<![CDATA[io9: twilight zone]]> http://tags.lifehacker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png <![CDATA[io9: twilight zone]]> http://io9.com/tag/twilightzone http://io9.com/tag/twilightzone <![CDATA[Six Signs You Might Be Dating a Robot]]> You've met someone new, and things are going great, but you start to notice something off about them. Could your significant other be a robot in disguise? Check our list for the possible signs.

Now maybe you're knowingly dating a robot, or perhaps you've had one constructed for that very purpose. But if you think your guy or gal might be an artificial intelligence, but you're not sure, look for these symptoms:

You've Only Spoken to Them Online

xkcd: It's always risky dating someone online. You don't know if that cute girl you've been chatting with is really an octogenarian with great taste in movies — or a particularly sophisticated spambot. Fortunately, this savvy Internet user knows a test for artificial intelligence far more efficient that the Turing Test or the Voight-Kampff.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer "I Robot...You Jane:" We all learn a valuable lesson about chatting with strange men when sweet, awkward Willow starts an online romance with Malcolm. She thinks she's found the man of her dreams — or at least someone to help her forget Xander for a while. Tragically, "Malcolm" is actually "Moloch," an ancient demon trapped in the school's computer system whose only means of physical interaction is through a robot body.

There Are Multiple Copies

Battlestar Galactica: Glowing spines would have been a handy way to tell the Cylons from the humans, but barring that, there are a few other ways to tell if the person you're sexing up is a Cylon. Baltar and Tyrol both date Cylon women with a penchant for sabotage, but Helo gets the most definitive clue to his lady friend's true nature, when he spots her exact duplicate hanging around Caprica with a Number Six.

Star Trek "Requiem for Methuselah:" Rayna Kapec seems like the perfect woman: intelligent, beautiful, and a great pool players. It's no wonder that Captain Kirk, who falls in lust every other week, pursues her. But, alas it's not meant to be. Kirk and Spock stumble into a chamber belonging to Rayna's guardian Flint, containing several earlier gynoid versions of the lovely Rayna. The emotional impact of learning that she's a robot and being forced to choose between Kirk and Flint prove too much for Rayna's circuits to handle, prompting an irrevocable meltdown.

The Twilight Zone "In His Image:" Jessica Connelly never actually learns that Alan Talbot, the man she fell in love with, is a robot. His creator and physical doppleganger, Walter Ryder, just quietly takes his place after Alan malfunctions and starts developing homicidal impulses.

They're Three Laws Compliant

Foundation: We'd all like our significant others to respect human life and to protect us when we're in danger. But Dors Venabili, Hari Seldon's bodyguard and eventual wife, is actually programed to do just that. Seldon does suspect that she's a robot, but by then he has already fallen for her.

Their Affection Can Kill

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me: British Intelligence never bothered to tell Austin Powers that his partner and new bride Vanessa Kensington is, in fact, a fembot planted by Dr. Evil. Austin learns soon enough when Vanessa points a pair of machine guns from her breasts, though she notes he would have figured it out sooner if he'd tried a little foreplay.

Kim Possible: So the Drama: When crime-fighting teenager Kim Possible needs a date to her junior prom, new student Eric appears just in the nick of time to be Kim's first steady boyfriend. She's understandably devastated when her nemesis Dr. Drakken kidnaps her new beau, and rushes to save him. But when Kim gives the newly liberated Eric a relieved hug, he electrocutes her, revealing himself to be one of Drakken's Synthodrones.

They Dance Like No Human Dances

"Der Sandmann" by ETA Hoffmann: Summer Glau's ballerina background may have been an excuse to place the Terminator Cameron in toe shoes, but gynoids have a long history of dancing. Olimpia, for example, is quiet adept at dance as well as singing and playing the harpsichord. Many find her cold and stiff movements a bit off-putting, but Nathanael, a young student already engaged to another woman, develops a passionate obsession with her. When he learns that Olimpia was an automaton all along, he's driven mad by the revelation, leaping to his death.

Metropolis: When the Joh Fredersen and Rotwang conspire to place a robot made to resemble the popular worker leader Maria upon the working caste, they hold a dance performance to see if the people of Metropolis see her as human. It works, and the men of Metropolis are immediately captivated. It's Fredersen's son Freder, who is in love with the real Maria, who eventually recognizes that she's not the girl he fell for, and must be a copy.


