Flag

References

• Independence Day (United States)
• Almost Plausible: Fireworks
• Vexillology
• The Big Bang Theory
• DOES YOUR FLAG FAIL? Grey Grades The State Flags!
• Why city flags may be the worst-designed thing you’ve never noticed
• 99% Invisible
  • 99% Symbolic
• Our Flag Means Death
• Triangle
• Betsy Ross
• Drunk History
• Shuttle Basics
• Life on Mars
• Rocket Man
• Berenstain Bears: Name Confusion
• All Summer in a Day
• Galaxy Quest
• First ever image of a black hole: a CNRS researcher had simulated it as early as 1979
• Back to the Future
• Scrubs
  • Clip Compilation: Eagle!
• Scooby Doo, Where Are You!
  • Spooky Space Kook
• Doctor Who
  • The Impossible Astronaut
• Spock
• James T. Kirk
• Jay and Silent Bob
• My Dinner with Andre
• Good Will Hunting
• The Martian

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Thomas]
So is there a skeleton, then, where the time machine is?

[Shep]
Oh, maybe the one that gets sent further back and is going to die?

[Thomas]
Well, I was thinking the person who originally came back to scout the colonization trip or whatever, who was the person operating the time machine in the first place? They got stuck. So there’s just like a spacesuit with a skeleton in it. Again, from the future.

[Emily]
I like spacesuits with skeletons, so I’m on board with that. That’s my favorite Scooby Doo episode.

[Shep]
And my least favorite Doctor Who episode.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. We are a US based podcast, and today is our country’s Independence Day. We wanted to pick a theme that would celebrate the holiday, and fireworks was the first thing that came to mind. But we’ve already done an episode about fireworks, which you should listen to because it’s pretty funny. So we decided to go with Flag instead. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and raising the standard with me are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
F as in flag and fireworks.

[Thomas]
Ooh.

[Emily]
Ooh, fancy.

[Thomas]
Do either of you have any interest in vexillology?

[Emily]
I’m assuming that’s the study of flags.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
It is, yes.

[Emily]
I have some. I think they’re pretty. And I like to hear what each thing symbolizes.

[Shep]
I basically didn’t at all and thought that on Big Bang Theory, one of the characters is obsessed with flags, and it’s like, “Oh, yes, that’s a stereotypical nerd thing. Whatever.” And then recently on YouTube, CGP Grey did a video on states flags-

[Emily]
That’s a good one.

[Shep]
And it was so good, and someone in the comments linked to a TEDTalk where they did a talk on city flags, and that was also really good. So I have this renewed interest.

[Thomas]
Was that TEDTalk to the Roman Mars one?

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s really good. Yeah, flags are really interesting. And I mean, I guess, like, my opinion prior to watching the or listening to the Roman Mars episode on 99PI (99% Invisible), it was always just sort of like, “Yeah, flags are fine. And I like the way some of them look, and I kind of don’t care for others,” but I didn’t have, like, a way to articulate that or I didn’t really think about why ever. And then once they started talking about, “Oh, here are elements that are nice, and here are elements that are maybe less good,” and I was like, yeah, I guess I never really thought about it. But those things kind of, for the most part, reflect what my thoughts were. And I do find those kind of more simple flags generally are better, although some of them are so simple as to be almost meaningless. It feels like sometimes.

[Emily]
Mmhmm.

[Shep]
Where it’s just three bars of color.

[Thomas]
Right. You really have to be in the know to understand, like, what does all of this represent? But then maybe, like, when you find that out, it’s like, “Oh, actually, that’s pretty cool.”

[Emily]
That’s how I feel about it when I find it out. I’m like, “Oh, that’s cool. I didn’t know that.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
From the CGP Grey video, he highlighted the differences between Washington state flag and Washington DC’s flag-

[Thomas]
Ooh.

[Shep]
Which I thought was really interesting, how you can take the same original concept (Washington, the person) and derive these two different things from it.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s pretty cool. And similarly, we have our theme of Flag, and we’re gonna derive a whole bunch of different things from it with our pitches. So, Emily, you’re pitching first today. Let’s hear what you have.

[Emily]
Oh, I have some real winners. Do you like the confidence? I’m almost believable, right?

[Thomas]
Oh, goody.

[Shep]
You have checkered flags in yours.

[Emily]
I do.

[Thomas]
Hey.

[Emily]
So the first one is the story of a young union soldier’s wife who is sewing an American flag for her husband and his unit. This ultimately ends up being his funeral flag.

[Thomas]
Ooh.

[Emily]
So it would just be a sad story of that.

[Thomas]
So is this sort of, like, following the journey of the flag?

[Emily]
Yeah. Most of it will be her constructing it, maybe some letters and her life as a war bride and then kind of maybe its journey to the husband and its way back to her.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I like the idea of it following the flag.

[Emily and Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So, like, as it’s being carried through the army, you’re seeing these mini episodes of various soldiers.

[Thomas]
The flag sort of as the audience stand-in.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
I like that.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
That’s cool.

[Shep]
However, this sounds like a sad one, and I don’t need help crying anymore.

[Emily]
I mean-

[Thomas]
Not in 2023.

[Emily]
No. All right, so the second one is a little more light hearted or can be a little more light hearted. A fake documentary about the design of a new flag for a post-apocalyptic society.

[Thomas]
I love the idea of a talking head scene where the guy is like, “We really wanted to make sure that we got the animals that were important to us in there. So that’s why the Trash Panda is featured very prominently on the flag.”

