BBC Northern Ireland is currently developing the five-hour series, which stars Tamzin Outhwaite as Detective Inspector Rebecca Flint and Emun Elliott as Dr. Christian King. After a series of images are sent to King's laboratory from space, he realizes that they hint at a devastating incident — one that has not happened yet. He teams up with Detective Flint to solve the mystery behind the images and try to prevent the catastrophe from occurring.

"We knew there was an appetite for a big, bold, fresh take on the cop show," explains Murray Ferguson, chief executive of Clerkenwell Films. "Something that might be different from the traditional formula of investigating a crime that has already taken place.

"So, we began to consider what if we could find a means of telling that story in reverse? Is there an original and credible way of a police team finding themselves with the knowledge of crimes or disasters happening in the future? We wanted the show to feel like it really could happen in the world we all know."

But the writers claim that we'll get some actual science mixed with our cop drama, and they've hired astrophysicist Margaret Aderin to consult on the theories behind the show's titular paradox. There's no date yet for Paradox, but the series will air as five individual episodes.

Behind the scenes of BBC's upcoming sci-fi series Paradox [The Geek Files]

Criminal Activity

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger: Involuntary time travel comes with plenty of disadvantages, not the least of which is finding yourself suddenly and unexpectedly naked without any money. Fortunately, the predestination paradox can be a handy survival tool. Time traveler Henry often finds himself sent to the same points in time and space as his younger self, and teaches him how to find clothing, pick locks, and steal wallets. It's sort of like illicit father-son bonding, just with himself.

The Joy of Sex

The Time Traveler's Wife: Another unexpected side effect of time travel is that a horny, adolescent Henry is every now and then confronted with a nearly equally young, equally horny duplicate of himself. This makes for some rather spectacular instances of masturbation, but it's really awkward when his father walks in on him.

—All You Zombies— by Robert Heinlein: The Unmarried Mother was an intersex, though apparently female, teenager who was seduced by a mysterious older man. Many years and a sex change later, she, now he, is sent back in time, where he meets and makes love to a very familiar girl.

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold: Daniel Eakins is the sort of time traveler who throws caution to the wind, sampling all that time travel has to offer: foiling assassinations, visiting great moments in history, and using his knowledge of the future to bet on the ponies. So it's no wonder that when he meets up with the same- and opposite-sex versions of himself, he tends to get it on with them.

Futurama: Bender's Big Score: When the alien nudists get a hold of the time travel code tattooed on Fry's rear end, they're mostly interested in stealing artifacts from 20th Century Earth, although they do at one point take a time out for Nudar-on-Nudar nookie.

How to Win a Fight

The Kid: Russel Dritz's dirtbag ways may go back to his childhood, when he was picked on by bullies and lost his mother to illness. When Rusty, his younger self, ambles into Russel's life, he finds there are some subtle ways that he can change the past. First on the agenda: Getting the kid into a boxing ring so he can learn how to throw a punch.

How to Become Rich and Powerful

Back to the Future, Part II: The 2015 version of Biff decides that all of his troubles would be solved his he had been extremely wealthy in the past. So he steals Doc Brown's time-traveling DeLorean and, with a 2015 sports almanac in hand, travels to 1955, when he gives the almanac to his younger self. And it seems to work: Biff is rich beyond his wildest dreams, he's quietly had his rival George McFly murdered, and he's married to George's now artificially-endowed widow Lorraine. Of course, it all goes to hell when that pesky Marty McFly appears on the scene.
Gargoyles "Vows:" In move that revealed the entire series as one big predestination paradox, David Xanatos travels back in time on his wedding day to give his younger self a collection of priceless gold coins, along with instructions on how to invest the proceeds from their sale. Is it cheating? Probably, but in Xanatos's mind, it makes him the very definition of a self-made man.