They've Returned from the Dead

Machine Teen: Carly Whitmere knows that her boyfriend, Adam Aaronson, is frequently ill, but never would she guess that his bouts of illness are the result of glitches in his robotic systems. It's actually not Carly, but Adam's best friend JT who first discovers his robotic nature, and later helps repair Adam after he is seemingly shot to death.

Star Trek "What Are Little Girls Made Of?:" Starfleet had lost contact with Nurse Christine Chapel's fiance Dr. Roger Korby for several years, so she was relieved to discover him apparently alive and well on Exo III. But it turns out the Korby she encounters is not quite the man she remembers, but an android copy that the dying Korby imbued with his appearance and memories, one who firmly believes in robot supremacy.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Ted:" When Joyce Summers starts dating Ted Buchanan, he seems to good to be true. He's charming, a fantastic cook, and happy to spend an afternoon playing miniature golf. Unfortunately, Ted also happens to be the robotic equivalent of Bluebeard, wooing women only to later hold them captive and watch them die. Although Buffy takes an instant dislike to this interloper, and accidentally "kills" him after Ted slaps her, Joyce only catches on to Ted's evil nature when Ted returns from the dead, all glitchy and malfunctioning.

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<![CDATA[Television's Biggest Badass Of All Time, Day Six: River Vs. The Doctor]]> Who knew River Tam was such an all-purpose badass? She's crushed two cybernetic organisms, a legendary starship captain and the Slayer. Can she defeat a Time Lord, who's lived ten lives and saved the universe? Plus a couple bonus rounds.

But on the off chance that the Doctor can't stop River, here's the clash many of you have been clamoring for:

And if River beats Brock Samson from the Venture Bros. as well? How about this:

That's right, the kid from the Twilight Zone. He'll send her to the Cornfield! What's she going to do about that?

If River wins all of these contests of badassery, she'll go on to face Batman, the Dark Knight, Gotham's watchful avenger tomorrow.

If any one of River's challengers beats her, than he'll face Batman tomorrow. If two of River's challengers win, then they'll have to face each other before going on to Batman. And if all three challengers win? We'll worry about that when it happens.

River Tam faces a threefold challenge — will she still be swinging tomorrow? You decide!

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<![CDATA[Let's Do The Time Loop Again. And Again...]]> If there's one thing that's constant in science fiction, it's time loops, where everything repeats. If there's one thing that's constant in science fiction, it's time loops, where everything repeats. Here's our list!

"A Little Something For Us Tempunauts" by Philip K. Dick features the classic time-loop storyline. A time-travel program is supposed to send some time-travelers forward 100 years, but instead only sends them a few days forward... where they learn that they died on their return from the future. But it gets worse, when one of them realize they're actually living the same few days over and over again, and so is the rest of humanity:

It felt like a deja vu thing, and then it hit him. We're in a closed time loop, he thought, we keep going through this again and again, trying to solve the reentry problem, each time imagining it's the first time, the only time... and never succeding. Which attempt is this? Maybe the millionth; we have sat here a million times, raking the same facts over and over again and getting nowhere. He felt bone-weary, thinking that. And he felt a sort of vast philosophical hate toward all other men, who did not have this enigma to deal with.

How do you break out? You don't. You're basically screwed. On the other hand, it's a kind of immortality.

Replay by Ken Grimwood. Jeff Winston dies of a heart attack at age 43, in 1988. Then he wakes up in 1963, when he's eighteen years old. He keeps reliving the years between 1963 and 1988 over and over again, making different choices each time, but nothing changes the stability of the loop, even committing suicide. Each time, he remembers his previous trips through the loop. Eventually, his loops get shorter and shorter, and meanwhile he tracks down another looper, Pamela. They finally go public, and the government forces them to provide intelligence on foreign developments.
How do you break out? It's not clear. The novel ends with Jeff and Pamela still looping, not sure if this will be their last time around.

"Time And Again" by David James won Science Fiction Magazine's short-story contest in the 1970s, with a classic time-loop story, but I haven't been able to find out much else about it.

