Last Month
Staff Blogs
Pop culture and television often has a way of bastardizing science for their own benefit. I’ve seen it happen all too often: space-invading alien babysitters, robotic kids that are far superior to the regular ones, and Saturday morning cartoons that deceive naive children (myself included) into believing that ghostbusting can actually be a potential career path in the new millennium. There is no scientific concept that television has fucked up more, however, than time travel. Which brings me to what are, in my opinion…
The Five Worst Uses of Time Travel in Television:
5. Walker Texas Ranger: “Way of the Warrior”
Shit starts to get real when everyone’s favorite crime-fighting, karate cowboy is transported by an Indian Shaman back to the 19th century to prevent a crime in the future. This is where things get a little sketchy. I’m fairly positive that the shaman struck Walker with a bolt of Magical Racist Indian Lightning to send him back to the past. Now, footage of Walker’s unorthodox time traveling methods has become hard to come by, BUT, by using advanced computer simulation technology, and the undoubtedly perfect image of this episode in my brain, our fine staff artists at UseBombs.com have been able to recreate just what the process might have looked like:
Artist's Rendition
The episode culminates with what should certainly be a bad ass fight scene. Instead, we get about 50 seconds of a perfectly dapper Cordell Walker tussling around on the ground with what appears to be someone’s cousin in a Halloween costume. Good thing all that rolling and fighting down that fucking dirty hill had no effect on your perfect hair, Walker. Also, I’m pretty positive that Sneaky Slow Motion Indian borrowed the feathers in his headdress from a Jesse “The Body” Ventura boa.
Walker Fights With Sneaky Slow Motion Indian
4. Boy Meets World: “No Guts, No Cory”
Before the opening theme even starts, Cory and the gang are WHISKED THE FUCK AWAY to 1940′s Philadelphia, as part of an ABC block of time travel-related programming on TGIF. The world is at war, and this startling news sends basically every male character in the show into the armed services, as further proof that Americans just aren’t as devoted to protecting their country as they were back then. I mean, after 9/11, I could see Sean joining up, and maaaaybe Eric, but definitely not Cory. Fuck, Topanga is a far more likely candidate to enlist than Ben Savage is. Actually, I probably wouldn’t trust either of those Savages in a foxhole with me, because as far as I know, one of them could be Judge Reinhold in disguise.
This episode also features a once in a lifetime cameo by Sabrina the Teenage Witch’s Salem the Cat that I’m sure you’ll wanna miss.
3. Matlock: “The Nightmare”
A bump on the head leads to a nightmare of senior proportions, as our intrepid Champion of the Elderly, Matlock, finds himself trapped in the ol’ west! After Conrad is accused of murdering the Sheriff, Matlock is forced to use his Alzheimer’s-sharpened cunning to defend Conrad from a lynch mob and clear his name. There is also a hooker. Is it just me, or aren’t you supposed to keep people with concussions from falling asleep? Maybe this is why: If you pass out with a concussion, you turn into Matlock from the past.
See also: “Matlock’s Bad, Bad, Bad Dream”, which is essentially the same episode and title, just worse, worse, worse.
2. Family Matters: “Father Time”
That Crazy Urkel is at it again, this time inventing a time machine seemingly for the sole purpose of confusing Carl Winslow. Once that hilarity has certainly ensued, Carl decides to go back to the 1970′s with Steve to do the only thing that any sensible quantum-leaper should ever do: make themselves rich as balls.
Urkel Ruins Time Travel Part I
They return to the future, discovering Carl’s new found wealth, along with a couple side effects: Harriette is divorcing Carl and Eddie and Laura were never even born. For some reason they decide that this is a problem, and there is an incredibly convoluted explanation as to how Steve can fix it. In the end, Carl and Steve get back to the future and the Winslows are a stereotypical middle-class black family once more. Hurrah.
Urkel Ruins Time Travel Part II
This is off topic, but Family Matters is probably the one show in the history of television that is most guilty of “jumping the shark”. I can almost remember this show as a vehicle of promoting moral values to black teens. With Urkel’s brief period of soaring popularity, though, later seasons of Family Matters transformed into a clusterfuck of Jaleel White characters, robots, transformation chambers, evil ventriloquist dummies, and a cavalcade of “What are they gonna do next?!” moments that ultimately ended with Urkel proposing to Laura on a NASA mission in the Earth’s fucking atmosphere. I swear to God, the only redeeming thing about this show was Waldo Faldo. Did I really just type that?
See also: “A Pirate’s Life for Me”, where the time machine is brought back into the picture, this time transporting Steve and Carl to a pirate ship in the 1800′s. Seriously.
1. Star Trek: “Every Installment of the Series – Numerous Fucking Episodes”
The worst culprit of the bunch. Star Trek uses various ridiculous explanations and circumstances to position their characters in different time periods. This is the go-to storyline in every single Star Trek series. I’m sure Trek writers over the years have found themselves asking profound questions like “How can we show off Willy Shatner’s captainly sass in a 1960′s environment?” “Can we inject the emotionless, android Data into a hilarious Detective Noir?” and “Isn’t there a way to get characters from the different spinoffs to interact with each other, so hardcore fans can jerk off to the idea of Mr. Scott engineering a Galaxy class starship?”
It’s not just that, but you just get the sense that Star Trek uses time travel as a vague excuse to wrap up story lines. This is used almost as much as the notion of the captain losing, and subsequently attempting to regain, control of the Enterprise. Hell, the entire series finale of The Next Generation focused entirely on time travel. They didn’t just use it as a way of wrapping up one episode, they used it as a cop-out on an entire television series. There are also numerous instances in Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise I could have spent the time to research and cite as examples, but no one would have understood them because no one gives a flying shit about any of those shows.
See Also: The films Star Trek IV, Star Trek: Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, and Star Trek (2009). Oh yeah, spoiler alert. Like it even matters.
There you have it. Feel free to never dispute this list, because every word here is the truth. Except maybe the racist Indian lightning. Might have embellished a little bit there. After all, the Indians used every part of the buffalo. 