Voyagers! was a short-lived
Science Fiction TV show from the 1980's. It told the story of Phineas Bogg (played by Jon-Erik Hexum), a man who works as a "Voyager": a member of a mysterious
group of people who travel through time and make sure history is the way it should be. Unlike in other
Time Travel series, there was no clear reason why history was changing. The series was meant as
a way to subtly teach history to the target audience. In the pilot episode, Bogg is joined in his travels by Jeffery Jones (played by Meeno Peluce), a young boy from the 1980s (who is something of a history expert) after Bogg loses his Voyager's manual; Bogg had failed to pay enough attention during his training and didn't know what to do without the book.
Compare and Contrast
Time Squad.
The program ran for one season on NBC (1982-1983). Unfortunately, most people's awareness of the show is due to the unfortunate accidental death of Jon-Eric Hexum after the show had been canceled. (While on the set of his next series,
Coverup, he shot himself in the head with a pistol loaded with blanks as a joke, and died of a skull fracture.)
This show provides examples of:
- All Up To You
- And Knowing is Half the Battle —During the credits, viewers are told if they want to know more about the people, places, and events featured in the episode, to visit their local public library.
- Applied Phlebotinum: The pocketwatch-like device used by the Voyagers to time travel.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy — Though the show did not make bizarre claims about the backstories of the historic figures Boggs and Jones met during their adventures, there were a few odd moments...
- Cleopatra running around Prohibition-era New York with gangsters, and meeting Babe Ruth, while speaking perfect English.
- Jules Verne naming the globetrotting hero of Around the World in Eighty Days Phileas Fogg after meeting Bogg.
- Jack the Ripper turned out to be the rogue Time Traveller from "The Trial of Phineas Bogg."
- Clip Show — "The Trial of Phineas Bogg" is an unusually good instance of this.
- Excited Show Title!
- Fridge Logic: Why is history changing? How can a kid's knowledge of history compete with a time traveler's book? Why does everyone everywhere speak 20th century English? And when they (almost invariably) jump from one time to another in the middle of the episode, why do they have to hurry to get back to the time they left before it's too late to fix history?
- Great Big Book of Everything — Averted in that Bogg loses his "Voyagers Manual" in the pilot. Jeffrey tags along to help, as he is a history buff.
- Hey, It's That Guy! — A pre-beard Jonathan Frakes plays Charles Lindbergh getting some help before his famous flight.
- No Ending
- Parental Abandonment — Jeffrey's parents die in a car accident prior to the beginning of the show, hence his willingness to chase around time and space with Bogg.
- Ripple Effect Indicator — Red Light = History Needs Fixing. Green Light = History's Been Fixed.
- Rule Of Cool
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong
- Steampunk
- They Fight Crime! -A girl-crazy pirate and a kid from the 80's save history from... um... itself?
- Wayback Trip
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