The Twilight Zone, "Death Ship." Three astronauts discover a crashed spaceship that is an exact replica of their own. Eventually, they figure out they're actually dead, and then they snap back to the moment they discovered that crashed ship, in an endless loop. (This episode is supposedly becoming a big-screen movie.)
How do you break out? There's no way.

Groundhog Day is still the all-time classic, to the point where people now describe time loops as "Groundhog Day events." Bill Murray spends either about ten years, or millennia looping through the same day. (Director Harold Ramis has said both.) Each iteration of that one day, he learns a bit more and masters all of the variables a bit better.
How do you break out? Once he manages to have the absolute perfect day, he's free of the loop. That includes saving people's lives, fixing a flat tire, putting on a piano show, and getting Andie McDowell to fall for him.

12:01 (1990 Oscar-nominated short film): Myron Castleman (Kurtwood Smith) is trapped for all eternity, reliving the same hour of his life. (Even suicide doesn't help, which is a common theme in these stories. It would be hilarious to find a time loop that you can break by killing yourself.) This half-hour film aired as part of Showtime's 30-Minute Movie series.
How do you break out? You try to sue the makers of Groundhog Day, only to get trapped in endless lawyers' conferences.

12:01 (1993 TV movie): I actually saw this when it was on originally, and enjoyed it a lot. The same day repeats over and over, due to a "time bounce" caused by a particle accelerator gone wrong. Only lowly H.R. employee Barry is aware of the time trap, and he has to get close to a lovely scientist, Lisa (who keeps dying) to discover the truth. Finally, it turns out that the main scientist behind the project (Martin Landau) is ebil.
How do you break out? By disposing of Landau, basically.

"Endless Eight" in The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya: In this Japanese novel series, schoolgirl Haruhi Suzumiya can change reality. In one installment, she makes her friends, known as the SOS Brigade, relive the same two weeks over again because they were so perfect.
How do you break out? After 15,498 repetitions (or about 600 years) Haruhi finally has enough.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Cause and Effect": The U.S.S. Enterprise gets caught in a loop where roughly the same day repeats over and over again – always ending with the ship blowing up. For the Enterprise, the loop lasts 17 days. For the USS Bozeman, the other ship in the loop, it lasts 80 years.
How do you break out? Finally, Data is able to "remember" enough to know that Riker isn't always a total moron. Just usually.

X-Files, "Monday": It's one of those days when everything goes wrong - and worst of all, it keeps repeating. Only one woman is aware the entire world is stuck in a time loop.
How do you break out? Mulder pulls a Data, and finds a way to send a reminder to himself, so he'll do things differently the next time around.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Life Serial": Buffy's working at the Magic Box, where a customer orders a live mummy hand. Her attempts to retrieve the hand invariably end with her killing it, which means the sale can't go through. How do you break out? She finally solves the puzzle by ordering a hand be delivered.

Stargate SG-1, "Window of Opportunity": O'Neill and Teal'c get stuck in a time loop for three months, and the only way they can get out is to translate the Ancient writing on an altar so that they have the necessary information to break out of the time loop. In the meantime, O'Neill and Teal'c enjoy their freedom from consequences by biking through the base, playing golf through a Stargate, and, in O'Neill's case, resigning from the Air Force so he can kiss Major Carter.
How do you break out? They finally translate the writing, which explains how the Ancients tried to prevent a disaster by building a time machine.

Day Break: This short-lived series starring Taye Diggs had him framed for murder and reliving the same day over and over until he could solve everything. At least one other person appears to be experiencing the same repetition. Digg's character, Detective Brett Hopper, seems to be able to cause some slight changes to the next loop, such as making people wake up with a strange sense of foreboding that something is about to happen.
How do you break out? The show got canceled before we saw it happen.

Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, "Twas the Night before Mxymas": Mr. Mxyzptlk makes Christmas Eve repeat endlessly, each time around making things worse and worse until, before long, Clark and Lois (the only two aware of what's going on) are staring at nuclear annihilation as Mr. Mxyzptlk slowly removes all hope from humanity.
How do you break out? Lois and Clark finally manage to banish Mxy back to the fifth dimension, restoring hope.

