Spoilers follow for the Netflix series Bodies, eight episodes of which debuted on October 19.
To its credit, Bodies knows that time loops are a headache. The Netflix series is structured around one, with four detectives in 1890, 1941, 2023, and 2053 investigating the same crime in each of their eras, which they eventually learn is caused by someone traveling backward from 2053 to 1889. But instead of dwelling on the mechanics of how any of this works, Bodies offers hand-waving vagaries: “There is no science yet to explain what it is,” a character says of the phenomena that allows them to move through time. That approach means that Bodies preemptively excludes itself from established genre rules about how time-loops, alternate realities, or parallel universes could function; the…
