The Ontological Paradox in ‘The Cellar’ (2020) E01 of ‘Amazing Stories’

“Know that love is truly timeless.”
― Mary M. Ricksen

In the very first episode ‘The Cellar’ of the latest iteration of ‘Amazing Stories’ we are treated to a time-travel story based around a romance that has many resonances with the film ‘Somewhere in Time’ released nearly 40 years ago. It is both a heartbreaking romance/love affair across time and a time travel story (a scientific romance as the now legendary stories of H. G. Wells were designated) that involves significant objects that provide the conduit by which the chasm of time can be crossed.

In Somewhere in Time it is a pocket watch and in The Cellar it is the barometer and the box that ‘Sam’ (Dylan O’Brien) finds in the fireplace, containing the impending marriage photograph in 1919 of ‘Evelyn’ (Victoria Pedretti) and the matches. However, there are contained within each tale a very peculiar ontological paradox. Let me explain further.

The film ‘Somewhere in Time’ is an adaptation of the science-fiction novel Bid Time Return (1975) by Richard Matheson. A young college student (Christopher Reeve) is celebrating the debut of his play when an elderly woman (Susan French) places a pocket watch into his hands and pleads: ‘‘Come back to me.” He does not recognise her and she dies soon after.

Eight years later whilst on a break from writing, Richard (Reeve) chances upon a photograph of the mysterious elderly woman when she was much…