Original Air Date: 11.08.00
Main Characters
Trekkies, Timmy, Ms. Choksondik
Plot Summary
The kids have to face the 4th grade, and they're not too happy about it. Cartman cooks up a scheme to go back in time to return to the 3rd grade where things were fun and easy. Two Star Trek fans help them rig Timmy's wheelchair into a working time machine and send Timmy on the trip of his life! Timmy is brought back to the present when the Trekkies build a time portal with a machine consisting of a duck taped to a microwave. At the end of the episode, Ms. Choksondik convinces the class that life is about going forward, not backward and Stan remembers that the 3rd grade actually sucked.
Analysis
This episode uses the novum of time travel to probe the idea of nostalgia while peppering up the storyline with sci-fi gags. The two Trekkies that create the time traveling devices have a hard time working together because they cannot agree how many episodes are in the original Star Trek series. Referencing this clip in the movie Speed, Jimmy cannot stop his time-traveling wheelchair because it would explode (shown here).The absurd time traveling devices in this episode mock the crazy time machines in other works, such as the Dolorean in "Back to the Future" or the wardrobe in C. S. Lewis's "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe."
Original Air Date: 12.04.02
Main Characters
Cartman, Stan, Butters, and their future selves
Plot Analysis
On a dark and stormy night, a stranger appears on the Marsh family's front door steps, claiming to be the future version of Stan. Stan's future self is a product of drug and alcohol use. He says he comes back from the future to convince his younger self to not go down this path. Eventually Stan discovers that his "future self" is actually an actor hired by his parents to motivate their son.
After Stan gets back at the company who employed the actor, Cartman begins thinking about what his future self would be like, and decides to start taking care himself. He is then visited by his real future self, a thin, good looking man who tells young Cartman that he became the CEO of his own time traveling company by making the right decisions. Cartman doesn't believe him, and decides to spite him by doing whatever he wants. Future Cartman then expands into a fat and greasy mechanic.
Analysis
So many times in Sci Fi movies people come back from the past and people believe their stories. Couldn't their stories be fake? This episode explores that idea while simultaneously satirizing the war against drugs. The fake future self is a hyperbole of the scare tactics used by many parents and organizations to convince their children not to use drugs. Sharon Marsh put it best when she said, "If we use lies and exaggerations to keep kids off drugs, then they're never going to believe anything we tell them."
Original Air Date: 11.1.06
Main Characters
Cartman, Butters, Ms. Garrison, Richard Dawkins, otters
Plot Summary
Richard Dawkins, a well-known evolutionary biologist, comes to South Park Elementary to teach evolution to the 4th grade. Ms. Garrison, the 4th grade teacher and an anti-evolutionist, falls in love with Dawkins. During a night out, Dawkins converts Ms. Garrison to atheism by citing the Flying Spaghetti Monster and proving religion is based on logical fallacies. The newly converted Ms. Garrison then convinces him to rid the world of religion and thus end religious wars forever.
Outside of class, Cartman begins to loose his mind waiting for the release of the Nintendo Wii. Unable to wait 3 weeks for its release, Eric Cartman gets Butters to help him cryogenically freeze himself. However, his plan goes terribly wrong.
Cartman instead wakes up in the year 2546. In this future reality, everyone has been converted to atheism. However, this does not end war; a war rages between 3 different atheists sects fighting over who has the best name. Unfortunately for Cartman, the Wii is an ancient gaming console in 2546 that is not compatible with the new TV's of the future.
Analysis
This episode was aired right before the much anticipated Nintendo Wii gaming system was released. Cartman, know for being materialistic and impatient, was the perfect character to make fun of the Wii craze that characterized the Christmas shopping of 2006. Additionally, this episode satirizes the idea that a world without religion will end war.
Science fiction wise, this episode is rife with pop culture references. Just compare this clip to the intro to the TV show Buck Rodgers in the 25 century! While stuck in the future, Cartman uses a Crank Prank Timephone to tell his past self not to cryogenically freeze himself. This interaction with a past self can also be found in famous Science Fiction works such as Robert Heinlein's "...All You Zombies" (1959). Whenever something changes in the past, the future is appropriately changed as well. For example, when Richard Dawkins discovers that Ms. Garrison is a transvestite, Dawkins no longer pursues Garrison's dream of converting the world to atheism and making the atheists groups disappear from the future. These time changing events parallels movies such as the "Back to the Future" trilogy.