Supernatural, "Mystery Spot": Such a classic example of the Groundhog Day trope that Dean actually references Groundhog Day several times. Sam keeps reliving the same day over and over again, and it always ends with Dean dying. At first he thinks it's due to their visit to a Mystery Spot, where the laws of physics don't apply, but as Dean's deaths get more and more demented, Sam starts to suspect otherwise.
How do you break out? Sam eventually figures out the reality-warping Trickster is behind it all.

Blood Ties, "5:55": This Canadian series about a cop with failing eyesight who becomes a P.I. (and teams up with the illegitimate vampire son of Henry VIII) featured an episode where the cop in question, Vicki Nelson, keeps reliving the same day over and over, in search of an antique.
How do you break out? Vicki finally opens a box that releases her from the time loop.

Outer Limits, "Déjà vu": A teleportation experiment goes wrong and sends a bunch of scientists back to the day before, with only Dr. Mark Crest remembering what happened. Trying to figure out what went wrong and created the loop, he ultimately discovers his friend Lt. Colonel Lester Glade altered the experiment by turning it into a bomb in the hopes of saving his career.
How do you break out? Crest finally traps Glade in a time-loop of his final second of life.

Doctor Who, "Meglos": The British time-travel comedy soap featured a lot of time loops, but none quite as ridiculous as Meglos, where the Doctor and Romana relive the same five minutes or so over and over again, at the hands (??) of an evil cactus, who wants to impersonate the Doctor.
How do you break out? It makes almost no sense. They start reenacting the events of the time loop a minute early, so the space/time vortex gets confused. Or something. I know!

Torchwood: Captains Jack and John spent five years in a two-week timeloop.
How do you break out? Probably by having so much sex, they broke time and space.

Sealab 2021, "Lost in Time": In a parody of the TNG episode, Quinn and Stormy keep getting blown back 15 minutes by an explosion that destroys Sealab. And when they try to warn Captain Murphy, they keep getting mistaken for doppelgangers and thrown in the brig.
How do you break out? They finally contact their other selves and abort the mission (to steal cable TV) that led to Sealab blowing up. And then all the duplicate Stormies and Quinns have to fight each other, gladiator style.

Justice League Unlimited, "The Once and Future Thing": Batman defeats the time-traveling Chronos by forcing him to trap himself in a time loop of the very second where he first started time-traveling, forcing Chronos and his wife to bicker for all eternity.
How do you break out? If Batman traps you, you stay trapped.

The Twilight Zone – "Shadow Play": Criminal Adam Grant is stuck in an eternal time loop, as he prepares for his execution. He desperately tries to convince people that none of this is real and that it will all fade to nothing once they execute him, but to no avail: he's killed before the governor's stay of execution can come through. It all restarts with a new itineration of the loop, although this time different people pay different roles in Grant's nightmare.
How do you break out? He doesn't.

Eureka, "I Do Over": It's Allison and Nathan's wedding day, and due to some kind of wibbly wobbly timey whimey thing, Carter ends up reliving the day over and over and over again.
How do you break out? Nathan Stark finally sacrifices his own life.

Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut: The entire world is forced to relive 1991-2001, and nobody has any free will to change events, despite remembering everything they did last time. Thus, everyone has to watch all the sadness and mistakes all over again.
How do you break out? The loop only goes around once.

Seven Days, "Come Again?": A glitch makes our time-jumping hero, Frank Parker, loop back to his arrival time.
How do you break out? Eventually, Parker figures out the glitch and prevents it from recurring.

More lists of time loops are at Wikipedia, Me Loops, and TVTropes.

Additional reporting by Alasdair Wilkins.

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<![CDATA[Elvis Has Left the Planet]]> Hip-shaking, pill-popping rocker Elvis Presley officially died in 1977, but he keeps popping up, at least in science fiction. Think Elvis lives? We list scifi’s explanations for what really became of the King.


He Was Abducted by Aliens

Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams: Arthur Dent, one of the token Earthlings traveling through the stars, discovers a Tennessean singer with the initials “EP” at an alien bar called “The Domain of the King.” Dent and Ford Prefect buy a pink spaceship from the fellow and tip him an obscene amount for singing “Love Me Tender.”

Animaniacs “Space Probed”: One fateful night, the Warner siblings find themselves aboard an alien spacecraft. A quick inspection of the ship proves that they’re not the ship’s first Earthling guests. Elvis has beaten them to the punch, along with Amelia Earhart, Bigfoot, and Jimmy Hoffa.


Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman: Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, insists he never laid a hand on Mr. Presley, no matter what some pub quiz game says. Chances are that Elvis either is flipping patties at a Burger Lord in Des Moines, or was abducted by aliens who thought him too good for our world.

He Is an Alien

Men in Black: If MIB taught us anything, it’s that anyone you’ve ever suspected of being from another world actually is, from Dennis Rodman to your kooky third grade English teacher. As for the King, he didn’t die, Agent K coolly informs us; he just went home.

“The Bride of Elvis” Kathleen Ann Goonan: Elvis wasn’t just the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll; he was a King, a royal member of an alien race. Fearing his party-hearty ways on Earth would lead to his premature demise, his caretakers, known as “Brides,” place him in a death-like coma until their ship returns to take him away.

He Faked His Death

Bubba Ho-tep: Weary of his fame, Elvis decides to take a breather and find someone else to endure his endless public adoration. He exchanges lives with the world’s most convincing Elvis impersonator, but when the facsimile dies on the can, no one believes that Elvis is the genuine King. He lives out his remaining days in relative peace, at least until the mummies and vampires start showing up.

Death Becomes Her: All individual who partake of Lisle von Rhoman’s immortality elixir must eventually disappear from the public eye. But Elvis can’t resist the occasional tabloid photo op.

Preacher by Garth Ennis: Jesse Custer picks up a number of hitchhikers as he heads towards the Alamo, but perhaps the most memorable is the shadowy Southerner who rhapsodizes on his long-surrendered fame. He never says his name, but reveals his identity as soon as he slides into Custer’s car with a “Thangyu Verrmuch.”

The Chronicle “The King is Undead”: In an episode written by The Middleman’s Javier Grillo-Marxuach, the journalists of tabloid newspaper The Chronicle discover that all Elvis impersonators are, in fact, vampires. And it seems that when the King learned this horrifying truth, he faked his death, adopted the name of his stillborn twin, and became the world’s foremost hunter of the Elvis-themed undead.

The X-Files: In “Shadow,” conspiracy-obsessed Fox Mulder jokes that Elvis Presley was the only man to successfully fake his own death (Andy Kaufman apparently bit it for real). But when the Lone Gunmen investigate an Elvis impersonator only to discover that he isn’t actually Elvis, the trio begins to worry that the King may truly be dead.

He’s Alive and Well, in an Alternate Universe

Armageddon: The Musical by Robert Rankin: A group of aliens become frightfully distressed when their favorite soap opera – the planet Earth – is about to be canceled due to Armageddon. To extend Earth’s airtime, they decide to create an alternate plotline in which Earth’s destruction is delayed. So they send Barry the Time Sprout back in time to persuade Elvis Presley to resist the draft, thus averting US involvement in Vietnam. The time-traveling Elvis ends up creating some alternate histories of his own, including one in which he’s worshipped as God.

He’s Been Copied

Thriller by Robert Loren Fleming: The short DC series features Kane Creole, an Elvis clone turned bank robber. Creole’s none too pleased with the way his creators desecrated the original Elvis’ remains and angrily kills them off.

What If? “What If Thanos Changed Galactus Into a Human Being?”: In this hypothetical tale, Thanos responds to Galactus’ attack on him by transforming the planet eater into a human being. But the remade Galactus isn’t just any human; he’s a perfect copy of Elvis Presley – before the weight gain and the undignified toilet death. Galactus can even sing and dance like the King, and when Galactus is offered the chance to return to space godhood, opts instead to remain on Earth and keep Elvis’ legacy alive.


He’s Really Dead. Honest.

Elvissey by Jack Womack: Elvis may be dead, but that doesn’t stop a cult from emerging in the year 2033 claiming him as semi-divine. In an attempt to maintain their monopoly on the human consciousness, a multinational corporation sends two of its agents to retrieve a young Elvis Presley from an alternate history’s past. But the Elvis they bring back is less “King of Rock” than “sexual predator.”

Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries by Charlaine Harris: Elvis hasn’t made it into True Blood yet, but in the source material, the King was discovered very slightly alive by a vampiric morgue attendant. The misguided vamp decides to make the overdosed Elvis undead, but the resulting creature, answering only to “Bubba,” is somehow brain damaged by the process. The other vampires treat him as a dimwitted errand boy, and try to keep him clear of any household pets.

