[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Odyssey5_186.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:"We saw the Earth destroyed, and in a heartbeat everything and everyone we knew was gone."]]

->''"It just occurred to me this is one scenario NASA '''really''' forgot to program into the simulators."''
-->-- '''Kurt Mendel''', upon witnessing the destruction of Earth in "Pilot"

A sci-fi TV series that ran on Showtime in 2002.

'''Beware of spoilers.'''

A routine mission for the crew of the space shuttle Odyssey turns to nightmare, as they witness the very Earth [[strike:explode]] implode from orbit. As they drift into space they are rescued by an alien, calling itself "The Seeker", who reveales that Earth is not the first world to suffer such a fate and offers to [[MentalTimeTravel send their minds back in time]], so that they may try and stop it from happening. After going back, the crew of the Odyssey struggle to readapt to what their lives were at that time, and to learn to work together toward their common purpose. The show mostly falls on the hard end of MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness, except for the jump back in time, which falls on the really soft end.

The team is led by Commander Chuck Taggart, a hardened and quick-witted old-school NASA veteran who is often paternal towards them, in part because of his son, Neil, who is also flying missions with him. Neil, having gone from a pot-smoking metalhead to NASA's youngest astronaut is largely motivated from growing up in his older brother's shadow and despite having surpassed both him and their parents' expectations he still occasionally clashes with his father. They are joined by Kurt Mendel, a Nobel Prize winning geneticist, whose extreme cynicism and hedonistic attitude not only serve as counterpoint to Chuck, but very often earns him raised eyebrows and disgusted reactions from even the more liberal members of the crew (he even gets punched in the face in the Pilot). Angela Perry, the shuttle's co-pilot is in many ways the son Chuck wished he had. Tough and determined, her striving to earn her own place in the world is very much the result of being the daughter of a US senator. She also had a relationship with Kurt in the past. Sarah Forbes, a news anchor and the first journalist in space serves very much as the team's emotional anchor. Deeply religious and having lost her infant son to cancer years ago, she is then thrust into the brutal position of watching him waste away all over again. Her mellow character and friendly demeanor act as the glue that holds the crew together, and she sometimes fills a maternal role for Neil.

During its runtime the show was plagued by ExecutiveMeddling (like the last 6 episodes being delayed for two years before being aired in the US) and was finally [[{{Cancellation}} cancelled]], despite having one of the highest ratings on its network. Since then it's attained a fairly strong cult following.

