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* ''Series/Loki2021'' establishes the Time Variance Authority in the [[Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse MCU]]. They are a brutally fascistic organization that ruthlessly polices the timeline, and answer to no one but the unseen "Time-Keepers". According to their own propaganda, long ago, a multiversal war threatened to destroy all of creation, so the [=TVA=] was established to ensure only one timeline ("the Sacred Timeline") existed. Any branching paths or new timelines are "reset" and folded into the main timeline before they can cause any trouble, and anyone who creates a new timeline (a "variant") is put on trial and sentenced accordingly. [[spoiler:Ultimately, the actions of Loki and Sylvie throughout the first season end up destroying the Sacred Timeline, renewing the threat of the instigators behind the war (one of whom takes over the TVA itself).]]
to:
* ''Series/Loki2021'' establishes the Time Variance Authority in the [[Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse MCU]]. They are a brutally fascistic organization that ruthlessly polices the timeline, and answer to no one but the unseen "Time-Keepers". According to their own propaganda, long ago, a multiversal war threatened to destroy all of creation, so the [=TVA=] was established to ensure only one timeline ("the Sacred Timeline") existed. Any branching paths or new timelines are "reset" and folded into the main timeline before they can cause any trouble, and anyone who creates a new timeline (a "variant") is put on trial and sentenced accordingly. [[spoiler:Ultimately, the actions of Loki and Sylvie throughout the first season end up destroying causing the Sacred Timeline, Timeline to branch, renewing the threat of the instigators behind the war (one of whom takes over the TVA itself).war.]]
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* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' had recurring character Nicholas Prentice, a senior agent of a future time travel agency. He and his colleagues ensure the regulation of time travel, but he is allowed to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong himself (succeeding when he brings a Nazi war criminal to justice, but failing when he can't prevent a Presidential assassination). His agency recruits its agents by plucking people out of their timeline moments before they were set to die in fatal accidents. The introduction of the agency lessens the impact of episodes such as 'Final Appeal' and many others with dark endings.
to:
* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' had recurring character Nicholas Prentice, a senior agent of a future time travel agency. He and his colleagues ensure the regulation of time travel, but he is allowed to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong himself (succeeding when he brings a Nazi war criminal to justice, but failing when he can't prevent a Presidential assassination). His agency recruits its agents by plucking people out of their timeline moments before they were set to die in fatal accidents. The introduction of the agency lessens the impact of episodes such as 'Final Appeal' and many others with dark endings.endings as it gives hope that things can always be set right.
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Changed line(s) 25 (click to see context) from:
* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' had recurring character Nicholas Prentice, a senior agent of a future time travel agency. He and his colleagues ensure the regulation of time travel, but he is allowed to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong himself (succeeding when he brings a Nazi war criminal to justice, but failing when he can't prevent a Presidential assassination). His agency recruits its agents by plucking people out of their timeline moments before they were set to die in fatal accidents.
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* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' had recurring character Nicholas Prentice, a senior agent of a future time travel agency. He and his colleagues ensure the regulation of time travel, but he is allowed to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong himself (succeeding when he brings a Nazi war criminal to justice, but failing when he can't prevent a Presidential assassination). His agency recruits its agents by plucking people out of their timeline moments before they were set to die in fatal accidents. The introduction of the agency lessens the impact of episodes such as 'Final Appeal' and many others with dark endings.
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%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks!
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TimePolice in LiveActionTV series.
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* ''Series/BernardsWatch'': The Postman makes sure the watch's owner doesn't use it to commit crimes. He also ensures that time loops don't occur (such as when Bernard's cousin Lucy kept trying to rewind the watch).
* The Janitor and the clone of Josie in ''Series/BlackHoleHigh''. The clone was an agent from the future sent to ensure the safety of the timeline by having time travel technology develop in the right hands. The Janitor was from the further future and was a much more knowledgeable time policeman.
* [[TheMenInBlack The Cleaners]] in ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'' are an organisation dedicated to upholding TheMasquerade, though, in carrying this objective out, they are capable of acting as Time Police Officers, by such means as [[ResetButton turning back time]] and even [[RetGone erasing all trace of offenders from existence]] if they deem it necessary.
* ''Series/{{Continuum}}'': when it comes to enforcing the correct timeline, ThereAreNoPolice. There is, however, an intimidating cult of vigilante temporal enforcers known as Freelancers who act much more like a time ''Mafia'' than time ''police''.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** The exact mission of the Time Lords [[VaguenessIsComing was never made clear]], but it's implied that they somehow kept watch on time travel, dealing with any paradoxes and stopping people abusing it. And stopping the ClockRoaches from eating planets.