“You Know They Got a Hell of a Band” by Stephen King: Presley is the mayor of the ironically named town of Rock ‘n’ Roll Heaven, a spot in the afterlife where all the great, tragically deceased rock stars of the world gather and subject “normal” residents to interminable concerts for all eternity.

Odd Thomas Series by Dean Koontz: Elvis numbers among the ghosts who befriend the specter-spotting Odd Thomas. Elvis is reluctant to leave the world of the living because he’s not prepared to face his mother’s spirit.

Six-String Samurai: After a Russian nuclear attack destroys an alternate America, Elvis becomes the literal king of a chunk of the American Southwest. After four decades of rule, he dies, and America’s remaining musicians vie to fill his rhinestone-covered shoes.

RoboCop 2: Lest we had any doubt about the King’s demise, RoboCop 2 settles it. The megalomaniacal drug dealer Cain has Elvis’ skeleton, which is sealed inside a glass coffin.

The Twilight Zone “The Once and Future King”: Not only is Elvis unequivocally dead in this Twilight Zone episode, he actually died long before 1977. Gary, an Elvis impersonator, gets sent back to 1954 and meets his idol. But when he tries to prematurely introduce Elvis to rock music and his famous shaking hips, a baffled Elvis becomes enraged and Gary is forced to kill him in self-defense. Gary then takes on Elvis’ identity and spends the next two decades living out every Elvis impersonator’s dream.

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<![CDATA[Leonardo DiCaprio Channels Rod Serling]]> Apparently Leonardo DiCaprio's production company Appian Way is hunting down script ideas for a Twilight Zone movie. We'd love to see DiCaprio as Rod Serling — we know he can do mid-twentieth century weirdos, after Catch Me If You Can and The Aviator. Obviously he's getting into the mytho-scifi groove, since he's also rumored to be acting in the upcoming US version of Akira. Let's hope his version of Twilight Zone goes better than the 1980s version, where Vic Morrow was killed by an errant helicopter. [UK Guardian]

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<![CDATA[What's The Most Overrated Classic Scifi TV Show?]]> We've all had the experience of looking back at a movie or TV show that rocked our worlds a few decades ago, and going, "Oh." Suddenly, the awesome classic of the 1970s or 1980s looks kind of cheesy and silly. The robot pets, the speechifying, the Klingons in cowboy hats. You expect the special effects not to be that special or effective, but you're not prepared for the dialog or the acting. Which "classic" scifi show deserves to be kicked out of the canon?

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

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<![CDATA[Trippiest Twilight Zone Episode Becomes A Movie]]> A classic Twilight Zone episode written by Richard (I Am Legend) Matheson is getting a big-screen update called Countdown. The original episode, "Death Ship," is about three astronauts who arrive on an alien planet, only to find their own dead bodies, in a crashed version of their own ship. The movie version will be written and directed by Michael Brandt, co-writer of 3:10 To Yuma and the upcoming Wanted. Details (and spoilers) below.

Says Brandt:

Countdown is fantastic because it wraps the themes of fate and predestination in a movie that is really a giant puzzle (that will also) be fun for the audience to piece together... The updates that are successful - not just of this but of any of the great 1950s Sci-Fi concepts - are those that take the idea and bring a modern sensibility to it. When it misses sometimes, it's because people get caught up in the story from start to finish.
"Death Ship" was a short story by Matheson before he adapted it into a TV episode. In the famous TV version, after the astronauts discover their own wrecked ship and corpses, they reason that they've jumped forward in time and all they have to do is change their actions to avoid this fate. (Which could be the "predestination" stuff Brandt is talking about.) But there's also a lot of other stuff, including the astronauts seeing visions of their dead friends, and it's hinted that they may actually be dead already, and just seeing weird afterlife visions. The whole episode is up on YouTube.[SciFiNow]]]>
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<![CDATA[The Best and Worst Time Travel TV Shows]]> The first time travel tale to ever appear on television was in 1959 on The Twilight Zone, and since then there have been scads of time-tripping adventures available to viewers, some good and some bad. Here's a list of some of the best and worst chronoscopic escapades that television has to offer.



