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Cartoon

Popeye the Sailor


Several early Popeye cartoons had plots that might only be explained by time travel, such as meeting Sindbad (played by Bluto) in a sixteen minute 1936 cartoon. However, for me, the real time travelin’ began in the 1960s television cartoon when the Professor had a time machine. Here’s a list of episodes which I know of that might be explained by time travel. Send me others that you spot!
Huck-huck-huck-huck. There ain’t no such thing as pirates, Olive. They’re only a fragamentation of the imagamentation.

|pending alt-text|
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies


I hope I’ll find more time travel in the Warner Brothers cartoons, but for starters, there’s “The Old Grey Hare” where Elmer Fudd is taken far into the future—past 1990!—where he chases bugs with the Buck Rogers Lightning Quick Rabbit Killer, and Daffy Duck with Speedy Gonzalez in “See Ya Later, Gladiator” (1968).
When you hear the sound of the gong, it will be exactly twoooooo thowwwwwsand Ayyyyy Deee!

  • Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies by Mel Blanc (28 October 1944).
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Serial Film

Brick Bradford


In fifteen episodes, Brick travels to the moon to protect a rocket interceptor while his pals take the time top to the 18th century to find a critical hidden formula.
Michael Main
Maybe tomorrow you’ll be visiting your great, great grandmother. 

With the moon and a winged spaceship behind him, Kane Richmond (as Brick
                Bradford) holds an atomic ray gun with Linda Johnson at his side.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Studio One


Almost every week for a period of nearly eleven years (7 Nov 1948 to 29 Sep 1958), Studio One presented a black-and-white drama to CBS’s television audience. We can claim some of the TV plays as our own in the sf genre, and at least two included time travel (a “Berkeley Square” remake on 20 March 1949, and “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” on 19 May 1952). One other sf connection comes from Studio One clips of William Shatner (in “The Defender,” 1957) which were used to portray a young Denny Crane in an episode of Boston Legal (“Son of the Defender,” 2007).
You’ve heard of the transmigration of soul; have you ever heard of the transposition of a man’s body in time and place?

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Fantasy
  • Mainstream
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Lights Out


I wonder whether Lights Out was the earliest sf anthology TV show. The first four episodes were live broadcasts on New York’s WNBT-TV (NBC) starting on 3 Jun 1946. It was renewed by NBC for three seasons of national broadcast starting 26 Jul 1949, and I spotted at least two time-travel episodes. Some episodes have found their way to Youtube, although I watched “And Adam Beget” on Disk 5 of the Netflix offering. I haven’t yet listened to any of the earlier radio broadcasts.

The episode “And Adam Beget” came from a 1939 radio episode of Arch Oboler’s Plays, and it formed the basis for a 1953 Steve Ditko story, “A Hole in His Head,” in the Black Magic comic book.
You don’t understand. Look at the short, hairy, twisted body—the neck bent, the head thrust forward, those enormous brows, the short flat nose. . .

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Mighty Mouse


Mighty Mouse saved the day many a time, so doubtlessly he has saved the day in many other times, too, but so far I’ve seen only one such episode (“Prehistoric Perils,” 1952) in which our mouse goes in our villain’s machine back to the dinosaurs to save Pearl Pureheart.
And now, my little papoose, I shall take you off in my time machine.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Lux Video Theatre (s02e19)

The Jest of Hahalaba



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Tales of Tomorrow


When Sturgeon and Abrahamson sold the idea of this anthology show to ABC, they had the backing of the Science Fiction League of America, giving ABC first shot at any stories written by league members. They took good advantage of the deal, including stories by Fredric Brown, Arthur C. Clarke, C.M. Kornbluth, and others including Henry Kuttner and C.M. Moore’s “What You Need.” That excellent 1945 story involves future prediction without time travel, but I included it in my time-travel list just because I liked it so much (and it was later made into a Twilight Zone episode, too). Hence, I’ll count the Feb 1952 airing of the story as the first time travel in Tales of Tomorrow. There were at least four other see-into-the-future-or-past episodes, but I won’t include them in the list below. After all, one must have standards!

In general, I’d place the stories on the more horrific end of the science fiction scale, but certainly worth watching.
After my treatment, you’l awake. You’ll find yourself in a room a thousand miles from here and back seven years in time. You’ll have absolutely no remembrance of these past seven years. The slate will be clean.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Science Fiction Theater


I’ve seen only the second episode, “Time Is Just a Place” (in color!), in which a happy 1950s couple (one of whom is Mr. B from Hazel—did she ever time travel?) get new neighbors who have escaped from the future. The episode was based on the 1951 Jack Finney story, “Such Interesting Neighbors.”
Nothing to get excited about. Any housewife could use one.

  • Science Fiction Theater by Ivan Tors (15 April 1955).
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Adventures of Superman


In the first episode of season 3, “Through the Time Barrier” (23 Mar 1955), Professor Twiddle’s time machine takes the staff of the Daily Planet back to prehistoric times. I don’t know whether there was any other time travel.
Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Look—up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!

Yes, it’s Superman, strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who—disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannored reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper—fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way!

|pending alt-text|
  • Superhero
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse (s01e6)

The Time Element


Serling wrote this one-hour time-travel episode as a pilot for a one-hour anthology show, but after it was filmed, William Dozier at CBS requested a change to a half-hour format. So, “The Time Element” was shelved while Serling worked on a new pilot (which also had a stormy history). Meanwhile, Bert Granet, producer of the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, caught wind of the original Serling pilot and quickly snapped up the production for which he had to then fight hard with the Westinghouse bigwigs in order to air.

The story involves a time traveler, Pete Jensen, who couldn’t stop the attack on Pearl Harbor, but he certainly made his mark as the Twilight Zone precursor.
I have information that the Japanese are gonna bomb Pearl Harbor tomorrow morning at approximately 8am Honolulu time.

  • “The Time Element” by Rod Serling (CBS-TV, USA, 24 November 1958).
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  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Hallmark Hall of Fame

  • |pending byline|

Over the years, I’ve seen dozens of the Hallmark Hall of Fame specials. More recently, I went through the list of episodes back to 1951 when they started as a weekly anthology show on NBC. I spotted only one episode with time travel, the venerable Berkeley Square, broadcast in color on a special day in 1959, but I haven't yet tracked down a copy to watch.

  • Hallmark Hall of Fame, |pending byline| (5 February 1959).
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

BBC Sunday-Night Theater

  • |pending byline|

For nearly all of 14 years, the BBC staged and broadcast weekly live plays, at least one which included time travel: a production of the 1926 play, Berkeley Square. According to lostshows.com, no copy of Berkeley Square survived, but I did enjoy a telerecording of their 1954 staging of Nineteen-Eighty-Four (with no time travel!) that caused a stir in cold-war era Britain.
Attention, comrades, attention! Here is a complementary production bulletin issued by the Ministry of Plenty giving further glorious news of the success of the seventh three-year plan! In clear demonstration of the rising standards of our new, happy life, the latest calculated increases are as follows. . .

  • BBC Sunday-Night Theater, |pending byline| (31 May 1959).
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Hector Heathcote


Hector first appeared in a movie theater short feature (I miss short features) called “The Minute and ½ Man” in 1959 where he goes back to the American Revolution and fouls things up until the end when he scares away the Redcoats (reminiscent of the 1955 Casper cartoon). I haven’t seen that first cartoon in which Hector travels by time machine, but Hector later had TV escapades (his own show, starting 5 Oct 1963) visiting the likes of Daniel Boone and inventing the telephone in 1876, all without a time machine in the ones I saw. There was also a children’s book (which had no time travel), a Dell spin-off comic book (Mar 1964), and a Colorforms’ play set (which provided the image to the top-left).
You’re wanted on the telephone—a young lady.

  • Hector Heathcote by Eli Bauer (4 July 1959).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Twilight Zone


Five seasons with many time-travel episodes. Four (marked with ¤) were written by Richard Matheson, one was by E. Jack Neuman (“Templeton”), one by Reginold Rose (“Horace Ford”), and the rest were by Serling (including “What You Need” based on a Lewis Padgett story with prescience only and no real time travel, “Execution” from a story of George Clayton Johnson, “A Quality of Mercy” from a Sam Rolfe story featuring a young Dean Stockwell, and “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville” from Malcolm Jameson’s “Blind Alley”).
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e05)

Walking Distance


Stopped at a gas station outside of his boyhood hometown, burnt-out executive Martin Sloan decides to explore the town, which surprisingly has not changed at all in twenty-some years.
Michael Main
I know you’ve come from a long way from here . . . a long way and a long time.

Michael Montgomery (as young Marty) carves his name into a post on a bandstand,
                while Gig Young (as old Martin) looks on.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon Series

Peabody’s Improbable History


The genius dog, Mr. Peabody, and his boy Sherman travel back in the Wayback Machine to see what truly happened at key points of history.
Peabody here.

  • Peabody’s Improbable History by Ted Key (29 November 1959).
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e10)

Judgment Night


Carl Lanser finds himself on a transatlantic voyage of the cargo liner S.S. Queen of Glasgow, in 1942, not knowing much about himself or how he got there, but knowing volumes about submarine warfare.
Michael Main
There’d be no wolf packs converging on a single ship, Major Devereaux. The principle of the submarine pack is based on the convoy attack.

Patrick Macnee (as First Officer McLeod) stands behind a disoriented Nehemiah
                Persoff (as Carl Lanser) in the bar of the S.S. Queen of Glasgow.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e18)

The Last Flight


World War I pilot Terry Decker flies through a white cloud and emerges 42 years later, landing at an American Air Force Base in France, at which point he proves that a Nieuport 28 biplane is capable of doing a causal loop just as well as he can do an Immelmann Turn.
Michael Main

Kenneth Haigh (as Leftenant Terry Decker) stands in his Royal Flight Corps
                uniform in front of his Nieuport 28 biplane.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Fantasy
  • War
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e26)

Execution


Back in the 1880s, just after a man without conscience is dropped from a lone tree with a rope around his neck, a scientist pulls him into 20th-century New York City.

Serling wrote this script based on a George Clayton Johnson’s bare bones, present-tense treatment for a TV script, complete with an indication of where the commercial break should go. For this episode, Serling filled in the flesh and cut the fat from a bare bones, present-tense treatment by George Clayton Johnson. The treatment appeared in Johnson’s 1977 retrospective collection of scripts and stories, and in Volume 9 of Serling’s collected Twilight Zone scripts, Johnson commented that “Rod took my idea and went off to the races with it. He had a remarkable knowledge of what would and wouldn’t work on television, and he took everything that wouldn’t work out of ‘Execution’. He worked like a surgeon; a little snip here, a complete amputation over there, move this bone into place, graft over that one. When he was done, my little story had grown into a television script that lived and breathed on its own.” Serling also added a nice twist at the end that, for us, warranted the TV episode an Eloi Honorable Mention.
Rod Serling wrote this script based on a 1960 Twilight Zone episode of the same name, but I’m uncertain whether the story was published before Johnson’s 1977 retrospective collection.
Michael Main
Caswell: I wanna see if there are things out there like you described to me. Carriages without horses and the buildings that rise to—

Professor Manion: They’re out there, Caswell. . . . Things you can’t imagine.

Dressed in a tie and black jacket, and holding his trademarked cigarette, Rod
                Serling stands in front of a time machine.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e30)

A Stop at Willoughby


On a snowy November evening during his train commute home from New York City, John Daly falls asleep and, perhaps in a dream, sees a simpler life with bands playing in the bandstand, people riding penny farthings through the park, and kids fishin’ at their fishin’ holes the 1888 summertime of idyllic Willoughby.
Michael Main
Willoughby, sir? That’s Willoughby right outside. Willoughby, July, summer. It’s 1888—really a lovely little village. You ought to try it sometime. Peaceful, restful, where a man can slow down to a walk and live his live full-measure.

A man cycles on a penny farthing in an idyllic city park beside James Daly (as
                38-year-old New York City executive Gart Williams).
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Debatable Time Travel
Cartoon

Tooter Turtle

  • |pending byline|

In each of the 39 short episodes (aired as part of King Leonardo and His Short Subjects), young Tooter would visit Mr. Wizard with the latest passionate idea of what he wanted to be. Mr. Wizard would magically make him into his wish (often back in time), but it would always end up with Tooter learning a lesson.
Be just vhat you is, not vhat you is not. Folks vhat do zis are ze happiest lot.

  • Tooter Turtle, |pending byline| (15 October 1960).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s02e09)

The Trouble with Templeton


The trouble with aging actor Booth Templeton is that he sees life as useless even decades after his young wife died. The answer to his trouble may lie in the people he meets—including his dead wife, Laura!—in what appears to be his hangouts from some thirty years ago. Actual time travel or something more fantastical? You be the judge.
Michael Main
Laura! The freshest, most radiant creature God ever created. Eighteen when I married her, Marty, . . . twenty-five when she died.

Dressed as a flapper, Pippa Scott (as young Laura Templeton), pushes aside a
                curtain and strikes a pose.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s02e10)

A Most Unusual Camera


Petty thieves Chet and Paula Diedrich are frustrated, angry, and in a bickering mood when they find nothing but cheap junk in the 400-lbs. of stuff they lifted from a curios store in the middle of the night, . . . until that boxy looking camera with the indecipherable label—dix à la propriétaire—produces a photo of the immediate future.
Michael Main
Yeah, it takes dopey pictures—dopey pictures like things that haven’t happened yet, but they do happen.

Jean Carson (as Paula Diedrich) holds up an unusual, boxy camera.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s02e13)

Back There


An engineer in the 1960s slips back to the night of Lincoln’s assassination.
Michael Main
I’ve got a devil of a lot more than a premonition. Lincole will be assassinated unless somebody tries to prevent it!

In a dark alley, Russell Johnson (as Corrigan) pounds on a closed stage door
                beside a poster announcing the play Our American Cousin.
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Walt Disney’s Classic Cartoons

  • |pending byline|

Even before the modern Duck Tales that my kids watched, I’ll bet Mickey and his friends went romping through time numerous times. The only one that I remember seeing as a kid myself was a trek by a singing father and son to see the invention of the wheel by a prehistoric Donald Duck (“Donald and the Wheel”).
This cat is really nowhere; in some circles, we’d call him square.

  • Walt Disney’s Classic Cartoons, |pending byline| (21 June 1961).
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s03e15)

A Quality of Mercy



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Debatable Time Travel
Cartoon

Clyde Crashcup


As a separate feature in The Alvin Show, Quirky Clyde Crashcup (with his assistant Leonardo) invented everything from babies to a time machine that reverses all time.
I should like to remind you that all of you who witnessed this demonstration are five minutes younger than you were when we started.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

鉄腕アトム

  • Tetsuwan Atomu
  • Mighty Atom
  • Astro Boy
  • |pending byline|

Astro Boy began as a Japanese comic (manga) in 1952 and then became an anime cartoon before anybody knew what anime was. The cartoons of the 21st century Pinocchioish robot boy were dubbed in English and syndicated in the U.S. starting in 1963. I do remember one time-travel episode in which Astro Boy stopped a time-traveling collector from the future who was after ancient animals and people for his zoo; and I suspect there was more time travel in the manga and later U.S. cartoons.
Dad’s taking animals and plants and even people back with him to display in the 23rd century.

  • 鉄腕アトム, |pending byline| (1963).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s04e14)

Of Late I Think of Cliffordsville



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Outer Limits


The original series ran only a season and a half with 49 episodes on the science fiction end of The Twilight Zone mold, but a full hour long. At least four episodes had some time travel.
There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about the experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to. . . The Outer Limits!

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Dr. Who


Sadly, I’ve never been a vassel of the Time Lord, though I’ve seen his pull on his other subjects such as my student Viktor who gave me a run-down of the TV and movie series and spin-offs. In exchange, I guaranteed him at least a 4-star rating and he promised to never again mention the short story, comic book, audio book, radio, cartoon, novel, t-shirt, stage and coffee mug spin-offs.
Hard to remember. Some time soon now, I think.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Outer Limits (v1s02e01)

Soldier



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour


As a kid, I knew of the iconic theme song and profile of Alfred Hitchcock, but it wasn’t until 2013 that I spotted one episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour with time travel—namely, their adaptation of John Wyndham’s “Consider Her Ways.”
This evening’s tale begins with a nightmare-like experience, but that is only a prelude to the terrifying events which follow. And now, speaking of terrifying events. . .

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

The Flintstones


Everyone gathered around the TV to watch America’s favorite stone-age family on Flintstones night in the 60s. In one episode of their final season (“Time Machine,” the Flintstones and the Rubbles turn the tables on America by visiting the 1964 World’s Fair (among other times in the future).
Oh, it’s marvelous, absolutely marvelous. You just step inside and I throw a lever. And things spin and lights go on and off, and you wind up somewhere in the future.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

My Favorite Martian


Three seasons with at least 8 time-travel episodes All time travel occurs with Martin’s CCTBS, a cathode-ray, centrifugal, time breakascope.
What a planet for me to get marooned on.

|pending alt-text|
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

I Dream of Jeannie


Five seasons with 3 time-travel episodes, all with Jeannie (who was the primary reason I wanted to be an astronaut).

Naturally, I never had any refined taste (as indicated by the Bronze Eloi Medal awarded tp Jeannie), but I was a product of my 60s childhood, and, besides, Jeannie (occassionly and briefly) had a belly button (including season 5’s “Mrs. Djinn-Djinn”).
We’re at the marketplace, master. Oh, and there is Ali, the man who hit me.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Bewitched


Eight seasons with at least 19 time-travel episodes, all with the enchanting Samantha. (I had a scheme to become the third Darrin.)
Oh, my stars!

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Time Tunnel


When the senate threatens to cut off funding for Project Tic-Toc, Tony Newman and Doug Phillips set out to prove that the project is viable, but instead they are trapped moving from one past time (perhaps the Titanic!) to another (could be the first manned mission to Mars) each week.
He could be living in yesterday or next week or a million years from now.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

It’s About Time


Astronauts Gilligan and the Skipper Mac and Hector get thrown from the space age to the stone age, complete with Tyrannosaurus Rex, English-speaking cavemen, a beautiful cavewoman (Imogene Coca) and the requisite hijinx. Partway through the first season, the cavepeople came to modern-day New York.

During my 2012 visit to Bellevue, my college roommate Paul Eisenbrey reminded me of this show from our childhood.
It’s about time, it’s about space, about two men in the strangest place.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Star Trek (s01e04)

The Naked Time


After an alien spore infects the entire Enterprise crew with madness, it seems that the only available action to save the ship from a rapdidly decaying orbit is a cold restart of the engines.
Michael Main
You know, Dr. McCoy said the same thing.