[Emily]
Yeah, see, we could go either way with, like, ridiculousness, or we could make it a little more serious.

[Thomas]
Yeah. What are some of the elements you think would be on a post-apocalyptic flag? Have you thought about that at all?

[Emily]
No, but-

[Thomas]
I mean, trash, obviously.

[Emily]
Obviously.

[Shep]
Mushroom cloud.

[Thomas]
Mushroom cloud. Yeah.

[Emily]
Nuclear snow.

[Thomas]
Biohazard symbol. Yeah.

[Emily]
The death of large mammals.

[Thomas]
Pile of bones.

[Emily]
I just imagine that scene in Our Flag Is Death, where they’re all-

[Thomas]
Yeah. Oh.

[Emily]
Showing their flags and explaining the meanings behind them. All right, and for my final one, a young man finds a very old flag in the attic of his frat house. He decides to hang it on the wall of his dorm room, behind his bed, mattress on the floor, blue sheets-

[Shep]
His dorm room or his frat room.

[Emily]
I’m sorry, his frat room.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
And overnight, he becomes possessed by an eldritch spirit attached to the flag, which embodies or manifests as Uncle Sam and then goes on a killing spree for all he deems unpatriotic.

[Shep]
I was wondering where the serial killer was going to come in. I thought it would be a fish out of water story. You know, someone, a Confederate soldier or something possessed the flag and then embodies the student. And is someone out of time.

[Thomas]
Well, you see, the flag was sewn by a young Union soldier’s wife, and then he died and his blood got on the flag, and then-

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah. Bringing it all back together.

[Thomas]
That’s right.

[Emily]
All right, that’s all I got for you guys. Shep, it’s your turn.

[Shep]
Okay. So on the first manned mission to Mars, when the crew goes to plant the flag, they find a flag already there. Now, there are a couple of places you could go with this. One, it’s their flag, and they’re in a time loop, like Triangle. Have you seen Triangle?

[Thomas]
Ooh. No.

[Shep]
It’s one where they’re repeating the same events over and over, but you only see, like, one pass through. So she gets her necklace or her bracelet or something caught on a grate, and she pulls her hand and it breaks it off and it falls down, and there’s a pile of bracelets there, or necklaces, whatever it was. It’s been a while. So the objects are accumulating as these loops go through. So this is maybe the flag from the previous loop of these people, or it’s not that at all. It’s the flag from an ancient civilization. Now, where was the civilization? Was it a civilization from Earth that was also traveling to Mars? Or was it a civilization from Mars that has now gone extinct? Or is it a civilization from beyond our solar system? But in which case, why are they using flags? Maybe flags are universal. I don’t know.

[Emily]
I like that idea of the universal language.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
The universal language of flags.

[Thomas]
Or something that’s, like, they realize as a flag, they’re like, “What is this? Oh, my gosh.”

[Shep]
Right? Okay. My other pitch is each nation has a flag. We know this. Thomas, have you seen the American flag?

[Thomas]
Yeah, I saw it just earlier today.

[Shep]
No, you saw a American flag.

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Shep]
But secretly there is the American flag that’s kept secure and safe, because if any other nation captures it, they win. It’s capture the flag on a global scale.

[Emily]
All right.

[Thomas]
That’s great.

[Shep]
That’s it for me. Thomas, what do you have?

[Thomas]
My first idea is a romantic comedy. Hold on. Don’t just vote for it because it’s I said romantic comedy. Hear me out.

[Emily]
Oh, no, I’m sold already.

[Shep]
Yeah, same.

[Thomas]
I don’t know. Hold on. Wait till you hear my second one.

[Shep]
All right.

[Thomas]
Because I quite like the second one.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
The first one is a romantic comedy called Red Flags. The movie is about giving people a fair chance and thinking about things from their perspectives. So the main character is a middle-aged divorcée who is way too picky and always looking for red flags in the men that she dates. Her stance is that she’s going to, quote, “Get it right this time.” As a result, she has impossibly high standards and is quick to dismiss men for even the tiniest fault. She meets a guy with, by her estimation, far too many red flags to even consider. For whatever reason, they remain in each other’s orbit. And that gives her a chance to see that many of those initial red flags are actually reasonable for an older, divorced man with kids. The more time they spend together, the more she sees that he’s a genuinely good guy who would make a wonderful partner. He’s not 100% perfect, but she comes to realize that she isn’t either, and no one ever will be.

[Shep]
So the lesson is lower your standards. All you single dating people, lower your standards.

[Emily]
I feel extremely called out.

[Thomas]
All right. My other idea it’s the summer of 1776. Newly widowed Betsy Ross is an upholsterer and runs the Ross Furniture Barn. Sales are flagging.

[Shep]
You paused for groans, and it took the pause for me to get it.

[Thomas]
She tries a bunch of different wacky schemes to drive sales, but none of them work. She needs to turn things around pronto or risk losing the business. Maybe she does lose the business at some point. The Continental Congress holds a nationwide competition to find a design for the flag of the newly formed United States of America.

[Shep]
How do they advertise the national-?

[Emily]
There’s the newspaper.

[Shep]
There aren’t like-

[Emily]
They send out flyers. They hire newsboys.

[Shep]
There’s just flyers posted everywhere.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Town criers.

[Emily]
Town criers. They have newsboys shouting it from the streets.

[Thomas]
Right. There’s a post that all the news gets put up on.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It took six months to go from the southernmost state to the northernmost state. How are they organizing this? “This competition will run for the next three years.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Remember at that point in time, Continental Congress is in Philadelphia. That’s kind of middle.