** The Time Agency was initially thought to be humanity's Time Police. Between New Who and ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'', though, it's hinted to be a mix of this and opportunists.
* ''Series/KamenRiderDenO'' has the main protagonists acting as a form of Time Police, protecting the timestream from the [[MonsterOfTheWeek Imagin]], whose goal is to change the future by rampaging in the past. TheHero Ryotaro occasionally tries to bend the rules to help the VictimOfTheWeek with whatever problem they've got. The fifth[=/=]seventh movie (''Episode Yellow'' of the ''Chō Den-O Trilogy'') introduces an actual Time Cop, who [[LawfulNeutral arrests anyone who alters history, good or bad]]; naturally, he ends up becoming the movie's antagonist as aside from anything else, by this point Den-O himself is a walking changed timestream.
* ''Series/LegendsOfTomorrow'':
** The Time Masters. Comicbook/RipHunter is a renegade Time Master who wants to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong, despite the fact the Time Masters say it was ''supposed'' to "go wrong". [[spoiler:They eventually discover that the Time Masters have been manipulating all of history from the Vanishing Point, which gives them complete omniscience except regarding the Vanishing Point itself. They saw a Thanagarian invasion coming, and decided that Vandal Savage was the only one who could stop it, so they subtly altered history to bring him to power and unite the world under his rule. The Legends destroy the Vanishing Point, disband the Time Masters, and kill Savage long before he rises to power]].
** In the second season, the Legends have taken over the TimePolice duties... but they're kind of terrible at it. They work to fix "aberrations" caused by rogue time travelers, and while they do [[CloseEnoughTimeline mostly fix things,]] they also make an embarrassing number of accidental changes to the timeline in the process. These include giving Albert Einstein's wife credit as a genius equal to her husband, loosing zombies on the Civil War, seducing the queen of France, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and giving Mick a Revolutionary War statue]].
** Rip eventually creates a new organization to replace the Time Masters. The Time Bureau agents are more professional and bureaucratic, and no fans of the Legends. (Eventually, that ''does'' include Rip himself. No one's above the law, so they arrest ''their own founder'' after he pulls some Legend-style rulebeaking.) By season 4, the Time Bureau and the Legends reach an understanding where the Time Bureau handles the routine policing of the time stream and the Legends are sent to deal with the really weird stuff like time traveling magical creatures.
* ''Series/{{Lost}}'''s show runners have described Mrs. Hawking as a "temporal policeman" who prevents Desmond from changing the past during his initial visit to 1996.
* ''Series/Loki2021'' establishes the Time Variance Authority in the [[Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse MCU]]. They are a brutally fascistic organization that ruthlessly polices the timeline, and answer to no one but the unseen "Time-Keepers". According to their own propaganda, long ago, a multiversal war threatened to destroy all of creation, so the [=TVA=] was established to ensure only one timeline ("the Sacred Timeline") existed. Any branching paths or new timelines are "reset" and folded into the main timeline before they can cause any trouble, and anyone who creates a new timeline (a "variant") is put on trial and sentenced accordingly. [[spoiler:Ultimately, the actions of Loki and Sylvie throughout the first season end up destroying the Sacred Timeline, renewing the threat of the instigators behind the war (one of whom takes over the TVA itself).]]
* The Spanish show ''Series/TheMinistryOfTime'' is about how the Spanish government regulates time travel.
* ''Series/{{NTSFSDSUV}}'': The "Time Angels" who appear in two separate episodes to [[PoorlyDisguisedPilot upstage the regular cast]] are a trio of beautiful female agents that spoof ''Series/CharliesAngels'', except they patrol time. Their arch-enemy is Creator/LeonardoDaVinci, who invented time travel so that he could claim to be responsible for all other inventions as well.
* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' had recurring character Nicholas Prentice, a senior agent of a future time travel agency. He and his colleagues ensure the regulation of time travel, but he is allowed to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong himself (succeeding when he brings a Nazi war criminal to justice, but failing when he can't prevent a Presidential assassination). His agency recruits its agents by plucking people out of their timeline moments before they were set to die in fatal accidents.
* Not exactly time travel, but in ''Series/{{Parallax}}'' the Guardians are charged with preventing pollution of the alternate realities.
