Time Travel Shows and Movies: Compare and Contrast

[Cranberry]

Like it says on the tin. What are your favorite (or least favorite) time travel shows and movies? What's your favorite type of time travel story (fixed timeline, dynamic timeline, multiverse, time loop, etc.)? Do you have any cool links for us?

@Kromm -- couldn't remember the title you wanted for this, but I think this is close. I can edit it if you want!

[paulvdb]

Did the networks all get together and decide to do time travel shows for the new season? There is this show, Fox has Making History (two friends travel back to the American Revolution) and ABC has Time After Time (H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper travel to 2016). The CW already has Legends of Tomorrow so that leaves CBS. I haven't checked their new shows yet so I don't know if they also have one.

[ketose]

Time After Time sounds like a remake of the movie from 30 years ago.

I've been a fan of time travel shows since the original Doctor Who was on PBS years ago. The only problem with time travel is that it's a hard plot device to write because the laws of cause and effect don't have to apply.

The time travelling was infrequent and there were plot holes, but Continuum was a really well done show about time travel and the potential consequences. This show's time device looks a lot like Seven Days, which held up pretty well for it's 3 seasons on UPN.

[ottoDbusdriver]

On 5/20/2016 at 0:54 AM, ketose said:

Time After Time sounds like a remake of the movie from 30 years ago.

I've been a fan of time travel shows since the original Doctor Who was on PBS years ago. The only problem with time travel is that it's a hard plot device to write because the laws of cause and effect don't have to apply.

The time travelling was infrequent and there were plot holes, but Continuum was a really well done show about time travel and the potential consequences. This show's time device looks a lot like Seven Days, which held up pretty well for it's 3 seasons on UPN.

And don't forget '12 Monkeys' on Syfy.  And 'Continuum' was pretty good too.

Timeless does look a bit like 'Seven Days' combined with 'Time After Time', since they appear to be chasing some criminal/mad man/whatever into the past (instead of the future) vs. just changing the outcomes of very recent events/calamities/etc. (like they did on Seven Days).  It's unclear if the criminal/mad man/whatever somehow changes the timeline, or how/if they are able to detect those changes or how they know what time in the past the criminal/mad man/whatever went back to.  Hopefully they don't treat time as strictly linear -- because they have a time machine.  If the bad guy goes back to June 1, 1937 (for example), I hope that the good guys go back to May 31, 1937 to get ready to stop him instead of showing up AFTER the bad guy arrived.

Though the trailer appears to be very Hindenburg specific.

[Just Here]

On 5/18/2016 at 2:38 AM, paulvdb said:

...so that leaves CBS. I haven't checked their new shows yet so I don't know if they also have one.

Well, CBS is bringing back MacGyver, which had a few "Was It All Just a Dream"/"Mental Time Travel" episodes (Mac going back to the Old West and to a King Arthur version of Medieval England). Though, I doubt the new series will have those sorts of episodes, and I doubt even more that the series lasts long enough to allow for such episodes.

[ketose]

5 hours ago, Just Here said:

Well, CBS is bringing back MacGyver, which had a few "Was It All Just a Dream"/"Mental Time Travel" episodes (Mac going back to the Old West and to a King Arthur version of Medieval England). Though, I doubt the new series will have those sorts of episodes, and I doubt even more that the series lasts long enough to allow for such episodes.

Like when we learn McGyver's first name even though he said something different in the pilot?

I didn't mention 12 Monkeys because I haven't really watched it. However, I watched the movie and La Jetee, the 1962 predecessor to 12 Monkeys.

CBS had Cold Case a few years ago. That was almost like time travel.

[KaveDweller]

On 5/18/2016 at 2:38 AM, paulvdb said:

Did the networks all get together and decide to do time travel shows for the new season? There is this show, Fox has Making History (two friends travel back to the American Revolution) and ABC has Time After Time (H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper travel to 2016). The CW already has Legends of Tomorrow so that leaves CBS. I haven't checked their new shows yet so I don't know if they also have one.

