The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 2007



   Cinderella III: A Twist in Time
by Dan Berendsen, et. al. (Frank Nissen, director)
First release: 6 Feb 2007

Cinderella’s nasty stepmother uses the Fairy Godmother’s wand to turn back time and enlarge the slipper to fit one of the nasty stepsisters.

Computer animation has produced some nice stories, particularly as done by Pixar, but even the best computer animation can’t live up to the early Disney artists who produced the original Cinderella, and reasonably competent computer animation such as this Cinderella fare, can’t survive a weak storyline, lame dialogue, and tuneless songs.

In any case, here’s a relevant cost comparison in 2015 dollars:
  1. Cinderella (1950) $29 million
  2. Cinderella III (2007) $9 million
  3. Inside Out (2015) $175 million

 The wand is not a toy! 




   Primeval
created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines
First episode: 10 Feb 2007

A time anomaly is allowing beasties from the past and future into present-day England. Oh, and Professor Cutter goes through the anomaly, too, because he’s searching for his lost wifey.

 Miss, oh Miss!! There’s a dinosaur on the playground. 




   Dreamland
by James P. Lay, Kenny Saylors and Kyle Saylors (Lay, director)
First release: 27 Feb 2007

Meghan and Dylan stop at a desert diner near Area 51 where they hear UFO and time travel stories. On the road again, their radio starts picking up Patsy Cline songs, they get separated, and Meghan has various scarey encounters including a spooky 8-year-old girl and newspaper clippings about top secret time travel experiments in the 60s.

I watched to the end (where there is about five minutes of song that tries to explain it all), but I won’t claim to understand the movie. One reviewer says that the spooky girl was abducted and subjected to government time travel experiments, and that the movie is populated by characters who are only in her mind as she travels through time (possibly people from the clippings). If so, then perhaps Meghan is the little girl’s imaginings of her own older self.

 Don’t you get it? There’s no such thing as time, there’s no such thing as this place, and there’s no such thing as you. Meghan is a figment of her own imagination. 




   Premonition
by Bill Kelly (Mennan Yapo, director)
First release: 16 Mar 2007

In a troubled marriage, Linda Hansen finds herself skipping back and forth in time during a week that ends with one of her daughters scarred from running through a plate glass door and her husband dead in a car accident.

The title suggests that the things Linda sees are just premonitions, but to me they felt more like travel through time with no ability to alter events.

 I’m sorry to tell you this. Your husband was in a car accident. He died on the scene yesterday. 




   The Last Mimzy
by Rubin, Emmerich, Hart, Skilken (Bob Shaye, director)
First release: 23 Mar 2007

The people of the future are dying, so they send time-traveling dolls back to 2007 where they can communicate only with sappy Seattle children.

 They’ve been sending other Mimzies to the past to look for it, but none of them have come back. 




   Meet the Robinsons
by Jon A. Bernstein, Michelle Spritz and Nathan Greno (Steve Anderson, Director)
First release: 23 Mar 2007

Twelve-year-old orphan genius Lewis along with his 13-year-old buddy Wilbur Robinson from the future mangle every time-travel trope while fighting a clichéd villian with a clever hat.

 Remember, I’ve got a time machine. You mess up again, and I’ll just keep coming back ’til you get it right. 






   According to Jim
created by Tracy Newman and Jonathan Stark
First time travel: 4 Apr 2007

Jim uses a porta-potty as a time machine to get repeated chances at being a successful dad at his son’s t-ball game (“The At-Bat”). Janet and I watched the time-travel episode on a happy summer evening.

 All right, we’ve established that you can play for the Cubs. 




   The Forbidden Kingdom
by John Fusco (Rob Minkoff, director)
First release: 18 Apr 2007

Modern-day martial-arts-obsessed teen Jason Tripitikas falls off a building with a golden staff and finds himself in fuedal China fulfilling the legend of the seeker who will return the staff to The Monkey King.

 Jason: Is this a dream?
Lu Yan: No, where you come from is the dream, through the gate of no gate. 




   Panic Time
by John Carstarphen (Carstarphen, director)
First release: 1 May 2007 (limited)

Elisa figures time travel can provide the perfect alibi for murdering her scumbag husband. Sadly, though, if you watch this movie with another person, neither one of you will have an alibi for those lost seventy minutes, since you’ll both be asleep.

 The police said that the killer left behind no evidence at all. 




   “Swing Time”
by Carrie Vaughn
First publication: Jim Baen’s Universe, June 2007

Carrie Vaughn lives just down the road from me, and I met her once at a reading. Her voice captured me, and her stories do too, although this tale—of time traveling theives, Madeline and her nemesis Ned, who gain their ability from dancing—did not grab me as much as a non-time-travel story, “The Librarian’s Daughter.”