[Thomas]
There you go. Isn’t that where she lives, anyway? Doesn’t she live in Philadelphia?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I think she did.

[Thomas]
I think so.

[Shep]
I think it was just a convenience. A person of convenience.

[Thomas]
Yeah. All right, so the Continental Congress holds a nationwide competition, or maybe a Philadelphia-wide competition, to find a design for the flag of the newly formed United States of America. Betsy enters, and her design performs well, but she has stiff competition. Perhaps at some point there’s an accusation that she stole her design. Or maybe people are shocked at her use of five-pointed stars instead of the traditional six-pointed ones. Anyway, in the end, she wins the competition and eventually opens Betsy’s Flag Emporium.

[Shep]
I’m so lost. I’m so out in the weeds on this one. What is going on?

[Emily]
It’s like an episode of Drunk History.

[Thomas]
Pretty much, like, I just like the idea of sort of like a wacky retelling of history.

[Shep]
So this is like Emily’s fake documentary about the design of a flag, but it’s the design of a flag for a new union rather than a post-apocalyptic society.

[Thomas and Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah, those are my pitches. Did we have one that we liked more than the others?

[Emily]
Obviously, the rom-com,

[Shep]
I mean, that was my thought too, but we do do a lot of rom-coms.

[Thomas]
The one thing I don’t really love about this rom-com idea is it feels really generic. I don’t know, it just sort of seems like, yeah, this is how rom- It’s like I’ve just described the formula for a rom-com.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
There we go.

[Shep]
It needs more flags. Maybe he’s a vexillologist.

[Thomas]
There we go.

[Emily]
I agree with you about the rom-com. It is a little on the generic side, and we do those quite often. I like Shep’s with the mysterious flag on Mars.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s pretty intriguing. I like the time loop idea, although those can be tricky, especially in an hour.

[Shep]
We’ve never done a time travel episode. We keep going right up to the border.

[Thomas]
A loop might be easier than, like, a full-on proper time travel thing.

[Shep]
Well, I mean, you could explain the loop right away. They’re on Mars. There’s some ancient civilization that has a machine and they go through it and they come out and-

[Emily]
So if we did the time loop and it was an alien machine causing it, is it just like the byproduct of the machine that they happen to stumble into? Like, there’s just this space on Mars that’s like a time vortex type thing? Or is it done on purpose by the civilization? Are they trying to fuck with them?

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, it could be to protect something.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay, so they land on Mars. Was this a planned location or was it like the moon landing where they couldn’t get to their original location, they just had to find another spot they could set down.

[Thomas]
Oh, I like that idea of it being there’s a spot they’re trying to get to, but they end up landing somewhere that’s not quite in that area, so they have to trek back.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
And so that original area is where the time loop happens. Like, at some point, they cross a threshold and that begins the loop. Or maybe planting the flag triggers it. That way they’re not constantly, like, landing and getting out. So where does that loop start? So does it start with, like, them walking?

[Shep]
So, like, their supplies have been shipped in and landed in this one location, and they have landed in a different location, and so they have to trek across the surface to get to the supplies to do their mission and take off again. And so they show up to that location, and it looks like someone has already been there. So at the beginning, because we’re seeing it from their perspective, a time loop has already happened. But we don’t know that it’s a time loop yet.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
We just see the supplies have been opened, the flag is planted, all this stuff has-

[Thomas]
The Hab is set up, like, things are, yeah.

[Shep]
Yes. As if someone had gone there and done stuff, and so it might seem from the audience, like, before they know what’s going on. “Is there life on mars? Is this an alien?” You wouldn’t think it’s humans that have done this. You would think it’s some other life form.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
So there’s that mystery element at the beginning. So I guess the fact that it could be a time loop maybe isn’t revealed until the end.

[Emily]
That would make sense.

[Thomas]
Would we then only see one loop because the first time it loops, we’re gonna kind of figure it out.

[Shep]
Right. We could only see one loop. So at some point they travel back to before they arrived at the lab site. What do we want to call that?

[Emily]
Landing site Alpha.

[Shep]
Yeah, the alpha location, not the emergency delta location. So we see them arrive and stuff has already been gone through or whatever, and at some point they go back, and then they have to go through their own supplies to get whatever they need. Why are they not there when the earlier version of them shows up? Why did they have to leave? What happened to cause them to leave?

[Emily]
Do we want an alien race to be there?

[Shep]
I mean, if there’s time travel, it could be future humans. It could be past humans, humans that went to the deep past back when Mars still had an atmosphere and tried to set up a civilization there.

[Thomas]
Oh, I like that idea, actually, where it’s humans from the future who’ve come back to try to set up a colony on Mars, back when there was an atmosphere, so that at a certain point, hundreds or thousands of years later, humans would be able to more easily make that transition to Mars and we could exist on multiple planets. I mean, it feels like it would be some rich asshole who goes back to try to set up, like, a luxury planet so that rich people a couple thousand years in the future would be able to vacation on Mars and get away from the dirty, normal earth people.

[Shep]
Right. The poors.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
But that could be what’s causing the time loop, is whatever technology or machinery they use to get there is busted in some way that’s generating the time loop.

[Thomas]
Yeah, totally.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
That seems really feasible.

[Emily]
Yeah. I like this idea.