And the CW has Frequency, where the people don't time travel, but a woman has a way to communicate with people in 1996, which results in some craziness. I'm excited about this season.

I always like stories where the people can't actually change things in the past, but realize that trying to stop something actual caused it. Just because I think it's more logical. If this show is them following people back in time I guess it is someone going back to commit new crimes and not finding out he's the cause of original events. 

[Camera One]

I watched the NBC show "Journeyman" (2007) which was cancelled due to low ratings and only lasted 13 episodes.  I liked it a lot.  The main character would suddenly go back in time without warning, where he ends up with someone to help or track, which has repercussions.  So there was a procedural aspect, as well as a slowly developing mythology of other time travellers, plus a lot of character moments where we see the effects of this disruptive time travelling on his family.  

Edited August 15, 2016 by Camera One

[KHenry14]

I've liked time travel shows going all the way back to 1966's Time Tunnel, which put character's into mostly famous historical settings (Titanic, Gettysburg, Peal Harbor).

Timeless looks like they are going to go back and keep the historical timeline accurate, if so that could work. I'll be curious what settings they'll go to.

[shapeshifter]

13 hours ago, KHenry14 said:

I've liked time travel shows going all the way back to 1966's Time Tunnel, which put character's into mostly famous historical settings (Titanic, Gettysburg, Peal Harbor).

Timeless looks like they are going to go back and keep the historical timeline accurate, if so that could work. I'll be curious what settings they'll go to.

I love most all things time travel, but I don't care for stories that just use it as a vehicle for the main character to see history through the modern audience's eyes; I need to see some version of the butterfly effect so the time travel itself has meaning and at least pseudo-physics effects.

[blueray]

I liked many shows and movies, particularly Primeval and Continuum.

Primeval follows a team whose job is to deal with portals (Anomalies) opening in modern London from places in the past (and future). I really wish it got another season though, ends in a cliffhanger. And then there was a spin off but I gave up on it after a few episodes.

Edited August 25, 2016 by blueray

[iRarelyWatchTV36]

If this new show even just hovers in the lower vicinity of the heights to which I hold SyFy's 12 Monkeys, then it'll be a decent show worth following.

Haven't watched DC's Legends of Tomorrow yet, but in terms of plots, this show seems closer to it in general terms [even though Dc-LoT is comic book-based].

[roamyn]

There was that BBC show that came over to the US a few years ago:  guy's girlfriend gets killed, he goes back to the 1970s.  First shot was him seeing the WTC (he knew tje year to be 2010).

The name slips me, right now.  

Also Quantum Leap was technically a time-jump show, tho Sam only jumped to years during his lifetime.

[shantown]

On 8/27/2016 at 1:51 PM, roamyn said:

There was that BBC show that came over to the US a few years ago:  guy's girlfriend gets killed, he goes back to the 1970s.  First shot was him seeing the WTC (he knew tje year to be 2010).

Life on Mars?

[roamyn]

On Sunday, August 28, 2016 at 6:41 PM, shantown said:

Life on Mars?

That's it!  

[Chaos Theory]

I am excited about the number or time travel shows in tv,. It's a fun genre.  I tend to enjoy most of them as long as they have an entertaining premise.  This is going to be a fun.,,,if confusing season for me.

[shapeshifter]

I appreciate the large number of time travel shows coming out, because it's like taking a bunch of pictures of beaches at sunset — one or more are likely to be keepers.

[Jordan27]

On ‎8‎/‎22‎/‎2016 at 10:20 AM, KHenry14 said:

I've liked time travel shows going all the way back to 1966's Time Tunnel, which put character's into mostly famous historical settings (Titanic, Gettysburg, Peal Harbor).

Timeless looks like they are going to go back and keep the historical timeline accurate, if so that could work. I'll be curious what settings they'll go to.

Wow, another TT fan.  That was my first exposure to time travel.  Loved that show.  So underrated.

Time travel is a good premise just like space shows.  You should be able to write at least a good show since one has a lot of material and a lot of different directions to go. 

