So tell me WHERE, IN TIME, ARE THE Y-M-M-V TROPES?
Right here!
- Awesome Music: The theme song, although not as well-remembered as the one from its predecessor, is catchy in its own right. You can hear a high-quality version of it (ripped from the Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? (1997) disc) here
on The Cutting Room Floor. Notably, although Rockapella aren't the ones singing it this time, the song was co-written by then-Rockapella member Sean Altman.- The Trail of Time bonus round in season 2 has a fantastically urgent theme to ratchet up the tension on the contestant.
- The Trail of Time bonus round in season 2 has a fantastically urgent theme
- Fridge Logic: Wait, if there's a Delayed Ripple Effect, how does ACME know that something has been stolen? Time hasn't changed yet, and even if it had it wouldn't matter because getting it back and returning it wouldn't help because time has changed to accommodate this fact. And if history changes so that the item never existed in that time period... Oh, we've gone cross-eyed! In short, let's just say the show runs on this, although the same could be said of any series with Time Police.
- Growing the Beard: Season 2 got quite a bit fancier, with a redone opening and some new CG graphics, and increased the difficulty of the Trail of Time.
- On the flipside, there was an increase in Stock Footage, and many people seem to prefer Baron Wasteland and Janine LaManna's Carmen to Buggs Zapper and Brenda Burke's Carmen.
- Harsher in Hindsight: Season 1, Episode 33 involved Baron Wasteland stealing the World's Columbian Exposition from 1893. The chase through the history of amusement parks ends at the then-recent opening of Back to the Future: The Ride, which the show happily touts as the likely future of entertainment. The ride eventually closed in March 2007, about 11 years after the episode aired.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: Season 1, Episode 47 had an Ultimate Data Boost involving quotes by William Shakespeare and Dr. Seuss. Both of them would scrap with each other in Epic Rap Battles of History, as shown here.
- Nightmare Fuel: Omnicia. She may be a Benevolent Abomination, but she's still an abomination nonetheless, and her appearance as a bald, floating head with dark eyes who speaks in a Creepy Monotone is very unsettling.
- Nintendo Hard: The Trail of Time wasn't this in theory, but it became this in execution. The time pilot would stand in one of six gates and be asked a history question with two answers (Example: It's 1939, what epic movie has its premiere in Atlanta: Gone with the Wind or The Ten Commandments?) If they got the answer right, the gate opened, but if they didn't, they had to perform some time-consuming manual task such as pulling up a rock with a rope. It became downright maddening when they decided to scatter the gates in a big mess, without any type of trail on the ground (lights would flash on the appropriate gate, and the Engine Crew would point the pilot there with airport flashlights). It's led some to believe that PBS deliberately made the whole thing confusing to avoid paying out the grand prize.
- A number of the questions relate to some of the clues given in the main game. So, it's possible to win with a lack of knowledge if you've been paying attention all game.
- Replacement Scrappy: Pretty much everyone and everything on Time compared to their World counterparts, with the exception of The Chief. To their credit, this is only by comparison; there wasn't really anything wrong with the Engine Crew but they weren't Rockapella, and while Kevin Shinick was actually a pretty good host, the biggest strike against him compared to Greg Lee was the fact that Lynne Thigpen's scenes as the Chief were pre-recorded solo, removing her witty banter with the host.
- While not exactly disliked, many viewers felt that Buggs Zapper wasn't as good a villain for Jamie Greenburg to play as Baron Wasteland, whose campy mustache-twirling villain theatrics were more memorable than the neurotic old-timey gangster.
- Sequel Difficulty Drop: Compared to Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego. The tasks contestants had to complete were simpler and given longer time limits in Time than in World (typically a contestant could whiff one of the six questions and still have time to complete the course), leading to a much higher winning percentage. To its credit, the show's second season ramped up the difficulty compared to the first.
- Special Effect Failure: In Season 2 Episode 9, snow is served as a vegetable in the Chrono-Cafeteria (It Makes...Some Sense in Context). Later, Engine Crew member Alaine decides to start a Snowball Fight, and everyone gets in on it...except it looks much more like they're throwing wads of paper than snowballs.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
- The switch from World to Time ousted a lot of fun from the show for many fans. Most egregious of all was the decision to pre-tape all of Thigpen's messages alone, which eliminated the host-announcer banter. This naturally makes one of the show's best-loved moments when the Chief from World shows up, asking where Greg is. Though she does like the look of her Time outfit and asks how long it'll be before she gets to wear it.
- The show also uses an "audience track" as opposed to a live studio audience of kids like in World, which gives the show a blatantly "closeted" feel over its predecessor. The dimly lit studio set (the Chronoskimmer interior) also makes the show feel more claustrophobic and uncomfortable in places.