* Though no actual time police feature in ''Series/PhilOfTheFuture'', Lloyd tells Phil that new laws regarding time travel were passed due to their family's intervention and was named after them, so there are stronger restrictions on CasualTimeTravel. What that meant for Phil was that when his family returned to the future, they would be legally prevented from returning to the past.
* ''Series/MiraiSentaiTimeranger'' and their American counterparts ''Series/PowerRangersTimeForce''. Though Time Force was originally just a non-time-traveling 30th century elite police force with a Time Machine CombiningMecha, a Time Ship, and a HumongousMecha that forms and mans a CoolGate for time travel. [[CrazyPrepared Ya know, just in case.]]
* Averted in both ''Series/PowerRangersTurbo'' and ''Series/PowerRangersSPD'', for identical reasons: one character in each (the Blue Senturion and the Omega Ranger) ''is'' both a SpacePolice officer and a time traveler, but they're only trying to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong after an alien invasion won; their normal cop duties have nothing to do with time travel.
* Averted in the various ''Franchise/{{Stargate|Verse}}'' series, especially ''Series/StargateSG1'', but still worth mentioning because that setting really ''should'' have Time Police. Despite multiple methods of TimeTravel in the setting, there are no people or ClockRoaches preventing paradox or enforcing a preferred timeline. Despite {{Precursors}} and SufficientlyAdvancedAliens who are totally willing to tell humanity YouAreNotReady on other issues like interstellar travel and certain weapons of war, they've never warned people away from screwing with history. Both good guys and bad guys do it. When people time travel and step on the ButterflyOfDoom, the heroes have to make {{Heroic Sacrifice}}s to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong and ''still'' put up with a CloseEnoughTimeline.
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** The Temporal Prime Directive, enforced by a variety of time agents who seem to have no relation to each other (and should be constantly getting in each other's way.) Captain Kirk harried the time agents to no end.
** ''[[Series/StarTrekVoyager Voyager]]'' twice ran into Starfleet Time Police from the 29th century. In one encounter, the lead time cop investigates a future disaster that Janeway and ''Voyager'' will trigger, only to discover that it's his own future self, turned InspectorJavert, after dealing with one too many Janeway encounters.
** Then there was the whole Temporal Cold War thing in ''[[Series/StarTrekEnterprise Enterprise]]'', where it was implied that Daniels' side was mostly there to keep history going as it should have done.
** ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'' had Temporal Investigations, which seems to be based in the present (theirs, that is, not the viewer's). The names of the two agents we saw were [[ShoutOut Dulmer and Lucsly]].
** And also Gary Seven- and whomever he works for- from the TOS episode ''Assignment: Earth''. He claims to be "from" the time period the episode is set in (1960s) but for the episode's purposes he's only there to stop a nuclear explosion. We probably would have found out more in the planned series, but it never came to be; nonetheless, he's been in the expanded universe a few times.
* Fate in the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' episode "My Heart Will Go On".
* ''Series/{{Timecop}}'' was a short-lived [[RecycledTheSeries spin-off series]] based on the Van Damme ''Film/{{Timecop}}'' movie. A new protagonist travels back in time OncePerEpisode to stop evil time travellers.
* The American show ''Series/{{Timeless}}'' has three agents (a history professor, a scientist and a marine) doing esentially Series/{{TimeCop}} work.
* The Guardians of Time in ''Series/TheTomorrowPeople1973'', presumably. The Guardians are a more advanced form of human than ''homo superior'' (called either ''homo novus'' or ''homo sapiens temporum''), though it isn't exactly clear what their role is, as their appearances all involve them being lured into traps by villains seeking to exploit their ability to facilitate time travel.
* The Commission in ''Series/TheUmbrellaAcademy2019'' which mostly 'preserves' the timeline by assassinating anyone who might make things happen otherwise.
* ''Series/{{Voyagers}}'' is an interesting concept, in that there's no actual evidence of meddling by anyone other than the Voyagers themselves. Their purpose is to make sure history went the way their records say it did. Is this a StableTimeLoop?
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%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks!
%%
%%%
TimePolice in LiveActionTV series.
----
* ''Series/BernardsWatch'': The Postman makes sure the watch's owner doesn't use it to commit crimes. He also ensures that time loops don't occur (such as when Bernard's cousin Lucy kept trying to rewind the watch).
* The Janitor and the clone of Josie in ''Series/BlackHoleHigh''. The clone was an agent from the future sent to ensure the safety of the timeline by having time travel technology develop in the right hands. The Janitor was from the further future and was a much more knowledgeable time policeman.
