About: San Dimas Time   Sponge Permalink

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San Dimas Time is used when a writer wants to add some against-the-clock tension to a Time Travel story without thinking too hard about how little sense that makes. As a result, events in two different time periods are shown to happen concurrently, so that people two years in the past only have X minutes to stop the villain from committing some terrible act in the present, even though they should technically have X minutes plus two years to sort it all out. Or perhaps the heroes have only Y minutes to get to their time machine and prevent the villain from doing something thirty years ago, which obviously makes no sense either. (Whatever "our" next year may bring, there is little risk of its world suddenly having experienced a Nazi victory in 1945.)

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  • San Dimas Time
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  • San Dimas Time is used when a writer wants to add some against-the-clock tension to a Time Travel story without thinking too hard about how little sense that makes. As a result, events in two different time periods are shown to happen concurrently, so that people two years in the past only have X minutes to stop the villain from committing some terrible act in the present, even though they should technically have X minutes plus two years to sort it all out. Or perhaps the heroes have only Y minutes to get to their time machine and prevent the villain from doing something thirty years ago, which obviously makes no sense either. (Whatever "our" next year may bring, there is little risk of its world suddenly having experienced a Nazi victory in 1945.)
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  • San Dimas Time is used when a writer wants to add some against-the-clock tension to a Time Travel story without thinking too hard about how little sense that makes. As a result, events in two different time periods are shown to happen concurrently, so that people two years in the past only have X minutes to stop the villain from committing some terrible act in the present, even though they should technically have X minutes plus two years to sort it all out. Or perhaps the heroes have only Y minutes to get to their time machine and prevent the villain from doing something thirty years ago, which obviously makes no sense either. (Whatever "our" next year may bring, there is little risk of its world suddenly having experienced a Nazi victory in 1945.) Alternately, characters traveling to some other time can't come back to the moment they left, but are somehow bound to return to a time, for example, eight minutes after they left if they were gone eight minutes. Can be justified, however, if time travel is of the "travel exactly X time forward/backward" variety. Or perhaps the characters just need to avoid paradoxes, but it's okay to Trick Out Time. Note that this is different from the Portal to the Past, where a time portal links two eras and allows time on both sides to run at an equal rate, giving the impression that events are running concurrently. This is essentially a portal that sends you X amount of time forward/backwards in time. The main difference is that the Portal to the Past means that the time flow rate on both sides are the same due to both sides being essentially at rest relative to one another (i.e. because of relativity). If you want to be charitable, you can blame this on the Timey-Wimey Ball. San Dimas Time is often portrayed using Meanwhile in the Future. (That page, however, specifically focuses on scenes in which the two time periods do not affect one another.) If the characters are in the past relative to the key events, they might avert this by taking The Slow Path. If they are in the future, they may think they can tell whether or not they are going to have succeeded (by simply reading a newspaper or otherwise) — but perhaps somebody Tricked-Out Time, or maybe there's going to be a Delayed Ripple Effect "after" the villain changed the past. Note: Please don't duplicate entries between this trope, Meanwhile in the Future, and Portal to the Past. Examples of San Dimas Time include:
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