List of Time Travel Science Fiction - Time Travel in Science Fiction Television Series

Time Travel in Science Fiction Television Series

Time travel is a recurrent theme in science fiction television programs. In some television series, time travel creates the premise and direction for the plot and/or setting of the show. Two model examples of television shows that utilize time travel in this way are Doctor Who and Quantum Leap. There are other television programs that incorporate time travel in only one, or some of their episodes. The table below encompasses television shows that fall into the first of these two categories. Shows that fall into the second category may be found in List of television series that include time travel.

Start date End Date Title Author Description
1951 1956 Captain Z-Ro Roy Steffens Scientist Captain Z-Ro, working in his remote laboratory, safeguarded mankind and history from impending harm. He had a time machine, the ZX-99, both to view history and to send someone back in time.
1963 Doctor Who A Time Lord known as "the Doctor" travels through time and space in a TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space).
1966 1967 It's About Time Sherwood Schwartz Two astronauts who break the speed of light, accidentally travel back in time to prehistoric Earth. When they realise that they are unable to return, they make friends with the cave-people they encounter. Eventually, they are able to return, but inadvertently bring some of the cave-people with them who then have to learn how to get along in the 1960s.
1966 1967 The Time Tunnel Irwin Allen The year is 1968, and Doug Phillips and Tony Newman are working on a top secret project beneath the Arizona desert called "tic-toc". The project has been 10 years in the making, and a visiting senator wants to see if this project really works, or he will cut the funding for it. To prove that it can work, Tony Newman turns on the time tunnel and goes back to the year 1912, and is on board the Titanic, which would sink hours later. Doug Phillips goes into the tunnel to help Tony, and both are stuck hapless in time. They are catapulted each week to a new adventure in history.
1970 1971 Catweazle Richard Carpenter 11th century wizard accidentally ensorcels his way into the 20th. Humorous mistakes are made.
1970 1971 Timeslip John Cooper Two time traveling children visit both the past and future.
1979 1982 Sapphire & Steel Peter J. Hammond

Two time traveling inter-dimensional agents protect and guard the order of time in this British drama.
1982 1983 Voyagers! James D. Parriott A member of a league of time travelers and a boy travel through time repairing errors in world history.
1988 1988 Moondial (TV serial) Helen Cresswell After a family tragedy a young girl is transported into the past.
1989 1993 Quantum Leap Donald P. Bellisario Dr. Sam Beckett helped to develop Quantum Leap, a project that would allow a person to time travel back to any point since that person was born. Beckett ended up being the test subject, and while he could remember only certain details, he traded places with a person in the past. Others in the past saw the other person instead of Beckett. In the present, an observer named Al, who Beckett could see as a hologram, gave Beckett advice. This usually involved having Beckett correct some problem in the other person's life.
1990 1991 Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures Animated spin off of the movies Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
1991 1992 Back to the Future: The Animated Series Bob Gale Follows on from Back to the Future III.
1992 1993 Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures Live action spin off of the movies Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
1993 1999 Goodnight Sweetheart Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran An accidental time traveller, Gary Sparrow, who leads a double life after discovering a time portal allowing him to travel between 1990s London and wartime London of 1939–1945.
1993 1994 Time Trax Harve Bennett