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!! This show provides examples of:
* AbusiveParents: Subverted with Sarah, whom people in the new timeline accuse of mistreating her son [[spoiler:when she's actually trying to prevent the cancer that originally killed him.]]
* AchillesHeel
* AFormYouAreComfortableWith: Played straight with both The Seeker and the entity which the team encounters in ''The Choices We Make''.
* AlmostOutOfOxygen: The fate that awaits the main characters in the pilot. They are saved by The Seeker just in the nick of time.
* ApocalypseHow: The series ''begins'' with a class X and revolves around the characters trying to undo it.
* AgonyBeam: The synthetics' method of communicating through conventional cell phones is rather unpleasant to humans.
* ArtificialIntelligence / AIIsACrapshoot: The Sentients, the main antagonists of the series.
* BadDreams: A character has recurring nightmares about the end of the world for a while after they're sent back.
* ButterflyOfDoom
* ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts
* BeneathTheMask: Kurt has, on numerous occasions, shown a very much kinder side than his usual persona.
* CutShort: [[spoiler:Ends with Angela abducted by the [=AI's=] and Kurt being arrested on suspicion of killing her. Plus the mysterious "Cadre" organization within NASA, which the team assume have something to do with the [=AI's=] and the impending destruction of the Earth, actually turn out to be trying to ''stop'' the [=AI's=] and believe that the Odyssey 5 team are the traitors.]]
* CuttingTheKnot: Humorously justified with a character's secured laptop.
---> '''Chuck:''' Okay son, you gotta get into that laptop.
---> '''Neil:''' Give me another twenty four hours. I've great minds working on this.
---> ''(cut to a couple of stereotypical cap-n-earrings hackers hammering a screwdriver into the thing)''
---> '''Neil:''' ''(watching worriedly)'' I'd feel a helluva lot better if i knew where we were going with this, would you '''please''' be careful!
--->''It's then revealed that they're just disconnecting a chip so they can go around the security measures.''
* DefrostingIceQueen: Inverted with Angela Perry; she's friendly enough until she thinks a man is trying to manipulate her.
* DoNotPassGo: Dr. Mendel uses the phrase in a [[NoteToSelf letter written to his future amnesiac self]] to underscore the importance of locating and watching a certain videotape explaining his loss of memory.
* DramaBomb: [[spoiler:Paige's death.]]
* DramaticSpaceDrifting: Unsurprisingly played straight in "Pilot" after the Earth implodes.
* EarthShatteringKaboom: Of course.
* FreudianExcuse: Angela's suspicion of manipulative men clearly comes from her SleazyPolitician father. Subverted in Taggart's case -- he remembers his father as a JerkAss, but later comes to realise Dad was just going through a rough patch, unaware that his life would be cut short before he could make up with his son.
* GovernmentConspiracy: The Cadre
* GroinAttack: Barely averted when Kurt Mendel has an attack of paranoia and is convinced that his friends are Synthetics. Angela gets Kurt to swallow his medicine by pointing a Beretta 9mm at his testicles.
-->'''Angela''': "I ''will'' do it, Kurt!"
-->'''Kurt''': "Oh God, even as a Synthetic, you are a ballbuster..."
* HandCannon: Chuck is quite fond of his Colt .45 Peacemaker revolver. He even does a flashy showcase for Kurt [[spoiler:just before they encounter a Synthetic for the first time, but subsequently finds that Synths have no trouble taking several shots to anywhere but the head and staying on their feet.]]
* HollywoodScience: Lampshaded when the Odyssey team consult an abrasive sci-fi writer clearly based on HarlanEllison (who conceived the series). As they can't tell him the truth (that they've travelled back in time five years to avert the destruction of the Earth) the team pretend they're [[ItsForABook writing a science fiction novel]]. The sci-fi writer goes into detail on how cliched and scientifically implausible their 'novel' is.
* KillSat
* MentalTimeTravel: Because it's impossible to physically travel back in time the aliens send their minds back into their old bodies.
* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: Notably that EarthShatteringKaboom, but none of the characters can resist tinkering with their own personal lives as well, despite agreeing not to do so.
* SomethingOnlyTheyWouldSay
* StandardizedSpaceViews: Creatively averted with the series' opening.
* ThatsNoMoon
* RidiculouslyHumanRobots: Justified, since Synthetics are designed with the specific purpose of being able to blend in human society. Spoofed when a sci-fi writer derides the idea of RidiculouslyHumanRobots as "a cheap tool TV shows use to save on special effects".
* SleazyPolitician: Angela's father, though he actually does care about her -- he just isn't above lying to her as well.
* TheUnreveal: We never found out if the AI's (the main day-to-day opponent of the time-travelling FiveManBand), or a misguided/genocidal attempt to stop them (by aliens or the US government) was behind the destruction of Earth.
* UnwillingRoboticisation
* WeatherDissonance: Since the crew of the Odyssey go back in time, they inevitably arrive to an event which, as they remember it in their original timeline, was accompanied by stormy weather, but in the new one there is a massive heat wave that even makes the news. [[spoiler: Turns out to be Sentients manipulating the weather to power a DoomsdayDevice of sorts.]]
* WhatCouldHaveBeen: According to the WordOfGod the series would have ended up with humanity changing into human-AI hybrids, which is certainly a bold concept for a TV show.
* WhiteVoidRoom: In the pilot where they meet a member of a race of SufficientlyAdvancedAliens.
-->"God really IS an old, white guy."
** And also where Chuck was to meet the Sentient responsible for creating the synthetic virus in ''Flux''.