A bare-chested George Takei (as Sulu) strikes a fencing position with a silver
                foil in a corridor of the Enterprise.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Marvel

  • |pending byline|

Admittedly, I watched Marvel cartoons on ABC Saturday morning as early as 1966, but I was never enamored by them as I was with the comic books. I can list the first time travel in many series—including what I think is the first actual time travel of Spider-Man in any medium—but I have watched only a few.
Hey, listen to this! ‘This is my last entry. I have set the machine to three million B.C. The door will remain open for any who wish to follow.’

  • Marvel, |pending byline| (10 November 1966).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Space Ghost


Back in 1966, there was a certain excitement about the each fall’s new lineup of cartoons. Maybe it was because the networks (CBS in the case of Space Ghost) made a big deal about it, even advertising in Marvel Comics; or maybe it was because kids had relatively few choices compared with today’s cable extravaganza. Whatever the reason, I do remember anxiously anticipating the new cartoons in 1966, including Space Ghost and Dino Boy. Space Ghost traveled through time at least once, back to the time of the Vikings in “The Time Machine.”
Spaaaaaaaaaace Ghoooooooooost!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Monkees


I knew that if I rewatched these reruns long enough, the space-time continuum would bend. In the episode “Dance, Monkee, Dance” (12 Dec 1966), Martin Van Buren himself comes for a free dance lesson.
♫ I’m in love, I’m a believer, I couldn’t leave her if I tried. ♫

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Comedy
  • Music and Musicals
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Wild Wild West


Agents James T. West and Artemus Gordon (in hindsight, quite likely agents of Warehouse 12) traveled in time at least one time when they met none other than Ricardo Montalbán (aka Kahn) who plays Colonel Noel Barley Vautrain with a scheme to travel back to kill Ulysses S. Grant in “The Night of the Lord of Limbo.”
The concept of a warp in the fabric of space, a break that could permit an object—or a group of Marco Polos if you please—to enter and go voyaging through space’s unlimited fourth dimension: time.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Western
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Star Trek (s01e19)

Tomorrow Is Yesterday


Darn those high-gravity black stars! Always accidentally throwing starships hither and yon through time. Although in this case, the crew of the Enterprise manages to correct all the problems they caused by beaming 1960s Air Force pilot Captain John Christopher on board.
Michael Main
Spock: Fifty years to go. Forty. Thirty.
Kirk: Never mind, Mr. Spock.
Spock: [silence]

A view of the Enterprise above the clouds of 1969 Earth.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

I Dream of Jeannie (s02e28)

My Master, Napoléon’s Buddy


When Tony says he’d love to spend an hour with Napoleon, Jeannie makes it so.
Michael Main
Napoléon: (scratching his belly inside his uniform) These wool uniforms!

An electronic banner behind a startled Napoleon reads: Tell Him about
                Waterloo.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Star Trek (s01e28)

The City on the Edge of Forever


After a delirious Bones hurtles through a time portal to the 1930s, Kirk and Spock follow to save him and stop dangerous changes to the timeline, no matter the cost.
Michael Main

Joan Collins (as Edith Keeler) and William Shatner (as James T. Kirk), dressed
                in duffle coats, on a city sidewalk, looking toward the night sky.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Lost in Space


Three seasons with 2 time-travel episodes.
Danger Will Robinson, danger!

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Dark Shadows


If you were a cool kid in the 60s, you ran home from school to watch Dark Shadows, a vampiresque soap opera that presaged Twilight by about four decades. I wasn’t that cool myself, but my sister Lynda was, and from time to time I overheard her and the cool kids talking about the inhabitants of Collinwood trekking to the late 1700s (in episodes from late 1967 through early 1969) and the late 1800s (in the March 1969 episodes). There may well be other time-travel escapades that have escaped me.
I’m afraid you must forgive me, miss. If we have met before, I’m sorry to say that I don’t remember it.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea


In the fourth season, the futuristic submarine Seaview and its crew had four time-traveling escapades, including the finale.
Suppose we had a working time device. Would we be able to get back aboard Seaview before the explosion, find out what caused it, and prevent it from happening?

  • Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea by Irwin Allen (3 December 1967).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Star Trek (s02e26)

Assignment: Earth


The Enterprise and her crew make their first intentional trip back in time to study historical aspects of 1968 and the Cold War, but unexpectedly, they intercept a transporter beam that brings the mysterious Gary Seven and his feline from a faraway advanced planet.
Michael Main
Humans of the 20th century do not go beaming around the Galaxy, Mr. Seven.

In a light grey suit, Robert Lansing (as Gary Seven) lies on a catwalk with
                steam in his face and a black cat on his back.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Star Trek (s03e23)

All Our Yesterdays


The three principal Trekkers find themselves on a planet where everyone is being evacuated to the past to escape an impending supernova.
Michael Main
Spock! You’re reverting into your ancestors, five thousand years before you were born!

In an icy cave, Leonard Nimoy (as Spock) places his hands on Mariette Harley
                (as Zarabeth) for a Vulcan mind meld.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Woody Woodpecker


I found one cartoon where the screwball woodpecker travels back in time: “Prehistoric Super Salesman” from 1969 where Professor Grossenfibber needs a subject for his time tunnel.
Now my time machine is all ready for the experiment. All I need is somebody. . . is somebody. . . ah, the woodpecker, ya!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Land of the Giants


When a suborbital ship gets caught in a space storm, it ends up on a planet where everything and everyone is twelve times bigger than normal, providing fodder for adventure and at least two treks through time (“Home Sweet Home” on 12 Dec 1969, and “Wild Journey” on 8 Mar 1970).

The writing, acting and sets had little appeal to me, though I did enjoy Batgirl (Yvonne Craig) in “Wild Journey,” aka Marta, the green Orion dancer from the third season of Star Trek.
But don’t you see: If we never take that flight out, there would have never been a crash, and the others would have never been stranded on this planet.

  • Land of the Giants by Irwin Allen (21 December 1969).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Timeslip


Serious Simon and Emotional Elizabeth use the Time Barrier to travel to different doctorwhoish pasts and presents, never meeting the Time Lord himself, of course, but sometimes meeting versions of themselves and their families.
Old Beth: Sometimes in life you have to make decisions and hope they come out for the best. You’ll know about that soon enough.
Young Liz: But I’ll never make your decisions, will I?
Old Beth: Then how did I come to make them? We’re the same, Liz. But I’m like a person You’ll never be, and you’re like a person I never was, never.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Partridge Family


I first noticed a Partridge Family time traveler in the song “Point Me in the Direction of Albuquerque” in which the young girl is obviously lost in time (although oddly, the key lyric line was omitted from the TV episode “Road Song”). If you listen closely, there are many other science fictional themes in the songs of Shirley Jones’s TV family, for example, the clones in One Night Stand (♫ I wish that I could be two people ♫) and, of course, the ubiquitous references to immortality (♫ Could it be forever? ♫).
♫Showed me a ticket for a Greyhound bus
Her head was lost in time
She didn't know who or where she was
And anyone that helps me is a real good friend of mi––i––ine♫

  • The Partridge Family by Tony Romeo (26 February 1971).
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Comedy
  • Music and Musicals
  • Audience: Children
  • Cameo Time Travel
Cartoon

The Brady Kids


The kids, sans Alice and parents, starred in their own cartoon show with magical adventures including at least one time-travel incident where Marlon the wizard bird changes places with Merlin—all directed by Hal Sutherland, the soon-to-be director of the animated Star Trek.
Boys: ♫Meet three sisters,
Girls: ♫Now meet their brothers,
Marcia: ♫Greg’s the leader and a good man for the job.
Jan: ♫There’s another boy, by the name of Peter,
Cindy: ♫The youngest one is Bob.
Boys: ♫See our sisters: They’re all quite pretty.
Greg: ♫First there’s Marcia, with her eyes a sparklin’ blue.
Peter: ♫Then there’s Jan, the middle one, who’s really groovy,
Bobby: ♫And sister Cindy, too.
Boys: ♫Let’s get set now, for action and adventure, as we see things we never saw before.
Girls: ♫We’ll meet Mop Top and Ping and Pong, the pandas, and Marlon who has voices by the score.
All: ♫The Brady kids, the Brady kids, it’s the world of your friends the Brady kids!♫♫♫

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

ドラえもん

  • Doraemon
  • Stray pancake boy
  • Doraemon
  • |pending byline|

Doraemon, an imperfect, talking, cat-shaped robot from the future, imperfectly helps young Nobita through coming-of-age problems. Neither the short-lived 1973 anime series nor the 26-year-long 1979 series made it to English-language TV, but English dubs of the third revival (665 episodes and counting) began airing on the Disney channel in 2014 as Doraemon: Gadget Cat from the Future.

The original manga comic was created by Fujiko F. Fujio.
I wouldn’t get bogged down in the details right now. The thing to focus on is that ’ve come here to save you from a horrible fate.

  • ドラえもん, |pending byline| (1 April 1973).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Star Trek


This series has a special place in my heart because of the day in 1974 when Dan Dorman and I visited Hal Sutherland north of Seattle to interview him for our fanzine, Free Fall. He treated the two teenagers like royalty and made two lifelong fans.

I think the series had only one time-travel story, “Yesteryear” (written by D.C. Fontana), which was the second in Sutherland’s tenure. In that episode, Spock returns from a time-traveling mission to find that he’s now in a reality where he died at age 7, and hence he returns to his own childhood to save himself.
Captain’s Log, Supplemental: When we were in the time vortex, something appears to have changed the present as we know it. No one aboard recognizes Mr. Spock. The only answer is that the past was—somehow—altered.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Love, American Style

  • |pending byline|

Even today, these vignettes hold a certain charm, although they’re also full of plot holes, and the one time travel episode has logic holes sufficient to drive a Delorean through. Even so, the episode “Love and the Time Machine” is the earliest presentation that I remember where a time machine provides multiple opportunities for a spurned suitor to court the object of his desire.
Just think, Doctor, the time barrier broken at last. This puts you up there with Albert Einstein! Isaac Newton! Leonard Nimoy!!

  • Love, American Style, |pending byline| (23 October 1973).
|pending alt-text|
  • Romance
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Sesame Street


From his early days, Kermit brought news reports to Sesame Street. I don't know when he first reported from back in history, so I’ll arbitrarily say that the first one was his interview of Christopher Columbus in Episode 700 shortly before Christmas in 1974.

In the 35th anniversary special, “The Street We Live On,” Grover takes Elmo on a trip through time to see how the street was in the past. Also, in a PBS special, “Elmo Saves Christmas,” the red guy visits a future Christmas.
[actorColumbus:[/actor] But, say, what time is it?
Kermit:Oh, it’s about, ah, 1492.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Audience: Preschoolers
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Classics Dark and Dangerous (s01e05)

The Ugly Little Boy



A neanderthal boy lies on a modern hospital bed in a white button-down shirt.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

DC

  • |pending byline|

As you know, I was forced to ban all post-1969 comic books from The List because comic books pretty much fell to pieces after that date. If I discover many more superhero cartoons like these ones, I will be forced to expand the ban.
It is the fifth century, A.D., the place is Britain, and I am Merlin Ambrosius.

  • DC, |pending byline| (10 December 1977).
Signed title page with a small doodle of a star, two eyes, and a word balloon
                with a question mark.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

A Traveller in Time


The BBC adapted Alison Uttley’s children’s book in a miniseries of five half-hour episodes, faithfully taking young Penelope Taberner Cameron back to Elizabethan England and the time of Mary, Queen of Scots. If you can find the British DVD, you'll even hear Simon Gipps-Kent regale Penelope with “Greensleeves.”
♫Alas, my love, you do me wrong
To cast me off, discourteously♫

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Mork and Mindy


There’s a scene in the first episode where Mork explains that he’s traveling from the 1950s Happy Days to 1978—but that scene did not air until subsequent reruns. The other time travel that I know of is in the penultimate episode where the couple travel via Mork’s ruby red, size eight, time-travel shoes.
Wait! I have one last request! I would like to die with dignity, with honor,. . . and with my penny-loafers on.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Happy Days


Some time after this show jumped the shark, Mork (who made his first appearance in a 1978 Happy Days episode) returns from the 70s to visit Richie and the gang, where they want to know about cars and girls of the future.
In 1979,. . . both are faster.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Fangface


Sherman Fangsworth, a cross between Looney Tunes’ Tasmanian Devil and a teen werewolf, had at least one adventure in time when he and his buddies were accidentally transported back to the 18th century by a modern-day pirate (“A Time-Machine Trip to the Pirate’s Ship”).
After my time machine warms up, we’ll be transported to the deck of the Silver Swan, the Spanish fleet’s most prized treasure ship. And after we pirate her valuable cargo, I’ll be the riches man in the world—ha ha ha ha ha!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Barney Miller


In the sixth season, one episode of the show had a man named Mr. Boyer who claimed to be a time traveler from the future. The show never settled whether he was an actual time traveler or merely a candidate for Bellevue Hospital’s psych ward, but consider this: Just how else did he get on top of the Washington Arch> And wasn’t he dead on about the price of gold which crashed from an all-time high of over $2000 per troy ounce on the day of the show’s airing to about $350 over the next two decades. So even if Mr. Boyer was not a time traveler, he saved Sgt. Harris a bundle of money. The precinct also got Boyer`'s thoughts on the price of Zinc, the future of gay rights, and the Denver Broncos.
I had no intentionof jumping, you know. The only reason I was up there is my coordinates were off.

|pending alt-text|
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Galatica 1980


I eagerly awaited the reboot of Battlestar Galactica in 1980, shortly before I left to join my soon-to-be wife in England. Sadly, the reboot was a disappointment: poor plots, poor characters, the same few seconds of special effects and explosions endlessly repeated—and not even Cassiopeia (Laurette Spang, whom I was in love with in 1978) or Serina (Jane Seymour, whom I am in love with now).

However, I later discovered one redeeming feature: Time travel in Part Three of the 1980 Galactica pilot show, when the warriors follow an evil scientist back to 1944 and foil his plot to give modern technology to the Nazis. I think this was the only hint of time travel in the Galactica franchise, although the same future wife whom I went to meet in 1980 now tells me that this bit of time travel may have planted a seed in writer Donald P. Bellisario for his later series, Quantum Leap.
The great ship Galactica, majestic and loving, strong and protecting, our home for these many years we endured the wilderness of space. And now we near the end of our journey. Scouts and electronic surveillance confirm that we have reached our haven, that planet which is home to our ancestor brothers. Too many of our sons and daughters did not survive to share the fulfillment of our dream. We can only take comfort and find strength in that they did not die in vain. We have at last found Earth.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Muppet Show


The most excellent Muppet Show, its successor Muppets Tonight, the short Muppet Movie Mania episodes, and the online From the Balcony couldn't totally ignore time travel.
Aparatus travel time a it’s. Moment the at on working I’m what is this. Hello!

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Superbook

  • |pending byline|

Young Chris Peeper finds a magic Bible that transports him, his friend Joy, and his robot Gizmo back to Old Testament happenings. The first run was anime, followed by a second run of 3-D CGI animation.
♫ Chris and Joy and everyone were having lots of fun. Superbook fell off the shelf: look what they’ve done. When it hit the computer, oh, they were surprised. Superbook got programmed in; now it’s computerized.♫ 

  • Superbook, |pending byline| (1 October 1981).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Ulysses 31


When a future Ulysses angers the gods, he and his children are exiled to travel space forever. Time travel occurs in the ninth episode, when they enter the domain of Chronos, and in a later episode where they head back to meet the original Ulysses.
Time! I must turn it back! This must work!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

The Flying House


While playing in the woods, Justin Casey and his pals Angie and Corkey stumble upon a house owned by Professor Humphrey Bumble and his robot Solar Ion, whereupon the professor reveals that the house is a time machine and the entire gang visits various Biblical happenings from the New Testament.
♫ We were having fun, playing hide-and-seek, then a summer storm appeared. Corkey got afraid, when it started to rain, then we came upon a house—should we go insiiiiide? ♫ 

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Voyagers!


Bright, young orphan Jeffrey and ladies’ man Phineas Bogg leap from one moment in history to another, righting those moments that have gone wrong in this Quantum Leap progenitor.
This isn’t 1942. Where’s Columbus, kid?

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang


Before Marty McFly went to the 50s, this 50s gang traveled through time using a time machine brought to them by a future chick name o’ Cupcake, all in 24 episodes where they desperately try to get back to 1957 Milwaukee.
Oh, now the gang got zapped into that time machine, and they’re, like, travelin’ through time. My, my, they do not dig where that machine is goin’, but they sure hope to get back to 1957 Milwaukee!

  • The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang by Wolfman Jack (8 November 1982).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe


He-Man and his mighty battle cat possess fabulous super-powers in order to defend Castle Greyskull against the sometimes time-traveling Skeletor (and also to sell Mattel action figures).
Time is delicate, He-Man; do your job swiFTLy.

  • He-Man and the Masters of the Universe by Roger Sweet (12 September 1983).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Saturday Night Live


We all know that early in her career Teri Garr hung out with a time-traveling Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, but who knew that she’d be time traveling again in a 1985 SNL time travel skit? I tried hard to pick my favorite from the bunch that I know of, but that’s an impossible task given that each one is bizarre is a completely orthogonal direction from the others.

Please let me know if you know of other episodes!

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Twilight Zone


Three seasons with 7 time-travel episodes. Harlan Ellison was a consultant on the series that included an adaptation of his “One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty.” The series also adapted Sturgeon’s “Yesterday Was Monday’, altering the plot and renaming it to “A Matter of Minutes,” and George R.R. Martin did the script for the time-travel episode “The Once and Future King” based on an idea submitted by Bryce Maritano.
Let the record show that in any age—good or bad—there are men of high ideals: men of courage, men who do more than that for which they are called upon. You will not always know their names. But let their deeds stand as monuments, so that when the human race is called to judgment, we may say, ‘This too was humanity!’

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s01e02)

The Playground


Charles visits his boyhood playground, at first on his own and then with his own son. There, he sees Ralph, the bully who tormented him, who’s still a boy and who still seems to be tormenting Charlie.

Perhaps Ralph was meant to be a ghost bully, perhaps the curly haired boy is young Charlie, perhaps Charlie switches bodies with his own son, or perhaps there’s time travel invovled. We doubt that even Captain Kirk could sort out all those perhapses in this TV version of Ray Bradbury’s story starring William Shatner. But clarity can be had if you read the original story, which takes about the same amount of time as watching the TV episode but shows the rich inner life of Charles Underwood and leaves no ambiguity about what’s up with “Ralph.”
Michael Main
Ralph? The bully. When I was a kid, he used to wait for me on the corner every day.