[Thomas]
Because of the glass-like dirt that screwed something up on the time machine and it’s causing it to short out, and it’s like trying to spin up, because it’s like an automatic return mode or something like that. And so it’s trying to spin up, but something happens and it trips back into the time loop. And-

[Shep]
I like that because now we can have a ticking clock that’s going in reverse. Every once in a while, the faulty machine sends out this, like, time wave that moves everything a little bit further back in time. That’s how they end up before they were there, when they’re there later.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But they have to launch and get off the planet and away from that machine before they end up before the supplies are dropped off. That’s why they’re not there later when they show up at the end of the loop, because they had to leave. So when they get there, their supplies have been gone through and the rocket is gone.

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Shep]
So it’s like a microwave. It’s got waves of areas where it’s high intensity and areas where it’s low intensity, so they could get separated fairly early, where some of them move back in time and one of them maybe doesn’t, or one of them moves back in time and the rest don’t. Maybe that’s the first thing that happens is one of them disappears.

[Emily]
And that’s who’s gone through the supplies before they get there.

[Shep]
Well, that’s what they think.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
That’s the working hypothesis is that this one person that separated from them somehow made it to the site before them and for some reason launched the rocket and left the planet and left them behind.

[Thomas]
Can you imagine walking up to that site, you’ve gotten off the ship, you trek all the way across the planet or however far you get to the site and all the food has been eaten. Not that, like the packaging and everything is gone. The packaging is empty, the food is gone, it has been eaten. You’re like, “How the fuck did he eat all of this food in 60 minutes and launch the rocket by himself?”

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Yeah. I like it because that introduces that mystery of what happened.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
The obvious explanation doesn’t seem possible, but it’s currently the only logical explanation.

[Thomas]
So I feel like we’re going to need to see more than one loop then.

[Emily]
Yeah. I think with the way we’re writing this one, it’s a multi loop.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah. To introduce that, like you said, that ticking clock and that pressure, that time pressure.

[Shep]
Right. It’s not really a loop, though. Well, I guess it is still a loop. Like, every time the machine goes off, they move further back and further back. So they move back and then they’re going forward in time and then they move back further and then they’re going forward in time.

[Thomas]
So at some point they see the rocket land.

[Shep]
Well, they might see the supplies dropped off, or maybe that’s the end of it, is they go back so far that the stuff isn’t there.

[Thomas]
Oh, my god.

[Shep]
And so they’re just trapped on this planet and they’re like, “Oh, we are going to die. When our oxygen runs out, we are going to die immediately.” And that’s when all the stuff lands. And they’re like, “Well, let’s get on the ship and go.”

[Thomas]
So I like this. They land, so we get the landing zone and the mission zone. So they land in the landing zone. They hike toward the mission zone. At some point along the way, the first person disappears. They’re like, “Well, we all have GPS units on our wrists, whatever. We know the rally point is the mission zone. Not too worried about it right now. Let’s just get there and get set up, because that’s the plan. We’re going to go to the mission zone.” So he knows where to go, he knows how to get there. And then they get there and the Hab is already set up and all the supplies are eaten and that things have been gone through, and they’re just like, “What the fuck?” And there’s that mystery of, like, how did he do this? And they’re like, “Well, we don’t have any supplies. We can’t stay here. So I guess let’s go back to the rocket.” They go back to the LZ, the rocket’s gone, or maybe they see the rocket taking off and they’re like, “What is happening?” And then what it is, is they’ve been moving around in time. And the plan that they formulate is “We have to get off this planet.” And so they sort of figure out maybe what the pattern is, the time pattern or whatever. And so they end up getting back to, however many of them are left at the end, get back to the rocket and take off to get off the planet.

[Shep]
I don’t think they can see the rocket take off, or at least not at that point. They’ll have to see it take off after they’ve already seen it not be there because it takes off further in the past.

[Emily]
That makes sense. So, like, the first return, it’s just not there and they don’t know what to do. And then they start they go in the loop or whatever.

[Thomas]
Because they would have “We’re not that far from the rocket.”

[Emily]
Right. “Would have heard it.”

[Thomas]
“We would have seen it and heard it like, what the hell?”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So then they go back to the mission zone. “Well, maybe we, you know, let’s look through it more. Maybe we can find something usable.”

[Shep]
And now there’s food there.

[Thomas]
Yeah. They come back and everything’s packed.

[Emily]
What we could do is maybe the guy that separated, left behind or whatever, has to do something on the rocket. There was some minor thing he has to fix before they can take off again. So he’s just going to do it now. So they get there first, that, all of that happens. They go back, rocket’s gone, they go back to the supply zone and he’s there and he’s like, “Oh, my god, where have you guys been? It’s been, like, four days.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And he’s introducing the idea of they’re in different time spots.

[Shep]
Yes. Although I wouldn’t have him, like, has to stay behind to fix something. He’s staying behind because that’s just protocol. He’s staying with the rocket in case something happens.

[Emily]
Sure.

[Shep]
And then from his perspective, everybody disappeared and he eventually leaves the rocket and goes to the mission zone.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Nobody answer, was answering the radio.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
All the transponders disappeared.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah. So then they all kind of get to know that something’s weird with time at that point.

[Shep]
Yeah. I think one of them’s got to disappear entirely that we never see again.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And there’s, like, scratches on a rock on the surface because they went back so far that nothing else was there.

[Thomas]
Ooh.

[Emily]
Ooh, I like that. Do we see the scratches slowly forming-

[Shep]
No.

[Emily]
Like, with each pass?

[Shep]
Oh, I thought you meant, like, watching it-

[Emily]
No, like with each pass there’s like-

[Thomas]
But it’s like at one point there are three, and then another time there’s like ten.

[Emily]
Yeah. And that first is just like these random scratches, and then the next time it’s like this actually looks like a pattern.