By His Bootstraps by Robert Heinlein: When Bob is pulled thirty thousand years into the future by a slightly older, though no wiser version of himself, he discovers that humans have become a primitive, compliant people. Diktor, a fellow native of the 20th Century, explains that a technologically advanced person could easily become king of these sheep-like folks, and gives Bob a list of 20th Century items to bring to the future. Bob complies, but travels to a point ten years before he meets Diktor. It takes Bob a shockingly long time to realize that he's in a Heinlein story and that he is himself Diktor.

How to Win the Girl of Your Dreams

Futurama: Bender's Big Score: Fry is distraught when Leela, the love of his life, is won over by an older and more mature stranger named Lars. When Lars is revealed to be Fry's older (and this time wiser) duplicate, Fry should probably recognize that he could woo Leela if only he'd successfully reign in his adolescent nature. But it being Fry, he fails to take the lesson to heart, and quickly moves on to another girl.

How to Travel Through Time

The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter: In Baxter's sequel to H.G. Wells The Time Machine, we learn that the Time Traveller didn't build his device completely unaided. A mysterious benefactor gave the Traveller a sample of a radioactive substance to study, a substance that ultimately makes time travel possible. Of course, like all mysterious strangers in time travel stories, the Time Traveller's benefactor is, in fact, an older version of himself.

How to Save the World

Heroes "Five Years Gone:" One of the great things about the power to travel through time is that if you get that whole "save the world" business wrong the first time, you can just keep trying. And Hiro Nakamura has the added benefit of traveling through time to change events himself, and leaving instructions for his much less bad-ass past self.

Doctor Who "Time Crash:" The Doctor meets up with himself a great deal, if for no other reason than two or three or five Doctors are better than one. But sometimes it's just to ensure a little predestination paradox magic. The Fifth Doctor watches the Tenth Doctor create an artificial supernova that cancels out a giant hole in fabric of reality. Naturally, the Tenth Doctor only knows how to do this because he watched himself do it when he was the Fifth Doctor.

Doctor Who "The Parting of the Ways:" Rose Tyler gets her own predestination paradox going when she looks into the heart of the TARDIS. The TARDIS gives her the power to transcend time and space, letting her leave the message "Bad Wolf" to herself in the past that ultimately lead Rose and the Doctor back to this time and place.

Teen Titans "Titans Tomorrow:" When the Teen Titans travel to the future, they're eager to see what they're like as adult superheroes. But the future is unexpectedly bleak, with many of the Titans turned to violence and destruction, tearing the United States in two and turning the Western half into a police state. Fortunately, the Titans are able to learn from their future selves what set these events in motion, and are able to prevent their dystopic future.

Babylon 5: To add another wrinkle in the predestination paradox, Jeffrey Sinclair finds that his entire life is being guided by his future self from the past. Sinclair eventually learns that he is the great Minbari historical figure Valen, and Sinclair must eventually travel back in time, become Valen, and write the prophesies that will guide Sinclair's life in the future. Fate, or proof that his talents transcend time and space?

Paradox, announced recently by the Beeb, is described by its director, the critically acclaimed Simon Cellan Jones, as "an electrifying white knuckle ride [that will] will leave the audience asking themselves dark, complicated questions about fate, the future and who controls it." Starring onetime Eastenders star Tamzin Outhwaite, the series follows a police detective whose beat includes crimes that haven't happened yet. Whether or not the show will include Samantha Morton as a bald psychic named after a famous mystery writer has not yet been revealed.

The BBC is already buzzing about the show, with a spokesman calling it "a fresh spin on the crime genre [featuring] a fantastically bold idea." Shooting on the new series begins next month.

Outhwaite to star in sci-fi drama [BBC News]

His Life is a Fixed Event in Time

“No Time Like the Past” (The Twilight Zone): Paul Driscoll is a well-meaning but ineffectual time traveler. Not only does he fail to kill Hitler (thanks to the intervention of a suspicious maid), he also fails to warn the Hiroshima police about the atomic bomb and fails to keep the Lusitania from being torpedoed. It turns out that he is unable to change past events, and, when he does effect events in the past, it is only as part of a predestination paradox.

He’s More Clever Than You'd Think

I Killed Adolph Hitler by Jason: When a depressed hitman is contracted to go back in time and kill Hitler, the Fuhrer gets the better of him, stealing his time machine and leaving the hitman in the past to wait and plan his revenge.

You’re Actually Part of a Predestination Paradox

“The Primal Solution” by Eric Norden: An elderly Holocaust survivor discovers a method of mental time travel and seeks to undo the horrors he witnessed in his youth by possessing the body of the young Hitler. He humiliates the young Austrian, then tries to goad Hitler into suicide, but Hitler regains control of his body before the deed can be accomplished. The young Hitler is so haunted by the encounter with the Jewish man’s mind that he resolves that he can only find peace by exterminating the entire Jewish people.

Cradle of Darkness (The Twilight Zone): Katherine Heigl travels to 1889 Austria in order to kill the infant Hitler. She succeeds in killing the baby by jumping into a river with it, but Adolph’s mother buys another baby and raises it as her own. And that baby grows into the Adolph Hitler that Heigl’s character set out to kill.

His Guards Are Used to Dealing with Time Traveling Assassins

Subnormality: In this strip of the webcomic Subnormality, we learn that Hitler’s guards are actually quite adept at killing time travelers before they get to Hitler. And all those attempts have got to make them wonder…

You’ll Be Thwarted By Other Time Travelers

“The Savage Time” (Justice League of America): The supervillain Vandal Savage travels back in time and places Hitler in cryogenic storage not to prevent the horrors of the Holocaust, but to assume control over the Nazi party and continue its regime into the present day. To reset the timeline, the Justice League travels back in time to remove Savage from power and have Hitler reinstated.

Midnighter: In the first arc of the Midnighter solo series, a man named Paulus claims to have replaced Midnighter’s secondary heard with a bomb, which he will detonate unless Midnighter goes back in time and kills Hitler. Midnighter does try to kill Hitler as a young German soldier, but he is stopped by time police from the 95th Century.

Days of Cain by JR Dunn: A group of rebel time agents seek to undo one of humanity’s greatest atrocities by killing Hitler, or, barring that, dismantling the death camps from within. But a society of time agents known as the Moiety is determined to preserve a certain version of the timeline of any cost, giving their agent Gasper James the unenviable task of ensuring the Holocaust goes forward.

“Wikihistory” by Desmond Warzel: One of the bylaws of the International Association of Time Travelers states that you can’t kill Hitler. The problem is, everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. This leaves more experienced time travelers the onerous task of undoing the historical edits of n00bs.

Killing Him Just Brings About a Potentially Worse Future

Making History by Stephen Fry: A history student and a physics professor manage to send a permanent male contraceptive pill back in time where Hitler’s father will consume it, ensuring Hitler will never be born. But without Hitler, the Nazi party is ripe for the leadership of Rudolph Gloder, who shares Hitler’s genocidal agenda, but is far more efficient, stable, patient, and charismatic. Free from Hitler’s personality flaws, Gloder was able to take over all of Europe, so that, in the alternate present day, an extremely conservative US is in a cold war with the Nazis.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert: In the video game, Albert Einstein invents a time machine, which he uses to go back in time and deleted Hitler from time before he could rise to power. But, without a strong Germany, Stalin’s Russia invades Europe, and eventually the United States.

It’s All Just a Dream

“The Man Who Dreamed the World” (The Fantastic Four): When She Hulk, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch, and Nick Fury mysteriously find themselves in the year 1936, Fury decides he may as well kill Hitler and slips off to Germany. Although the other three attempt to stop him, but just as the Invisible Woman seems to have talked him out of it, Fury shoots Hitler, killing him. But, it turns out that they had been in the dream of a coma victim, who snapped back to reality when Fury altered his dream timeline by killing Hitler. The actual timeline remains intact, leaving Fury in a less than happy mood.