When it comes to movies and TV series that involve time travel, there’s really only one way to approach them: turn off your mind and enjoy them for the entertainment that they are (or, at least, should be). If you start trying to work out what’s a paradox and what’s not, you’ll get a headache and, more importantly, you won’t be able to enjoy the fun. Not that “Journeyman” is really about the fun; it is – what a shock – a bit dark, blending sci-fi, mystery, and romance, offering up just enough of an intriguing premise to get you curious, but maybe not enough to keep you tuning in for the long haul. Not unless they start offering up some answers pretty quickly, that is.
Oh, but you’re wondering about the concept.
So says the original press release: “”Dan Vasser thought he had it all: a loving wife, a great son and a steady job. But life suddenly throws him a curve ball. Dan finds himself traveling into the past with a purpose – impacting people’s lives for the better – and sometimes the worse. While doing so, Dan reconnects with Livia Beale, his ex-fiancée, whom he lost in a mysterious plane crash. Now armed with the knowledge of the present, will he be able to save her? What would that mean to his own future? And how would it change a man who thought he had it all?”
Great idea. And not at all like “The Time Travelers’ Wife.”
Okay, that’s unfair. And, besides, producer Kevin Falls swears on a stack of bibles that he’s never read the book.
“I am one of these guys who always kind of wishes he could do everything over,” he explains, “and it has a lot to do with the disasterous dating pattern. And I was at a dinner party the other night, and we all started talking about who had Googled old girlfriends or boyfriends, and, like, everybody at this party said they had. And it just started getting me on that road of people sometimes wondering if their life had taken a different course. And I thought, what could be the ultimate love story where he has to, like — where the character has to straddle two different families in a way that feels epic. And I thought being married to somebody he loves, and then he travels at a time where he has a fiancee that may have been his soul mate, and it’s like, “Now what am I going to do?”‘ And that’s kind of the genesis of it.
“But,” he adds, “I hope that people love the book enough to go, ‘Okay, this might totally be the kind of thing that I would be interested in.'”
At the very least, it certainly interested Kevin McKidd, who you may recognize from his role as Lucius on “Rome.” I don’t know why people love that show,” he says of his former gig…but he is willing to theorize.
“I think it’s that it’s not a generic, standard, straightforward TV show…in the same way that ‘Journeyman’ isn’t. You are not going to just go and get the same meal every Monday night or Sunday night when ‘Rome’ was on. It changed, and the stories would change. And there would be — one episode would be an event episode, and the next episode would have a different slant and a different balance and a different focus instead of it being generic and, you know, the three-act structure. TV doesn’t work that way. But I think, getting back to ‘Journeyman,’ since that’s what we are here for, I think that’s one of the things I love. I mean, in a way, when I looked at ‘Journeyman,’ I felt that seems like a logical next step for me because, having gone from a show like ‘Rome,’ which is so event-style TV that’s very of its own, it would feel like a step back to me to kind of go into a cop drama or something much more box standard, you know, I mean, not being disrespectful to any of those shows because they are all well-made and fantastic classmen. But, for me,
‘Journeyman’ just felt like, you know, very — very interesting and emotional and truthful, and yet it sparked the imagination for me as an actor.”
The pilot episode of “Journeyman” – which, as we all know, may or may not be what we actually end up seeing on the air come the fall – is a little confusing at times, but, as noted, the show crosses several different genres; plus, it’s scored the sweet post-“Heroes” timeslot, which will surely work in its favor. That’s right, NBC has finally realized that they need to provide a proper follow-up for “Heroes”…and given that the show’s lead-in is “Chuck,” we’ve actually got the first all-sci-fi (more or less) night of TV in years. I know, I’m a geek, but I don’t care: I’m psyched!
P.S. On the subject of paradoxes and the long-standing sci-fi rule on time travel where if you change one thing, you change everything, Falls says simply, “Yeah, I don’t think it’s been proven.”