[Thomas]
Oh, how horrible. Yes. Okay, we do see that at some point. So there’s like a whole bunch of scratches in a rock. And then at some point they notice there aren’t as many scratches in the rock, and they’re like, how the hell is that possible? And then later the scratches are all back and they’re like, what the fuck? And you realize they were in- the person was alive. They went back to where the person was, and had they connected up, they would have all been together and they would have been in the same dip or whatever of the wave, and they would have all moved together through time. But because that person was off doing something else somewhere else, they miss each other.

[Shep]
How do they know that that person was there at that time? Are they in radio contact? They’re not close enough to be in the same dip, but they could be close enough to contact. But then what would you say? You have a limited amount of time. How much information can you send through? Time travel is hard. Why did we choose this?

[Emily]
Well, I thought it was more the realization that they were there and they missed it and that they didn’t know that he was there. They didn’t communicate with him. They didn’t find his blip on the screen.

[Thomas]
It’s more, I think, what you’re saying about that, like, the missed opportunity, right? Yeah.

[Shep]
Why would we see different amounts of scratches at different times? Now, if they’re trying to keep track of how many loops they’ve been through, then it’s a tally. I can see tally marks growing larger, but a message. You write the whole message all at once.

[Thomas]
See, I imagine tally marks for, like, loops or how how many days they’ve been there, or whatever it is. That number is always the same, the whole movie, except one time it’s way smaller, and then it goes back to being, later, they see it, and it goes back to being the same number, and it’s like, “Oh, god. There was that one loop where we were in the same time frame as that person.” But see, I don’t think it ever increases. I think it is the number it is because the person died hundreds of years before anyone ever got there. And so the tally marks are just there, and then at one point, a bunch of them go back, and there’s, like, half as many tally marks because they’ve moved hundreds of years back.

[Shep]
That’s why this is the mission zone. A Mars rover or whatever found these markings, and so they planned this mission here.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. To study the markings. That’s good.

[Shep]
I really want to emphasize the missed connection, though.

[Thomas and Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And that’s why I think they need to be in radio contact or their transponder needs to show up. Like they, they- The person that’s missing is suddenly there, and they can talk briefly.

[Emily]
But they can’t see them.

[Shep]
Right. They’re not in visual contact, but they’re talking on the radio. We got separated, and the other person’s freaking out because he hasn’t seen anyone.

[Emily]
So excited. And yeah.

[Shep]
Right. And then they’re trying to get together, and that’s when another wave goes through and the transponder disappears again because they didn’t get together in time.

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Shep]
And that’s it. They missed their window.

[Thomas]
I actually want them to see each other, but I want that person to be pretty far away. And so they can see each other and they can communicate via radio. The guy’s like, “Oh, my god. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t go anywhere. I’m coming.” And he’s, like, booking it. And there’s, like, hills and valleys to the landscape-

[Shep]
Oh ho.

[Thomas]
And so he dips down below into a small valley and then just never comes back up. And they’re like, “What happened?” And they look back into the cave or the rock or wherever the tallies are, and all the tallies are back, and they realize they’ve left him behind again. And that’s it. That’s the last we see of him.

[Shep]
Yep. That’s good and sad.

[Thomas]
How many astronauts are on the mission and how many make it home or make it off the planet?

[Emily]
There’s at least four. I assume a crew would be larger than that, although not a lot.

[Thomas]
Right. I was thinking maybe five or six.

[Shep]
(Reading a search result) “A space shuttle crew is typically five to seven crew members.”

[Emily]
There you go.

[Thomas]
Well, there we go.

[Shep]
So we have one character who gets separated into the past.

[Thomas]
And that guy is definitely not going home.

[Emily]
Right. And then we have the other one who gets separated initially, but they are able to reunite.

[Thomas]
Do we do five? So the one guy gets disappeared, and then it’s two and two. They get separated in pairs and then reunited all four together.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, we could do that.

[Thomas]
Oh, let’s do six. So we’ve got the one guy who disappears forever, the one guy who’s on the rocket, and then the other four people. And so rocket guy is sort of bouncing back and forth, in and out of, like, the timeline. Sometimes they’re in contact with him, sometimes they’re not. And we could just leave him on the rocket the whole movie. So he’s inexpensive.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Get someone, an A-list person to just do a cameo.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And they’re just mostly voice work.

[Emily]
Alan Tudyk!

[Thomas]
So I like that. And then we’ve got four people to play on the surface of the planet and go through time and separate and come back together in whatever groupings we want.

[Shep]
Do the two get back together, or do the two groups, do the two pairs get back together?

[Emily]
Well, we want them to survive. Right? We only want one guy to die forever.

[Thomas]
Well, do we? I mean, I kind of like the idea of maybe only three people. We’ve got the guy in the ship and one other pair who manage to escape.

[Shep]
I like that. If they get to the machine, they figure out what’s going on. And these waves of time are coming from this one location.

[Emily]
Oh. And then the two have to sacrifice themselves to save the three.

[Shep]
Right. So they go in where the waves are the most powerful, and they end up going way into the past, back to when maybe there was atmosphere on Mars. And it’s a man and a woman. So it’s like Adam and Eve.

[Thomas]
Ooh. Yeah.

[Emily]
I was just going to say, are we going to introduce that into this one?

[Thomas]
I like that. So they shut down the machine, but in so doing, there’s a huge final burst of energy that sends them back. Oh. So they’ve gotta they’ve got to do something that holds- They figure out how to get the machine to hold at- oh, my god.