William Shatner (as "the Papa") sits in a swing at night, looking on in horror
                at something nearby.
  • Fantasy
  • Debatable Time Travel
Cartoon

Transformers


Two groups of robots who crashed to Earth in the distant past have returned to life and are making Earth—past and present—their battleground. These are the time-travel cartoon episodes that I spotted in the four original seasons (1984-1987) and in the Beast Wars episodes (1996-1999) in which time travel was commonplace. I haven’t seen the later series [Robots in Disguise (2000-2002), the Unicron Trilogy (2001-2006), the more recent animated series (2007-2010), and the webisodes (2010)].
They were called Autobots and Decepticons. But the brutal Decepticons were driven by a single goal: total domination. They set out to destroy the peace-loving Autobots, and a war between the forces of good and evil raged across Cybertron.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Lazer Tag Academy


Young Jamie Jaren, the Lazer Tag champion of 3010, travels back to 1980 to protect her distant teenaged ancestors from the evil Draxon Drear who was unwittingly released into that earlier era.
As Drear races through time in his quest to conquer the future, he is pursued by Jamie Jaren. Jamie must team with her ancestors Tom, Beth and Nicky Jaren. Join us now in their adventure through time to preserve the past, save the future, and keep the peace established by. . . the Lazer Tag Academy!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Muppet Babies


As babies, all the Muppets are occasionally looked after by Nannie. They first time traveled by taking Gonzo’s supersonic snowmobile trike back to rescue Nanny’s ruined yearbook in “Back to the Nursery.”
But how can we replace a picture taken a zillion years ago?

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Star Trek: The Next Generation (s01e01-02)

Encounter at Farpoint


As the new captain of the Enterprise and other new members of his crew become acquainted with their galaxy class starship and its capabilities, they travel to a curious city on Deneb IV and also encounter a powerful  being from the Q who, among other things, exhibits a possible power over time itself.
Michael Main
Troi: Captain, sir, this is not an illusion of a dream.
Picard: But these courts belong in the past.
Troi:I don’t understand either, but this is real.

  • “Encounter at Farpoint” by D. C. Fontana (Paramount Domestic Television, USA, 28 September 1987) [syndicated].
Patrick Stewart (as Captain Jean-Luc Picard) boldly stands on the bridge of the
                N C C 1 7 0 1 D.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Series

Fraggle Rock


The symbolic and colorful world of Jim Henson’s Fraggle Muppets included at least one moment of time travel when Mokey, Boober, and Wembly are mysteriously transported back to a time of Fraggles who cannot laugh.
Wouldn’t it be fun to travel in time? O’ course, you wouldn’t really go anywhere. No, Sprocket, because the past and the future are happening now, here in the present. It’s all a question of perception. I thought dogs knew things like that.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Amazing Stories


Steven Spielberg brought Amazing Stories to TV in two seasons of an anthology format. At least one time-travel story—Jack Finney’s venerable “Such Interesting Neighbors”—appeared in the second season (20 Mar 1987).

Janet and I bought our first color TV for these episodes, a Sony of course.
Oh, Randy, neighbors are always strange; those are the rules.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v2s02e10a)

Time And Teresa Golowitz



No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

One Life to Live


In a 1988 plot line (“Buchanan City”), Clint ends up back in 1888 where he falls in love and is betrothed to Viki’s look-alike ancestor Ginny!

Apart from Dark Shadows (which, as we all know, was more than a soap opera), this is the first time travel that I’ve spotted in a soap.
Ginny: I was staring up at the night sky trying to find that extra planet that you claimed was there when I was giving the children their astronomy lesson today.
Clint: Why can’t you just take my word for it?
Ginny: Because brilliant scientists have studied the heavens and deduced that there are only a certain number of planets in our solar system—eight, just eight. And then you come along and throw the whole system out of question!

|pending alt-text|
  • Mainstream
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Red Dwarf (s01e01)

The End


In this pilot episode, menial worker Dave Lister on the spaceship Red Dwarf finds himself three million years in the future after accidentally overstaying his time in a stasis room where time does not exist. In contrast to a long sleep or cryogenics, traveling via stasis is actual time travel.
Michael Main
The stasis room creates a static field of time. Just as x-rays can’t pass through lead, time cannot penetrate a stasis field. So although you exist, you no longer exist in time, and for you, time itself does not exist.

A dazed Craig Charles (as Dave Lister) in a colorful Pacific island shirt
                emerges from a time stasis room.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Star Trek: The Next Generation (s01e24)

We’ll Always Have Paris


Temporal distortions, such as time loops and mixed times, are rippling outward from an isolated planetoid where Dr. Manheim and Jenice Manheim, an old flame of Picard’s, built their time/gravity research lab.
Michael Main
Sensors show nothing, sir, But it appears a moment in time repeated itself exactly, for everyone.

No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Gumby Adventures


In the 1988 episode “Lost in Chinatown,” Gumby’s claymation sister Minga travels through a magic tapestry to ancient China, and Gumby must rescue her!
Wow: a picture on silk! It looks real old. I wonder what life in China was like in those days. While waiting for Grandma, I’ll go and find out.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s01e01–02)

Genesis


Physicist and all-around good guy Sam Beckett rushes his time machine into production—funding is about to be cut!—and as a consequence, he leaps into the life of a USAF test pilot, where Sam and his holographic cohort Al have a moral mission. And after setting things right in that pilot’s life, Sam—“oh, boy”—takes a few moments to win the big baseball game in 1968.
Inmate Jan
One end of this string represents your birth, the other end your death. You tie the ends together, and your life is a loop. Ball the loop, and the days of your life touch each other out of sequence, therefore leaping to one point in the string to another . . .

A worried Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett), dressed as a test pilot, stares out of
                the small cockpit of the experimental X2 plane.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Sports
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s01e03)

Star-Crossed


Why would anybody leap into English Professor Gerald Bryant during June 1972? Sam is certain that his mission is to he can reconcile his own future quantum physicist girlfriend with her father so that her fear of commitment won’t cause her to leave Sam at the alter in another twelve years.
Michael Main
Don’t ya see, Al? I’m here to give Donna and I a second chance.

Teri Hatcher (as Donna Elesee) and Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett) study a book
                together at a library table.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s01e04)

The Right Hand of God


Sam leaps into professional boxer Clarence “Kid”Cody in 1974, where he must win his first legitimate fight in a year to save the sisters of St. Mary’s, start a new life with Dixie, and also—if things work out as expected in the Rumble in the Jungle—escape the mob.
Michael Main
That surprise punch in the last inning . . . it was inspired.

Michelle Joyner (as Sister Angela) leans to one side and waves into a boxing
                ring.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s01e05)

How the Tess Was Won


Sam leaps into Doc Young, DVM, back in 1956 Lubbock, Texas, where it seems his purpose is to out-rope, out-ride, and out-posthole-dig cowgirl Tess McGill in an effort to win her heart.
Michael Main
You can’t expect me to do this and not get involved. So if Tess falls in love with Doc, I’d appreciate it if you just leap me outta here as soon as possible.

Covered in mud in a pig sty, an exasperated Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett) holds
                up a piglet.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s01e06)

Double Identity


Sam does a double leap at one location: First into hitman Frankie LaPalma at the moment when he and Don Geno’s former girlfriend are in the sack together, and then as Don Geno himself.
Michael Main
Who ever heard of one lousy hairdryer blacking out all of the East Coast?

Dolled-up Terri Garber (as Teresa Pacci) leans back and reaches up to give
                Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett) a romantic kiss.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s01e07)

The Color of Truth


Upon arriving in an Alabama diner in 1955, Sam sits at the counter and sees an elderly Black man looking back at him from the mirror.
Michael Main
You’re hear to save her tomorrow, not to initiate the civil rights activity in the South.

Howard Matthew Johnson (as an older Black man, Jesse Tyler) looks out from a
                reflection in a window at Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett).
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s01e08)

Camikazi Kid


It seeems that the only way Sam can fulfill his mission of stopping 17-year-old Cam Wilson’s older sister from marrying shithead Bob is to race Bob “for pinks” in hopes that Bob will lose his cool and show his true self, but that’ll only work if Sam (as Cam) and his buddy Jill can soup up Cam’s pink mommobile with a blast of nitrous oxide at exactly the right moment of the race.
Michael Main
Older Brother: Come on, Mikey, we gotta rehearse.

Mikey: [waving] Bye-bye!

In the front seat of an old car, Holly Fields (as Jill) explains the workings
                of a new dashboard gadget to Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett).
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s01e09)

Play It Again, Seymour


Sam arrives in 1953 as a private eye who looks like Humphrey Bogart and has to solve the mystery of his partner’s murder while trying to figure out his relationship with his partner’s wife and the eager kid at the newsstand.
Michael Main
Kid, if I’m lucky I’m gonna spend the rest of my life leaping around from one place to another instead of face down in a pool of blood.

Dressed in overcoats and fedora hats, Claudia Christian (as Allison Grimsley)
                and Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett) stare into each others eyes.
  • Science Fiction
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s03e03)

The Lake


The TV adaptation of Bradbury’s “The Lake” focuses more on the adult man, who’s now thirty-something Doug, but the story structure and pathos of his lost childhood love remain intact.
Michael Main
If I finish it, will you come?

Exactly half of a large sand castle with a trail of footprints looping around
                it.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s03e06)

A Sound of Thunder


Bradbury himself wrote the teleplay for this first on-screen adaptation of his famous story, and somehow he managed to do it without the word “butterfly” appearing in the script (though we do see the critter at the end).
Michael Main
Travis: We might destroy a roach—or a flower, even—and destroy an important link in the species.

Eckles: So?

A gaping T rex shows its sharp teeth and red gums.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Smurfs


While trying to return a dinosaur to its proper time at the start of season 9, a time whirlwind whips the annoying little mushroom blueters into time—a condition that’s carried on through the rest of the season.
Well, Papa Smurf, there is one way to get this critter back home, but it’s awfully dangerous.

  • Smurfs by Peyo (9 September 1989).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Ring Raiders


Matchbox produced and aired five cartoon episodes in 1989 to promote their Ring Raider line of toys including the time-traveling planes of the evil Skull Squadron and the right-stuff Ring Raider pilots.
Lieutenant, I’ve got three strange bogeys about a mile north-northwest. They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before. They don’t even have props.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e01)

Honeymoon Express


Sam pops into newly married Tom McBride (a New York policeman), who is headed to Niagara Falls with his new bride (a budding lawyer and the daughter of a senator). The two of them engage in the usual honeymoon activities—fighting off ex-boyfriend thugs, rolling underneath moving trains, studying for the bar exam—while unbeknownst to Sam, Al is at a Senate committee meeting in Washington, D.C., fighting for the life of Project Quantum Leap. Oh, yes, and it’s now official: Sam and Al believe that God has taken control of the project, although Al refuses to be pinned down as to which god she is.
Michael Main
This committee has decided that your 2.4 billion dollar funding request for Project Quantum Leap . . .

Dean Stockton (as Admiral Al Calavicci) sits at attention in his dress-white
                uniform.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e02)

Disco Inferno


Sam finds out what it’s like to be a stuntman in a family with broken dynamics and (to him but not Al) in an era with broken music.
Michael Main
Disco’s not gonna last forever. I got a feeling it’s probably gonna die in a couple of years.

Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett in a white suit with wide lapels) strikes a disco
                dance pose with one hand pointing high into the air.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e03)

The Americanization of Machiko


In 1953, Sam steps off a bus as a sailor returning home from Japan with—surprise! to Sam and everyone else—a new bride named Machiko.
Michael Main
“I try to find a husband . . . to find my husband”

Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett) and Leila Lee Olsen (as Machiko, dressed in a
                Japanese robe) pick daisies on the roadside.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e04)

What Price Gloria?


Sam leaps into the body of executive secretary Samantha Stormer during a time rife with sexual harrassment that hadn’t yet been challenged or even given a name.
Michael Main
You know, this is degrading. First he chases me around the office, then he says I gotta wear lipstick

A fed-up Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett) sits at a dinner table wearing a fancy,
                low-cut dress and frilly hat.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e05)

Blind Faith


Who knew that if Sam leaped into a blind pianist’s body that he’d be able to see with his own eyes and stop a Central Park killer?
Michael Main
He says he wants to play.

In a tux and sunglasses, Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett) sits at a concert piano
                while Dean Stockton (as Al) holds his sheet music.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e06)

Good Morning, Peoria


Somewhat disoriented Sam—as Howlin’ Chic Howell at a 50’s radio station—must help station owner Rachel Powell defend rock’n’roll from the town elders and mobs of pitchfork-carrying, record-burning hayseeds.
Michael Main
Fred, I appreciate your opinion, but no matter how many editorials you publish, I am not gonna stop playing rock’n’roll.

No image currently available.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e07)

Thou Shalt Not . . .



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e08)

Jimmy



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e09)

So Help Me God



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e10)

Catch a Falling Star



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e11)

A Portrait for Troian



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e12)

Animal Frat



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e13)

Another Mother



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e14)

All-Americans



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Kappatoo


In an amusing twist on The Prince and the Pauper, Kappatoo 70934 swaps places with his twentieth century lookalike, Simon, in this one-season series and its follow-up, Kappatoo II, in 1992. I like that Simon in the future had a computer as his foil, whereas back in our time, Kappatoo has a cat. The vintage 1990 PCs are also fun.
Not where, when. When did I come from? Which happens to be the year 2270.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e15)

Her Charm



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e16)

Freedom



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Star Trek: The Next Generation (s03e15)

Yesterday’s Enterprise



  • “Yesterday’s Enterprise” by Ira Steven Behr et al., directed by David Carson (Paramount Domestic Television, USA, 19 February 1990) [syndicated].
Title card from the episode Yesterday
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e17)

Good Night, Dear Heart



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e18)

Pool Hall Blues



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e19)

Leaping in Without a Net



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e20)

Maybe Baby



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e21)

Sea Bride



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e22)

M.I.A.



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Alvin and the Chipmonks


It was not until the final season of the Alvin revival (nearly two decades after creator Bagdasarian’s death) that Theodore, Simon and Alvin had a series of movie take-offs including Dianne Dixon’s episode, “Back to Our Future,” in which the quirky inventor Clyde Crashcup (filling in for Doc Brown) brings the 90s trio back to the 50s to stop the original trio from giving up their singing careers.
Now remember boys, you must convince the old Alvin to stick with his musical career, so you can all be stars in the future!

  • Alvin and the Chipmonks by Dianne Dixon (8 September 1990).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventures


. . . featuring the most outstanding voices of the original Two Great Ones, but bogus plots and dialog.
♫ Whenever time stands still and trouble moves too fast, to save the future, we must learn about the past. ♫

  • Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventures by David Kirschner et al. (15 September 1990).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e01)

The Leap Home: 1969



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3


The animation and sound effects are a good reflection of the video game. In one episode (“Toddler Terrors of Time Travel”), the son of King Bowser invents a time machine to go back in time and stop Mario, Luigi and Toad from ever coming to their kingdom. The heroes stow away, and everyone ends up as toddlers in Brooklyn.
Maybe we can go back and change history, King Dad. All we need is a little time travel.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e02)

The Leap Home: 1970



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e03)

Leap of Faith



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s04e06)

Touch of Petulance


A faithful adaptation of Bradbury’s 1980 story of a man who returns to his warn his younger self about the future course of his marriage.
Michael Main
We are one, the same person: Jonathan Hughes.

Sitting on a train, Eddie Albert (as old Jonathan Hughes) looks out over a
                newspaper.
  • Fantasy
  • Horror
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e04)

One Strobe Over the Line



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e05)

The Boogieman



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s04e08)

The Toynbee Convector


At the end of Bradbury’s adaptation of his own earlier story, he adds a holo-twist that viewers of The Ray Bradbury Theater may have enjoyed.
Michael Main
Stiles: For years I brooded on it. I was in complete despair, and then one night, I was rereading H. G. Wells and his wonderful time machine, and then it struck me. “Eureka!” I cried, “I’ve found it. This [pounds book in hand] is my blueprint.”

James Whitmore (as one-hundred-thirty-five-year-old Craig Bennett Stiles) sits
                in his Wellsian time machine with bright bluish light streaming through the high
                windows behind him.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e06)

Miss Deep South



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e07)

Black on White on Fire



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e08)

The Great Spontini



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e09)

Rebel without a Clue



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e10)

A Little Miracle



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e11)

Runaway



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e12)

8½ Months



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e13)

Future Boy



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e14)

Private Dancer



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e15)

Piano Man



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e16)

Southern Comforts



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e17)

Glitter Rock



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e18)

A Hunting We Will Go



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e19)

Last Dance before an Execution



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e20)

Heart of a Champion



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e21)

Nuclear Family



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s03e22)

Shock Theater



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Back to the Future


After III, Doc Brown and Clara settle and raise a family in Hill Valley, though “settle” might be the wrong word when you once again have a working DeLorean.
You do sorta look like that J. Michael Fox guy.

  • Back to the Future by Bob Gale (14 September 1991).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e01)

The Leap Back



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e02)

Play Ball



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e03)

Hurricane



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e04)

Justice



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e05)

Permanent Wave



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e06)

Raped



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e07)

The Wrong Stuff



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e08)

Dreams



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e09)

A Single Drop of Rain



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e10)

Unchained



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Murder Most Horrid


In this anthology series, Dawn French finds herself in one murder story after another, including a tale of a “Determined Woman” physicist who uses her time machine to attempt to change the happenings of one particular murder.
If you don’t get out of this house, I’m going to murder you!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

ドラゴンボール


Sent to Earth as a mere baby to lay preparations for an alien invasion, Goku suffers a clonk on the head, losing all memory of his mission and subsequently becoming a champion defender of our planet. I haven’t watched enough episodes to know for sure when the first time travel occurred, but it may have been in Episode 122 of the second Dragon Ball series (Dragon Ball Z, “My Dad is Vegeta”) in which time traveler Trunks arrives with a warning. Trunk and time traveling continued into the reboot series, Dragon Ball Z Kai, which I’ve seen on the Toon network.
Thirdly, please tell me the grown-up version of my mysterious son from the future is with you.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e11)

The Play’s the Thing



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e12)

Running for Honor



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e13)

Temptation Eyes



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e14)

The Last Gunfighter



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s05e06)

The Utterly Perfect Murder


I felt that Bradbury’s adaptation of his own 1971 story lost its impact by turning young Doug’s childhood tortures into clichéd scenes—and still leaving it up to the viewer to decide whether there’s a moment of time travel.
Michael Main
Old Doug: Doug, Doug. . . . Come on out and play.

A black-and-white overhead photo of a young boy playing a grand piano.
  • Fantasy
  • Mainstream
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e15)

A Song for the Soul



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e16)

Ghost Ship



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e18)

It’s a Wonderful Leap



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e17)

Roberto!



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e19)

Moments to Live



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e20)

The Curse of Ptah-Hotep



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e21)

Stand Up



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s04e22)

A Leap for Lisa



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventures


The Two Great Ones become the two lame ones, although the Elvis episode has some redeeming factors.
It’s a completely creepy feeling to fail before a large group of Elvises.

  • Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventures by Darren Starr (28 June 1992).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Darkwing Duck


The crimefighting duck (or his pals) time traveled at least five times, some of which used arch-nemesis Quackerjack’s Time Top (no word on whether it was stolen from Brick Bradford).
Need I remind you about the time with the floor wax, the peanut butter and my VCR?

