Beforeigners

"Aliens from the past" (orig. Beforeigners is a six-part Norwegian television series, the first season of which was broadcast in 2019. In September 2020, HBO confirmed that the series had been renewed for a second season.

The plot of the series is based on the concept of "refugees coming not from another place, but from different times"proposed by writer and director Eilif Skodwin. This idea is reminiscent of the concept of the sixth episode of the eighth season of the animated series "South Park" ("Goobacks"), which premiered on April 28, 2004. The stories differ in that in the cartoon, people from the future purposefully arrived in the present in search of work.

In the modern world, aliens from the past are beginning to appear. Guests come from the Stone Age, the Viking Age and the late 19th century. They don't know how they got here, and they don't know how to get back.

After several years of assimilation, the Viking girl Alfhildr joins the police and, together with a local detective, begins to investigate the murders of other aliens.

Aliens from the past suddenly begin to appear in coastal waters around the world. Their appearance is accompanied by bright flashes of white light. The aliens come from different eras, but when traveling in time, they do not move in space. So, people who lived on the same lands for many years before the described events get to Norway.

During the movement, the aliens lose their memory: they do not remember not only the process of moving, but also the details of their life before it. The memories return fragmentally (in flashes) for a long time after arrival.

To reduce the negative effects of time travel, the aliens are given a special drug in the form of eye drops called "temproxat". Its action and purpose are not described in detail, but it is known that it is addictive, and overdose can lead to mental disorders and hallucinations.

Later it turns out that the movement is possible not only from the past to the future, but also back in time. A person who accidentally falls into the water at the moment of opening a time portal can travel to the past. After living there for some time, he can return back, and get to the original moment of the present. At the same time, its apparent age will not change, but some parts of the body (for example, teeth) may be aged. This is not the only scenario: in at least one case, a person enters the past as a child and returns as an adult.

The collision of two people, each of whom has made time travel in both directions, leads to a violation of the space-time continuum and "opens doors to many parallel worlds" (and possibly is the reason for the appearance of at least some of them). The consciousness of people who find themselves near the rupture of the fabric of space-time is spontaneously transferred to the consciousness of their copies in one of these worlds. At the same time, the bodies of these people in our world lie unconscious.

There is another way of transferring consciousness: with the help of a special device built by British scientists. The device has a side effect, and staying in it for too long can harm the body of a traveler between worlds.

The murder of one of the people who caused the rupture leads to the fact that the portal between the worlds closes, people's consciousness returns to their bodies, and some of the worlds probably die.

Some aliens from the past say that immediately after moving they were chased out of the water by a monster with burning eyes – a sea demon named Hafgufa.

Later, it turns out that the aliens take a fishing net with floats for a sea monster, with the help of which they are trying to get out of the water by human traffickers who arrived from the past.

In people who have traveled through time in both directions, the hippocampus increases (in those who have moved in one direction, it decreases on the contrary). Such people acquire the ability to slow down the subjective flow of time, as a result of which they can move at high speed, for example, dodging bullets. They also gain the ability to process and memorize large amounts of information, which gives them the opportunity, for example, to learn new languages in a matter of days.

Changes in the hippocampus in many time travelers lead to sleep disorders and sleepwalking.