Jeffrey M. Hayes

Grant Rosenberg

A police officer from the 22nd century makes his way back to our time to track down fugitives from the future.
1997 2007 Stargate: SG-1 Peter DeLuise On their journeys through the Stargate SG-1 experiences timetravel both to the past and future.
1997 1997 Crime Traveller Anthony Horowitz Jeff Slade uses a time machine created by colleague Holly Turner's father to solve crimes. The machine operates seemingly-randomly, sending the user(s) back in time a time that can be a matter of minutes, or several days.
1998 2001 Seven Days Christopher & Zachary Crowe NSA Agent Frank B. Parker can travel back 7 days in a time machine powered by alien technology.
2000 2001 Mirai Sentai Timeranger Four policemen travel from the year 3000 to the year 2000 to arrest fugitives.
2001 2005 Star Trek: Enterprise Various species from the 30th century are having a "Temporal Cold war" that is interfering with life in the 22nd century, which affects the lives of the USS Enterprise (NX-01) and its crew.
2001 2004 Samurai Jack Genndy Tartakovsky An ancient demon throws the hero Samurai Jack into the future, in order to allow himself enough time to conquer the world.
2001 2003 Time Squad Dave Wesson Time cops from the year 1,000,000,000 A.D. travel back in time to keep famous historical figures from diverting the course of history.
2002 2004 Odyssey 5 David Carson Astronauts are sent back in time after witnessing the end of the Earth from space.
2002 2003 Do Over Rick Wiener and Kenny Schwarz Joel Larsen, a 34-year old man, gets a second chance to get his life right, thanks to a freakish accident that catapults him back to 1981, as a 14-year old. He is electrocuted, then wakes up in his teenage body, but with all his adult memories intact. Blessed with adult wisdom, though hampered by adolescent urges, Joel sets out to right the wrongs that will befall his family.
2003 2005 Tru Calling Jon Harmon Feldman A young woman receives request from corpses to stop their untimely deaths and wakes up then the day before, in order to attempt to save them.
2004 2010 Lost Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse Desmond Hume, former Royal Scots Regimen, is caused by electromagnetic radiation to become "unstuck in time." His consciousness switches between 2004 (the present) and 1996. Benjamin Linus, former leader of the island natives, travels ten months into the future after moving the island. In Season 5, the characters on the island skip through time to different periods of the island's past and future.
2004 2009 Stargate: Atlantis Martin Wood Both John Sheppard and Dr. Elizabeth Weir experiences timetravel when dealing with various ancient devices among others the Stargate.
2004 2006 Phil of the Future Tim Maile & Douglas Tuber A family attempts to repair their spaceship after being stranded in the past, or modern day, while maintaining the appearance of being normal people.
2005 2007 Time Warp Trio Peter K. Hirsch A children's cartoon where using books three children travel through time and space.
2006 Torchwood Russell T Davies
Chris Chibnall
Jane Espenson
John Fay
Humans and aliens alike from different periods in time start to come through to our world by means of a rift in the space/time continuum. (Spin-off from Doctor Who.)
2006 2010 Heroes Tim Kring Hiro Nakamura and Peter Petrelli can travel in time and space. This is the foundation for the plot of both series one and series two, in which apocalyptic disasters happen and the characters travel back and forth in an attempt to prevent them.
2006 2007 Life on Mars Matthew Graham
Ashley Pharoah
Tony Jordan
Chris Chibnall
A police officer who must learn to adapt to the way things were done in the 70s after being thrown back in time by an accident. (A U.S. version of the series Life on Mars aired in 2008–2009.)
2006 2007 Transformers: Cybertron The Autobot Vector Prime is a defender of spacetime, he saved your friends human using your power over time, did before of destroy them, by Megatron
2007 Phineas and Ferb Dan Povenmire and Jeff Marsh In one episode, Phineas and Ferb "fix" an old model of a time machine at a museum which allows them to travel back to the age of the dinosaurs, and eventually back to the future again. In another episode, they used this same time machine again to travel into the future. This time, a much more complicated series of events followed, where their future sister follows them back through time and accidentally disrupts the normal course of various events, setting off a chain reaction that turns the future into a dystopian society.
2007 2011 Primeval Portals to different time periods start opening up and creatures from the past and future start to come through. There are indications that the portals are man-made, but their exact origin is shrouded in mystery.
2007 2008 Kamen Rider Den-O The protagonists must work with and fight creatures known as Imagin who come from a possible future and have come back in time to kill the key figure to the Junction Point: a human whose sole existence ensures that the Imagin's future cannot exist. The Imagin grant wishes to weak-willed humans to travel farther back in time along that person's memories in order to find the Junction Point by destroying anyone and anything in their way to change the future.
2007 2007 Journeyman Kevin Falls
Matt McGuinness
Tom Szentgyorgyi
Dan Vasser is the main protagonist of the series, who finds himself jumping through time, unable to stop or control the jumps. Olivia "Livia" Beale is also a traveler from 1948 who jumps into the future. After not being able to jump home, she was stuck in Dan's present and adapted to life there, where she began a legal career and fell in love with Dan, only to finally jump back home while on the plane. For unknown reasons, she now jumps to the same times that Dan visits, and offers him advice and assistance in his missions.
2008 2010 Ashes to Ashes Matthew Graham
Ashley Pharoah
Julie Rutterford
Mark Greig
Jack Lothian
Spin off series from "Life on Mars" set in 1980s
2008 2009 Kamen Rider Kiva Parallel storylines taking place in 1986 and 2008 are told, with two of the protagonists from the 2008 timeline going back in time to 1986. The latter time traveler goes back in time to attempt to prevent his birth such that his love may live, but instead ensures that his existence remains by saving his father from being killed by the series' antagonist.
2008 2009 Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicles A female Terminator from the year 2027 comes back in time to 1999 to protect a young John Connor. They then use the time displacement equipment to move forward in time by 8 years to hide John. Various other Terminators are sent back in time on varying missions.
2009 Dinosaur Train Craig Bartlett A T-rex named Buddy travels with his adopted Pteranodon family on the Dinosaur Train. The Dinosaur Train has the ability to visit the entire Mesozoic Era, the “Age of Dinosaurs,” passing through magical Time Tunnels to meet the dinosaurs in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous time periods.
2009 2011 Being Erica Jana Sinyor Erica Strange begins seeing a counselor to deal with regrets in her life, only to discover the counselor (Michael Riley) has the ability to send her back in time to actually change these events.
2009 2010 FlashForward Brannon Braga and David S. Goyer FBI agent Mark Benford and the rest of the world fall victim to an incident that renders the entire population of Earth unconscious for two minutes seventeen seconds on 6 October 2009. During the "Black Out", as it is called, the consciousness of everyone on the entire planet shifts forward six months into the future to the date 29 April 2010, where they witness their potential futures that could occur that day.
2010 Mary Shelley's Frankenhole Dino Stamotopolous Dr. Victor Frankenstein has since completely mastered immortality and now has also created an infinite number of Einstein-Rosen Bridge "wormholes" portals or "Frankenholes" between his small Eastern European village (which is teeming with monsters and supernatural forces) and every time period from the past and the future. This allows historical figures and celebrities seeking the doctor's services to find him. Although many classic horror monsters are present, the series' focus is mainly on Dr. Frankenstein and his family.
2011 2011 Hoops & Yoyo Ruin Christmas In a TV special, Hoops and Yoyo accidentally travel through a wormhole and meet Santa Claus when he was still Kris Kringle.
2011 2011 Puella Magi Madoka Magica Gen Urobuchi A mysterious girl named Homura Akemi is revealed to have made a contract with a being known as Kyubei to go back in time and save the titular character.
2011 2011 Steins;Gate Nitro+/5pb A group of friends accidentally discover that their microwave that they have configured to use a phone acts as a time machine sending text messages through time.
2011 2011 Terra Nova When Earth is threatened with extinction in 2149, some humans travel back 85 million years in hopes of preventing disaster later.
2012 Primeval: New World A Canadian spin-off series to Primeval.

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