  • Darkwing Duck by Tad Stones (18 September 1992).
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e01)

Lee Harvey Oswald: 1957–1959



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e02)

Lee Harvey Oswald: 1959–1963



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e03)

Leaping of the Shrew



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e04)

Nowhere to Run



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e05)

Killin’ Time



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e06)

Star Light, Star Bright



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Captain Planet and the Planeteers


Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, sends out five magic rings which are obtained by teenagers who are then tasked with protecting the planet Earth, sometimes individually and sometimes by combining to call forth Captain Planet who (among other things) can even take them into the past (“OK at the Gunfight Corral”).
There she is, boys: my own time machine.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e07)

Deliver Us from Evil



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e08)

Trilogy: One Little Heart



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e09)

Trilogy: For Your Love



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e10)

Trilogy: The Last Door



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e11)

Promised Land



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e12)

A Tale of Two Sweeties



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e13)

Liberation



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e14)

Dr. Ruth



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e15)

Blood Moon



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e16)

Return of the Evil Leaper



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e17)

Revenge of the Evil Leaper



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e18)

Goodbye Norma Jean



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

X-Men


Even though the 1992 cartoon had all them new-fangled X-Men and their funky costumes, I still got some enjoyment from the Kirby-designed villains, such as the Sentinels in the two-part time-travel story, “Days of Future Past” (which, not coincidentally, will also be the name of the upcoming X-Men movie). Well, they were sort of Kirby-designed: He penciled the cover and sketched the layouts of X-Men 14.
We rebels have a theory: If the assasination of the 90s never occurred. . .

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e19)

The Beast Within



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e20)

The Leap between the States



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e21)

Memphis Melody



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s05e22)

Mirror Image



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.


In a steampunk Old West, gunfighter Brisco County, Jr., and his sidekick Lord Bowler are hired to track down the maniacal time-traveler John Bly who, among other things, kills the senior Brisco County and seeks a powerful Orb from the future—plenty of excitement for the 27 episodes of its one season.

At least one Brisco time traveler from 5502 appears naked a la the terminator, but (as of 2015) Harlan Ellison hasn’t sue Brisco over the time-travel requirement.
Brisco: Are you an angel? You look like an angel.
Karina: No. I’m from the future. My name is Karina.
Brisco: And, uh, in the future you’ve kinda given up on clothes?

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Western
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

King Arthur and the Knights of Justice


When the real King Arthur and his knights are put out of commission by the evil Morgana, Merlin brings a football player, Arthur King, and his teammates, the Knights, back as replacements for two seasons on this syndicated series.
And then, from the field of the future, a new king will come to save the world of the past.

  • King Arthur and the Knights of Justice by Jean Chalopin (13 September 1993).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Pinky and the Brain


In their quest for world domination, the pair of gene-spliced lab mice traveled through time multiple times, both in their role as an Animaniacs guest feature and in their own series. Their jaunts include a visit to H.G. Wells and his time machine.

As with the Warners in other Animaniacs episodes, it’s not always clear whether Pinky and the Brain are traveling through time or merely acting out a drama set in a different time period. Such is life within four walls.
Greetings from a post-apocalyptic future. We have traveled back through time to bring you the answer to all of your problems. We are your future selves.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog


Video game character Sonic and his sidekick Tails repeatedly foil the evil Dr. Robotnik, including a four-part quest to the past where Robotnik seeks the four all-powerful chaos emeralds in the times of Blackbeard, King Arfur, Sonic’s ancestors and prehistory.
I can’t go through with this. My theories of time and space were developed for peace, not for your evil schemes.

  • Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog by Reed Shelly et al. (26 October 1993).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Goodnight Sweetheart


Television repairman Gary Sparrow walks into a pub and meets a friendly barmaid in London during World War II, a spot where he repeatedly returns to escape a mundane life and loving but sometimes trying wife in 1993.
Oh, I must say you might be takin’ this 1940s theme a bit too far.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Sailor Moon (s02e36)

未来への旅立ち!時空回廊の戦い

  • Mirai e no tabidachi! Jikū kairō no tatakai
  • Departure for the future! Battle of the space-time corridor
  • Journey to the Future: Battle in the Space-Time Corridor
  • by Sumisawa Katsuyuki, directed by Kosaka Harume

Sailor Moon and the gang travel to the Door of Space and Time where they hope to head to the future and rescue Chibiusa’s mommy. Sailor Pluto opens the Space-Time Door for them, which takes them to Planet Crystal Tokyo and a slew of baddies. Their adventure in the future is continued in the next few episodes, but we haven’t yet indexed those.
Michael Main

Sailor Pluto opens the Door of Space and Time as Sailor Moon and the others
                watch in awe.
  • Superhero
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Babylon 5


We admit it: Nobody up in the ITTDB Citadel knows a thing about this 23rd-century space station except, of course, that the humans and aliens sometimes travel through time. This entry in the ITTDB is just a placeholder to remind us to watch the series!
This is nuts! A station doesn’t just disappear and then reappear four years later like some kind of Flying Dutchman.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

The Simpsons


Homer’s first time travel was part of the fifth Halloween montage in a segment called “Time and Punishment” (aka “Homer’s Time Travel Nightmare”) where each tiny dinosaur he stomps on alters his own life. The next bit I saw was Professor Frink, who built and used the chronotrike in “Springfield Up,” attempting to tell his young self to choose a different career.
Homer: (to self) Okay, don’t panic! Remember the advice Dad gave you on your wedding day.
Grandpa: (in flashback) If you ever travel back in time, don’t step on anything, because even the slightest change can alter the future in ways you can’t imagine.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Dog City


This combined animation/Muppet show from Jim Hensen Productions gets an extra half star just because the main characters are all dogs, one of who explains how a time machine has completely altered Dog City in the episode “Future Schlock’ (12 Nov 1994).
Due to the use of a time machine, events were changed in Dog City’s past, which naturally affected Dog City’s future, which was Dog City’s present, of course.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

A.J.’s Time Travelers


In the four episodes of this Fox Network Saturday morning show, teenaged Commander A.J. Malloy leads a crew through horribly written educational trips through time including visits to Imhotep, Newton, Gutenberg and the Tuskegee Airmen, Salem, Santa, and more.

I wish I knew more about when this aired. The first episode was definitely “Imhotep,” since that is where A.J. meets his crew; it might have aired as early as 3 Dec 1984.
Having a conversation with a dog in a time machine and you think something can be impossible?

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine


Seven seasons with nine time-travel episodes including the most troublesome “Trials and Tribble-ations.”
We do not discuss it with outsiders.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Star Trek: Voyager


Seven seasons with 12 time-travel episodes, two of which featured Kess’s namesake, Kes.
As they say in the Temporal Mechanics Department: There’s no time like the present.

  • Star Trek: Voyager by Rick Berman et al. (30 January 1995).
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Lois and Clark


Four seasons with 7 time-travel episodes:
Lois, did you know that in the future you're revered at the same level as Superman? Why, there are books about you, statues, an interactive game—you’re even a breakfast cereal.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Superhero
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Outer Limits


Sadly, this revival (which outlasted the original by more than 100 episodes) was shown mostly on cable, so I didn’t see many of the first airings. But as I was writing up this listing, I realized that between the two runs of The Outer Limits, three runs of The Twilight Zone, one season of Tales of Tomorrow, and a handful of other miscellaneous episodes of weird anthology series, we could easily put together a full season of a new anthology show: The Time Travel Zone Limits. After one season, the network will be ours, and we can continue for many happy seasons into the future.
There is nothing wrong with your television. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are now controlling the transmission. We control the horizontal and the vertical. We can deluge you with a thousand channels or expand one single image to crystal clarity and beyond. We can shape your vision to anything our imagination can conceive. For the next hour, we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the deepest inner mind to. . . The Outer Limits!

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Star Trek: Gargoyles


What’s that? You didn’t realize that Tim’s favorite childhood cartoon was part of the Star Trek universe? And I suppose you also believe that Doc Brown had nothing to do with Brownian motion?! According to the creator, this universe has a fixed time line in which you may travel but not change things—what he calls “working paradoxes,” though my memory holds only one time-travel episode, “Vows” (14 Sep 1995).
You may have prevented me from altering the past, but you failed too. You see I have clear memories of your little inspirational about keeping my vows of love. I never forgot it. Obviously history is immutable.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

The Magic School Bus


Apart from “The Busasaurus,” in which The Magic School Bus in the Time of Dinosaurs comes to the little animated screen (although only with the Cretaceous period), I don’t know whether Miss Frizzle and her charges ever took any other trips through time.
To really understand a dinosaur, you really need to walk in its shoes.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Mirror, Mirror


Troubled 14-year-old Jo Tiegan is given a mirror that lets her visit back-and-forth with another girl who lives in her very bedroom in 1919 New Zealand.
I was just positioning the mirror for your daughter.. . . Jo, you must leave it right there. It’s right for it to be there. By tomorrow morning, you’ll understand.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Goosebumps


R.L. Stine’s creepy kids’ books translated to TV, but for me, the pace on the small screen was always slow. A couple episodes had definite time travel, and some of the episodes were filmed in Bellevue, WA, where I went to junior high school, but I haven’t recognized any landmarks.
So Tara has never been born. I suppose there’s some way to go back in time to get her, right? I guess I probably ought to do that. And I will. . . one of these days.

|pending alt-text|
  • Horror
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Star Truck: Animaniacs


The Warner kids beam onto the Star Truck ship in the year 2995 where Captain, Mr Spork, Squattie, and the rest of the gang don’t realize that they are a mid-twentieth century TV show.

If you don’t get knocked out by the giant Star Truck hammer, you’ll briefly spot Pinky and the Brain in this satire. That pair had their own chrono-atypical adventures in separate episodes of Animaniacs and their own show.

N.B. the Warners often visited movie or TV sets in different times in which it wasn’t clear whether the other characters knew that they were actors in a dramatical production. In Star Truck the Warners could well be in the future, but in other episodes (e.g., Hercules Unwound, which costars Pinky and the Brain), the fourth wall is shattered.
Yakko: Come on, Cap, let’s go back to New York in the 1930s.
Dot: You can fall in love with Joan Collins—
Yakko: —and then she’ll die.

|pending alt-text|
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Wishbone


Wishbone, our favorite imaginative dog, is an different literary adventurer during every episode, including one scary 1995 tale (“Bark to the Future”) where he became the Traveller. The kids loved this show, especially Hannah (and me).
This is the problem with time. I’m hungry now, but snack time is later. Why can’t later be now?

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

The Busy World of Richard Scarry


In one Busytown episode, two of Richard Scarry’s cheerful characters, Huckle Cat and Lowly Worm, are accidentally taken back to Colonial Busytown by Mr. Fix-It’s Tardis-like time machine. Fortunately, Mr. Fix-It’s ancestor helps them fix the broken lever in the time machine (even before today’s Mr. Fix-It can rescue them in another familiar looking time machine).
This isn’t any old elevator, boys. It’s a time machine! This is for traveling through time.

|pending alt-text|
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Duckman


Seinfeld’s pal, George Costanza, lends his voice to private detective, lousy family man, and general letch Eric Tiberius Duckman, who in one amusing episode was visited by multiple future selves warning him of multiple future mistakes.
Actually, it seems that while trying to set the alarm on my clock radio, I may have ripped a hole in the time-space continuum.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Dexter’s Laboratory


Boy Genius Dexter makes amazing invention after amazing invention including a time machine that his annoying sister Dee Dee first used in the first episode, “DeeDeemensional.” I enjoyed the way it ended.
If there were a message that was so important it required time travel, I certainly would not send my idiot sister.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Early Edition


A calico cat brings Gary tomorrow’s newspaper every morning—and at least two episodes in the four seasons sent soft-spoken Gary back in time (to the Chicago Fire in “Hot Time in the Old Time” and to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in “Everybody Goes to Rick’s). Go Gary!

One of the reasons this show appealed to me is the occurrence of a strong, introverted lead character, which is a rarity in all fiction.
What if, by some magic, you found the power to really change things? People, events, maybe even your life. Would you even know where to start? Maybe you can’t know. Until it happens.

  • Early Edition by Bob Brush (28 September 1996).
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Richie Rich


In the 1962 Richie Rich comic book, the poor little rich kid had an actual time machine, but in the 1996 cartoon (“Back in the Saddle”), he and Gloria just find themselves back in the Old West with no machinations needed, where they meet Reggie the Kid.
Richie, look at the date! June 1896!

|pending alt-text|
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (s01e14)

Sabrina through the Looking Glass



  • “Sabrina through the Looking Glass” by Nell Scovell, directed by Liz Plonka (ABC-TV, USA, 17 January 1997).
No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Crime Traveller


Unconventional detective Jeff Slade becomes even more unconventional when nerd Holly Turner reveals the limited time machine left to her by her lost-in-time father.
If something has happened, it will happen.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (s02e08)

Inna-Gadda-Sabrina


In a crossover involving all four of ABC’s Friday night family-friendly shows, Salem eats Sabrina’s time ball, sending their world back to the 1960s and sending each of the other shows’ characters to a different decade as well. You could argue that the time ball causes the whole culture to experience the world as if it were back in the 1960s rather than producing actual time travel.
Inmate Jan
You hold it and your surroundings become whatever decade you think of.

On the set of Sabrina’s house, Caroline Rhea (as Hilda), Melissa Joan Hart
                (as Sabrina), and Beth Broderick (as Zelda) flash peace signs in sixties clothes.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

Boy Meets World (s05e06)

No Guts, No Cory


As part of ABC’s Friday night crossover, Salem (the cat from tag-4138 Sabrina) transports the Boy Meets World world to 1940s America where Cory, his dad, and Shawn all ship off to war.
Michael Main
I don’t know how I would handle living back then. You know, I wonder what it was like during World War II.

Down on one knee, Ben Savage (as Cory Matthews in a World War 2 uniform)
                proposes to Danielle Fishel (as Topenga in a 1940s dress).
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

You Wish (s01e07)

Genie without a Cause


In the third part of ABC’s Friday night crossover, Sabrina’s cat Salem transports the You Wish gang to the 1950s Travis has a James Dean-ish drag race, Genie inspires a young Bob Dylan, and Salem tries to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Felix the Cat.
Michael Main
I hope this is the one where she stomps on the grapes.

Closing title card Episode 7 of You Wish, with an ad for abc dot com and
                Sabrina riding a bicycle across the moon.
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

Teen Angel (s01e07)

One Dog Night


The final part of ABC’s Friday night crossover took Salem the cat to Teen Angel’s house where he transports Teen Angel and the family back to the time of disco and, apparently, altered the course of the 1976 presidential election.
Michael Main
Oh, honey, you can go any time. Disco’s gonna last forever.

Closing title card Episode 7 of Teen Angel, with a logo for abc dot com and
                Melissa Joan Hart (as Sabrina) talking with Mike Damus (as the Teen Angel).
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Debatable Time Travel
Cartoon

Men in Black: The Series


I’ve yet to see a modern TV cartoon with animation up to my childhood fare, but the stories of this adaptation of the alien-fighters (based on the Malibu comic, which was based on the movie) are sometimes watchable, including some episodes where the Men time traveled even before Men in Black III.
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do yesterday.

  • Men in Black: The Series by Duane Capizzi et al. (20 December 1997).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (s02e24)

Sabrina’s Choice



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

You Wish (s01e09)

All in the Family Room


Slighted by his sister, Travis uses Genie’s time travel portal to run away to a pirate ship.
based on ShareTV

On a pirate ship in pirate drab, John Ales (as the Genie) and Nathan Lawrence
                (as Travis) stare each other down.
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

You Wish (s01e13)

Gift of the Travi


When Genie gives each of the kids a Christmas wish, Mickey wishes for a white Christmas in LA, and Travis wishes that it would be Christmas every day. Yeah, like that ever works out.
Michael Main
I wish every day was Christmas.

An exhausted Santa Claus waves his hands in frustration.
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Flint, the Time Detective

  • |pending byline|

Flint, a none-too-bright cave boy, is defossilized in the 25th century and applies his remarkable strength and bravery to protecting the world from the time-changing machinations of the Dark Lord. The 39 Japanese anime episodes were dubbed in English and broadcast in 2000.
Crossing the time barrier to save the world!

  • Flint,the Time Detective, |pending byline| (1 October 1998).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Seven Days


Navy Lt. Frank Parker is the mentally unstable operative for government missions that can travel back in time exactly one week.
Someday I’m gonna form a chrononauts’ union.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Stargate SG-1


Premise: Ancient visitors to Earth have left a gateway to the stars and to other Egyptian-like civilizations. I watched the movie and the first two seasons on Amazon, but never fully got pulled in to the gate, not even when they traveled back in time to 1969 and made a cool reference to “Tomorrow Is Yesterday.”
Thornbird: I’m Major Robert Thornbird. And you are?
O’Neill: Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Family Guy


Nikolaus Correll turned me on to time travel in Family Guy.
It’s called a temporal causality loop. The universe created me, so that I could create it, so it could create me, and so on.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (s04e02)

Dream a Little Dreama Me



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Walker, Texas Ranger


Somebody has to say it: Chuck Norris doesn’t travel to the 19th century after a 1999 encounter with a Shaman (“Way of the Warrior”); the 19th century travels to Chuck Norris.
The shaman sent for me. He brought me here to help you.

|pending alt-text|
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (s04e06)

Episode LXXXI: The Phantom Menace



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (s04e08)

Aging, Not So Gracefully



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (s04e12)

Sabrina Nipping at Your Nose



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

SpongeBob SquarePants [s1:e14A]

SB-129


The first of SpongeBob’s family to foray into time was Squidward, whose accidental cryofreeze took him two millennia into the future. Of course, even primitive sponges know that that was not actual time travel, but future-SpongeTrons point the six-limbed cephalopod to a time machine that took him on two actual time travel trips before returning him to his own time. No, we don’t know whether one of the future SpongeTrons is SB-129, but we do note that the production code for this episode was 2515-129.
Inmate Jan
Well, why didn’t ya just ask? The time machine is down the hall and to the left.

Squidward, the green anthropomorphized squid, looks in shock at a throw switch
                with labels for Future and Past.
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Archie


There were Archie cartoons when I was a kid: The first ones I remember had the Riverdale teens as a pop band (“Sugar, Sugar!”) around the same time as the Monkees, but I don’t recall any time travel then, even if it was directed by Hal Sutherland, soon-to-be director of the animated Star Trek. However, I did spot a later three-part time travel story in Archie’s Weird Mysteries that ran in 2000 (“Archie’s Date with Fate,” “Alternate Riverdales,” and “Teen Out of Time”).
Free will and predestination aside, I vow to completely redesign my time travel invention to make it safer.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (s04e17)

Salem’s Daughter



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (s04e19)

The Wild, Wild Witch



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

犬夜叉

  • Inuyasha
  • Inuyasha
  • |pending byline|

Teen Kagome Higurashi is transported from modern Tokyo to the Japanese Age of Warring States (around 1500 A.D.) where she inhabits the body of her earlier self and fights the demon InuYasha.

The manga comic was adapted into 193 anime episodes in two series (InuYasha and InuYasha: The Final Act, both of which were dubbed in English. I do wish that the translation of the quote shown below had been more true to Dorothy’s line from The Wizard of Oz.
We really aren’t in Tokyo any more, are we?

  • 犬夜叉, |pending byline| (16 October 2000).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

South Park


The first indication of time travel in South Park was in 4th grade when (among other things) Cartman’s Dawson’s Creek Trapper Keeper Futura S2000 has designs on killing Kenny and taking over the world, but fortunately a robot from the future has come back to protect and serve.
I have come to destroy that trapper keeper because it was the Dawson’s Creek Trapper Keeper that belongs to an Eric Cartman in South Park which three years from now manifests itself into an omnipotent super being and destroys all of hu-manity.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Courage, the Cowardly Dog


In one episode (“1000 Years in the Future”) of the misadventures of Courage and his family, an errant meteor knocks them into the future, it’s up to Courage to explore things in the new Banana Republic and get them back to their own time (or maybe chance will have to do that).
I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more, or the present time, or some combination of the two.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Power Rangers Time Force


In the ninth season of the power rangers, evil mutant Ransik flees from the 30th century back to our time. Rangers pursue. I don’t know whether other years had time travel.
If I can’t rule the present, then I’ll just rule the paaaaaast!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Farscape


I enjoyed the interplay of the characters in the first season: Earth astronaut John Crichton who’s sucked through a wormhole in the style of Star Trek Voyager to end up on a living spaceship (Moya) with the Pilot plus four fugitives: Peacekeeper soldier Aeryn, Warrior D’Argo, deposed emperor Rygel XVI, and the priestess Zhaan—all being pursued by the obsessed Bialar Crais. That first season had visions of the future but, alas, no time travel. In later seasons my interest waned, even though there was real time travel in one episode, “Different Destinations” (13 Apr 2001).
Chiana has already told me a few words. Yes. No. Bite me. That’s all I need to know.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Futurama


Philip J. Fry never caught my interest the way the Simpsons did, but after surviving a millennium in cryogenic suspension, Philip and his 31st century cohorts do have some wacky time travel, including “The Late Philip J. Fry” wherein the professor’s one-way time machine takes them further and further into futures with a strange resemblance to various sf movie futures.
We are travelers from the past, my good one. Since your time, human evolution has diverged. There are we—advanced in intellect and morality—and the dumblocks—stupid, vicious brutes who live underground.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Time Squad


In a utopian future, the past starts to unravel and it’s up to Otto, a ten-year-old 21st century orphan, and the rest of the Time Squad to patch things back together.
That’s the History Instability Alarm! It’s time for another mission!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

劇場版ポケットモンスター セレビィ 時を越えた遭遇(であい

  • Gekijoban pokettomonsuta serebyi toki o koeta sogu
  • Pokemon Celebi encounter over time: The movie
  • Pokemon 4Ever: Celebi—Voice of the Forest
  • |pending byline|

A tiny Pokémon Celebi and his boy are chased into the future by a Pokémon hunter.
They say there’s a sound you can hear when the spirit that protects the forest is time traveling.

  • 劇場版ポケットモンスター セレビィ 時を越えた遭遇(であい, |pending byline| (7 July 2001).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Samurai Jack


When the evil Aku returns to threaten the empire, a young prince trains for years to eventually fight and defeat him, but before Aku can be fully vanquished, he sends the prince into the future where he battles through threat after threat (with stories told in pictures more than words) in his quest to return to his own time.
I thought once like you, but the sword is only a tool. What power has it compared to that of the hand that wields it?

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Invader Zim


Tim showed me the one Zim time-travel episode (“Big, Bad Rubber Piggy”) on Christmas Day in 2010. The would-be alien invader Zim plans to send a terminator robot back to kill is nemesis Dib, but the time-travel portal will accept only rubber piggies, which Zim manages to make do with.
You could prevent Walton Chunky from ever inventing Breakfast Chunks by using temporal object replacement technology!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Star Trek: Enterprise


You must watch the whole of Enterprise to grok the full arc of the Temporal Cold War with 13 episodes that were more temporal than others:
Old T’Pol: There’s a human expression: Follow your heart.
Young T’Pol: What if my heart doesn’t know what it wants?
Old T’Pol: It will, in time, it will.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Buffy the Vampire Slayer


Time travel was not a staple for the young bloodsucker nemesis, but Buffy did slay time on a few occasions.
Via, concursus, tempus, spatium, audi me ut imperio. Screw it! Mighty forces, I suck at Latin, okay? But that’s not the issue. I’m the one in charge, and I’m telling you open that portal, now!

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Joss Whedon (23 October 2001).
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

The Fairly OddParents


Young Timmy Turner has two fairly odd fairy parents who can grant wishes, but are always creating problems for Timmy to fix, including at least twice when he had to wish himself back in time: to the Old West (“Old, Old West”) and to a pirate ship (“Odd Pirates”).
Safety’s for yellow bellies.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (s06e15)

Time after Time



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Felicity


High school senior Felicity Porter follows Ben to college in New York and mopes around him for four years before he cheats on her, so (in the final five episodes of the series) her friend Meghan casts a spell to send her back in time where she can be with Noel who’s always had a crush on her although now he’s not quite so certain since, after all, there is that Hannah girl.
Next time be a more responsible time traveler.

|pending alt-text|
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (s06e22)

I Fall to Pieces


On the rebound from a breakup, Aunt Hilda meets her soul mate—the conductor from the Halloween mystery train—and if the wedding is to go on, Rodin to do his thing.
Inmate Jan
Oh, I can’t believe it: The only time a witch falls to pieces is when she’s separated from her soul mate.

In cardinal and gold bridesmaid dresses, Beth Broderick (as Zelda) and Melissa
                Joan Hart (as Sabrina) pose beside bride Caroline Rhea (as Hilda).
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Series

Odyssey 5


Five shuttle astronauts in orbit watch the mysterious destruction of the Earth, after which an alien offers to send their consciousnesses back in time five years to solve the mystery and save the earth. For me, it was the melodramatic music, weak scientific concepts and weaker dialog that fated this show to one season, although they did take on some interesting questions about how the crew’s actions may alter time.
I. . . have it in my power. . . to project you back.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Megas XLR


In the pilot show (called “Lowbrow” and aired on a Cartoon Network Weekend Summerfest), two video-game gearheads (Coop and Jamie) find a time-traveling robot in a junkyard and trick him out with a new engine, some new body work, a 671 Jimmy Huffer, and an eight-ball gear shift before realizing that they (along with the redhead, Kiva, from the future) must now protect present-day Earth from the evil aliens who enslaved the planet in the future and are now tracking the Megas back through time.

After the pilot, the Cartoon Network picked up the show for 26 new episodes.
Listen! We need Megas to avert an alien invasion in the far future. He wasn’t meant to be a toy for a prehistoric yahoo and his pet monkey thing!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

¡Mucha Lucha!


Just one time-travel episode (“Woulda Coulda Hasbeena”) in this forgettable series when the three kids’ teacher heads back to the land-of-disco to right-a-wrong in his past, and the kids follow.
Traveling back in time to change the outcome of a wresting match is so against the code of Mas Wrestling that it will rip our world apart at the seams!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Do Over


Thirty-something Joel Larsen, disappointed in his life, finds himself back in 9th grade with a chance to do things over again.
That, young time traveler, is your first kiss.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Twilight Zone


One season with 4 time-travel episodes.
I reminded them that Adolph Hitler was responsible for the deaths of 60 million people.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Frasier


Under the influence of sedatives, Niles wonders whether a hospital has memories, a question that's answered as he is wheeled into the operating room. I suppose the scenes could just be flashbacks or even hospital memories, but the final scene in “Rooms with a View” (s10e08) might well be time travel.
All these big dramatic moments, and the hospital just gobbles them up. Do you think a hospital has memories?

|pending alt-text|
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (s07e08)

Bada Ping!


Sabrina takes Salem into the future to find out her fate after gangster Mickey Brentwood finds out that she’s writing an exposé on his shady practices.
Inmate Jan
You see, this thug nightclub owner threatened our little Lois Lame over there—

Melissa Joan Hart (as Sabrina) lies peacefully in a white-lined coffin.
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (s07e09)

It’s a Hot, Hot, Hot, Hot Christmas


While on a Christmas trip to Florida, Sabrina and Salem travel back in time to see who robbed the condo where everyone is staying
Inmate Jan
Oh, oh, oh—I think you went back a little too far!

Melissa Joan Hart (as Sabrina) pulls the lever on an a vintage engine order
                telegraph, bathing herself and Salem the cat in gold and red light.
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Debatable Time Travel
Cartoon

Static Shock


Based on the DC comic book, fourteen-year-old superhero Virgil Hawkins, aka Static, has power over electromagnetism, but it’s his friend Nina, aka Time-Zone, who takes him and another hero through time in their first trek through time, trying to save Virgil’s mother.
She can rewind herself through time like a tape through a VCR!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Timeblazers


When Shakira or Alex ask questions about life of yore, Sam and Jen take them back to see for themselves.
And now they take me back in time to find out what life in the past was really like.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

ぽぽたん


Three young sisters—Ai, Mai and Mii—and their maid find themselves continually jumping from place to place and time to time.
Why do we have to keep moving, over and over again? It’s so unfair!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Code Lyoko


As you watch the first few episodes of this French nearly-anime cartoon (dubbed in English), there’s a challenge in working out exactly what’s what in the group of young friends at a boarding school where the resident genius (Jeremy Belpois) interacts with a girl (Aelita) who's trapped in a virtual world which is terrorized by the evil Xana. I suspect I may have missed a few episodes at the start (I started with “Teddygozila”), but it seems that at the end of each successful adventure in the virtual world, the supercomputer take the adventurers back in time to a point of their choosing. It’s kind of cool that things aren’tfully explained, so I hope I don’t later run into the origin episode!
Ready for a trip into the past, Yumi?

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Tru Calling


From time to time, a dead guy asks morgue worker Tru Davies for help, which causes her day to rewind and gives her a chance to save the dead person with the help of her shy boss Davis and her ne’er-do-well brother Harry.

Hannah gave me the DVD of the first season for Christmas, and it took a few episodes for the show to grow on me. I was hooked about halfway through the season, with the introduction of Jack Harper and the suggestions of an overarching plot.
Have a little faith in your sister.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Smallville


Ten seasons with at least 9 time-travel episodes:
Chloe: When you were a baby. Clark, if you really are in trouble on Krypton, you’d better find a way to get there, and soon, or. . .
Clark: I’ll never have existed.

|pending alt-text|
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Tripping the Rift


What if Star Trek/Wars were an adult cartoon with time travel on demand, including travel back to the start of the universe in the broadcast pilot, “God is Our Pilot”?
Chode: Hey, you know what the best part of being able to go back to the beginning of time means?
Whip: Yeah. Not having to remember what you did yesterday.
Chode: Yeah, that. And we’re gonna know once and for all how the universe was created.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law


After failing as part of a 1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoon, Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, Harvey Birdman is revived as an attorney whose clients are typically other hard-done-by Hanna-Barbera characters, including at least one episode where the Jetsons travel from the far future (that’d be 2002) to the present (2004), but my favorite is when Harvey has to defend Quick Draw “Eastwood” McGraw’s 2nd Amendment rights.
Ah, that’s okay, great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

5ive Days to Midnight


In this SciFi Channel miniseries, J.T. Neumeyer (physics professor, widower, and single dad) receives a briefcase from decades in the future containing a police file with the details of his murder five days hence. Once he accepts it as real, he has some success at changing fate by saving a woman from an accident—and then fate starts pushing back by killing her in a different accident, putting J.T. is on a track to meet his own fate.
The future is not immutable—you can print that!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Phil of the Future


Phil Duffy and his family, on vacation from the 22nd century in a rented time machine, are keeping it together just as best as they can now that they’ve ended up trapped right here in our time zone.
♫Meet a boy named Phil and his family
On vacation from the 22nd century
They got a rented time machine and they’re on their way
To a time way, way, way back in the day♫

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The 4400


Over the years, people of all ages and walks of life have been abducted. Now, 4400 of them have returned to a glen outside of Seattle, all at the same time and without any aging or memory of where—or when—they’ve been. We get to see how they fit back in or don’t, how they react to hostilities, how they use their powers such as young Maia Skouris who sees the future, 17-year-old bio-phenom Shawn Farrell who now has an eye for Nikki (not so young any more), and Richard who no longer has his life threatened for loving a white woman whom he’s managed to impregnate without sex.
History tells us this is where the path to oblivion began.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Time Warp Trio


Ten-year-old Joe and his two mates Fred and Sam travel back and forth in time in these 22-minute Discovery Kids cartoons based on Jon Scieszka’s story series.
Ever wonder how three kids from Brooklyn got their hands on a time-traveling book?

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Life on Mars


While working on murder case that has drawn in his girlfriend, Manchester Police Detective Sam Tyler is hit by a car and thrown into 1973 where DCI Hunt, WPC Cartwright, and everyone else in the district believes him to be a detective on loan.
I had an accident, and I woke up 33 years in the past. Now that either makes me a time traveler or a lunatic or. . . I’m lying in a hospital bed in 2006 and none of this is real.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Lost


Sadly, I never bonded with Lost, the six-season story of plane crash survivors on a supernatural island, but Tim assures me that I must list it with at least four stars.
Sayid: Radio waves at this frequency bounce off the ionosphere. They can travel thousands of miles. It could be coming from anywhere.
Hurley: Or any time . . .

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Snuffbox


Rich and Matt wend their way through 28 minutes of dark, f-bombed weirdness in six episodes, each of which includes a trip in time through a door marked 1888. My own preference in British comedy is for Basil Fawlty, but sadly, he never traveled through time.
Not that one! It’s out of order. Use the other door.

|pending alt-text|
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

American Dragon


Like all American teens, Asian-American Jake Long skateboards—oh, and he’s also the wise-cracking American Dragon, guardian of all magical creatures. In one episode (“Hero of the Hourglass”), Jake travels back to when his dad was a teen in order to get his mom to reveal the truth about magic and dragons.
Or, I can change things for the better. . . ooh, there’s a whole side of my family that my dad doesn’t doesn't know about. I have the chance to change that, the chance to reverse the last twenty years and redo everything without the lies, the secrets, the being grounded every other week.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Heroes


Hiro Nakamura reads comic books, wants to be a hero, and believes that his will power is enough to move him through time and space (and, yes, it is).

I enjoyed talking about this show with my friend John Kennedy before he died of cancer on 18 Mar 2009.
Save the cheerleader, save the world.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Day Break


Detective Brett Hopper keeps waking up at the same time on the same day, but each day he learns more about who's trying to frame him.
Maybe. We’ll see how the day goes.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Happy Tree Friends


Cute forest animals mutilate and maim each other with at least one time machine in “Blast from the Past” where Sniffles vainly tries to save his friends from playground death and mayhem.
Cartoon Violence: Not recommended for small children or big babies

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Wonder Pets


When the kindergarteners leave for the day, three kindergarten pets—a hamster, a duck and a turtle, of course—save various different animals from perils, including one episode when the trio traveled into a classroom poster to save a trapped triceratops.
Look! There’s there are dinosaurs in that poster! Let’s go there!

  • Wonder Pets by Josh Selig (“Save the Dinosaur”, 6 December 2006).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

American Dad!


Typical patriotic American family fare with Dad, Mom, two kids, an alien, a man trapped in a goldfish body, and the occasional romp through time.
Getting Scorsese off drugs means he never did all the cocaine that fueled him to make Taxi Driver, which means he never cast Jodie Foster, which means John Hinkley never obsessed over her, and he never tried to impress her by shooting President Reagan, which means Reagan was never empowered by surviving an assassination attempt—he must have lost to Mondale in ’84. Bingo! Forty-seven days into his presidency, Mondale handed complete control of the U.S. over to the Soviet Union.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Primeval


A time anomaly is allowing beasties from the past and future into present-day England. Oh, and Professor Cutter goes through the anomaly, too, because he’s searching for his lost wifey.
Miss, oh Miss!! There’s a dinosaur on the playground.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

According to Jim


Jim uses a porta-potty as a time machine to get repeated chances at being a successful dad at his son’s t-ball game (“The At-Bat”). Janet and I watched the time-travel episode on a happy summer evening.
All right, we’ve established that you can play for the Cubs.

|pending alt-text|
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Journeyman


Reporter Dan Vasser’s life is thrown into disarray when he starts jumping backward in time to help others in peril.
Don’t ask me to explain time travel paradoxes. All I do is fix the time gates when something goes wrong. Paradoxes are argued over at a much higher pay grade than mine.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Chilly Beach: The World Is Hot Enough


When Dale’s attempt to warm up Chilly Beach lead to an environmental disaster, he and his pal Frank go back in time to set things right, hopefully without destroying all the hilarious stereotypes of Canadians and Americans. Bonus points if you can guess what kind of vehicle the time machine is. Hint: Not a Delorean.
Even now, while millions of Amercans are tannin in the warm sunshine of Calfornia and Texas, millions more in the snows of Minnesota and Alaska must pay for artificial tannin machines and synthetic foul-smellin creme to achieve a similar but not entirely convincing effect. I feel your pain.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Sarah Connor Chronicles


After the events of the second movie, Sarah and teenaged John are trying to lay low when Cameron, a beautiful young terminator, arrives from 2027 and tries to take them away from their problems with a jump to 2007; other terminators follow and violence ensues.
Come with me if you wanna live.

  • The Sarah Connor Chronicles by Josh Friedman (13 January 2008).
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Phineas and Ferb


Stepbrothers Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher foil their sister Candace and undertake grand projects during their summer vacation, including some travel through time.
Mom, it’s me, Candace from the past. I came here in a time machine that Phineas and Ferb borrowed from a museum. You’ve gotta bust them!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Eureka


Sheriff Jack Carter is not the brainiest person in the top-secret government enclave of Eureka (though his daughter Zoe might be), but even so, he gets his share of solutions to the zany science project problems that arise, including bouts with a time-loop wedding (“I Do Over” on 18 Aug 2008), a trip to 1947 (“Founder's Day”), a series-ending anomaly for Jack and Zoe (“Just Another Day” on 16 Jul 2012), and other time anomalies.
Zoe: Dad, did you just see. . .?
Carter[/rom]: Yeah, I’ll deal with that tomorrow.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Lost in Austen


Amanda Price, a young 21st-century Englishwoman and devotee of Jane Austen, swaps places with the heroine of Pride and Prejudice.