[Shep]
It’s all coming together.

[Thomas]
So they’re in communication. They can see the date listed on the machine, so they know when they’re at the correct time. So let’s say it was today. So it’s July 4. 2023 is the date where they landed on Mars. And so that’s their today. And so they can see on the console when it finally says either that actual date or close enough to it like, “Hey, we’re in 2024. That’s good enough. Just go.” And so they can get back to the world that they’re supposed to be in, in the timeline they’re supposed to be in.

[Shep]
It’s got to be before they landed, but after the supplies were dropped off. That’s got to be the sweet spot, right? Because doesn’t the rocket disappear at some point.

[Thomas]
Yeah, but the rocket disappears because they’d left.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It disappears because they left. So all points after that, it’s gone.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So they need to get back to when it is there. This is why you get the A-list actor to be the guy on the rocket because he’s only there at the beginning and the end.

[Thomas]
And a few voice cameos in the middle, when it’s convenient.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So they say, “Okay, go, go.” And they hold the machine at that time or whatever happens. And so they clear it and there’s a big final burst of energy from the time machine that sets them back 5000 years or whatever it is. And it’s a lush planet. And they come out and yeah, so you get that Adam and Eve moment of like “Well, I guess we live here now.”

[Shep]
And she’s like, “I’m gay, though, so.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
They can have a platonic love story on the planet before they die. I mean, we don’t have to see it. We don’t need to know what goes on, so that is a question I have, though. Do we get to see each person’s-?

[Thomas]
So, I mean, I don’t think we need to see a lot about the people. I actually don’t imagine we see very much about the people who stay on Mars.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
The one guy, he just disappears. The couple, I think they walk out of a cave or something and we see that it’s lush, but it’s very bright. And we don’t follow them after that. We just see them walking out.

[Emily]
We could just hear water, a waterfall.

[Thomas]
Yeah. We know from their scene that they’re thousands of years in the past.

[Emily]
Right?

[Thomas]
And we know because it’s been established they aren’t going to be able to come back. They go together to see what the source is and if they can fix it. One of them is the electrical engineer for the ship or something and they realize there’s not enough time for the other person to get back.

[Emily]
If we’re going to make them Adam and Eve, let’s lean into it. One’s got an unrequited love for the other. So he’s just not going to leave her side.

[Shep]
Are we gonna make this a rom-com?

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
We ch- We specifically chose this one not to be a rom-com.

[Thomas]
The sequel is the rom-com.

[Shep]
Life on Mars.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Mars isn’t a good place to raise kids, I hear.

[Thomas]
That’s good. Well, while we figure out whether or not this is a rom-com, let’s take a quick break.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back from our break. So, what is the final end of the film? Is it those three people back on the ship headed toward Earth or toward whatever the orbiting ship is that takes them to Earth or however they get back? Is the implication that they’re going to make it back? Or do we see them back on Earth constantly questioning, is this actually our timeline?

[Shep]
Yeah, because how could you possibly know?

[Emily]
They’re running around screaming, “Is it Berenstein or Berenstain?”

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. They get back to Earth and no mission was ever planned or sent.

[Thomas]
Everyone assumes they’re aliens designed to look- They spend the rest of their lives locked up.

[Shep]
Yep. Well, that got real dark real quick.

[Thomas]
Now, I think the best thing is just they take off, set course for home, and that’s it.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
We just know that they’ve escaped the planet. We assume they’ll make it back.

[Emily]
I get what you’re saying, Shep, it’s that they’re gonna, when they go back to Earth, which we’re not going to see, they’ll actually go before the mission launched.

[Shep]
Right. That’s the implication, that they are also still on Earth.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So the supplies arrived not long before they did.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
So they’re going to unwittingly pass-

[Emily]
Themselves.

[Thomas]
Themselves. Because it’s a time loop.

[Shep]
Ooh!

[Emily]
Sure.

[Shep]
You have a scene at the beginning where there was a weird reading on the sensors.

[Thomas]
There was a near miss or some sort of weird radiation or gravitational or something like that. Yeah. Unexplained, but oh, and that’s what throws them off course.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. Excellent.

[Emily]
Perfect.

[Shep]
It all ties together good. That’s real good.

[Thomas]
Is it? Or is it a paradox?

[Shep]
It’s not a paradox.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
It’s a loop.

[Shep]
It’s a loop.

[Thomas]
How did it happen the first time?

[Shep]
It doesn’t matter how it happened the first time-

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
Because as soon as it loops once, they’re going to be thrown off for all subsequent loops.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s not a paradox.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
They landed correctly the first time, and then they threw themselves off a little bit, and then each subsequent loop, it found a happy place. They’re not going to get any further off course than this, and that’s where it stops changing. Haven’t you guys gone through loops before? It’s not a paradox.

[Thomas]
So how do they figure out that they’re in a time loop? I mean, certainly we don’t want somebody to experience it a whole bunch and then come back and be like, “Okay, guys, so here’s what happened while I was gone.”

[Emily]
Do they figure out are they separated multiple times or just one?

[Thomas]
I think it’s an ongoing issue.

[Emily]
So the first time they’re separated, somehow they figure-

[Thomas]
I think it takes a little bit, though, for them to figure, because I don’t want them to get it right away.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Like, maybe that’s an end of the first act thing.

[Shep]
I have a question. Are we following a specific person or pair, or are we following everyone and seeing what happens for everyone?

[Thomas]
Well, we don’t follow the one in the rocket ship, and we don’t follow the one who goes way back in time, because we don’t want to follow those people for budget and story reasons, respectively.

