Television's Best Time Travellers

One of the segments of the old Rocky and Bullwinkle show featured a brilliant bespectacled dog (Mr. Peabody) and his lackey bespectacled boy (Sherman) using the time travelling Wayback Machine to go through time and fixing things so they happen as they are “supposed” to happen such as cheating so that nearly blind William Tell can hit the apple off his son’s head and getting Paul Revere a real horse. The episodes generally ended a terrible pun.

The pair first appeared in 1959 probably making them television’s first time travelers.

In a list of television’s time travelers, I have to mention Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka). Hiro, at one point, had the ability to travel through space and time much like a human TARDIS, except without interplanetary travel. He used it to check out the various incarnations of the ever-changing future New York, went to the recent past himself meeting himself as a child, a future version of himself traveled to present day New York, and he spent far too long in ancient Japan during season 2.

This season he lost the ability to travel through time. This is probably for the best considering how the show overused his powers as a Deus Ex Machina or didn’t use his powers making viewers wonder why he didn’t use them. Now if only we can cause Claire to lose her blood.

Similar to the crew of the Enterprise, though not regularly, the inhabitants of the Planet Express Ship has also journeyed across the fourth dimension. The show’s most memorable time travelling moment came when the gang went back to the 1950s, became the legendary Roswell crash, and Fry became his own grandfather.

Though they weren’t regular time travelers, they traveled often enough to be included on the list. Honestly, I am including this specifically for the classic Season 2 episode “Assignment Earth.” In this adventure, Kirk and crew travels back to groovy 1960s Earth where they help a James Bond-ish spy and his assistant played by Teri Garr. It’s clear to anyone watching the episode that it was meant to be a potential pilot for a Star Trek spinoff.

Unfortunately, “Assignment Earth” was never picked up and NBC canceled Star Trek, the next season.

This Scott Bakula/Dean Stockwell show developed a cult following in its 5 seasons from 1989-1993. It wasn’t so much science fiction as fantasy with mostly dramatic/human elements. Most of the episodes were basically the same- Sam Beckett leaps from person to person across his own lifetime and tries to right what once went wrong, one life at a time. All throughout the series he looks for answers to why he travels, whose directing his journey and how to make it back.

NBC canceled the show, leaving it on a bizarre cliffhanger. To the best of our knowledge, Sam Beckett never found his way home.

I gave up on Lost after the episode where Jack went to Thailand. I've heard it's gotten better but I really don't care. But I know Losties are defensive of their show and if I included Heroes I might as well include the castaways from Oceanic 815. So there you go.

After developing an ability to make himself super cool (Stephan Urquelle), clone himself, and make himself into Bruce Lee, creating a time machine seemed like the natural next step for the boy genius. And he did it. He and Carl traveled to a pirate ship. And the less said about any of this the better.

Not many franchises have lasted for over 40 years- Star Trek and James Bond are two of the few- let alone one existing primarily on television. But due to a regeneration power, The Last of the Time Lords has been travelling space and time since he took his first companions to the Stone Age in 1963.

The “original” series lasted for 26 years, until 1989. But in 2005 the BBC brought it back but not as a re-envisioning or a re-make or a prequel but as a continuation. The Doctor we see today is the same Doctor who fought the Daleks and the Cybermen decades ago. The show is just as popular on both sides of the Atlantic as it has ever been.

Ten people have played The Doctor, most recently David Tennant who will be replaced by Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor in 2010 but the time machine (the classic blue police box) remains the same.

I’m not sure whether to include him as a time traveler considering he never actually traveled through time. Sam Tyler (John Simm) was a 2006 police detective in Manchester, England who was hit by a car and finds himself a detective back in 1973. The series is about him dealing with 1970s police procedures, his badass boss Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) while figuring out why he’s been sent back three decades.

The final episode answers that he was in a coma induced fantasy. But in a powerful climax he realizes that 1973 was more real to him than modern times and makes his way back to the happier and better, albeit fantasy, world of three decades ago.

The show was spun off into the 1980s-set Ashes to Ashes, currently airing its second season on the BBC. It was also remade as an American series in 2008 on ABC, which was cancelled in its first season and had a vastly different ending than its predecessor.

One of the best shows NBC has had in years was the short-lived Journeyman. Lasting for 13 episodes in 2007, it is one of the most recent “brilliant but cancelled” shows and is held as another example of NBC’s mistreatment of quality programming.

Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd) was an average family man who worked for a newspaper. He would randomly find himself back in time in random places having to help people in trouble. Aided, but not guided, by his fellow time traveler ex-girlfriend Livia (Moon Bloodgood), he had to balance his professional and family life without having any control over when or where he’d end up.

This show wasn’t merely a strong cast with good writing and honest emotion. It also dealt with some of the real life annoyances that time traveling might bring upon a traveler (e.g. “today’s” cell phones not working in the past, “today’s” money looking fake), a strong sense of continuity, and a powerful mythos.

Sadly, its full potential never got to be explored since the show was unceremoniously dumped after 13 episodes.