Time Frame

• "The Time Machine" was released in 1960, starring Rod Taylor as an inventor who travels through time and returns to his own year, 1900, to recount his adventures to his astonished and skeptical friends. The movie is based on the Wells story published in 1895 and strays a bit from the original plot, but not so much that it is unrecognizable. Taylor's character finds Earth destroyed by a nuclear war in 1966, and so he goes far into the future to find a peaceful society called the Eloi being preyed upon by cannibalistic Morlocks that live underground. He battles to save the Eloi and then returns to tell his friends of the adventure. When they don't believe him, he returns to the future, taking three books with him. The viewer is left to wonder which books they are.
  
  

History

• A television series called "The Time Tunnel" had a short run in the mid 1960s. Its plot involved two scientists caught in a time machine-- the time tunnel-- from which they could not be retrieved. The duo went from one time to the next, always seemingly landing in the midst of some historic event in which they would have to extricate themselves before being killed. "The Time Tunnel" was canceled by the ABC network after just one season but is available on compact disc. While the first few episodes were well done--with such scenarios as the two lead characters being on the Titanic before it sank--the last episodes lost steam and the series wasn't renewed.
  
  

Effects

• One of the most popular episodes of "Star Trek" had a time machine at its center. In "The City on the Edge of Forever," Dr. McCoy is accidentally injected with a psychosis-inducing drug and makes his way to a planet through which he escapes back in time to 1930s Earth. While there he does something that allows the Nazis to be triumphant in World War II, thus changing all of the planet's future. Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock must go after him, and when they do Kirk falls in love with Edith Keeler, a pacifist played by Joan Collins. Spock learns that Keeler's future political influence will delay America's entrance into the war, with Germany winning. Kirk then knows that McCoy must have saved Keeler from dying in an accident and then prevents him from keeping her from being hit by a car. They return to their own time, where they find that history has gone on as it was meant to.
  
  

Expert Insight

• Time travel through the use of time machines shows up in countless television shows and movies. Movies such as "Lost in Space," "Timecop", and "Galaxy Quest" employed the use of a time machine at one point to change the outcome of the character's fate. The "Back to the Future" movie trilogy was a huge success, with a time-traveling teenager portrayed by Michael J. Fox. "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban " used the idea of a time machine at the end to right things, and "The Terminator" movie franchise depended on a time machine each time to send Arnold Schwarzenegger's character back in time. Another TV series that had a lengthier run that concerned time travel was "Quantum Leap," which ran from 1989 through 1993.
  
  

Theories/Speculation

• The trouble with many plots that involve a time machine is that even if such a contraption could exist and work, there are still too many unexplained holes in the storyline. For example, in the "Star Trek" episode in which McCoy changes history, the landing party is stranded on the planet with the pretext being that the ship no longer existed above them in space because of something McCoy had done in the past. However, if this was the case, how could any of this have happened to begin with? Likewise, in any movie or series with a time machine plot, anything someone did in the past would have a rippling effect on the future.