Timecop

1 9 9 7 – 1 9 9 8 (USA)
9 x 60 minute episodes

The year was 2007 (the future!), and time travel – or, more precisely, “temporal displacement” – had been invented but not yet perfected, and the TEC (Time Enforcement Commission) – colloquially, “Time Cops” – had been established to “Protect the Past, Preserve the Future.”

Jack Logan (Ted King) was a cocky and stubborn, but effective Timecop, who was sent out on missions whenever the TEC team detected “ripples in history” that indicated bad guys were doing their own time travelling and changing things for their own evil ends.

Scanning the pages of old newspapers to locate those ripples (where a hitherto known historical fact had just changed) was nerdy but brilliant historian Dr Dale Easter (Kurt Fuller).

When a ripple was found, Jack jumped into the time travel device – a kind of elaborate dodgem car on rails – buckled up and roared off into the past, where he might encounter Jack the Ripper (and, it seems, the cockney chorus from My Fair Lady), Christopher Columbus, or the Nazis trying to “fix” World War II with nuclear weapons.

Also on the team were wisecracking technician Claire (Cristi Conaway) and gruff boss Eugene (Don Stark), who Jack routinely ignored.

This short-lived series was based on the comic book and the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. It also ripped off Quantum Leap – but sadly didn’t decide to rip off any good writing or interesting plotting from anywhere.