Time Travel with Babbage and Watt Technology

With a hint of Faraday thrown in!

The time machine & time travelling sequences were the best part of this film.

The above video shows the time travel scenes from the 2002 film "The Time Machine". I downloaded the film from iTunes and watched it about a year or two ago. I thought the effects and sets were good and in particular I was impressed by the steam punk time machine. But on the whole I didn't really enjoy the story. In comparison with H G Wells' book of the same name the film sacrifices the disturbing cutting edge of the book for the feel good factor; but I suppose the feel good factor is what most people want of an escapist film.  The film, needless to say, takes evolution for granted, but doesn't follow Wells into the potentially nihilistic territory of a profane version of evolution.  In comparison Wells was entirely frank about the logic of a world where the only imperative is the survival "ethic" and just where that "ethic" might take us as a race.  In contrast the 2002 film smothers the Riddle of the Sphinx with schmaltz and kitsch. 

Wells' "The Time Machine" cuts two ways: It either reinforces postmodernism's thoroughgoing (and ultimately inconsistent) scepticism or it provokes a determination that the future need not be like Wells' depiction. But then, if there is no personal God to turn to who or what is going to guarantee that our efforts will prosper?  Profanity so easily succumbs to the depression of a nihilistic malaise. As I once reported an evangelical atheist saying: "The Universe doesn't care about us!".  The sense of ultimate hopelessness and futility which such expressions may engender is tantamount to being pulled down into darkness by the clutching hands of the demonic Morlocks. 

One day, perhaps one day,  some one is going to make a film that does justice to Wells' original ideas and the riddles they raise. With today's special effects a really good job of it could no doubt be done. However, unless the makers of this future film think they can do better they might like to retain the 2002 hardware reconstruction of the Time Machine itself! 

The  2002 Time Machine's  console  is reminiscent of Babbage's difference engine

Steam powered time travel! An eclectic mix of nineteenth century precision technology. But according to Wells the fancied human genius behind this project would likely  count for nothing in the cosmic context.

For comparison: the console of a real steam truck, although it lacks the Time Machine's "trip computer"! I took this photo myself at the Thursford Collection