 With a few measures of dancing, a charge of power crept into Madeline's bones, enough energy to take her anywhere: London 1590. New York 1950. There was power in dancing. 


   “A Zoo in the Jungle”
by Carl Frederick
First publication: Analog, Jun 2007

Arthur Davidson decided to become an astronaut when his father disappeared on the moon twenty years ago. Now, Arthur and a cosmonaut are exploring the very crater where the father disappeared when they come across an alien-built planetarium that may have the power to reunite Arthur with his father.

 A planetarium on the Moon. It’s like a zoo in the jungle, or building a swimming pool under water. What’s the point? 


   Against Time
aka All Over Again
by Cleve Nettles (Nettles, director)
First release: 12 Jun 2007 (direct-to-dvd)

This movie was made in 2001 and made the film festival circuits, but it wasn’t released until it appeared on dvd in 2007 (the dvd cover says that it won an award at the International Family Film Festival, but that’s not listed on the IFFF website); there was a warning sign that I might not take to it (the writer and the producer were one and the same), even though the hero (Z.T.) is a high school shortstop and budding inventor with a pretty, doting girl (Delena) and his own future self come back to warn him about becoming an old drunk.

 From the future? A wino from the future?! 




   “Darwin’s Suitcase”
by Elisabeth Malartre
First publication: Jim Baen’s Universe, Jul 2007

In the 22nd century, Sister Solange uses a time viewer to watch the forbidden Charles Darwin who, much to Solange’s surprise, has an encounter with a less-devout 22nd century man.

 He looked ordinary enough for such an evil man.
She wondered what he was thinking. Was he plotting his terrible attack on the Church? 




   Discipline
by Paco Ahlgren
First publication: 1 Jul 2007

Ahlgren melds the multiverse, quantum mechanics, the mysticism of the East, horror worthy of Stephen King, a little “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for,” and the violence of addition into a skillfully woven story of young Douglas Cole: his dog dies, he loses his family and moves to Texas, his friend kills himself, and his girlfriend leaves him (though, admitedly, the dog came back to life), all before reaching a time-travel-infused turning point.

Many small things were just that little bit off for me, such as the initial introduction of the uncertainty principle. I wish Ahlgren had taken the bull by the horns and stated that the reason we cannot know both the position and movement of a particle simultaneously is because those two properties simply don’t simultaneously exist.

 Unfortunately, while I was becoming more adept at making the business decisions that repeatedly benefited my shareholders, I had also been informed by my mentors and closest friends that the proliferating global acts of terrorism—along with the economic catastrophe which had ended only a few years earlier—had been engineered by a power-hungry madman whose sole objective was to become a diety, thereby ruling the entirety of space and time. 




   Magic Wagon’s The Time Machine
aka Graphic Classics The Time Machine (Graphics Planet)
adapted by Joeming Dunn and Ben Dunn
First publication: 1 Jul 2007

The Dunns present a 26-page comic book adaptation of the classic with large, block-colored panels and a blonde Weena with an anime look.

 That was three years ago. I wait every day for the return of the time traveler. 


   “Sweep Me to My Revenge”
by Darrell Schweitzer
First publication: Talebones, Summer 2007

An aging English professor has had it once and for all with the young Professor Cranchberger, so he borrows his brother’s time machine to disprove the upstart’s ridiculous theory that Edward De Vere wrote Shakespeare’s plays.

 It’s at times like this when I have to either sell my soul to the Devil or go see my brother Francis. I chose the latter because he was closer. He worked at the same university, just across campus, in the Physics Department. I walked into his office and said without any formalities, “I want to borrow your time machine.” 




   The Accidental Time Machine
by Joe Haldeman
First publication: Aug 2007

A faulty part changes a calibration device into a time machine that takes dropout student Matt Fuller further and further into the future including a theocracy of 2252 (where Martha, a sexually spontaneous vestal virgin, joins the adventure) and an AI-tocracy some 24,000 years later.

 So he had to plan. The next time he pushed the button—if the simple linear relationship held true—the thing would be gone for over three days. Next time, over a month; then over a year. Then fifteen years, and way into the future after that. 


   Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
by Laurie Viera Rigler
First publication: Aug 2007

A modern-day L.A. woman wakes up in the body of a thirty-something spinster in 19th century England and, until the right man appears, refuses to believe it’s anything more than a dream.

 I’m still here. Shit. It’s morning. Birds singing. The scent of roses wafting through my window. Mrs. Mansfield in my doorway. 




   Unholy
by Sam Freeman and Daryl Goldberg (Goldberg, director)
First release: 4 Sep 2007

After Martha’s witnesses her daughter kill herself, she seeks answers in nazis, government cover-ups, occultism and (fortunately) time travel.

