The Star Trek vision of time travel usually involved restoring the “correct” timeline after some mishap, and preserving the way that things are “supposed” to be. In the time travel story of Paper Girls, the forces that support timeline preservation are painted as villains, and the act of changing history is seen as a charitable act, a sort of temporal wealth redistribution where the advances of the future are shared with the past. I don’t think I agree with the ethics of this position, but it was an interesting inversion of what I’ve seen before.
My favourite parts of the story involved the teenage girls meeting adult versions of themselves. Because of my age, I identified more with the “guest stars” than the main cast, and found myself wondering what I would say to my younger self. I kind of wish that Paper Girls had offered more answers to this question, beyond “Keep in touch with your friends.”