* [[TheMenInBlack The Cleaners]] in ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'' are an organisation dedicated to upholding TheMasquerade, though, in carrying this objective out, they are capable of acting as Time Police Officers, by such means as [[ResetButton turning back time]] and even [[RetGone erasing all trace of offenders from existence]] if they deem it necessary.
* ''Series/{{Continuum}}'': when it comes to enforcing the correct timeline, ThereAreNoPolice. There is, however, an intimidating cult of vigilante temporal enforcers known as Freelancers who act much more like a time ''Mafia'' than time ''police''.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** The exact mission of the Time Lords [[VaguenessIsComing was never made clear]], but it's implied that they somehow kept watch on time travel, dealing with any paradoxes and stopping people abusing it. And stopping the ClockRoaches from eating planets.
** The Time Agency was initially thought to be humanity's Time Police. Between New Who and ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'', though, it's hinted to be a mix of this and opportunists.
* ''Series/KamenRiderDenO'' has the main protagonists acting as a form of Time Police, protecting the timestream from the [[MonsterOfTheWeek Imagin]], whose goal is to change the future by rampaging in the past. TheHero Ryotaro occasionally tries to bend the rules to help the VictimOfTheWeek with whatever problem they've got. The fifth[=/=]seventh movie (''Episode Yellow'' of the ''Chō Den-O Trilogy'') introduces an actual Time Cop, who [[LawfulNeutral arrests anyone who alters history, good or bad]]; naturally, he ends up becoming the movie's antagonist as aside from anything else, by this point Den-O himself is a walking changed timestream.
* ''Series/LegendsOfTomorrow'':
** The Time Masters. Comicbook/RipHunter is a renegade Time Master who wants to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong, despite the fact the Time Masters say it was ''supposed'' to "go wrong". [[spoiler:They eventually discover that the Time Masters have been manipulating all of history from the Vanishing Point, which gives them complete omniscience except regarding the Vanishing Point itself. They saw a Thanagarian invasion coming, and decided that Vandal Savage was the only one who could stop it, so they subtly altered history to bring him to power and unite the world under his rule. The Legends destroy the Vanishing Point, disband the Time Masters, and kill Savage long before he rises to power]].
** In the second season, the Legends have taken over the TimePolice duties... but they're kind of terrible at it. They work to fix "aberrations" caused by rogue time travelers, and while they do [[CloseEnoughTimeline mostly fix things,]] they also make an embarrassing number of accidental changes to the timeline in the process. These include giving Albert Einstein's wife credit as a genius equal to her husband, loosing zombies on the Civil War, seducing the queen of France, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and giving Mick a Revolutionary War statue]].
** Rip eventually creates a new organization to replace the Time Masters. The Time Bureau agents are more professional and bureaucratic, and no fans of the Legends. (Eventually, that ''does'' include Rip himself. No one's above the law, so they arrest ''their own founder'' after he pulls some Legend-style rulebeaking.) By season 4, the Time Bureau and the Legends reach an understanding where the Time Bureau handles the routine policing of the time stream and the Legends are sent to deal with the really weird stuff like time traveling magical creatures.
* ''Series/{{Lost}}'''s show runners have described Mrs. Hawking as a "temporal policeman" who prevents Desmond from changing the past during his initial visit to 1996.
* ''Series/Loki2021'' establishes the Time Variance Authority in the [[Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse MCU]]. They are a brutally fascistic organization that ruthlessly polices the timeline, and answer to no one but the unseen "Time-Keepers". According to their own propaganda, long ago, a multiversal war threatened to destroy all of creation, so the [=TVA=] was established to ensure only one timeline ("the Sacred Timeline") existed. Any branching paths or new timelines are "reset" and folded into the main timeline before they can cause any trouble, and anyone who creates a new timeline (a "variant") is put on trial and sentenced accordingly. [[spoiler:Ultimately, the actions of Loki and Sylvie throughout the first season end up destroying the Sacred Timeline, renewing the threat of the instigators behind the war (one of whom takes over the TVA itself).]]
* The Spanish show ''Series/TheMinistryOfTime'' is about how the Spanish government regulates time travel.
* ''Series/{{NTSFSDSUV}}'': The "Time Angels" who appear in two separate episodes to [[PoorlyDisguisedPilot upstage the regular cast]] are a trio of beautiful female agents that spoof ''Series/CharliesAngels'', except they patrol time. Their arch-enemy is Creator/LeonardoDaVinci, who invented time travel so that he could claim to be responsible for all other inventions as well.
* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' had recurring character Nicholas Prentice, a senior agent of a future time travel agency. He and his colleagues ensure the regulation of time travel, but he is allowed to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong himself (succeeding when he brings a Nazi war criminal to justice, but failing when he can't prevent a Presidential assassination). His agency recruits its agents by plucking people out of their timeline moments before they were set to die in fatal accidents.
* Not exactly time travel, but in ''Series/{{Parallax}}'' the Guardians are charged with preventing pollution of the alternate realities.
* Though no actual time police feature in ''Series/PhilOfTheFuture'', Lloyd tells Phil that new laws regarding time travel were passed due to their family's intervention and was named after them, so there are stronger restrictions on CasualTimeTravel. What that meant for Phil was that when his family returned to the future, they would be legally prevented from returning to the past.
* ''Series/MiraiSentaiTimeranger'' and their American counterparts ''Series/PowerRangersTimeForce''. Though Time Force was originally just a non-time-traveling 30th century elite police force with a Time Machine CombiningMecha, a Time Ship, and a HumongousMecha that forms and mans a CoolGate for time travel. [[CrazyPrepared Ya know, just in case.]]
* Averted in both ''Series/PowerRangersTurbo'' and ''Series/PowerRangersSPD'', for identical reasons: one character in each (the Blue Senturion and the Omega Ranger) ''is'' both a SpacePolice officer and a time traveler, but they're only trying to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong after an alien invasion won; their normal cop duties have nothing to do with time travel.
* Averted in the various ''Franchise/{{Stargate|Verse}}'' series, especially ''Series/StargateSG1'', but still worth mentioning because that setting really ''should'' have Time Police. Despite multiple methods of TimeTravel in the setting, there are no people or ClockRoaches preventing paradox or enforcing a preferred timeline. Despite {{Precursors}} and SufficientlyAdvancedAliens who are totally willing to tell humanity YouAreNotReady on other issues like interstellar travel and certain weapons of war, they've never warned people away from screwing with history. Both good guys and bad guys do it. When people time travel and step on the ButterflyOfDoom, the heroes have to make {{Heroic Sacrifice}}s to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong and ''still'' put up with a CloseEnoughTimeline.
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** The Temporal Prime Directive, enforced by a variety of time agents who seem to have no relation to each other (and should be constantly getting in each other's way.) Captain Kirk harried the time agents to no end.
** ''[[Series/StarTrekVoyager Voyager]]'' twice ran into Starfleet Time Police from the 29th century. In one encounter, the lead time cop investigates a future disaster that Janeway and ''Voyager'' will trigger, only to discover that it's his own future self, turned InspectorJavert, after dealing with one too many Janeway encounters.
** Then there was the whole Temporal Cold War thing in ''[[Series/StarTrekEnterprise Enterprise]]'', where it was implied that Daniels' side was mostly there to keep history going as it should have done.
** ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'' had Temporal Investigations, which seems to be based in the present (theirs, that is, not the viewer's). The names of the two agents we saw were [[ShoutOut Dulmer and Lucsly]].
** And also Gary Seven- and whomever he works for- from the TOS episode ''Assignment: Earth''. He claims to be "from" the time period the episode is set in (1960s) but for the episode's purposes he's only there to stop a nuclear explosion. We probably would have found out more in the planned series, but it never came to be; nonetheless, he's been in the expanded universe a few times.
* Fate in the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' episode "My Heart Will Go On".
* ''Series/{{Timecop}}'' was a short-lived [[RecycledTheSeries spin-off series]] based on the Van Damme ''Film/{{Timecop}}'' movie. A new protagonist travels back in time OncePerEpisode to stop evil time travellers.
* The American show ''Series/{{Timeless}}'' has three agents (a history professor, a scientist and a marine) doing esentially Series/{{TimeCop}} work.
* The Guardians of Time in ''Series/TheTomorrowPeople1973'', presumably. The Guardians are a more advanced form of human than ''homo superior'' (called either ''homo novus'' or ''homo sapiens temporum''), though it isn't exactly clear what their role is, as their appearances all involve them being lured into traps by villains seeking to exploit their ability to facilitate time travel.
* The Commission in ''Series/TheUmbrellaAcademy2019'' which mostly 'preserves' the timeline by assassinating anyone who might make things happen otherwise.
* ''Series/{{Voyagers}}'' is an interesting concept, in that there's no actual evidence of meddling by anyone other than the Voyagers themselves. Their purpose is to make sure history went the way their records say it did. Is this a StableTimeLoop?
----
