Written by Jonathan Klotz | Updated
Before streaming changed Hollywood forever, syndication was the big moneymaker, allowing studios to rent out their shows for an easy profit. First-run syndicated shows can bring in big money Baywatch Being the most successful show of the 1990s, it is an example of syndication success.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have Time Traxan Australian science fiction series presented as a poor man’s series Quantum leapDespite some creative ideas, it failed to stick with the audience and is now in danger of fading away forever.
Hunt future criminals today
the Quantum leap The comparison is that Time Trax It was critically panned even during its original run from 1993 to 1994, and if you heard the synopsis of the show, you’d immediately start nodding and thinking, “yeah, that makes sense.”“. in Time Traxcriminals from the year 2193 use a time machine called TRAX to travel back to the parallel universe’s past. Police Captain Darren Lambert, played by Dale Midkiff, who you may recognize Pet schoolor more recently, his appearance in every police procedural you can think of, sets off on the hunt, with the help of SELMA (Infinitely Located Envelope Memory Archive), his version of Al, and can’t return until they’re all caught.
What Time Trax What he did differently was make all future humans superior, from higher IQs and faster memorization to the ability to move faster, and in what were often the best shots in the series, a way to perceive time faster, which gave the appearance of slowing down. Downtime is around them. Darren relied on SELMA to find fugitives by tracking their heartbeats, which beat slower than humans today, at 35 beats per minute on average.
He knew exactly what it was
In the “Status of the Week” format, Time Trax He didn’t try to reinvent a genre like Babylon 5another Prime Time Entertainment Network original, with Kung Fu: The Legend Continues Approximate common triad. Instead, it was a fun and breezy series. The show had some initial success, was given a second season, and could have run longer, but the network wanted to remake it, canceling the series in the process.
Time Trax It may have been full of weird dialogue, cheap special effects, and sets that were reused over and over again due to budget issues, but it was also delightfully charming in the same way as other ’90s hits like Hercules and Xena. There are a few guest stars familiar to Star Trek fans as well, with Jeri Ryan appearing, even before Dark skyas a woman whose offspring will eventually become deadly in the 23rd century. John de Lancie, Q, appears as a stalker focused on a country musician who will later become a star.
Another show wasting time
As with many other joint offers, Time Trax It’s hard to find in the streaming era thanks to the tangled web of who owns the actual rights to it. Gary Nardino Productions developed the series, while Lorimar Productions helped broadcast it, but the problem is that Warner Bros. bought Lorimar, while Paramount bought Gary Nardino. The rights to the series were split between two studios, and although it was released on DVD in 2012, nothing has been done with the show since.
Today, if you’d like to watch Time Traxyou’ll have to find it on DVD, but fortunately, it’s available on Amazon for about $30 a season. As the years go by, it’s a sad fact that more shows like this will be lost to time, which is another reason to try to preserve physical media as much as possible.