Time Trax: better humans

[FaxModem1]

So, I'm watching the TV show Time Trax, and part of the premise is that 22nd century humans are much faster and smarter than present day humans. Was there ever a justification for this or did it just happen?

I also find it amusing that Darien is a minority and that in his native time zone, he gets faced with the ethnic slur 'blanco'.

[mr friendly guy]

There was an episode where Derien meets a boy from the 20 th century who runs faster in the 100 metres sprint than the fastest olympic athlete. Selma speculates he may be the missing link, however it later turns out he was from the future. Thus the show pretty much admits they don't know when humans started becoming so much more physically capable.

[Zor]

Possibly people got rather keen on genetic engineering.

Zor

[LadyTevar]

Actually, there's a simpler reason. Since 1900, the majority of the human race have had better healthcare, better food, and better lifestyles, which has lead to overall better health. While many Americans (like myself) are too lazy to work out and overweight, those that do push themselves are running marathons, competing in extreme sports, and pushing the envelope of what is possible.

If we've come this far in 100 years, how far can we go?

[Simon_Jester]

We've already picked up a lot of the low hanging fruit- unless we start inventing steroids super soldier serum growth-boosting substances and feeding them to kids, we're not going to be able to do much better than "make sure they eat a balanced diet and get plenty of vitamins." It's unreasonable to assume that people in the future are all that much more committed to sports on average than people in the 20th century; their greatest athletes might be better than ours due to advances in training and better nutrition, but their average citizen shouldn't be better than our (well-fed, well-trained, very dedicated) best athletes.

I think to make the next step, we'd need to do things with the human body other than feed and care for it better. So I think Zor's right about the genetic engineering.

[Lost Soal]

It must be environmental because their genetics are fucked up. One of the plot points was that they have significantly different average heart rates and they were using this as a method of detection at the beginning. Then, I can't remember how much time passed, the heart rates changed to 20th century normal which Selma claimed was because of the time zone.

This makes no sense to be honest, unless the environment of the future itself was having an effect on them.

[Sarevok]

If I am not mistaken did not the future humans have an extreme ability to survive with low amounts of oxygen ? Like for example I seem to recall the main character spending quite a lot of time under water with bare minimum preparations.

[Ahriman238]

Google-Fu!

He grew up a normal child of his times: IQ 204, Speed Memorization rate 1.2 pages per second (slightly above average). He was a competent athlete. His best speed for the 100 meters was 8.6 seconds, and for the Mile Run - 3 minutes 38 seconds. He wondered how the Olympic Champion could ever have done it twenty seconds faster. His heartbeat was a normal 35 beats per minute. His life expectancy - 120 years. His lungs were average, capable of air storage up to six minutes. Beta wave training had given his generation mind control capabilities unavailable fifty years before his birth. One of these was the ability to slow down the speed of visual images reaching the brain, popularly called "time stalling". It demanded rigorous training.

Yeah, there's something going on there. The life-expectancy I could see as a function of advanced medicine, and the present world record for a mile run is 3 minutes 43 seconds, so a five second improvement over a century isn't that exceptional (besides being an average person) a 25 second improvement is somewhat more impressive. But a only slightly more than half the heart rate? How is he even alive? Holding his breath twice as long?

Does anyone know anything more specifc about this 'beta-wave' training, and mental abilities?

[mr friendly guy]

Guys the show explicitly states that humans have somehow evolved to be faster, stronger etc. In case anyone still thinks that its simply better training, let me disabuse you of that notion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0ezRG6tZN4

This is the episode "prodigy". Basically a criminal from the future brings his son back to the past and continues his life of crime. In this episode his son is talked into competing in the 100 metres sprint and beats the world record in 8.86 seconds, without any training as stated in the first few minutes of the show. So we have a 13 year old, short boy running faster than Usain Bolt. The world record is stated as 8.12 by the title character. This all occurs in the first 5 and a half minutes of the episode.

And that special mind training, it just allows him to perceive things slower, and gives him more time to react. Basically the show would demonstrate Lambert using the ability by going into slow mo, then have Derrien react in time to do what needs to be done.

[Stravo]

Regarding the time stop ability didn't Darien teach someone how to do that in an episode? I think it was a boxer from this era that Darien was training to defeat a boxer from the future or some nonsense like that. I really did enjoy this show and was intrigued by the notion that humans would be more physically evolved in the future. Gene Roddenberry seemed to have a fetish for people being just "better" in the future.

[mr friendly guy]

I think the episode in question was a boxer from the future who didn't want to go back, but Selma knows he will end up killing another boxer from the past in a match. Derrien trains to be a boxer to bring him back. The trainer was the father of the boxer Derrien is trying to bring back. Oh, and boxing is banned in the future because its dangerous (You think ) hence why the boxer wanted to stay in the past where it was still legal. I vaguely remember Derrien doing his time stop trick on the boxer.

[CaptainChewbacca]

The time stop ability was some sort of mental discipline, and as I recall he was training in it like a martial art. He didn't stop time, he just 'slowed images entering the brain'. It let him do stuff like memorize a deck of cards while it was being shuffled or dodge bullets.

[FaxModem1]

If I remember from the pilot correctly, he only learned the time slowing trick at Westpoint, which in the future, is some sort of Giant police academy.