[CabotCove]

Some of my recent favourite films in this subgenre

Project Almaniac

 

Time Lapse

 

Predestination

This one is just plain crazy

[blackwing]

I saw the preview for "Making History" and it looks hilarious.  Seems like a great blend of comedy and history.  Will definitely watch this one when it premieres, I assume as a midseason replacement.

In terms of movies, I know it was horribly reviewed, but I loved "Timeline", starring Gerard Butler and the late Paul Walker as people who go back to medieval France.  I'm a sucker for anything medieval.  The Michael Crichton book it is based on was better, but books usually are better than their adaptations.

[snarktini]

On 8/14/2016 at 7:48 PM, Camera One said:

I watched the NBC show "Journeyman" (2007) which was cancelled due to low ratings and only lasted 13 episodes.  I liked it a lot.  The main character would suddenly go back in time without warning, where he ends up with someone to help or track, which has repercussions.  So there was a procedural aspect, as well as a slowly developing mythology of other time travellers, plus a lot of character moments where we see the effects of this disruptive time travelling on his family.  

I liked it a lot, too! And Kevin McKidd.

The "without warning" bit reminded me of Time Traveler's Wife, where he would just shimmy out and couldn't control it. Sucks when you find the shower still running and no one there! I guess there are only so many time travel elements and plot devices, all these shows end up like mad libs.

Continuum handled time stream changes better than most by the end. I don't worry too much about time mechanics but it's nice when it's not too eye-rolly.

[Chaos Theory]

This has the same "feel" of 12 Monkeys.  A group of people bouncing around in time but are things really happening in the order or way they think they are or is something else at work?  

[psychoticstate]

On 5/19/2016 at 9:54 PM, ketose said:

Time After Time sounds like a remake of the movie from 30 years ago.

I love time travel and have an unhealthy love for this movie too.  I checked online and apparently the show is a remake of the movie, right down to putting HG Wells and the Ripper into 1979 San Francisco.  Sign me up!  Per IMDB, the show won't debut until 2017. 

I also loooooved Journeyman and was so pissed with NBC for cancelling it.  I thought it had great bones and NBC gave up much too soon, without marketing or getting behind the show at all.

One of my favorite romantic movies of all time is Somewhere in Time, featuring time travel.  Just love it.  

[Chaos Theory]

Suddenly I've gotten a Sliders vibe from the show.  The group comes back each episode and things have changed.  Things need to change for more then just Lucy though.  I would love for the group to have something subtle change and the group be "horrified" like America suddenly become vegan.  "What have we done!"  No offense to vegans.  Just an example.

Edited October 13, 2016 by Chaos Theory

[Lugal]

I watched Men in Black III last week and I kept expecting Lucy and the team to ask for chocolate milk.

Also, does anyone remember on the Ben Stiller Show in the 90's the sketch with Janeane Garofalo "B Minus Time Traveler?"

[xaxat]

A brief history of time travel (in fiction), or would you use time travel to kill baby Hitler?

(It might surprise you when that question was first asked.)

Edited October 15, 2016 by xaxat

[Raja]

On 10/13/2016 at 8:39 AM, Chaos Theory said:

Suddenly I've gotten a Sliders vibe from the show.  The group comes back each episode and things have changed.  Things need to change for more then just Lucy though.  I would love for the group to have something subtle change and the group be "horrified" like America suddenly become vegan.  "What have we done!"  No offense to vegans.  Just an example.

I agree on Sliders however the (new timelines?) doesn't seem to be the focus just background we will be reminded of as the group has no "temporal prime directive" to pull a Star Trek TNG and Voyager term to guide them.

[methodwriter85]

I agree with Sliders, although I would love for an episode where things have massively changed.

[Moose135]

Tomorrow, TCM has a trio of time travel movies - The Time Machine at 7:15am Eastern, Time after Time at 9am, and Time Bandits at 11am.

[legaleagle53]

1 hour ago, Moose135 said:

Tomorrow, TCM has a trio of time travel movies - The Time Machine at 7:15am Eastern, Time after Time at 9am, and Time Bandits at 11am.