[Shep]
Right. I think we follow the pair that stays and turns off the machine.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s the mission captain and one other person.

[Thomas]
Do we? Because if we end the movie the way we were saying before, we leave them behind and follow the three in the rocket at the very end. Like, that’s where the last shot is, is on the rocket. So I feel like the two who get back on the rocket are the ones we follow.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
And it hurts a little bit less, like, to leave those two on Mars because we weren’t as invested in them as we were the two who do get off the planet. Does that make sense?

[Shep]
Well, that’s why I wanted to follow them that were left behind.

[Thomas]
Emily, what you were just saying gave me an idea. You mentioned talking about, like, oh, well, we see them in the lush Mars. We see the waterfall and stuff like that. We don’t need to see any of that because we see it at an earlier point. Somebody, or maybe the whole group goes back in time that far temporarily, and they see the lush Mars. So we as an audience, get to see, here’s what lush Mars looks like, here’s the waterfall, here’s all that. So that at the end there’s some cue that we give the audience, whether it’s an audio cue or a visual cue, that’s like, hey, remember that scene in lush Mars? Okay, well, that’s where they are again. And they can even discuss just straight up ahead, like, “Oh, this must be thousands of years ago, back when Mars had an atmosphere and water and all that.”

[Emily]
Is it like a blink of an eye almost, type situation where they’re just very temporarily there. 5-10 minutes, max.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I think-

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
It’s like an All Summer in a Day type of situation where it’s like, “Okay, we’ve got 20 minutes in the good Mars, and then we’re back to desolate Mars.”

[Emily]
“Drink your water, get your sunlight.”

[Thomas]
Right. Oh, god. The temptation to take your helmet off, but in the blink of an eye, you could be back in desolate Mars.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Emily]
Maybe somebody’s going to-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And the other people are like, “We’re scientists. Don’t be stupid.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Right. “Is there air? You don’t know.”

[Thomas]
“Seems okay.”

[Shep]
Okay. I think that you establish clues that there’s a time shenanigan going on if you’re following one pair-

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
And the two pairs separate to investigate different parts of the landing zone. But they’re staying together-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because they already separated once and one person disappeared. So the mission captain is like, “Let’s buddy up because we’re not going to let that happen again.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And they’re going to meet back up in 10 minutes or 20 minutes or whatever, and then when they start investigating whatever, the other pair comes back right away. It’s like, “I thought we were going to meet up in 20 minutes.” “It has been 20 minutes.” But we, the audience are with the one pair, and we know that it hasn’t been 20 minutes for them.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
At some point, they have to check their watches-

[Emily and Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And see that they’re all the pairs are synchronized with each other-

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
But they’re not synchronized between pairs.

[Thomas]
That’s a great scene for it.

[Shep]
“What’s going on here?”

[Thomas]
“Oh, there must be some sort of magnetic anomaly that’s interfering…” Because of course, you wouldn’t immediately go to time travel.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
That’s preposterous.

[Shep]
Exactly. And unscientific. And they’re all scientists.

[Thomas]
So we talked about the time travel was: humans in the future trying to establish whatever in the past on Mars, a colony or whatever. How does that get communicated to the audience?

[Shep]
They find the machine.

[Thomas]
Yeah, but there’s really not like a manual on the machine or a plaque on the machine that was, like, “Created for the colonization of Mars in BC 5000.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Obviously BCE at that point.

[Shep]
But the menu or the labels is going to be in English or something.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So it’s going to be clear that it’s from Earth.

[Thomas]
Has a little American flag on it.

[Shep]
Yes!

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Got to establish the flag.

[Emily]
Do they…? No. It’s a stupid throwaway line.

[Shep and Thomas]
Now you got to say it.

[Emily]
No, because you’ll make fun of me because I’m not a sciency person.

[Shep]
No, we’ll edit this out.

[Emily]
No I want you to leave it in when you make fun of me and my protests for being made fun of. Well, you could have someone be like, “Look at the machinery. And obviously this technology doesn’t exist yet. This is just theorized. We haven’t come up with the [math/material/insert thing here], that it doesn’t exist in their time yet, but they’re working towards and that machine has it.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. I mean, just like we had pictures of what mathematically a black hole should look like. And people were able to sort of come up with pictures of, like, “It would probably look like this.” And then all of the models and stuff that we’ve gotten are, like, just have just confirmed that those really old pictures were shockingly accurate. It could be the same sort of a thing where it’s like, “Oh, my god, I’ve seen this architecture sketched out before as a hypothesis, but-“

[Shep]
“But it’s a way out there hypothesis.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Like, “We’ve never had the computing power to do it.”

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
And, like, “Some of these parts, like, I’ve never I’ve never seen microchips like this,” or, you know, whatever it is. And it has the classic three dates thing, like in Back to the Future. It has the origin date, and it’s “I guess it’s from the future. It says it is.” Oh, yeah. You know how equipment always has the little manufacturer plaque on there? And it has a date, a manufacturer date, hundreds of years in the future. Thousands of years in the future.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And they’re like, “What?”

[Shep]
That’s the inspection plaque.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“Last inspected.”

[Thomas]
“Past inspection on this date.” I mean, I think that that sells it. Works for me.

[Shep]
Works for me.

[Emily]
So we’re not following the Adam and Eve couple, because that’s just what I’m going to call them from now on. Adam and Eve.

[Shep]
That’s fine.

