The Time Travelers

written and directed by Ib Melchior

Release: 29 October 1964
Format: Feature Film
Genre: Science Fiction
Audience: Adults
Content: Definite Time Travel
Original Language: English

Using their time viewer, three scientists see a desolate landscape 107 years in the future, at which point the electrician realizes that the viewer has unexpectedly become a portal. All four jump through, only to have the portal collapse behind them, whereupon they are chased on the surface by Morlockish creatures who are afraid of thrown rocks, and they meet an advanced, post-apocalyptic, underground society that employs androids and is planning a generation-long trip to Alpha Centauri.

The film draws in at least four important additional time travel tropes: suspended animation, a single nonbranching, static timeline (with the corresponding inability to go back and change it), experiencing the passage of time at different rates, and a trip to the far future. And according to the SF Encyclopedia, the film was originally conceived as a sequel to the 1960 film of The Time Machine.

— Michael Main

Isn’t it obvious? The war did happen. You never did go back with your warning.

DEBUT

The Time Travelers (at movie theaters, USA, 29 October 1964).

VARIANTS

1 English variant

DERIVATIVE WORKS

Journey to the Center of Time written and directed by David L. Hewitt, (at movie theaters, USA, a forgettable day in 1967).

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

Timeline Models

Foretold or Seen Future Is Inevitable: needs verification [?]
Single Static Timeline
Viewing the Future: viewed through the chronoscope

Time Travel Methods

Chronoscopes
Time Portal: The machine was intended only as a time viewer, but it turns out to be a time gate..

Themes

Differing Time Rates
Free Will, Fate, and Determinism: discussion [?]
Long Sleep, Cryogenics, Etc.

Fictional Tags

Future Wars
H. G. Wells’ Time Machine Universe: Not really in Wells’s world, but according to the [urlx=www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/time_travelers_the
]SF Encyclopedia[/urlx], it was originally conceived as a sequel to the 1960 film The Time Machine..
Post-Apocalyptic and Post-Holocaust Worlds

Groupings

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY: We haven’t yet mapped out the time travel itinerary.