Nine: Times Travel

This show would not have been on my to-watch list if I had not read the online reviews. I had not seen any shows by the male & female lead before. I didn't even realize that the female lead was the second female lead of Lie To Me! Such vast personalities!

But I definitely have seen the production of Queen In Hyun's Man. Why do I mention this? Before it's the same production team with the same 'time traveling concept'.

But instead of Joseon & Modern Seoul, we have just 20 years of parallel universe happening at the same time. I have to say I had a hard time figuring out the different parallel universe that we were brought along with.


This show is basically about Park Sun Woo (played by Lee Jin Wook) and his tragic life. Why do I say it's tragic, because it really is. He had a sad past - father murdered, mom turned crazy/senile, elder bro killed himself and now in the present, he has to deal with a pending brain tumour. 

Although he has a sad & dramatic life but he never let anything get him down. He's a broadcast news reporter and anchor who’s ambitious and successful. He’s well-liked by his teammates & his bosses. He's a couple with our heroine, Joo Min Yeong (played by Jo Yoon Hee) and knowing he has a brain tumour, he finally proposed and we all know it's not going to end well... 

The main attraction of this drama is that the are many plots happening at the same time that intertwines with one another...

It started when Sun Woo was notified by his elder brother's death. After investigation, he found out his brother was on his way to find an incense that could allow him to go back in time. Sun Woo managed to get hold of it and succeeded going back in time! He event met his own younger 15-year-old self. 

Being an inquisitive reporter, this allowed him to go back in time to find out what exactly happened to his father who's a hospital director. He believed his father was killed by the second-in-command who wanted that title. 


"One incense stick will transport the traveler back exactly twenty years, so while Sun-woo can change something in that time, he cannot later negate it. 
Thus time is a line, not a loop, and with these incense sticks Sun-woo has found a way to cut the queue. There are nine sticks, and a person can only travel back in time for as long as a stick burns, which is roughly thirty minutes. Consider Sun-woo’s two timelines (past and present) to be traveling on parallel tracks: If he changes something in the past, in the present he must wait for the past to react before his reality changes. All the time in between then and now remains unrippled until the change arrives. 
To add a complication, Sun-woo retains all his memories of the life he lived before the change. After the first time he changes something, he is essentially cognizant of two realities—there are his memories of the life he first lived, and also the memories he acquires of how things played out the second time. With nine sticks, Sun-woo essentially creates alternate realities every time he travels, and the same rules hold true for anybody who finds out about the time traveling. Once they know, they also retain memories of the other lives they lived, which means that there are fast-growing alternate threads of reality that get created with every change Sun-woo enacts. This can become occasionally confusing to keep straight, but is also deeply fascinating. 
It also becomes a recipe for disaster, because you can’t go around creating so many ripples in the time-space continuum and expect to get away with it without consequence. And he does not."

How can you not watch the show after reading something as intrigue as this?

And so, I was hooked episode after episode.

The main reason for him to go back in time to change the past was hoping to be able to live happily together with his family. And so our hero believes he can save Dad’s life and take down a villain, but as it turns out, Time does not like being cheated. Sun-woo overreaches by attempting to fix his brother’s broken heart on top of everything…

The first thing he tried to do was to 'save' his brother. His brother had also live an empty life. He couldn't marry the woman he wanted, he couldn't do what he wanted, he never wanted to be a doctor. Sun Woo went back in time to help his brother to get his life back together.

Note that when he went back in time, he went back as 2013 35-year-old Park Sun Woo. His 15-year-old version is still present right there! Hence, the elder bro in the past wasn't able to recognise the 35-year-old PSW. He was only appreciative towards a stranger and a man who helped him.

So in 1993, Sun Woo's brother finally gotten married to the woman he loves who's a single mother with a daughter. But I bet that the 2013 Park Sun Woo probably wouldn't expected that his brother's step-daughter grows up to be Min Yeong!

It's totally mind fucked. In the original 2013 timeline, he's supposed to get married with Joo Min Yeong after proposing to her. And in one instant after altering his brother's life in 1993, in the new 2013 timeline - she became Park Min Yeong, his niece.


As Dramabeans says it best, "The twist delivers a genuine Ohhhh fuck kick, because setting things back to rights would require breaking up his brother’s marriage. It forces him to choose between love or family, between his happiness and his brother’s. There’s a whole lifetime of memories that no longer exist anywhere but in his head."

Park Min Yeong eventually recalls her relationship with her uncle, Park Sun Woo and it lead to the angst & unhappiness to keeping all these forbidden attraction hidden a secret. What should Sun Woo do? He doesn't have a lot of time left....

Fortunately, his younger self is a smart one. 2013 Sun Woo revealed to 1993 Sun Woo to do regular medical check up. And guess what? When the old 2013 Sun Woo was rushed to the emergency, seemingly dying, in the new 2013 timeline, Sun Woo woke up totally cancer free. So yay for that.


I personally think the bromance between the 2 brother is quite tragic. It's a doomed family tragic to begin with simply because the elder brother is a weak-willed individual. We later learn that he was the cause of their father's death. It was an act of defense when the father refused to allow his elder son to see a woman who's a single mother and has a child.

In the old 2013, he died in Himalayas while searching for the incense. In the new 2013, after Sun Woo had saved him and lived with being Min Yeong's uncle, his brother has also eventually committed suicide using drugs injection. zzzzzz Sun Woo had done so much!!! SO MUCH!

So of course our Hero learns that "just because he got to go back and prevent something doesn’t mean he ultimately gets what he intended. Once Sun-woo is out of the past, things are out of his control; he soon finds out that Fate/Time/The Greater Powers always find a way to remind him that he isn’t the one deciding things." when he was stranded in 1993 and was finished off by the villain.

But... we still have a Young Sun Woo who eventually grew up to be the final Sun Woo left standing with a better life ahead of him. The Final Sun Woo also got the girl he wanted :)


Watch the drama left me mind-blogged because each episode was really that nice. Honestly not very recommended for a pregnant mother to be watching but since I had already started, I couldn't stopped watching haha!