Time travel is tricky business – especially if you’re a movie producer. I imagine that you don’t want your character catching up with Marty McFly in some bizarro alternate universe. That would be bad for your plot. And you certainly want some consistency in the rendering of both past and future so that your industry looks intelligent… which is why this space travel infographic is a must have for all movie producers considering a time travel plot device.
There’s a bigger version here – and I found it here.
The other thing producers need to take careful note of is calculating length and distances both for actual travel and in order to calculate the time it’ll take for their protagonist to go on a time travelling mission to Mars. Consistency is not all that important if you have a time machine that will erase the travel time… but some geeks viewers are pretty pedantic about that sort of thing – especially when it comes to sci fi.
So here’s another vital infographic (from here). EDIT – apologies to XKCD, the original source of this graphic.
I <3 infographics.