 Kraus’s experiments dealt with the evolution of warfare, what is referred to as the unholy trinity: time travel, invisibility, and mind control! Many believe, to this day, the experiments continue to exist using unwilling subjects 




   Hirsute
by A.J. Bond (Bond director)
First release: 9 Sep 2007

Some guy invents a time machine and uses it to go back in time to make a 14-minute, half-hairy, half-gory film.

 If I can make this work, I’ll just come back here right . . . right now: seven forty-two P.M., Friday, June 13, 2008. 




   Los cronocrímenes
English title: Timecrimes (translated from Spanish)
by Nacho Vigalondo (Vigalondo, director)
First release: 20 Sep 2007

Cuando Héctor (1) sigue una chica desnuda en el bosque, entre en un silo y un cientifico le envía en el pasado.

No, I won’t write any more one-sentence summaries in Spanish, but I wanted to practice. In English, I’ll tell you that this movie is full of wonderful contortions, horror and fatalism.

 Has viajado en el tiempo. 




   Journeyman
created by Kevin Falls
First episode: 24 Sep 2007

Reporter Dan Vasser’s life is thrown into disarray when he starts jumping backward in time to help others in peril.

 What’s going on? That game was eight years ago. 


   “A Bridge in Time”
by Joseph P. Martino
First publication: Analog, Oct 2007

Tom Carson merely fixes time gates from nine to five, while others worry about whether stock pickers (such as his curvacious running partner, Jennifer Campbell) might be passing information to their past selves while they take a detour over a bridge in the past during construction of a new bridge.

 Don’t ask me to explain time travel paradoxes. All I do is fix the time gates when something goes wrong. Paradoxes are argued over at a much higher pay grade than mine. 


   Countdown to Armageddon
by Edward M. Lerner
First publication: Jim Baen’s Universe, Oct 2007 - Oct 2008

 Einstein showed that gravity is only a manifestation of mass, a curvature of the space-time continuum caused by the presense of mass. No mass, no gravity. Time is similar—it passes only in relationship to . . . stuff. Each astronomical object, each planet, has a single achievable time transfer influenced by—and that can be calculated from—net local gravitation effects. That interval depends on its own mass, its sun’s, and the galaxy’. 


   “Wikihistory”
by Desmond Warzel
First publication: Abyss and Apex, Oct 2007

The time-travel bulletin board has a recurring problem.

 Haven’t you noobs read IATT Bulletin 1147 regarding the killing of Hitler?! 




   The Seeker
aka The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising
adapted by John Hodge (David L. Cunningham, director)
First release: 5 Oct 2007

Birthdays in the U.K. are a big deal for young boys: Just ask Harry Potter, or (in this case), ask Will Stanton, an American whose family is visiting England. On his fourteenth birthday, Will is told of his destiny as the last of the time-traveling warriors called the Old Ones who wield their ancient powers of The Light against those who follow The Dark.

According to those who know, the movie doesn’t follow the book that it’s based on (the second book of Susan Cooper’s, The Dark Is Rising Sequence), but I got some enjoyment from the innocence and soppiness of Will, his sister Gwen, his infatuation with the town’s pretty girl, and even Will’s stereotypical brothers. But the horror and fantasy parts of the film were as formulaic as the fact that Will is the seventh son of a seventh son; and Will’s ability to step through time is incidental to the story.

 Merriman: Walk with us, Will.
Will: Where?
Merriman: Through time. 


from Petrie’s website

   “Afar”
by Simon Petrie
First publication: 365 Tomorrows, 21 Oct 2007

A man with an Ethiopian alias plans a seemingly impossible time travdel escapade in humanity’s far past.

 Anyone wanted to change the past, badly, far enough back, things shift so that person didn’t exist, or time travel hadn’t been invented. 


   “These are the Times”
by John G. Hemry
First publication: Analog, Nov 2011

Temporal Interventionish Tom and his implanted assistant Jeannie are at the start of the American Revolution, a decidedly TI-crowded time, when they run into Tom’s love interest Pam, another TI from Tom’s future who is trying to figure out who fired the first shot.

 The steath-suited TI leveled a weapon, then droped as a stun charge hit. Moments later the other TI weo’d fired the stun charge fell, then two more TIs appeared and took out whoever had nailed the second TI. But then the stealth-suited TI reappeared, having recovered somewhen in the future and jumped back to try to finish the job. 




   Southland Tales
by Richard Kelly (Kelly, director)
First release: 14 Nov 2007

After terrorists destroy Abilene and El Paso with nuclear bombs, the patriot act dominates the U.S. and the world is engulfed in World War III. Unfortunately, the U.S. seems to be more engulfed in the next presidential election and finding an alternative to oil, which somehow (don’t ask me how) combine to create a rift in space-time that doesn’t really play much of a role in the self-important plot, but does serve to send two monkeys (or maybe two of the movie’s characters) back in time 69 minutes.

