Anyone who knows me knows that I love time travel stories. A couple of years ago I even attempted to write a pilot about a man who could travel through time. So when I heard about the new NBC drama Journeyman, a show about a man who has the ability to go back in time, I was there. This is one of the few shows this fall that I can say that I am actually looking forward to. This also means that I will either really love the show or be its harshest critic.
The problem I see with many time travel TV shows and movies is that the audience tends to over-think everything from physics to philosophy, and cause and effect to paradox. Sometimes the audience just has to suspend disbelief and enjoy the story. That being said, the creators of the show have to establish certain rules of time travel then follow those rules. Look at Time Cop (the movie or the TV show). The audience came in accepting the idea of time travel but couldn't get beyond the fact that a time vehicle was launched like a pinball down a long track, but the charters arrived in the other time period without the vehicle. Where did it go? Time travel stories also work best when they don't deal with real historical events. The audience will then have an idea of how things will end (you knew Russell Johnson was not going to save Lincoln in that Twilight Zone episode). As you can see I am already over-thinking the show and I haven’t even watched it yet.
I watched the pilot. On the positive side, these are real human stories playing out. Kevin McKidd plays San Francisco newspaper reporter Dan Vasser. Dan begins having blackouts and then winds up sometime in his past. Time periods are subtly identified through popular culture references like music, clothing, billboards and broadcasts of The Today Show. The show reminds me a little bit of Quantum Leap but instead of the hero staying in one time until the job is done, Dan follows an individual, who he is apparently assigned to help, through different time periods.
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