Which version of The Time Machine -- the 1960 original or the 2002 remake (which is vastly inferior, in my opinion)?

[Moose135]

The 1960 original. 

[Mojeaux]

I am not generally a fan of time-travel shows, but I was in the hospital with nothing to do and basic cable so I watched Timeless.

The ONLY time-travel show I liked was the MOVIE 12 Monkeys and I loved it because no matter what they did, the timeline would work itself around until the same thing would happen. IIRC, nothing they did CAUSED the thing to happen anyway. It was going to be that way no matter what and while they could change details, they couldn't alter the outcome. To me, it was logical.

[BooksRule]

I liked the way the problem of 'how you change the past might/will change the future timeline' was handled on Syfy's 'Eureka'.  When several of the characters from present day returned from a time travel trip to 1940s Eureka, they feared that the entire world would have been changed because of how they might have altered the past, but the found that changes in the timeline happened like ripples in water--the farther away from the initial event the less things changed.  So, although many things had changed in Eureka, most of the world's history hadn't changed.  Probably very unscientific, but it made sense to the show (and was one of the few times where a show 'reset' itself and I still liked it as much as I did before--which was that I still liked it a lot).

[legaleagle53]

You know how some of us have wanted this show to devolve into a screwball time-travel comedy?  Fox did it.

Meet Making History, which I would describe as "Timeless meets Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure."

https://twitter.com/makinghistory

[methodwriter85]

On 10/27/2016 at 10:37 AM, Mojeaux said:

I am not generally a fan of time-travel shows, but I was in the hospital with nothing to do and basic cable so I watched Timeless.

The ONLY time-travel show I liked was the MOVIE 12 Monkeys and I loved it because no matter what they did, the timeline would work itself around until the same thing would happen. IIRC, nothing they did CAUSED the thing to happen anyway. It was going to be that way no matter what and while they could change details, they couldn't alter the outcome. To me, it was logical.

I'm starting to think that's what the show is ultimately going to go to- that no matter Flynn does or who he kills, he can't stop the formation of Rittenhouse, because time will find a way.

[CooperTV]

31 minutes ago, rose711 said:

I found there was a short lived tv show about time travel in the 1960s so I wasn't far off!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Tunnel

it sounds like they got to go to the future(!) as well as the past. And they went all over the world not just the US! Also they went back to the ancient past like Ancient Greece.

I watched couple episodes of this. It reminded me a lot of Stargate SG1, the SG writers probably borrowed some stuff from it. I didn't think it was all that engaging, and the both leads looked exactly the same to me.

Timeless reminds me more of CBS' Seven Days.

Quote

The plot follows a secret branch of the United States' National Security Agency which has developed a time travelling device based upon alien technology found at Roswell. As the opening of the show says, the Chronosphere, or Backstep Sphere, sends "one human being back in time seven days" to avert disasters. The show's name refers to the fact that the Backstep Project can only backstep seven days because of limitations imposed by the fuel source and its reactor. As the fuel source is limited, there is a strict mandate that they only Backstep for events relating to "National Security". The backstep team and the equipment are stationed in a base called Never Never Land, which is in a secret location somewhere in the desert of Nevada.

And the sphere they travel in looks like that.

[Driad]

Not sure this counts but I was fond of the "Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman" segments of "Rocky and Bullwinkle. (Not a kiddie show.) It was a cartoon, but so is this one sometimes.

[Moose135]

10 minutes ago, Driad said:

I was fond of the "Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman" segments of "Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Yes! With the wayback machine!

[Dowel Jones]

29 minutes ago, Driad said:

"Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman"

My alltime favorite pun of his was when they went back to visit Alexander the Great.  Whatever happened has long since exited my memory, but on their return, Mr. Peabody informs Sherman that Alexander also invented the world's first synchronized battle plan by giving his generals cloth dyed in chemicals that would change color at different times, thus allowing the generals to coordinate their attacks as he planned.  Sherman expresses amazement and Mr. Peabody says (with his usual superiority) "Sherman, don't tell me you've never heard of.......Alexander's Rag Timeband."

[Bort]

24 minutes ago, txhorns79 said:

While I didn't love Stephen King's book 11/22/63, I did like the concept he offered of the past pushing back on people who tried to alter things, (i.e. the closer the main character got to altering the past in substantial ways, the more "the past" would place things in his way to try and stop him).  I feel like Timeless has shown some of the bad outcomes that occur when you mess with the past, but isn't really willing to take things all the way on that.     

This reminds me of the subpar Time Machine remake, where the protagonist saves his fiancée, but Time basically wouldn't let him because saving her negates his whole reason for building the time machine in the first place. And then it gets dumb, because he travels way into the future to try and figure out why he can't save her and the reason is super-obvious. Apropos of nothing, the part where he saves her, leaves her on a street corner while he goes into a store to buy something and then she gets mowed down by a horse-drawn carriage had me in hysterics. I totally laughed my ass off at that part.

[MDKNIGHT]

Haven't seen the show Timetraxx mentioned.  A cop from 2193 travels back to track 200 criminals that escaped into the past because of an evil genius who also escaped into the past (this was on about 20 years before Continuum) .  It wasn't a great show but it was OK to kill time and it kind of gave me the giggles.  In 2193 the protagonist is white and people say he only got into the police academy because of affirmative action because he is a minority.  Also in 2193 if you want to insult someone you call him a "blanco" i.e. white. 

I wonder what the writers of the show are thinking now that the fear some whites have that they are going to be out reproduced, is openly being tauted as an excuse for discriminating against minorities and marching around with lit torches chanting Nazi slogans. 

BTW Dr Who had it's own version of would you go back and kill Hitler.  Actually they had several  

One was Doctor #4 had to choose between killing the first batch of Daleks and maybe preventing a whole lot of their genocidal acts but on the other hand he pointed out that many different planets bonded in solidarity to try to fight off the Daleks.  He decided not to blow them up although a smaller explosion set the Daleks back a bit.

2. River Song actually DID go back and try to kill Hitler but things got complicated.

3. Doctor 12 met Davros (who having created the Daleks can be argued was WORSE than Hitler since they killed PLANETS full of people not a percentage of just one planet's population.) when he was a child and could have let him die as a child, thus preventing a LOT of deaths but couldn't bring himself to do it. 

They had others I can't think of right now. 

[ketose]

On 5/8/2018 at 5:13 PM, MDKNIGHT said:

Haven't seen the show Timetraxx mentioned.  A cop from 2193 travels back to track 200 criminals that escaped into the past because of an evil genius who also escaped into the past (this was on about 20 years before Continuum) .  It wasn't a great show but it was OK to kill time and it kind of gave me the giggles.  In 2193 the protagonist is white and people say he only got into the police academy because of affirmative action because he is a minority.  Also in 2193 if you want to insult someone you call him a "blanco" i.e. white. 

I wonder what the writers of the show are thinking now that the fear some whites have that they are going to be out reproduced, is openly being tauted as an excuse for discriminating against minorities and marching around with lit torches chanting Nazi slogans. 

BTW Dr Who had it's own version of would you go back and kill Hitler.  Actually they had several  

One was Doctor #4 had to choose between killing the first batch of Daleks and maybe preventing a whole lot of their genocidal acts but on the other hand he pointed out that many different planets bonded in solidarity to try to fight off the Daleks.  He decided not to blow them up although a smaller explosion set the Daleks back a bit.

 

Making "the good outweighs the bad" argument about Davros is pretty weak. It was basically an excuse to keep the most popular villain on Doctor Who.

One of the amazing things about Time Trax was that was no butterfly effect. Whatever was done in 1993 apparently had no effect on 2193. The entire series (except the pilot) took place in 1993 and the Sci-fi elements mostly had to do with technology brought from the future. It was kind of a high tech version of Walker, Texas Ranger.