Time Trax was a relatively obscure 90s sci-fi series. It ran at a time before ASTRO and Streamyx, and so all a ten-year old had to watch in the evenings were TV2, TV3, and NTV7 (even back then no one watched TV1). It was perhaps a golden age of sorts, a time where special effects were still special, and disbelief was more easily suspended. I still look back fondly to the days when I would see MacGyver, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Hercules, Robocop, etc in the TV Guide.
It told the story of Darien Lambert, a police cop from 2197 sent back in time to capture time-travelling fugitives, with nothing but his AI assistant Selma and a remote control that shot stun pellets. This setup was pretty cool back in the 90s (I never looked at car remotes quite the same way again). And I’ve always had a thing for time-travel plots. In a tragic twist I still remember to this day, the channel carrying it (TV3?) never aired the last episode – I vaguely recall reading in the TV guide that the final episode was airing, but when the time came the episode was overriden for some reason and never shown again.
But fret not, past self. Thanks to Bittorrent and Unifi, the full Time Trax series is now mine to watch at leisure!
There is always that odd feeling when re-watching an old series. Plots were pretty cliche then for one thing, and characters tended to have heavy stereotypes. It takes a while to really rewind get back the suspension of disbelief – in the pilot for example, Lambert quotes the multiverse theory of time-travel, but yet he is able to use the personals column to send (archive?) messages back (forward?) to his own time. Being a VHS rip, the quality is terribad to boot. And the title art looks like the graphic designer chose the first thing that popped up in WordArt. But once that’s done though: A car remote that stuns. A motherly AI living in your credit card. How cool is that??
Here’s to finally learning the ending after nearly two decades!