The dog who connects the story in The Lake House seems to be more than a dog. She, whom Kate names Jackie but calls Jack, never does anything not normal for a dog, but manages to do those things in ways and at times that all work toward bringing Alex and Kate together. Yet either Jackie is a separate magical event in the fantasy, or time is more convoluted than first appears.
The problem arises because in her first letter--the letter Kate wrote to the next tenant before any magic occurred, before Alex died in her arms and the connection between them began--she mentions the pawprints outside the front door, a set of prints which began in the middle of the walkway and ended at the door. Alex is confused because when he first reads the letter there are no pawprints, but he then watches Jackie walk through his pan of paint and track those prints up to the door. Since at this point no one suspects time travel, he thinks it nothing more than a remarkable coincidence; yet for us it is problematic.
Jackie's part in all this is very much to bring Alex and Kate together. She provides the pawprints that stimulate the conversation; she responds to the name Kate gave her when Alex uses it. She bolts from the construction site to lead Alex to Morgan's house in time to get him invited to Kate's 2004 birthday party, where he dances with her, kisses her, and perhaps derails her relationship with Morgan.
Here is the problem: if Jackie is the result of a magic initiated when Kate connected with Alex at the accident in 2006, then in the original history there was no Jackie in 2004; but then there also were no pawprints for Kate to mention in the letter which she had by that time already written and left in the mailbox. Thus either Jackie was already part of the original history and already left those prints on the walkway, or Kate's original letter did not mention any such prints. If the letter does not mention the prints, Alex does not wonder about them, and it will take an extra run through history to fix that.
The question then becomes whether the dog is part of the magic initiated at the accident, or the accident part of the magic initiated by the dog, or whether we have two independent magical events leading to the same result. It is always simpler, in magical terms, to assume that events are connected; and it is better magic to assume that Kate's invocation at the accident initiated everything than to suppose that a magical dog caused the accident to induce her to have those thoughts and feelings. We will thus have to assume that the dog is not part of the original history, but comes into being in 2004 because of Kate's response to the accident in 2006. That gives us an original history without the dog, which we will attempt to reconstruct next time.
Comments
Mark,
Just wanted to ask what you think of John Titor, and if his story would make a plausible motion picture
rhank you for answers again. I was watching other time travel film: Click with Adam Sandler. It is about television control he was given from the dancing deerhunting man in the back of beyond. In the televsion control he is able to move quickly through time, the device is time traveling device like doctor brown's transformer car. it is a much better film than lake house and contains fonzie as the father. I would love to read this as a review. There was a tv show here about weird science where a girl who assisted two spies, one was chevy chase. on this show she came out of the computer. it had the same plot as Click but used more time travel. i think she was like an internet genie. but i recall you just review movies.will you also review the superman film where he travels back in time?
will you produce pamplets?
Pombo--If you're asking whether I think John Titor is a genuine time traveler from twenty-six years in the future, I am genuinely skeptical. I would expect that before we crack time travel we would crack artificial intelligence, mind/machine interface, matter transmission, and some form of interstellar travel, and a quarter century is probably not going to see those technologies accomplished--and there are more plausible beginnings in them than in time travel.
If you wonder whether his story would make a good movie, I am not familiar enough with the details, although a good writer could probably make any of several good stories of it--investigation that proves him a fraud, investigation that suggests he is a success, some story based on what he hoped to accomplish by his trip, a story in which he accidentally changes his own history, all possibilities that could be interesting. But I wouldn't try it myself.
Thanks for the note.
--M. J. Young
Doc--I saw trailers for Click but haven't seen it; it does sound like it may have temporal elements, so I'll have to look for it.
As to the other, are you sure you're not confusing Spies Like Us (Chevy Chase as a spy) with Weird Science (two kids bring a girl out of a computer)? I see that a TV show of that name exists, but Chase does not appear to have been part of it. Weird Science is, well, weird, but I don't recall a time travel element in it. It's been a few decades since I saw it, though, so I could have forgotten something.
--M. J. Young
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