Unfortunately, the U.S. DVD movie mash-up omitted the bit where Amanda Price serenades Mr. Darcy, Mr. Binley, and Miss Bingley with Petula Clark’s “Downtown.” Damn those cheapskates who won’t pay for music rights! So, head straight for the full miniseries on Hulu!
♫Just listen to the misic of the traffic in the city. La la la la, la la la and the neon lights are pretty. How can you lose?♫

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Life on Mars


I watched this show when it first came out, but it never engaged me, and somehow the casting seemed off. Not until seven years later did I watch the original U.K. version: Surprise! I was drawn in, partly because the characters appealed to me more, and partly because of a softer sell—still melodramatic, but not often over the top.
It goes like this, Spaceman. We live on a rock, there ain’t no rhyme, there ain’t no reason. We live on a rock, just one of many. Hurling around in some big cosmic jumbalaya. Now you wanna get questiony, that’s your prerogative. My ma took me to a loud church every Sunday. She squeezed her eyes shut, she pressed her rosary beads to her lips and she prayed for good things for those she loved. But, cancer took two of her sisters. Her husband couldn’t make a move without a belly full of gin, her youngest son turned to a life of crime, and her oldest, me, is a nasty son of a bitch who can’t get out of third gear without a snarl. So, who was she talking to every Sunday and why wasn’t he answering? I will tell you why, because we live on a rock, just one of many. There ain’t no answers! There’s just this! And all you can really hope to do is to find a couple of people who make the seventy or eighty odd years we get to live on this sweet swinging sphere remotely tolerable.

I gotta take a leak.

|pending alt-text|
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Fringe


When smart and beautiful FBI Agent Olivia Dunham is recruited by Homeland Security to investigate strange happenings on the fringe of science, she’s given free rein to choose any colleagues she wishes, which leads her to the slightly mad (but kindly) scientist Walter Bishop and his jaded son Peter.

I didn’t get around to watching this until it appeared on Amazon Prime after the series finale. It’s a little too violent for my taste, but the three main characters have become favorites of mine just as much as Myca, Pete and Artie on that other show; and as I watched into the first half of season 3, it became more and more addictive. By the time it reached the middle of season 4, it became my favorite long love story ever.

The first glimpse of time travel was in Episode 10, when Walter tells of the time travel machine that he built to save Peter as a boy, although that episode didn’t see any actual traveling.
After all, I was the scientist; and my only son was dying and I couldn’t do anything about it. . . I became consumed with saving you, conquering the disease. In my research, I discovered a doctor, Alfred Gross—Swiss, brillant physician, he’s the only man that had ever successfully cured a case of heppia. But there was a problem: he had died in 1936. And so, I designed a device intended to reach back into time, to cross the time-space continuum, and retrieve Alfred Gross.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s01e01)

Dr. Tom



|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s01e02)

What I Am Is What I Am



|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s01e03)

Plenty of Fish


Dr. Tom: Ultimately, Erica, you just have to decide. You have to choose how are you going to be. I mean, you could spend the rest of your life caught up, in that fear. Okay. Or, you could face it. Take the leap. See what comes. Your ice cream’s melting.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s01e04)

The Secret of Now


Dr. Tom: Do you think that it’s appropriate to address one of your life regrets through plagiarism?

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s01e05)

Adultescence



|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s01e06)

Til Death



|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s01e07)

Such a Perfect Day


Erica: Leave my brother alone. Don't mess with the babysitter.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s01e08)

This Be the Verse


Dr. Tom: It’s 1974
Erica: ’74? But how can that be? I'm not born until ’76.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s01e09)

Everything She Wants


Erica: I should have gone to her the next day and talked it through.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s01e10)

Mi Casa, Su Casa Loma


Erica: Our friendship, it’s still there. And I know that I’ll find my way back to it, but I need some time.
Ethan: What do I do?
Erica: Nothing. You just have to wait for me to be ready.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s01e11)

She’s Lost Control


Erica: If I could go back, I would not kiss Ethan.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s01e12)

Erica the Vampire Slayer


I’m giving you one special power: shape-shifting. . . . You know, like Odo on Deep Space Nine.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s01e13)

Leo


Dr. Tom: What have you done?
Erica: I . . . I didn’t have a choice.
Dr. Tom: Really?
Erica: Okay, fine. I did have a choice.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Partially Animated TV Miniseries

Dino Dan


Young Dino Dan is a boy who sees dinosaurs in his world. Sometimes others see the dinosaurs, too, and from time to time, time traveling occurs back to the Triassic, Jurassic, or Cretaceous. It could just be a boy’s overly active imagination, but that’s okay by me.
Unfortunately, the time machine ain’t working right now. We gotta get some new space-time capacitors.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Preschoolers
  • Definite Time Travel
Serial Film

Ctrl


After the success of Robert Kirbyson’s short, “Ctrl Z,” NBC picked it up for a 10-episode web series, the first ever by a major TV network. The first episode, at about four and half minutes, is a remake of the first half of the original “Ctrl-Z,” and after that, we go on a trek through the rest of the keyboard. But regardless of which key an episode focuses on, the original ctrl-z is (almost) always there to help Stu step back when needed.

Because the episodes are periodically released short episodes that tell one continuous story, we classify the Ctrl web series as a single serial—like the old-time movie serials—rather than a TV series. Including the aforementioned first episode, there were ten episodes.
Michael Main
Lizzy: Just hit control-z.
Stu: Oh! Thank you, thank you, I know how to undo things. Okay?

Steve Howey (as Ben Piller), Tony Hale (as Stuart Grundy), and Emy Coligado (as
                Elizabeth) pose on a giant keyboard key.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Dinosaur Train


Buddy, a tyrannosaurus rex, is being raised by a pteranodon family who has access to a dinosaur train that can travel through the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods.
See kids, in the Jurassic period, there’s no grass or flowers.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s02e01)

Being Dr. Tom



|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s02e02)

Battle Royale


I don't want to talk to you about time travel or therapy or anything.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s02e03)

Mama Mia


Jude: [holding baby] You know I can’t stand these things, right?

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s02e04)

Cultural Revolution


Erica: My dream is to write fiction, and that will happen someday. I am not letting that go.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s02e05)

Yes We Can


Erica: [with Kai at her side][/actor]

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s02e06)

Shhh . . . Don’t Tell


There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s02e07)

The Unkindest Cut


You were expecting robots, flying cars, everybody in silver jump suits?

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Misfits


Five teens, trapped in a freak storm, acquire superpowers, including Curtis who can rewind time. More graphic and less intense than Heroes (season One)—and nobody can fly.

Later, in season 2, another of the misfits travels back from the future.
There's always someone who can fly.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s02e09)

A River Runs through It . . . It Being Egypt


It’s amazing, you know? You stand beneath a car: There’s always so much more going on underneath than you’re aware of.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Turtles Forever


Some goofier-than-the-real-turtles turtle-bodies seem to be impersonating the real Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and what’s more they seem younger than today’s turtles, young enough to have come from 1987.

The younger shellheads come from an alternate 1987—the original incarnation of the cartoon—but I figure it’s still the past. In addition, perhaps all the turtle universes are splinters from the original Turtle Prime which that bad guy targets.
I’ve already got four turtles to worry about. These are. . . superfluous.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s02e10)

Papa Can You Hear Me?


As Erica struggles with her feelings for Kai, the tables are turned on Dr. Tom whose therapist sends him back to his most difficult day.
Michael Main
Dr. Tom: Why am I having the same fight with Erica that I used to have with my daughter?

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s02e11)

What Goes Up Must Come Down


Erica: If I woulda stayed, I woulda been rich in my twenties. I . . . I mean I could have paid off all my student loans, and I never would have needed to work at that stupid call center. I would have had the time and the means to dedicate to my writing, and my life—it would have been completely different.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

How I Met Your Mother


While Ted once again pursues some girl, Marshall does the more important task of writing a letter to his future self, and future Marshall comes back to anonymously deliver a plate of hot buffalo wings in “The Window” (s05e10).

And in an episode that Janet called me in to watch just before Hannah’s wedding, “The Time Travelers” (s08e20), Ted goes down to the bar where he meets Barney, Twenty-Years-from-Now Barney, Twenty-Years-from-Now Ted, Twenty-Hours-from-Now Ted, and Twenty-Minutes-from-Now Barney—not to mention two versions of Twenty-Months-from-Now Coat-Check Girl.
Okay, guys, I’ve been waiting twenty years for this. Just like we practiced, one, two, ah one-two-three-four: ♫ Whooooa, ooooooh, ooooooh, oooh, for the longest time. . . ♫

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s02e12)

The Importance of Being Erica


It’s not complicated. You can’t stay in this hallway forever—you have to choose.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

The Secret Life of Suckers


The eponymous suckers of this 13-episode no-dialog Spanish cartoon are the beasties who live on car windows with suckers for hands and feet. Each episode shows snippets of the life of one such beastie (Travis), including a gag in the 12th episode where he visits caveman days and spaceman days, and various Travises keep appearing next to each other.
Travis: drinking milk from the baby bottle from his own baby self) Berurrrrp!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

SpongeBob SquarePants [s7:e09A]

Back to the Past


SpongeBob, Patrick, and their two superhero friends head back to the days when the old superheroes were young. Can you guess who it was back in that past who ate all of Mermaid Man’s tartar sauce, unintentionally altering the future? Note: The old superheroes were voiced by Ernest Borgnine and Tim Conway; their young counterparts were Adam West and Burt Ward.
Michael Main
This device allows us to transport into the future or past, at a date or destination of our choosing. Unfortunately, the consequences of altering the order of history are so dangerous [thunder], we’ve chosen to leave it alone. So you mustn’t touch!

Former superhero sidekick Barnacle Boy stands beside a stylized control panel
                of a time machine.
  • Superhero
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Warehouse 13


The secret service does more than just protect the president: Agents Myka Bering and Peter Lattimer (under the guidance of Artie, not to mention the help of girl genius sidekick Claudia and slightly psychic landlord Leena) also gather and protect remarkable scientific artifacts from throughout history. H.G. Wells shows up at the start of season 2, but time travel didn’t appear until episode 10 of that season, when Myka and Pete head to 1961. Later, in the first episode of season 4, after the deaths of all and sundry (not to mention the demolition of the warehouse), Artie goes back in time again (at great expense to himself). I was expecting more time travel in season 5 and was not disappointed when our favorite agents follow the evil Paracelsus back to 1541 (“Endless Terror”) to prevent the creation of a warehouse of horrible human experimentation; plus there’s a smidgen of 1942 time travel in the mushy (in a good way) series finale.
Pete: I’m not gonna remember. . .
Artie: Remember what?
Pete: Remember dying.
Artie: No. No, Pete, you won’t remember. [Pete dies.] But I will. . ., I will.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s03e01)

The Rabbit Hole


Erica: I feel ready to start phase two.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Time Traveller


Using the Four Winds Sims animation packet and pieces of the Radio Theatre Group’s audio play of The Time Machine (based on the 1948 Escape radio program), Celestial Elf produced an eight-minute animation. Looks like they had fun.
with grateful thanks to H.G. Wells for his Inspiration & to Koshari Mahana for use of Four Winds

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s03e02)

Moving On Up


What do you do when a piece of your life is suddenly missing? We know we’re supposed to move on, but how?

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s03e03)

Two Wrongs


Dr. Tom: And this time?
Erica: I’ll spend every second with Leo. No Trent, no distractions.
Dr. Tom: I wouldn’t count on it.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s03e04)

Wash, Rinse, Repeat


Kai: In a few weeks, I come back to 2010 on another regret, and while I’m here, we sleep together.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s03e05)

Being Adam


Adam: I would walk away from Sean instead of hitting him, and that would change everything, Dr. Tom—and I know that’s not how this works.
Dr. Tom: Why don’t you let me worry about how this works.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s03e06)

Bear Breasts



|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Regular Show


Two park groundskeepers, Mordecai (a blue jay) and Rigby (a raccoon), live out a surreal sit-com life twelve minutes at a time, including some encounters with time travel such as the do-over that Mordecai wishes for after a bad first kiss with a red bird named Margaret.
All I know is guys from the future lie.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s03e07)

Jenny from the Block


Friendship . . . two people choose each other through some mysterious mix of alchemy and circumstance. On the surface, the reason for our choice seems obvious: They share our interests, they make us laugh—but isn’t there more to it than that? And do we ever really stop and wonder why this person and not another?

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s03e08)

Physician, Heal Thyself


Erica: Can I change this? I mean, can I avoid sleeping with him ’cause Kai said it was gonna happen—which means it’s already happened for him, which means . . .
Darryl: . . . you have to go through with it to avoid creating a paradox.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s03e09)

Gettin’ Wiggy Wit’ It


Because using information that you have gleaned from a trip to the past to try to fix your life in the present contravenes the rules.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s03e10)

The Tribe Has Spoken


Like twin phoenixes, we rise from the ashes—right?

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s03e11)

Adam’s Family


Look at me. You went back there and you faced what happened, and now you have to face how it made you feel. And that’s how you break the pattern.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s03e12)

Erica, Interrupted


Sent you back? No, Miss Strange, you don’t understand. You’ve been in a coma for two weeks.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s03e13)

Fa La Erica


When Erica wakes up in Julianne’s 1980s body, I do wish she’d said “Oh boy” instead of “Oh my God!”
Michael Main
I'm so sorry—I . . . I . . . I didn’t mean to dredge up the Ghosts of Christmas Past.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

No Ordinary Family


In this family of superheroes, Mom time travels at the end of Episode 18 (“No Ordinary Animal”) and in Episode 19 (“No Ordinary Future”).
Time travel, Stephanie! We’re talking the big leagues! The Flash! Silver Surfer!! Doc Brown’s DeLorean!!!

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

SpongeBob SquarePants Mini 69

And Krabs Saves the Day

  • [writer and director unknown]

This episode has implied time travel in that we see a tartar-sauce sated Patrick licking his lips and burping after young Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy discover that their barrel of quick-dry tartar sauce is empty (as also happened in “Back to the Past”).
Michael Main
Now prepare for a heaping helping of quick-dry tartar sauce!

  • “And Krabs Saves the Day” [writer and director unknown] (SpongeBob SquarePants Mini 69, Nickelodean (USA, 14 June 2011).
Cartoon superhero Mermaid Man and his sidekick Barnacle Boy stand helplessly
                tied up as Super Tightwad dumps tarter sauce on Man Ray.
  • Superhero
  • Comedy
  • Cameo Time Travel
Cartoon

SpongeBob SquarePants Mini 68

Lessons Learned

  • [writer and director unknown]

SpongeBob and faithful Patrick use the boxy time machine from “SB-129” to travel back and give advice to their younger selves.
Michael Main
Patrick, with this time machine, we can go back to the past and make our young selves wiser!

  • “Lessons Learned” [writer and director unknown] (SpongeBob SquarePants Mini 68, Nickelodean (USA, 14 June 2011).
Cartoon character Sponge-Bob and his starfish pal Patrick stand in a boxy time
                machine in front of their younger selves.
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

SpongeBob SquarePants Mini 67

Time Machine

  • [writer and director unknown]

In the first of three time travel mini-episodes—each around one minute long—SpongeBob and Patrick put their hot tub time machine through the works, hoping to find Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy in their prime.
Michael Main
Will they get it right? Will SpongeBob and Patrick get to see their superheroes in their super-prime?

  • “Time Machine” [writer and director unknown] (SpongeBob SquarePants Mini 67, Nickelodean (USA, 14 June 2011).
Cartoon character Sponge-Bob and his starfish pal Patrick sit in a time travel
                tub on the sea floor.
  • Superhero
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Fool Us


I love Penn and Teller’s friendly and praise-filled personalities as much as the magic of the magicians who are trying to fool the most renowned magicians (Penn and Teller themselves). One episode included the time traveling pair of Reece Morgan and Robert West.
And not only are we magicians, time travelers, and all-around spiffy chaps, we are also tourists—fourth-dimensional tourists.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s04e01)

Doctor Who?


Erica: So what do I do? Do I just go out there, hand him the card, and ask him how he’s handling the divorce?

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Terra Nova


I finally had a free Saturday morning, so I Hulued the pilot, but couldn’t get through the melodramatic story of a family from 2149 that goes back to an alternate prehistoric time stream as part of the 10th pilgrimage.
That wasn’t a very nice dinosaur.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s04e02)

Osso Barko


Erica: It’s not that I’m not happy doing what I’m doing—I mean, I love my work. It’s just sometimes I wonder if I shoulda tried harder to be a writer.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s04e03)

Baby Mama


Erica: My mother is my patient?!

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s04e04)

Born This Way



|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s04e05)

Sins of the Father



|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s04e06)

If I Could Turn Back Time



|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s04e07)

Being Ethan



|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s04e08)

Please, Please Tell Me Now



|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

T.U.F.F. Puppy


Dudley Puppy, a dog and a spy, together with his cat friend keep Petropolis safe from various baddies such as Snaptrap who, in one episode (“Watch Dog”), becomes ruler of Petropolis—now Snaptrapolis—when Dudley and his time watch inadvertently change the past in an attempt to snag the last chocolate donut away from Kitty.
Or, I could set this watch back one minute and risk horribly altering reality to beat Kitty to that donut.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s04e09)

Erica’s Adventures in Wonderland



|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s04e10)

Purim



|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Being Erica (s04e11)

Dr. Erica



|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Alcatraz

  • |pending byline|

This show has a Ph.D. with a comic book shop, a kindly old uncle, Vince Lombardi as a 1963 jail warden, a crotchety FBI agent who really has a kind heart, residents of 1963 Alcatraz showing up today, and a girl with a gun! What’s not to love?
All the prisoners were transferred off the island, only that’s not what happened—not at all.

  • Alcatraz, |pending byline|, .
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Serial Film

Dating Rules [.s1]

Dating Rules from My Future Self I: Lucy


Nice and nerdy Lucy gets romantic advice from her future self via text messages.

Fellow ITTDB indexer Janet found this one on the web, and we watched a daily installment with tea during my first September up in the ITTDB Citadel.
Michael Main
Lucy: tell me who this is.
Unknown: I’m u 10 years in the future.

Nicely dressed Shiri Appleby (as Lucy) smiles at us over her cell phone.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic


Not until the fourth reincarnation of the My Little Pony cartoons did Twilight Sparkle dabble in time travel by receiving a dire warning from her future self in “It’s About Time” (s02e20).
Who are you? I mean, you’re me, but I’m me, too. How can there be two me’s? It’s not scientifically possible. You are not scientifically possible!

  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic by Lauren Faust (10 March 2012).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Continuum


Policewoman Kiera Cameron is sucked into a time transporter when a group of seven terrorists escape from 2077 to 2012. For me, the main drawback is the stereotyped terrorists whom Kiera fights; I felt that they didn’t need to be pure evil, particularly when the governments of the future have all be overtaken by corporations.
Time traveler—hello?