[Emily]
So we’re not following them. We’re following the other two. Mostly. We’re staying with them on their shenanigans and adventures.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I mean, we can follow Adam and Eve a little bit, but they’re not our primary focus.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Our primary focus is the other couple.

[Emily]
Do we want to talk about the other two? The other pair? Do we care? Are they just some dude brahs that, are they Turk and J.D.?

[Shep]
Turk and J.D.! “Eagle!”

[Emily]
Or are they just colleagues? I would like maybe they had some animosity that they have to overcome in being paired up.

[Shep]
I mean, astronauts go through a lot of rigorous-

[Emily]
This is true. Psychological-

[Shep]
Psychological screening, which doesn’t make for good movies because it’s not very dramatic.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But that’s what I want to see. I want to see professionals being professional. I don’t want to see people yelling and screaming and being unprofessional, because every time I see that, it takes me out of it.

[Thomas]
You see people acting or reacting in a way that’s just like, “Well, but that’s not how people would act in that situation.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So is there a skeleton, then, where the time machine is?

[Shep]
Oh, maybe the one that gets sent further back and is going to die?

[Thomas]
Well, I was thinking the person who originally came back to scout the colonization trip or whatever, who was the person operating the time machine in the first place? They got stuck. So there’s just like a spacesuit with a skeleton in it. Again, from the future.

[Emily]
I like spacesuits with skeletons, so I’m on board with that. That’s my favorite Scooby Doo episode.

[Shep]
And my least favorite Doctor Who episode. I like the skeleton in this, in the spacesuit, the more I think about it, because how do they know how to stop the machine? That skeleton’s got to leave a clue behind. Like, here’s what they were trying to do, but they failed to do.

[Thomas]
He’s got the keys for the machine in his hand.

[Emily]
I was going to say an Allen wrench and a Swedish manual.

[Thomas]
Yeah. He’s got a little instruction manual, one of those little, like, wrist mission manuals.

[Shep]
Right. And it’s exposed to the vacuum of- not the vacuum, the near vacuum of the Mars surface, so it didn’t degrade.

[Thomas]
Right. And it’s in a cave, so there’s no UV degradation.

[Shep]
Right. This all works, this scientifically accurate time travel movie. So then you fill the rest with philosophical discussions between the pairs of people that we’re following, the nature of reality and time and-

[Emily]
Meaning of humanity. And-

[Shep]
Right. Why did you become an astronaut? Why did you agree to this mission? What happens if we die out here?

[Thomas]
And then we see some stuff of them setting up the Hab and eating all the food and essentially getting things to the state where they found it originally at the beginning of the film.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
All right. Well, is that it then?

[Shep]
I, yeah.

[Emily]
I think we got it.

[Thomas]
I think we’ve got it.

[Emily]
I have no complaints.

[Thomas]
It’s pretty good. All right.

[Emily]
I feel satisfied.

[Shep]
I don’t know the makeup of the of the couple that we’re following, the pair that we’re, that is the main focus of the movie. I know nothing about these two. I know a bit about the guy that stays on the rocket and a bit about the guy that disappears and a bit about the captain and the other person that is the pair that gets sent to the lush Martian past. And nothing about the two main characters.

[Emily]
The two main characters, that’s what I was getting at originally was like, what do we have them do? Who are they? What do we know about them? Are they J.D. and Kirk? J.D. and Kirk? Are they Spock and Kirk?

[Shep]
Either way.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Some sort of bromance going on here. They’re platonic lifemates. It’s it’s Jay and Silent Bob. And we don’t have to write any dialogue for Silent Bob. This works out really well.

[Emily]
That’s why I wanted there to be some sort of animosity or jealousy. But you’re right. They go through rigorous psychological training and testing, so they’re not-

[Shep]
Or maybe because they think they’re going to die on this planet, they talk about their feelings and maybe one of them was jealous of the other one because they’ve been in training together for a long time. They’ve known each other for a long time. They both had a crush on the same girl and one of them married her.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And so he’s jealous, but not enough to act on it, but enough to talk about it calmly on this mission where they’re about to die.

[Emily]
Okay. I can buy that. Then we learn a little more about them.

[Shep]
I mean, I’m picturing most of the movie is My Dinner with Andre, but on Mars. All right. Are we missing anything? I mean, there’s lots of details-

[Thomas]
Right. There’s tons of details, but-

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
That we could add, but that’s not what we do in the initial pitch.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
No, we come up with the general premise, and we allow somebody to purchase that general premise and fill in the gaps.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Which we would be happy to do.

[Thomas]
For the right price.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Well, we love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about a Flag. Should we keep the flag flying, or are you only seeing red flags? Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media or sending us an email. Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com At the top of the show, I said our first instinct for today’s object was one we had already used. Now, despite how it may look, I promise we are not running out of ideas. But if you have an idea for an ordinary object you want us to come up with a movie about, get in touch and let us know. You can easily do that at AlmostPlausible.com Happy 4th of July, and we hope you’ll stay safe whether you’re celebrating the holiday or not. Emily, Shep, and I will return to run another idea up the flagpole on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Thomas]
There’s obviously a big period of trying to figure out what the hell is going on, so-

[Shep]
Right. Because they’re all scientists.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They’re thinking logically about it.

[Emily]
Someone does math and maths it all out. Matt Damon’s there with a chalkboard and a janitor suit. Just-

[Thomas]
He takes a step back and goes, “Well, how do you like them apples?”

[Shep]
Right. It’s like the Martian, except for instead of potatoes, it’s apples.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. “Matt Damon why didn’t you fly back to Earth with the crew?” “Had to go see about girl.”