The Good:


  • The Twilight Zone: Time travel has long been a staple of Twilight Zone stories, and numerous episodes have featured things like soldiers traveling through time to Custer's Last Stand, people revisiting their pasts, and trying to alter the future. One of the best shows was "A Stop in Willoughby," which featured an overworked businessman who would dream that his train was stopping at a utopian city in the 19th century called Willoughby.

  • Doctor Who: Following hard on the heels of The Twilight Zone was Doctor Who, a series about a time-traveling alien that first appeared in 1963. It's the longest running science fiction series in history, and its recent seasons have been hailed by fans and critics alike, even if the special effects are still a bit craptastic. In a great episode called "The Face of Evil," the Doctor (played by the excellent Tom Baker) revisits a planet he'd been to in the past, only to find that they now fear a giant stone effigy of his face. Meddling in the past sometimes leads to poor results.

  • Voyagers!: This time tripping series featured a traveler from the future, Phineas Bogg, teaming up with teenaged Jeffrey Jones and "fixing" history. They'd do stuff like make sure the Wright Brothers invented the airplane. They traveled around with a device called The Omni, which looked like a big pocket watch. It had two lights on top: the red one meant there was a problem with the timestream, and the green one meant all was well. Yes, it sounds cheesy, but it was great fun.

  • Quantum Leap: Yet another show about fixing mistakes in history, but this series made the episodes a bit more personal, as Dr. Sam Beckett could only travel through time within his own lifespan. With his holographic pal Al from the future, he had to figure out what was wrong and fix it so Sam could "leap" out into his next adventure. One of the more emotional moments had Sam leaping into Vietnam to try to stop his brother from dying.
  • The Bad:


    • Time Tunnel: This campy series from the 1960s featured a government project (called "Tic-Toc," ouch) which was basically a giant tunnel that could take people back through time. When an irritated Senator threatens to shut the project down because of ballooning costs, Dr. Tony Newman enters the tunnel and is shortly followed by Dr. Doug Phillips, who is trying to save him. They become "stuck in time" and somehow transported to the scenes of major events, like the Titanic sinking, Pearl Harbor being bombed, this show being canceled after one season.

    • Back To The Future — The Animated Series: This cartoon version of Marty and Doc Brown could have been whimsical fun, but it only manages to capitalize on very early 90s cheese. You can check out the opening for the series, but be aware that you won't be able to travel back in time to unwatch it.

    • Time Trax: this series features Dale Midkiff as a cop from the future who was sent back to capture over one hundred criminals who had escaped into the past. Armed with his sentient and holographic computer SELMA, which looked like an AT&T MasterCard, he'd zap the baddies with a shot from his car alarm alarm remote and send them back to the future. Okay, so it was really a futuristic device disguised as an alarm remote, but still. Ouch.

    • Timecop: Yes, they made a TV show after the semi-cheesy Jean Claude Van Damme movie of the same name. In it, Jack Logan tracks down criminals who try to go back and alter time. If only they could go back and cancel this show before it began. Mercifully, only nine episodes were produced.

    • Do Over: 34-year-old Joel Larsen accidentally gets zapped with a defibrillator, and wakes up in his 14-year-old body, back in the past. Armed with the knowledge of a thirty-something, he tries to change his life for the better, and promptly fades into television obscurity. 80s nostalgia just couldn't keep this one alive.
    • The Fringe:

      These are the shows that haven't quite proven themselves yet, but are very promising so far.

    • Life On Mars: This much-lauded BBC series features a cop who gets struck by a car in the present day, and suddenly wakes up in 1973. He's able to keep working as a policeman in the past, but it isn't made clear if he's imagining everything via a coma in the present, or if he's just a bit mentally deranged back in 1973. It's getting an American makeover, in the grand tradition of taking great BBC shows and turning them into sludge, so try and track down episodes of the original.

    • Journeyman: This show is pretty much 'Quantum Leap Redux,' except the storylines and acting keep us coming back for more. San Francisco reporter Dan Vasser finds himself traveling through time and changing the destinies of people he meets along the way, which is somehow related to his time-tripping. We'll see if it can travel through time and avoid the writer's strike and the new show chopping block.
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