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Serial Film

Dating Rules [.s2]

Dating Rules from My Future Self II: Chloe


In the second season, our heroine switches to lovely and lonely Chloe (Candice Accola). Now, if we can only get writer Sallie Patrick to slip some time travel into the other show she works on, Revenge.
Michael Main
Chloe, you have to believe me. I’m here to help you help me . . . help us!

  • Dating Rules from My Future Self II: Chloe by Leah Rachel, directed by Tripp Reed and Shiri Appleby (Youtube: Alloy Channel, 1 August 2012 to 20 August 2012 [6 parts]).
Candice Accola (as Chloe) twists her hair around the fingers of one hand and
                dangles her high heels from the other.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

The Garfield Show


At least one episode of our favorite cat’s cartoon show (’It’s About Time.” written by Mark Evanier) includes a time machine in which a jealous Nermal goes back in time to replace Garfield at the pet shop when he was first adopted by Jon. After that, Garfield still has his Jon-centric memories, but nobody at Jon’s house recognizes the lasagna-eating cat.
Interviewer: Professor Bonkers, is it true you’ve invented a time machine?
Professor: That is correct.
Interviewer: How long did it take you?
Professor: The rest of my life. I actually finished it 47 years from now, and then when I was done, I jumped into my time machine and came back here to today in it.

  • The Garfield Show by Jim Davis (18 September 2012).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Spy vs. Spy Animated Segment #63

Black Spy and the DeLorean

  • [writer and director unknown]

White Spy thinks he can win a drag race against Black Spy and his DeLorean, all in just thirty seconds of stop-motion animation!
Michael Main
88 MPH

  • “Black Spy and the DeLorean” [writer and director unknown], short segment of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid / Adjustment Burro,” from Mad [s03e11] (Cartoon Network, USA, 27 September 2012).
The Black Spy from Mad Magazine reads a headline: Spy Challenges Spy to Drag
                Race!
  • Comedy
  • Satire
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

NCIS (s01e02)

Recovery


Abby speculates about the origin of a bullet covered in sixty-year-old mold. P.S. If you are an N.C.I.S. fan, be sure to also check out the short Brian Dietzen film One Minute Time Machine.
Michael Main
Well, my first thought is this assassin, from the past. He stumbles through a tear in the space-time continuum . . .

Abby in her lab, wearing an NCIS labcoat and sporting her trademark pigtails.
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Cameo Time Travel
Cartoon

Bravest Warriors


In the year 3085, the four children of the Courageous Battlers (who died) form a new team to right wrongs (such as that time loop in the first regular episode, “Time Slime”) across the universe using the power of their emotions and other moop.
Repair the time loop! Save Glendale!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Robot Chicken


Claymation Doc Brown and his somewhat faulty time machine comes to Robot Chicken in “Eaten by Cats” (s06e16). Unlike Claymation Marty, I kinda like the Weinermobile version. Bonuses in this episode: Thor’s hammer and Cap’s shield, Hawkeye’s bow, and Hulk’s catheter, and possibly Nick Fury’s gun.
If I’m gonna build a time machine, it’s got to be iconic. I’m not gonna use a Honda f-bleep-ing Civic!

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

The Penguins of Madagascar


In one episode (“It’s About Time”), Kowalski invents the chronotron (“So why not just call it a time machine?,” asks Skipper.)
So while we’re at it, why not just call the Great Wall a “fence,” Mona Lisa a “doodle,” and Albert Einstein “Mr. Smarty-Pants”?

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

1001 Nights


In the one time travel episode (“The Man Who Went Back in Time”) of this Canadian cartoon, Shahrazad tells of a ne’er do well man who complains that he could been a contender had he only had the same breaks as his neighbor.
That coulda been me. I coulda been rich and successful. But no. . .

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Rewind


For this rejected-series pilot, mega-hand-waving went into creating a setting where a government team could send people back to change the past in a way that the team and the travelers can remember the original timeline and observe the effect of any changes—somewhat like Seven Days but without the charm of Lt. Frank Parker. My thought is that one particular plot device totally missed the boat: The team has a technology that allows them to confidently predict the outcome of any proposed change before enacting it. Imagine how boring The Butterfly Effect would have been had Evan had such a technology in his pocket. Even so, I would have watched this series if it had ever made it into full production.
Basically, Charlie can show us how an action in the past creates ripples in the present.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Castle (s06e05)

Time Will Tell


A murder investigation leads to a suspect (Doyle) who says he traveled back in time to stop a catastrophe that will result in at least half the people on the planet dying.
Tandy Ringoringo
Ryan: I thought it was kind of derivative.
Esposito: Like a mash-up of 12 Monkeys and Terminator.

No image currently available.
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Get a Horse!

  • |pending byline|

Out on a 2-D black-and-white hayride, Mickey and the gang run afoul of Peg-Leg Pete, who knocks Mickey into a 3-D color future.
I’m gonna knock you right inta next week!

  • Get a Horse!, |pending byline| (27 November 2013).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Uncle Grandpa


When the main character of a TV show is the uncle/grandpa/brother/dad of every person in the world (including, presumably, himself), you have to expect time travel sooner or later. In this case, I think the first time travel was when a future Uncle Grandpa delivered a future pizza. The only time traveling that I’ve seen, however, involved the wayward pants that Christopher Columbus refused to return
If I don’t get my pants back by the end of the day, ’m calling the time police.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

신의 선물 – 14일


Kim Soo-hyun is a mother whose young daughter Han Saet-byul gets kidnapped and murdered. Discovering a miraculous ability to go back in time exactly two weeks before the event, Soo-hyun is determined to expose the kidnapping plot and save her daughter before she dies all over again. Helping her is Ki Dong-chan, a former cop turned private investigator out to prove the innocence of his mentally challenged brother, who is falsely accused of murdering Dong-chan's ex-girlfriend.
based on Wikipedia

  • 신의 선물 – 14일 by 최란, directed by 이동훈 (SBS-TV (Korea, 3 March – 22 April 2014).
A young girl with her stuffed bear stands at the edge of a misty lake while
                head shots of four worried people look out at us below.
  • Fantasy
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Mr. Peabody & Sherman

  • |pending byline|

The movie had some good one-liners and even some good (albeit worn) puns in the style of the original cartoon, but for me, the plot lacked even enough structure to hold the attention of a child and the writer was writing down to his audience so much so that not even Patrick Warburton’s voice in a small part was sufficient to rescue the story from the fast-forward button.
Very well, then: If a boy can adopt a dog, the I see no reason why a dog can’t adopt a boy.

  • Mr. Peabody & Sherman, |pending byline| (7 March 2014).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Resurrection


After eight-year-old Jake Langston drowns in a river, 32 years pass before he reappears, unchanged, in a rice paddy in China. They can call it resurrection, but it quacks like time travel to me, even if Jake’s original body is still in that mausoleum.
What’s red and green and goes a million miles an hour?

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Once Upon a Time


I loved the first season of this show in which the Evil Queen casts a spell that takes all of Fairy Tale Land to a small town in Maine. The show definitely jumped the shark in season 3 when they went to Neverland, but I came back to watch the last three episodes of that season when a time portal opened into the pre-spell Fairy Tale Land.
I’m still here. How is that possible? We saw her die. I should never be born.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Folklore and Mythology
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Outlander


Based on the wildly successful romance novel series, this Housewives in Time TV series takes World War II nurse Claire back to 1743 Scotland where the muscular Scottish highlander Jamie Fraser immediately rescues her from a sinister ancestor (and lookalike double) of her husband. In that long-ago time period, Claire longs to return to her life, but that doesn’t stop her from a Jamie romance.
Perhaps I had stumbled onto the set of a cinema company filming a costume drama of some sort.

|pending alt-text|
  • Romance
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Steven Universe


With the help of three aliens, Steven discovers the magical powers that he inherited from his alien mother. In one episode (“Steven and the Stevens”), the boy time travels with the help of a magic hourglass, whereupon he attempts to divert a disaster at his dad’s carwash but only makes things worse. Eventually, though, he forms a singing group with other versions of himself.
Don’t make me hurt me, Steven!

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

The Flash, Season 1

  • written and directed by multiple people

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, Season 1, written and directed by multiple people (The CW, USA, 7 October 2014) to 19 May 2015).
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 Series

Odd Squad


This Fred-Rogersish gang of mathy kids teach a small lesson in each episode, including more than one episode with time travel.
  1. Ms. O Uh-Oh (3 Dec 2014) Ms. O from the past
  2. 6:00 to 6:05 (22 Jan 2015) dinosaurs
  3. Back to the Past (21 Jun 2015) to the future and back
  4. Drop Gadget Repeat (9 Nov 2016) a time loop
Because I traveled through time, I don’t know if I’m 10 or 11. . . I just know I can’t see color any more.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Librarians


Under the guidance of the Warehouse caretaker (John Larroquette), three apprentice Librarians and their Guardian venture forth each episode to contain various rogue magic threats while the actual Librarian (Noal Wyle) who put the team together tries to find the library which is lost in space and time. Apart from that lost library, there is no time travel until the final episode of the second season (“. . . And the Final Curtain”) when two of the team depart for the year 1611.

For me, the characters, acting, writing, and plot arcs were well below that of Warehouse 13, although the setup was nice.
More than that, I’m offering you an opportunity to save the world every week.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

12 Monkeys, Season 1


Same pandemic backstory as the movie, similar names for the characters, no Bruce Willis, and a mishmash of time-travel tropes along with tuneless minor-key chords in place of actual tension and slowly spoken clichéd dialogue in place of actual plot. Random discussions of fate brush shoulders with an admixture of possible time travel models from narrative time (when a wound sprouts on old JC’s shoulder while watching young JC get shot), to skeleton timelines (JC thinks that his timeline will vanish if he succeeds), to a fascination with a single static timeline (you’ll see it in Chechnya) and time itself has an agenda. Primarily, we’d say that the story follows narrative time from Cole’s point of view.

By the end of the first season, one principal character has seemingly been trapped in the 2043, and Cole is stuck in 2015, having just gone against fate in a major way, but with a third principal character poised to spread the virus via a jet plane.

P.S. Whatever you do, whether in narrative time or elsewhen, don’t bring up this adaptation as dinnertime conversation with Terry Gilliam (but do watch it if you can set aside angst over a lack of a consistent model and just go with Cole’s flow).
Michael Main
About four years from now, most of the human race will be wiped out by a plague, a virus. We know it’s because of a man named Leland Frost. I have to find him.

—from “Splinter” [s01e01]

  • 12 Monkeys, Season 1, written by Terry Matalas, Travis Fickett, et al., directed by multiple people (SyFy, USA, 16 January 2015 to 10 April 2015).
A man
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Best Friends Whenever


When best friends Cyd and Shelby get accidentally zapped by Barry’s ray gun, they gain the ability to travel through time, although they don’t lose the ability to freak out over drama at West Portland High School.

|pending alt-text|
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Inside Amy Schumer


No topics are off-limit in standup-comedienne Amy Schumer’s, not even time travel which occurs in the episode “Wingwoman” (30 Jun 2015) along with other skits on telephone help for crises, boyfriend-meets-brother, and more.
Amy plus Six: Amy, it’s me . . . you, I time traveled from six years in the future.

Amy: How does that work?

Amy plus Six: I don’t know! How does electricity work? You just pay for it. Now listen, five-years-in-the-future-you is gonna come back and talk to you.

Amy: Wait, I thought you were from the future.

Amy plus Six: I’m six-years-in-the-future-you. Five-years-in-the-future-you has bangs. Now, she’s gonna come and she’s gonna tell you—

Amy: If I should get bangs or not?

Amy plus Six: No! Shut the fuck up! She’s gonna tell you not to move in with Travis.

Amy: (devastated) Why not?

Amy plus Six: Because he cheats on you; he gives you gonorrhea and bed bugs. It’s a nightmare.

Amy: Oh, God, I’ve never had bed bugs before. I won’t move in with him.

Amy plus Six: Oh, no no no. You have to move in with him, okay? It turns out that by being warned to break up with Travis that things in the future get really screwed up, and California is now in the ocean.

|pending alt-text|
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Rick and Morty


Some might argue that Rick and Morty engage in mere time shenanigans—such as that whole time freeze thing and the parallel timelines—with no time travel. But the fourth-dimensional being with a testicle for a head does travel in time, most notably with that = mc² bit at the end.
Okay, listen you two: We froze time for a pretty long time, so when I unfreeze it, the world’s time is gonna be fine, but our time is gonna need a little time to, you know, stabilize.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Miraculous Ladybug


Parisian teens Marinette Dupain-Cheng (aka Ladybug) and Adrien Agreste (aka Cat Noir) are classmates in school and partners in superheroing, although neither of them know the other’s secret identity. One of their friends, Alix Kubdel (aka Timebreaker), can travel through time when she rollerblades at just the right speed, although when she does so, she also becomes evilized (aka akumatized) courtesy of the series bad guy (aka Hawk Moth).
Uh, I really don’t have time to explain right now, but I’m you from just a few minutes in the future.

  • Miraculous Ladybug by Thomas Astruc (“Timebreaker,” 22 September 2015).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Heroes Reborn


The Heroes are back! Including time traveler Hiro! Unfortunately, neither Hiro nor a pair of Noahs could save the plotline of this miniseries (or save the cheerleader for that matter) during the first seven episodes. Matters pick up in Episode Eight, but head downhill again with Hiro out of the picture.
What’s time travel like? Where’s Hiro?

  • Heroes Reborn by Tim Kring (24 September 2015).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

The Flash, Season 2

  • by multiple writers and directors

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.

  • The Flash, Season 2 by multiple writers and directors (The CW, USA, 6 October 2015) to 24 May 2016).
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
Cartoon

The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show

  • |pending byline|

Why am I not surprised that I can’t find any information on who had the idea of ruining this childhood favorite?
But first let’s get things rolling by introducing an incredible invention of mine that I like to call the WABAC machine.

  • The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show, |pending byline| (9 October 2015).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

僕だけがいない街


This 12-part anime adaptation of Kei Sambe’s manga felt more abbreviated than the 12-part live-action version, and the characters were not as captivating for me.
I call the process “Revival.” I usually go back between one and five minutes.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Legends of Tomorrow


Time Master Rip Hunter puts together a ragtag band of misfits from the early twentieth century (he found them by watching reruns of Arrow and The Flash) to track down and stop the evil, world-conquering despot Vandal Savage.

The pilot gets one extra half star for playing The Captain and Tennille when the gang visits 1975 and another plus half star because the swollen-headed Rip got belted by both Hawkgirl and the White Canary; but it lost a half star for Rip’s own soppy background story. Beyond the pilot, though, the explanations about changes to the timeline are just whacked.
I like being part of a team, man.

  • Legends of Tomorrow by Phil Klemmer et al. (21 January 2016).
|pending alt-text|
  • Superhero
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

11.22.63


When Stephen King’s book was first announced, I felt skeptical: After all, could even Stephen King breath new life into the most worn-out time travel trope of all? Yet he came through, not by adding anything new to the save JFK lore, but by blending in a unique brand of horror and producing a captivating page turner. So when Hulu announced that they’d make an eight-part miniseries of the book, I looked forward to its release. Never have I been so disappointed with an adaptation of a book. The acting is admirable, but the characters and plot have been flattened, presumably based on Hulu’s assumptions about what their viewers want.
You’re going to feel apart from other people. That doesn’t go away.

|pending alt-text|
  • Fantasy
  • Horror
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.


This show had the episode (“Spacetime”) that pushed me over the edge in the matter of whether to include precognition/premonitions in my time travel list. But when Fitz has quotes such as “You guys, there is no time—” how could I not? It may take me a while to pull in other visions-of-the-future stories, and I won’t include obvious non-examples (such as predicting the future based on elements that are available in the present moment), but I shall persevere. Here’s the reasoning behind my new ruling: If you (or Daisy) are actually getting a picture of the future, then Occam’s Razor says that information about the future is most likely traveling through time. Case closed.
Coulson: Like, in Terminator, if John Connor’s alive and able to send his friend back in time to save his mom to make sure he’s born, doesn’t that mean he doesn’t have to?
Lincoln: I, uh, never saw the original Terminator.
Coulson: You’re off the team.

  • Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. by Josh Whedon et al. (“Spacetime,” 5 April 2016).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Game of Thrones


Throughout its first six seasons, the HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones had a handful of time-travelish moments mostly centered on young Bran’s dreams of the past. But it wasn’t until the origin story of Bran’s half-giant companion, Hodor, that we saw a definitive influence of present-day Bran on Hodor’s past. The interaction is a terrific example of a closed causal loop: Bran is observing Hodor in the past because of who Hodor is to Bran, and it is Bran’s presence that creates that very Hodor.
The past is written; the ink is dry.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Timeless


I like the show’s period sets and the three main characters: history professor Lucy Preston, timeship pilot/scientist Rufus Carlin, and Delta Force soldier Wyatt Logan. I even like the bad guy that the trio chases through time. But I’m going to use the show to illustrate two questions that I wish they’d answer:

1. Take Lucy, for example. She and her pals go back in time and change something so that when they return to the present, the previously sistered Lucy no longer has a sister, Amy. And everyone except the travelers remember the Amyless version. That Lucy is quite a different Lucy, complete with a fiancé. So what happened to that Lucy?

2. When they discover that evil Garcia Flynn has gone back to some time in history, they inevitably rush to get there quickly. Why are they rushing? And why don’t they consider going back to before Flynn’s arrival in the past to be ready for him when he arrives?

But, yeah, I like the show and their cool timeship.
Lucy? What the hell has gotten into you? And who’s Amy?

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Arthur (s20e01a)

Buster’s Second Chance


According to Brain, the past cannot be changed, but Buster still tries to do so when he’s thrown back to preschool by a time vortex.
Tony Carr
Buster: What’s the square root of 49? [Buster thinks] I don’t know. I don’t know! . . . I’m baaaaack!

An animated white rabbit wearing rectangular red glasses looks shocked to be
                falling into a green-and-white vortex.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Travelers


Earth’s outlook is pretty grim, which we know because small groups of travelers from the future are taking over the bodies of present-day people with the goal of altering the shape of things that came. I enjoy how the bodies of the star team (Grant, Marcy, Carly, Trevor, and Philip) don’t always match those of their future counterparts.
We, the last and broken memories, vow to undo the errors of our ancestors, to make the Earth whole, the lost unlost, at the peril of our own birth.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Making History


When university janitor Dan Chambers invents a time machine (really more of a time duffle bag), he decides to use it to land a girlfriend in Colonial Massachusetts. His plan succeeds, but along the way, he manages to stop the American Revolution, a consequence that can be righted only by bringing history professor Chris Parrish into the fold.
After seeing that Peppermint Patricia wrapper, I knew that any society that could mix two separate flavors like mint and chocolate is more open-minded than I could ever fathom. We must start this revolution so that the women of the future can feel the freedom that I felt in those brief moments.

|pending alt-text|
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Time after Time


H.G. Wells chasing Jack the Ripper through time didn’t manage to translate from the 1979 silver screen to the 2017 small screen, although I enjoyed the Paris episode before the show was prematurely canceled.

The model of time travel was particularly troublesome in that I never did understand why H.G’s first trip took him to the museum.
It’s inevitable: Science and technology will advance beyond all imagination, forcing society to perfect itself. Imagine who you could be if you didn’t live in fear. Or more importantly, imagine the stories you could write if your life was full of adventure.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Dimension 404


The Twilight Zone rides again, but this time on streaming TV (Hulu)! The first three episodes, all released on April 4, included a Wishbone meets Captain Planet episode, “Chronos,” with a model of time-travel that made no sense (but was still a hoot).
You know you’ve got the wrong equation for closed timelike curves, right?

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

내가 이 나라의 평강공주다

  • Mai onri leobeusong
  • My only lovesong
  • My Only Love Song
  • by 김수진, directed by 민두식

Diva actress Song Soo-jung drives off in a huff in her manager’s VW van—Boing Boing—only to find herself in the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo where she meets characters from her historical TV show including the real Princess Pyeonggang and the roguish hero On-Dal.
Michael Main

A cheerful Gong Seung-yeon (as Soo-jung) drives a cute white van while a
                frightened Lee Jong-hyun (as On Dal) hangs on beside her.
  • Romance
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Miniseries

Somewhere Between


After San Francisco suffers a week of terror at the hands of a serial killer ending with the death of Laura Price’s eight-year-old daughter Serena, Laura falls into a dark depression and attempts suicide. Next thing she knows, she’s waking up before that week, whereupon she teams up with ex-police detective Nico Jackson (who also got thrown back in time), hoping to change the week, catch the killer, save Nico’s brother’s life, and save Serena—all in a mere nine additional episodes.
Michael Main
I’m not going to let anybody hurt you this time. I swear to you on my life.

  • Somewhere Between by Stephen Tolkin et al., directed by Duane Clark et al., 10 pts. (ABC-TV, USA, 24 July – 19 September 2017).
A black-and-white sideways head shot of Paula Patton (as Laura Price) above the
                title of "Somewhere Between".
  • Fantasy
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Electric Dreams [s:1e2]

“Impossible Planet”


A pair of spaceship pilots take advantage of centuries-old Irma Louise Gordon who just wants to see Earth before she dies.

Parts of Philip K. Dick’s original story are gone, such as the original ending, which must have been corny even in 1953; and part of the ambiguous revised plotline can be interpreted as time travel, although I suspect that adapter/director David Farr had a different meaning in mind. Regardless, I found Farr’s characters moving.

  • ““Impossible Planet”” by Philip K. Dick (Channel 4, UK, 24 September 2017).
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Orville


It didn’t take long for MacFarlane’s slightly zany Star Trek parody to introduce us to Pria, a collector visitor from their far-future, who grabs people only just before they’re about to die. I know the show has a bit of a comedy take, but I love their excellent take on so many classic sf tropes.
When we get to my century, I'll introduce you to Amelia Earhart.

|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Thundermans (s04e15)

Save the Past Dance


Superhero teens Phoebe and Max and their younger siblings have heard their parents tell a hometown hero legend once too often, so they “borrow” Cousin Blobbin’s time machine to find out the truth. But they manage to screw up the past and create a disaster in their own time, so they have to make a second round trip to sort it all out.

And just for fun . . . we get to see a flying pig three times! [Sadly, we have no Flying Pig tag. —the curator]
Tandy Ringoringo
If we see ourselves in the past, the whole universe could close in on itself. Watch a movie, you bookworm!

Jack Griffo (as Max) and Kira Kosarin (as Phoebe) pose in a leather jacket and
                poodle skirt for a 1950s dance.
  • Superhero
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Children
  • 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
TV Series

僕だけがいない街


This faithful, 12-part adaptation of Kei Sambe’s manga provides a compelling story for all three ages of Satoru Fujinuma, although for me the most captivating and disturbing story was of ten-year-old Satoru.
It’s as if you've seen the future.

|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Thundermans (s04e28)

Looperheroes



  • “Looperheroes” (Nickelodeon, USA, 25 May 2018).
  • Superhero
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Miniseries

Il était une seconde fois


At first, Vincent’s only plan for the mysterious 600mm wooden cube that provides a tunnel to the past is to make sure that Louise doesn’t break up with him four months in the past, but new circumstances soon raise the stakes. Then it gets weird in this four-part miniseries.
Michael Main
En fait, je suis passé dans un cube, et ça . . .
translate I actually went through this cube, and it . . .

Freya Mavor (as Louise) sleeps peacefully in the arms of wide-awake Gaspard
                Ulliel (as Vincent).
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

The Umbrella Academy, Season 1

  • by multiple writers and directors

Of the 43 children born 1 October 1989 with no gestation period, the eccentric and sometimes cruel billionaire Reginald Hargreeves brought up seven of them and turned them into the super-powered group called the Umbrella Academy when they developed powers. Nearly thirty years later, after Hargreeves dies, the five surviving members of the group gather at their family home. Oh, and: Number Six died some time ago and only Number Four can see him; Number Five disappeared about seventeen years ago, but he’s back (and in his 13-year-old body) after living 45 years in a post-apocalyptic future that’s scheduled to start in eight days.
Michael Main
As far as I could tell, I was the last person left alive. I never figured out what killed the human race. I did find something else: the date it happens. . . . The world ends in eight days, and I have no idea how to stop it.

  • The Umbrella Academy, Season 1 by multiple writers and directors, 10 episodes (Netflix, USA, 15 February 2019).
The six living siblings of the Umbrella Academy gather in colorful garb under a
                black umbrella held by Luthor.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Miniseries

A Christmas Carol


A radical retelling of the holiday classic that starts with a Victorian performance of the Charles Dickens tale before diving into the imagination of one of the children in the audience, taking the story to a darker fantasy realm.
from publicity material

A dark cloaked man with a twisted hand beckons top-hatted Guy Pearce (as
                Scrooge).
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Amazing Stories (v2s01e01)

The Cellar


Sam Taylor, a carpenter remodeling houses with his brother, feels ungrounded in 2019 until he uncovers a century-old photograph of a young bride along with a matchbook from a 1919 speakeasy. Like everyone else, we wondered at the end who Evelyn’s child is. Sam might be the father if a pregnant Evelyn traveled forward a second time, but that seems unlikely. I enjoyed that the writers left things open for us to wonder, and I also enjoyed the carefully constructed single static timeline.
Michael Main
You were right—the photograph, it was me, it . . . It will be. I don’t know how, but it will.

Dylan O
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Amazing Stories (v2s01e05)

The Rift


After a dogfight, a World War II plane flies through a time rift and into a 21st-century field near Dayton, where a single mom saves the pilot from the wreckage and her step-son saves the pilot from other dangers.
Michael Main
Sir, I know it’s a doorway and all, and we gotta send everything back there, but in training they did not really tell us what happens if we don’t.

Dunan Joiner (as Elijah) and Kerry Bishé (as Mary Ann) in a field pull away
                from each other as a one-winged World War II plane drops out of the sky above them.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

The Umbrella Academy, Season 2

  • by multiple writers and directors

Five’s plan for the Umbrella siblings to escape the apocalypse by going into the past ends up scattering them throughout different years of Dallas in the 1960s. They manage okay on their own until shortly after 11/22/63, when secondary effects from changes to the timeline cause a nuclear holocaust that can be averted only by recently arrived Five jumping back to 11/15/63 to exert his unique charm into getting the gang to work together.
Michael Main
Hazel to Five: If you want to live, come with me.”

  • The Umbrella Academy, Season 2 by multiple writers and directors, ten episodes (Netflix, USA, 31 July 2020).
All seven siblings of the Umbrella Academy walk in a straight line in their
                blue uniforms over a background of 1960s psychedelic black lines.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

WandaVision


I don't understand this power, but I will.

No image currently available.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Miniseries

16 episodes

시지프스: The Myth


Young genius Han Tae-sul is the focus of dangerous people and a mysterious woman—Gang Seo-hae—from a war-torn near future.

Sadly, the story comes close to being a slick static timeline, but alas, the writers could not follow through.
Michael Main
The Downloader is a real piece of work. There’s only a ten percent chance of success, eh? And even if they make it, half of them get caught by the Control Bureau.

  • 시지프스: The Myth by 전찬호 and 이제인, directed by 진혁, 16 untitled episodes (JTBC-TV, Korea, 17 February to 8 April 2021).
A static-y head shot of Park Shin-Hye (as Gang Seo Hae) with long black hair
                and a worried look.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Solos [s1.e01]

Leah


While talking to her mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, brilliant scientist Leah Salavara’s subconscious brings up just the idea that’s needed to video chat with herself in other times and eventually complete the final step that leads to actual time travel with a surprisingly complex set of motives.
Michael Main
Okay, so in order to run a reverse dimensional location search, I need to know what the interdimensional VIN is on your computer.

A startled Anne Hathaway (as physicist Leah Salavara) looks up from her
                computer in a lab packed with electronics and futuristic screens.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Loki, Season 1


Hang on to your Tesseracts! Apparently, in Endgame, when the Avengers traveled back in time to swipe various things from the 2012 Avengers, they inadvertantly started a branch in time where Loki ended up with the Tesseract. Of course, once that occurred, the Time Variance Authority spotted him as a Variant and quickly recruited him to help in their fight against even more variant Variants.
Michael Main
Appears to be a standard sequence violation. Branches growing at a stable rate and slope. Variant identified.

  • Loki, Season 1 (Disney+, 9 June 2021 to 14 July 2021)  [6 episodes] .
Tom Hiddleston (as Loki) stands with his arms crossed and an annoyed look on
                his face, in front of a large analog clock with multiple hands.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Fantasy Island (v3s01e03)

Quantum Entanglement


The new Fantasy Island inches closer to actual time travel when Elana helps “invisible” Eileen understand her relationship with her grown daughter by acting as a Dickensian guide and showing Eileen how her daughter experienced growing up. And young Ruby receives news of how her family is managing without her.
Michael Main
Eileen: She absolutely loved it here.
Elena: Are you sure?

Kiara Barnes (as young Ruby Akuda), dresseed in white, looks wiser than her
                years with tropical trees behind her.
  • Fantasy
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

Fantasy Island (v3s01e04)

Once Upon a Time in Havana


Finally! Some Actual Time Travel™ as Elena takes young drummer Alma Garcia back to 1967 Havana to learn the real story of the musical grandfather who abandoned his family decades ago—and the role Alma played in that single, static timeline.
Michael Main
Grandfather: Who are you? Where do you really come from? Elma: Just an Americana who plays the drums.

Gigi Zumbado (as Alma) smiles at night in front of a chain-link fence.
  • Fantasy
  • Music and Musicals
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

What If  . . . ? (s01e04)

What If . . . Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?


As we all know, when the world’s formost surgeon, Doctor Strange, lost the use of his hands in a car wreck, it prompted him to search out mystic treatments and eventually become the Master of the Mystic Arts. But what if he had lost something else in that wreck?
Michael Main
The Ancient One: Her death is an Absolute Point in time.
Dr. Strange: Absolute?
A.O.: Unchangable. Unmovable. Without her death, you would never have defeated Dormamu and become the Sorcerer Supreme—and the guardian of the Eye of Agamotto. If you erase her death, you never start your journey.

  • “What If . . . Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?” by A. C. Bradley, directed by Bryan Andrews, What If . . . ? [s01e04] (Disney+, worldwide, 1 September 2021).
A computer animated cartoon drawing of Benedict Cumberbatch (as Doctor Strange)
                casting a spell.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Fantasy Island (v3s01e05)

Twice in a Lifetime


The Island takes Nisha into two different versions of her future life in order to help her decide which man to marry. Only the Island knows whether Nisha is actually time traveling or merely experiencing potential futures, but the story’s ending suggests the latter. And meanwhile, out in the Island wilderness, Elena and Javier share intimate moments.
Michael Main
Let the future unfold.

John Gabriel Rodriquez (as Javier with a five-o
  • Fantasy
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

Fantasy Island (v3s01e06)

The Big Five Oh


Lifetime friends Camille, Margot, and Nettie are celebrating their 50th birthdays on the Island along with a bit of time-slowing for Margot and a non-interactive trip to view a potential future for all three.
Michael Main
Margot [after seeing the future]: Was that real?
Elena: As of this moment, yes.

Daphne Zuniga, Josie Bisset, and Laura Leighton (as Margo, Cam, and Nettie) hug
                it out with smiles, champagne, and long white, terrycloth bath robes.
  • Fantasy
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

Fantasy Island (v3s01e07), pt. 2

The Bromance


Brian Cole, a hard-core survivalist, faces his greatest challenge: working with and understanding his own young self.
Michael Main
I might be you, but I’m not a moron.

Lying on a rocky slope, Eric Winter (as Brian Cole) looks skyward while an
                out-of-focus Roselyn Sanchez (as Elena Roarke) stands calmly in the background.
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Fantasy Island (v3s01e07), pt. 1

The Romance


To help Miss Marshall find her way in the real wrld, the Island sends her to Victorian England to spend time with her favorite author.
Michael Main
Do you ever think you were born in the wrong time?

Lyinging on a blanket in a Victorian gardan, Caitlin Stasey and Gillian Saker
                (as Isabel Marshall and Rachel Coldwater) share a quiet moment reading a book
                together.
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

De Volta aos 15

  • Back to 15
  • Back to 15
  • written and directed by multiple people

Thirty-yeasr-old Anita feels that her life is a failure. If only she could do things over again, starting with that miserable first day of high school at age 15. In the case of the six-episode first season, Anita travels back-and-forth multiple times, with each round of new-found self-assertiveness and fresh mistakes at age 15 creating a new life at age 30. In Season 2, she gains a traveling companion in 17-year-old Joel.
Michael Main
Que vontade de pedir desculpes pra você.
translate If I could press undo in real life, I would do everything differently.

  • De Volta aos 15, written and directed by multiple people , 3 seasons (Netflix, 25 February 2022 to 24 February 2024).
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Young Adults
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Pera Palas’ta Gece Yarısı, Season 1


While researching an article about the 130th anniversary of Istanbul’s Pera Palace Hotel, dedicated journalist Esra Koksuz finds herself at the hotel back in 1919, investigating the murder of her own doppelgänger and racing to stop the murder of Turkey’s founder.
Michael Main
Mustafa Kemal 16 Mayıs günü o gemiye sağ salim binemezse Kurtsuluşı Savaşı başlamayacak. Cumhuriyet kurulmayacak. Türkiye diye bir ülke olmayacak.
translate If Mustafa Kamal doesn’t board that ship on May the 16th, the War of Independence won’t begin, the Republic won’t be founded, and Turkey will never come to be!

  • Pera Palas’ta Gece Yarısı [Midnight at Pera Palace], Season 1 by Elif Usman, directed by Emre Şahin and Nisan Dağ (Netflix, worldwide, 3 March 2022) [8 episodes].
No image currently available.
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

Star Trek: Picard, Season 2

  • by multiple writers and directors

After a catastrophic start to Season 2, Q steps in to pluck Picard’s crew and the Borg Queen from certain death only to insert them into a dystopian timeline that Q himself had created via a small change in 2024.
Michael Main
Time? Of course, that’s how he did it. This is not another reality—this is our reality. He went back in time and changed the present.

  • Star Trek: Picard, Season 2 by multiple writers and directors (Paramount+, 3 March 2022 to 5 May 2022).
Black-and-white photo of old Patrick Steward (as Jean-Luc Picard) standing in
                from of old John de Lancie (as Q).
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

The Umbrella Academy, Season 3

  • 0

After stopping the JFK-induced apocalypse in Season 2, the six Umbrella siblings return to 2019 where they no longer exist and their still-living father has founded The Sparrow Academy in their stead.
Michael Main
Well, someone killed our mothers, so we shouldn’t exist, but clearly we do exist, and the universe can’t handle it, which is a problem.

  • The Umbrella Academy, Season 3 by multiple writers and directors (Netflix, 22 June 2022).
The six living siblings of the Umbrella Academy gather in colorful garb on a
                luggage rack along with their dead brother and new friend from 1963.
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (s01e10)

A Quality of Mercy


A despondent Captain Pike considers warning two future cadets about the accident that will kill them and maim Pike himself, but before he can write to them, his older self shows up to transport young Pike to the future that the warnings will create.
Michael Main
Young Pike: How am I supposed to believe . . . ?
Old Pike: . . . that I’m really you?
Young Pike: You ever gonna let me get a word in edgewise?
Old Pike: I knew you were gonna say that. Does that help?

No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

The Peripheral, Season 1


When Flynne Fisher’s ne’er-do-well brother lands a lucrative gig testing new VR tech, he drafts Flynne to do the heavy lifting, and she’s bowled over by the future world the VR has created—until she realizes it’s more than a sim.
Michael Main
If it were time travel, as you say, you’d be here physically. This is merely a matter of data transfer: quantum tunneling is the technical term for it. I understand your confusion.

  • The Peripheral, Season 1 by multiple writers and directors, 8 episodes (Amazon Prime, 21 October 2022 to 2 December 2022).
Close-up of Chloë Grace Moretz (as Flynne Fisher) with her eyes obscured by a
                scene of rural North Carolina underneath an upside-down futuristic London.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (s02e03)

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow


A mysterious, bloody man appears and warns La’an of an attack in the past, after which she races to the bridge, only to find herself in an alternate timeline with a young James T. Kirk at the helm.

A trip to the past seeems in order.
Michael Main
There’s going to be an attack. It’s going to change the timeline. We have to stop it.

  • “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” by David Reed, directed by Chris Fisher (Paramount+, USA, 29 June 2023).
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Partially Animated TV Episode

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (s02e07)

Those Old Scientists


Ensign Boimler is pulled into a time portal to the time of his heroes, Spock and Pike. Mariner follows!
Michael Main
I know me being here wasn’t . . . ideal . . . , and potentially reality-threatening, but meeting all of you has been one of the greatest experiences of my life.

No image currently available.
  • Gold Medal Eloi
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Miniseries

8 episodes

Bodies


Slowly, the investigations of four different appearances of the same body come together in four different years from 1890 to 2053.
Michael Main
My thesis dared to posit that cause and effect is malleable, right? Which therefore makes time, as we know it, totally changable and fluid.

No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s04e18)

The Bard



No image currently available.
  • Undetermined Genre
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon Series

僕だけがいない街

  • Boku dake ga inai machi
  • The city where only I am missing
  • Erased
  • |pending byline|

This 12-part anime adaptation of Kei Sambe’s manga felt more abbreviated than the 12-part live-action version, and the characters were not as captivating for me.
I call the process “Revival.” I usually go back between one and five minutes.

  • 僕だけがいない街, |pending byline|, .
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel