VideoTyme

I know there are people out there that actually believe that someday people will be able to physically travel in time. The argument is that science just hasn't discovered a way to do it yet. If you've ever seen the popular television series "Heroes" which debuted in 2006, then you can understand why I say that physical time travel is impossible and will forever be impossible (unless you're dead and that's a different story).

Time Travel is a Plot Loophole

Every science fiction television series I can think of has used physical time travel as a loophole at one time or another. If we can't fix the problem, let's go back in time to make sure the problem never existed. Bring a popular character back who died in episode such or such? No problem, we'll fix it with a time travel episode.

In "Heroes", time travel is part of the plot. The characters of Hiro Nakamura and Peter Petrelli do a whole lot of time-traveling and generally screw things up. Can you imagine how screwed up the world would be if people could do this in real life? It's entertaining to watch, but I would never want that kind of power.

Time Travel Movies

There have been a lot of time-travel movies but for the life of me, I can't remember them all. Some of them are physical time-travel movies and some are mental time-travel movies (think psychics). Here's a list that I've compiled:

• The Time Machine (1960)
• Planet of the Apes (1968) and sequels
• Time After Time (1979)
• Somewhere in Time (1980)
• The Final Countdown (1980)
• Time Bandits (1981)
• The Philadelphia Experiment (1984) and sequels
• The Terminator (1984) and sequels
• Back to the Future (1985) and sequels
• Trancers (1985) and sequels
• Flight of the Navigator (1986)
• Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) and two later sequels
• Evil Dead II (1987) and the sequel that followed it
• Masters of the Universe (1987)
• Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) and sequels
• Millenium (1989)
• Freejack (1992)
• Timecop (1994) and sequels
• Twelve Monkeys (1995)
• Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) and the sequel that followed it
• Donnie Darko (2001)
• Planet of the Apes (2001)
• The Time Machine (2002)
• 13 Going on 30 (2004)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
• The Butterfly Effect (2004) and sequels
• Click (2006)
• Deja Vu (2006)
• Next (2007)
• The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)

Those aren't all of them, I'm sure, but they're the ones I can remember.

Time Travel TV Series

Very few TV series used time travel as the primary plot, but some did. They're included in the list:

• Doctor Who (1963) and the Doctor Who franchise
• Star Trek (1966) and the Star Trek franchise
• The Time Tunnel (1966)
• Planet of the Apes (1974)
• Voyagers! (1982)
• Quantum Leap (1989)
• Stargate SG-1 (1997) and the Stargate franchise
• Seven Days (1998)
• Do Over (2002)
• The Dead Zone (2002)
• Phil of the Future (2004)
• Heroes (2006)
• Journeyman (2007)
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008)

Again, those aren't all of them, but they're the ones I can remember.

Wrapping Up

If you've watched even a fraction of every story about time travel, you'd understand that if we humans ever had the ability to travel through time (in other than a mental state), we'd screw up our universe in so many ways it would be ridiculous. We wouldn't even have to try.