Save Your Family!

Tag Area: Time Travel Trope
Short Story

Cloche vaine

At the end of her long successful writing career, a woman is still haunted by her sister’s death four decades earlier. —Michael Main
An orange glow flows over a naked torso and head holding a bright sword with Jupiter and stars in the background.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

The Last Musketeer 1

The Last Musketeer

  • by Stuart Gibbs
  • (HarperCollins, September 2011) [print · e-book]
While chasing the cad who stole his family’s prized black crystal, young Greg Rich ends up back in AD 1615 where he and three future Musketeers must save Greg’s parents from Dominic Richelieu (the cardinal’s evil brother) and the deadly prison known as La Mort. —Michael Main
When joined as a whole, the Devil’s Stone was rumored to perform many miracles: strike people dead in an instant, turn lead into gold, even open portals in time.
A boy dressed in a long sleeve shirt with a short sleeve shirt on top leads the way down a dark alley with two Musketeers behind.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Anna Green 1

Time between Us

Somewhat self-absorbed 16-year-old Anna Green manages to fall for the first time traveler she ever meets, not realizing that he’s a time traveler or that he’s hoping his mission to 1995 will be a short-term affair. —Jeff Delgado
It’s too easy for me to say the wrong thing today, and if I do, we may never meet at all
A teenage girl looks into the distance on a beach with her arms clutched around her waist.
  • Romance
  • Audience: Young Adults
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

The Flash, Season 1

  • written and directed by multiple people
  • (The CW, USA, 7 October 2014) to 19 May 2015)
Time travel is implied right from the first episode of the CW’s rendition of The Flash where a newspaper from the future is seen in the closing scene. The rest of the first season builds a fine time-travel arc that includes a nefarious time traveler from the far future, a classic grandfather paradox with a twist (sadly not examined), a do-over day for the Flash (which Harrison Wells calls “temporal reversion”), and a final episode that sees the Flash travel back to his childhood (as well as a hint that Rip Hunter himself will soon appear on the CW scene). —Michael Main
Wells: Yes, it’s possible, but problematic. Assuming you could create the conditions necessary to take that journey, that journey would then be fraught with potential pitfalls: the Novikov Principle of Self-Consistency, for example.

Joe: Wait—the what, now?

Barry: If you travel back in time to change something, then you end up being the causal factor of that event.

Cisco: Like . . . Terminator.

Joe: Ah!

Wells: Or is time plastic? Is it mutable, whereby any changes in the continuum could create an alternate timeline?

Cisco: Back to the Future.

Joe: Ah, saw that one, too.
The Flash, in his red costume, zig-zags through an empty city street, leaving a yellow electric bolt behind him.
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

The Flash, Season 2

  • by multiple writers and directors
  • (The CW, USA, 6 October 2015) to 24 May 2016)
After Barry aborts his mission to the past in Season 1 in order to prevent his own present from being erased, he finds that his travel has caused even bigger problems! Yep, a rift has been a-opened to a parallel world with an alternate Flash and an evil speedster and—it would seem—more time travelin’ and another attempt to save his mom and dad! —Michael Main
No, that’s not how it works. In our timeline, Barry’s mother’s already dead, and her death is a fixed point. And nothing can change that.
Surounded by yellow lightning, Grant Gustin (as the Flash) races towards us in his red costume with a new white logo on his chest.
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Creeped Out (s01e05)

A Boy Called Red

After his parents break up, Vincent visits his Dad’s childhood home where Auntie Jeanne encourages him to explore—without even putting that cursed well off limits, the very well where Dad lost his best friend back in the summer of ’85! —Inmate Jan
When your dad was younger, he had a best friend, a boy called Red. Red disappeared down that well.
Young Malen Clarkson (as Vincent) reaches out in amazement at a glowing white globe larger than his head.
  • Horror
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

See You Yesterday

Up in the ITTDB Citadel, our first attraction is naturally to the time travel aspects of any movie, even when the result is an incomprehensible time wreck resulting from a pair of teenage geniuses. That’s what’s on the surface here, but it also seems to be a metaphor for the even bigger train wreck of the racist society in the 21st-century United States. —Michael Main
You’re missing the big picture here: If time travel were possible, it would be the greatest ethical and philosophical conundrum of the modern age.
Teens Eden Duncan-Smith (as C. J. Walker with glowing glasses) and Dante Crichlow (as Sebastian Thomas) run in front of a clockface.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Boss Level

  • by Chris Bore et al., directed by Joe Carnaham
  • (premiere, ArcLight Cinemas, Hollywood, California, 11 February 2020) [Original cut, now available primarily outside the US.]
After visiting his estranged wife, Jemma, at her top secret lab, retired special forces agent and ne’er-do-well Roy Pulver finds himself endlessly repeating the next day, which always starts with the same assassin in his apartment and always ends with Roy dead, even as he learns more and more about Jemma, their son Joe, Jemma’s work, and how to kill endless assassins.
translate It’s like being stuck in a video game in a level you know you can’t beat. —from the Hulu varient
Manly Joe Grillo (as Roy Pulver) menacingly points a gun behind images of other cast members from Boss Level.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

An Hour

  • written and directed by Prasanth Kumar
  • (Youtube: Andhra Pradesh Channel, 2 October 2020)
Young, unemployed Nanna seems to take everything in stride, even the arrival of unexpected package containing an artistic hourglass with the power to take him back or forward one hour in time.

The audio is mostly Telugu, but there are subtitles in broken English. —Michael Main
An old clock with ornate hands and Roman numerals shows behind the words "An hour".
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

Your Cat

You travel back in time to save your childhood cat in exactly the way that you know she was saved. —Michael Main
You have traveled thirty years back in time to save your cat.
Stylized outline of a rocket launching in a green circular seal for Daily Science Fiction.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

This Time Tomorrow

After turning forty in a snit because of her career decisions, her unexciting boyfriend, and her dying father, Alice Stern wakes up on her 16th birthday in her teen body. —Michael Main
“I know it’s your birthday,” Leonard said. “You’ve made me watch Sixteen Candles enough times to ensure that I wouldn’t let this one slide.”
A light brown scribble winds its way around a lighter brown cover of Straub’s novel, This Time Tomorrow.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Film

Time Stamp

Traumatized from witnessing her parents’ murder as a child, Jackie—a brilliant, young scientist—desperately time travels from 2033 to 2019, determined to keep her family alive. —from publicity material
I’ve seen my parents die 277 times.
Images of a pensive Ayana Taylor (as old Jackie) and Cydney Gooch (as young Jackie) appear above an electrified portal, Ken Napzok (as old Bill), and Parker Huseby (as Young Bill).
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Totally Killer

It’s fortunate that Jamie’s best friend in high school is building a time machine so that Jamie can go back to when Mom was in high school to stop the serial killer who killed Mom’s three friends—and just now killed Mom, too! —Michael Main
If your parents don’t get married and have kids, then basically you just have no life to go home to because everything woud be different. No one would have any idea who you are.
No image currently available.
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Time Bandits, s01e03

Medieval

With the aid of a triceritops skull that Kevin nabbed in the Cretaceous, the gang tries to pass itself off as dragon slayers in medieval Nottingham. And then, just when you’re starting to think this story might be too slim for an entire series, we get sister Saffron coming after Kevin. —Michael Main
We don’t know if we can change time or effect it at all.”
Lisa Kudrow (as Penelope) sits on a log in a forest, addressing a group of people offscreen.
  • Undetermined
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel