Hi Greg, I was just wondering if you were able to clarify some of the time scales in Bionicle’s story, as some of them don’t seem to make much sense.
I’m more specifically talking about everything that happened in the story after the Toa Mata arrived on the island of Mata Nui. According BS01’s timeline, everything between that point and reformation of Spherus Magna/Teridax’s defeat only happened in the space of a year and a half.
Within this, it suggests that the length of time between the arrival of the Toa Mata and the Matoran’s migration back to Metru Nui was only 3 months. That means that the Matoran only had that small amount of time to get to know the Toa before the conclusion of that part of the story in Mask of Light. I dunno, this just seems really odd to me. In addition to this, it also suggests that the Voya Nui/Mahri Nui part of the story only took one week. Somehow I find this incredibly hard to believe. That means Matoro had literally one week of being a Toa before he died. Then it’s unclear how long 2008 took, because it claims that the story for that year began ‘one year ago’ (one year before Spherus Magna’s reformation), and then claims Teridax takes over the MU six months later, meaning 2008 took an entire 6 months?
To me, this all seems rather odd considering the grand scale of 1,000 years between the Great Cataclysm the arrival of the Toa Mata on Mata Nui. Would you be able to make sense of any of this?
I have no idea, but this is something that has bothered me for a while as well!
Something tells me that these measures of time weren’t decided from the start of the story and may have been worked in later to try and establish a timeline. Thus the 3 months you’re talking about seem to rush the story only because, well, the story wasn’t written to take place in such a short amount of time? I don’t know…
It’s been established that by the beginning of story year 2006, about a year has passed since the coming of the Toa Mata. BS01 says that 2001 spanned a month, but that seems a bit short to me, and I’m not sure where they got that info. It’s always been unclear how much time each story arc in 2001-2003 took exactly, although it’s believable that 2002 and the Bohrok-Kal saga each took a month.
FWIW, I’d have to double check, but I believe 2006 spanned a few weeks, 2007 was definitely only three days, and 2008 probably took a week or so. But don’t quote me on that; again, it’s always been a bit vague.
Just to add to this, at the start of the comic unleash the rahkshi, Makuta mentions in his monologue that the toa thought they had defeated him “years ago”, doesn’t this imply that a few years had passed between the ending of MNOG and the Mask of light arc?