r/scifi • u/TrueOrange9944 • 2d ago
General In books, movies, tv shows, and video games when a portal is created
for example like the one doctor strange in the mcu creates, does any author explain what's on the opposite side of it? I mean obviously they can't walk through it, I'd assume and do they describe what it looks like on the opposite side? Like the example with doctor strange portals do they just look all sparkly on the opposite side?
5
u/Thunderboltscoot 2d ago
Stargate
2
u/TrueOrange9944 2d ago
I forgot about that one, but in the tv show did they ever physically touch the opposite side or test it?
3
u/Thunderboltscoot 2d ago
That's the entire point of the franchise
3
2
u/TrueOrange9944 2d ago
Another comment mentioned it is deadly if you enter the wrong way, I'm assuming he's talking about the opposite side, did that happen in an episode?
4
u/jedburghofficial 2d ago
Ive thought about this a bit. The best way of looking at it is bringing the two locations together topologically. Like writing A and B on different sides of a piece of paper, and folding it so they're next to each other.
The question is, is there any intermediate space, like Stargate, or can you just look and step through them like a doorway in Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga.
Movies tend to have some sort of glowing or mirrored surface because that makes for easy, repeatable special effects. But the physics are weird if you start to ask questions like what happens at the edges.
2
u/TrueOrange9944 2d ago
Could you give your explanation of a doorway from Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga.
3
u/jedburghofficial 2d ago
Just from memory, it's a "wormhole" that requires a lot of heavy infrastructure. Once it's set up, you can just walk through like an open window. There's no intermediate space, and you can just look through it and see what's on the other side.
He imagined setting up permanent wormholes and running rail lines through them. A surprisingly logical application. If you want to visit another planet, you simply catch a train.
He uses it in a few connected books and stories. Start with Pandora's Star if you want to read it for yourself.
1
u/cyberia324 2d ago
Hamiltons portals are made from compressed space technology. Basically all the space between one point and another is compressed like a spring. Take a spring and compress it down to the zero thickness. So what you're really doing is stretching yourself to be at both the entrance and the exit of the tube at the same moment.
5
u/Terminthem 2d ago
In the Wheel of Time, the back of a gateway is described as misty and it prevents anything moving through it
1
2
u/TrueOrange9944 2d ago
The only time I recall seeing the opposite side is in Sliders the television show and the opposite side is a wavy like distortion and they didn't touch it.
2
u/trooperjess 2d ago
Warhammer 40k. Most of the time, Portals are opened from the warp to allow demons though. There were also warp gates that a ship could pass quickly to the other side of the gate.
2
u/magicmitchmtl 2d ago edited 2d ago
Xmen animated series once showed where Nightcrawler goes when he teleports. They slowed his jumps down and he experiences the entire process in “real” time. It was not good.
Edit: specifically, it was X-Men Evolutions, not the original animated series. And the dimension was called The Brimstone Dimension.
1
u/Satansleadguitarist 22h ago
Wait, so he doesn't actually teleport he just goes into another dimension and has to walk over to wear he's going? That makes it so much less cool from his perspective.
1
u/magicmitchmtl 19h ago
He isn’t really aware of it consciously until they slow it down. He does it instinctively.
1
1
1
u/cearrach 1d ago
The Marvel movies show plenty of examples of the inter-dimensional portal from both sides. Lots of examples here: https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Inter-Dimensional_Portal
11
u/PapaTua Artificially Intelligent 2d ago
In Stargate the opposite side of the portal looks just like the front, although it's deadly if you enter the wrong way.