In the first episode, when Claire is freaking out on Zach about her life being over, didn't she make some comment about how homecoming was in 3 weeks?

And then in episode two, we find out Hiro, in addition to teleporting to New York City, also warped 5 weeks into the future, and found out that's when the bomb was going to go off.

And then at the beginning of episode twelve, there's a prompt at the beginning of the episode that says "Two Weeks Later."

3 weeks to homecoming + 2 weeks later = 5 weeks total

So why is it that in the first part of episode twelve, when Hiro and Ando are talking in the museum, Ando points out that they "only have three weeks left?"

Did I miss something?
Is it an error on the part of the writers?
Have the actions of the characters delayed the moment of the explosion along their timeline?
Am I just going crazy?

I'd say it's an error. Errors like this happen all the time in TV shows and movies.

Or you're just doing the math wrong.

People have been talking about this for a little while. One of tthe things taht could be happening is that 3 weeks could be any thing from 17 to 21 days. Or it could be an error.

Here we go again =P

If you pick the first 11 episodes apart very carefully, you'll find ways to connect each episode chronologically using things like references to "yesterday" or "two days ago" or obvious things like Peter waking up next to Simone, probably the morning after the fundraiser.

And if you do this, you'll come to realize that the events of the first 11 episodes logically had to have taken place over 9-12 days. There is overwhelming evidence for this compared to Claire's homecoming reference (and remember she was, in Zach's word, being "overdramatic" at the time =).

But this plus two weeks still puts us less than two weeks before Nov. 8. I'd honestly have to say that the timeline doesn't seem to be a big concern to the writers, because it's all over the place.

If Hiro begins his quest on october 2 and the bomb is in november 8, we have about five weeks of story. But at the beginning of Godsend we see that 2 weeks has passed just in hospital with peter, and ando says that the bomb will explode in 3 weeks... So, -3 from the bomb and 2 from the ep. 11... 5 weeks... how was longer the first part in terms of timeline? One day?

"3 weeks to Homecoming" is a mistake, left-over from a first draft of the pilot episode. Either that or nothing makes any sense here, regarding the time-line.
I'd go with the former, which works, because they won't shoot that whole scene again just because of that one line.

Ok, eventually someone is going to catch that line, as you can see, but I doubt they cared that much.

There is no time jump unless they tell us, I'm pretty certain about that, now. Which means, Homecoming was somewhere around the start of the second week in October, not three weeks into it.

Abraxas is in charge of the timeline (chronology of Heroes)

so he should know

:wink: i like reading your columns

One possible explanation, but not one I particularly care for, is that the events depicted in Claire's portion of the storyline and events in the other storylines in the first several episodes occur somewhat asyncronously up to a point.

The only thing I recall from the pilot that really ties Claire to a timeline relative to the other heroes is HRG's visit to Chandra's apartment in NY and his return home at the end of the episode. Those events tie in only with Mohinder who gave him a cab ride and Peter who took the same cab earlier in the episode. (And no, I'm not counting the physically impossible solar eclipse that was visible simultaneously in NY, Las Vegas, Odessa, Los Angeles, and Tokyo.)

I don't recall if a similar gap could be contsrued for Peter's timeline, but how long does Mohinder work on unlocking his father's research before Peter comes knocking on his door? Doesn't he mention it just before chucking his dad's laptop? I need to review.

If the discrepency is only a week or two, it could be explained this way if there is any suitable place in Peter's storyline to burn up that time off screen.

The reason I'm thinking the 3 weeks line wasn't a mistake is how frequently Claire appears at school in her cheerleader uniform. I'm sure some other schools may do things differently, but in all the schools I attended, the cheerleaders were only allowed to wear their uniforms to school on game days (Fridays usually). I don't remember seeing anything in the show so far to indicate that that is not the case.

Guess I have some homework to do. God bless DVR.

I'd be careful with that. I did the first 7 episodes and then pretty much didn't think about the timeline any more. I wanted to wait a bit, if it even pays off to waste thoughts on it. But I lost focus a little...at one point I almost agreed with Homecoming taking place on the third week in October.
Thanks, anyway!


I don't think so. There are some other things which really don't make sense, but Claire's timeline looks fine to me, the Homecoming reference excluded.

Hm, hold on...I don't know a lot about eclipses, in fact I'm not sure about the timeframes of them in different places of the globe. But keep in mind that Hiro and Ando could be further ahead of the others. But that would create an even bigger hole in Niki/Hiro/Ando timeframe. I'm not too fond of it. I know I should research eclipses, but I don't really want to. Pardon my ignorance (aka laziness).
Anyway, Claire is tied by that same eclipse, which means I don't get your point.


Maybe there was something in the chronology thread (see my signature), I don't recall we thought about it that much. Seemed ok.

No idea about the rest.