You’d think by now that I would have learned not to rent movies where the director and writer are one and the same, but I keep holding out hope.

 And what did we do when we discovered a rift in the fourth dimension? We launched monkeys into it. 




   Futurama: Bender’s Big Score
by Matt Groening, et. al. (Dwayne Carey-Hill, director)
First release: 27 Nov 2007

The oddest thing about the Futurama movie is that in the end all the back and forth in time by Bender and Fry very nearly holds together without paradox, even the origin of the time travel code.

 What’s the secret of time travel doing on Fry’s ass? 


   “Anything Would Be Worth It”
by Lesley L. Smith
First publication: Analog, Dec 2007

Physics grad student Abigail thinks that because waves go back through time in one interpretation of quantum physics, she might be able to go back in time, too.

 I just went back in time to save Sophia’s girls, so I should be able to save my girls! I concentrated with all my might on waves that went back in time, and then I felt a Herculean wrench. 


   “Kelmscott Manor: In the Attics”
by C.A. Gardner
First publication: Challenging Destiny, Dec 2007

The noble Englishman William Morris travels through time hoping to finally set the world right for socialism via the time machine of his friend Bertie.

 I suppose you remember that young writer, H.G. Wells—Bertie, we called him—who used to come to Hammersmith for the meetings of the old Socialist League. He seemed quite taken with News from Nowhere, my vision of the future. 


Jerry Oltion’s
trackball telescope

   “Salvation”
by Jerry Oltion
First publication: Analog, Dec 2007

Physicist William Winters asks the church for money to build a time machine to take him and the Reverend Billy back to the time of Jesus.

 “I’m talking time travel,” William went on. “You could go back in time and meet Jesus. Assuming he existed.” 


   Stuck in the Past
by Owen Smith (Greg Robbins, director)
First release: 15 Dec 2007

I did discover one fact while watching this film: Adding time travel and musical aspects to the story of an aging, lonely actress who gets to be 17 again cannot rescue an otherwise miserably written movie.

 Kinda like I did live my life, but now I gotta live it all over again. 




  Dragonriders of Pern #19
Dragon Harper
by Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey
First publication: 26 Dec 2007

Another epidemic hits Pern right smack in the middle of Kindan’s coming of age at Harper Hall. Meanwhile, J’lantir’s riders claim he told them something that he very well knows he did not—a definite harbinger of time travel in the dragon series.

 “Where were you all this time?” J’lantir growled. K’nad dropped his head, shaking it slowly. ’lantir pursed his lips sourly and peered along the rest of the line of men that comprised his missing wing. “Where were all of you?”
He scanned the line, looking for someone who might answer.
“We were on an important mission,’ J’trel said finally. The others looked at him and nodded in relief.
“Very important,” K’nad added with a confirming nod.
“So important that I didn’t know about it?” J’lantir asked in scathing tones.
K’nad gave him a confused look and was about to answer when J’trel nudged him, shaking his head.
“He said he wouldn’t believe us, remember?” J’trel whispered to K’nad in a voice not so quiet that J’lantir didn’t hear him. 



And Still More Time Travel of 2007
The story pilots haven’t yet taken these adventures out for a test drive.
  “The Metaphorical Car for the New Generation” by Idan Cohen, 365 Tomorrows, 28 Jan 2007
—I want that car!

  “Temponaut” by Duncan Shields, 365 Tomorrows, 14 Feb 2007
—drunken scientists travels forward

  “Relative” by T.J. Moore, 365 Tomorrows, 22 Feb 2007
—travel to abandoned world

  “A Perfect Alibi” by J.S. Kachelries, 365 Tomorrows, 11 Mar 2007
—rivals at a temporal physics conference

  “Time Enough for a Wedding by Grady Hendrix” by Grady Hendrix, 365 Tomorrows, 26 Sep 2007
—time traveler misses own wedding

  “Before the Previous Crunch” by Patricia Stewart, 365 Tomorrows, 5 Nov 2007
—to before the big bang

  “Moore’s Law” by Gavin L. Perri, 365 Tomorrows, 30 Dec 2007
—an old man tells how it used to be




Romance Time Travel of 2007
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  Challenge 1: Highlander's Challenge by Jo Barrett

  Viking II 7: Down and Dirty by Sandra Hill

  Blackthorn 3: Midnight's Bride by Sophia Johnson

  Masters of Time 1: Dark Seduction by Brenda Joyce

  Masters of Time 2: Dark Rival by Brenda Joyce

  When I Fall in Love by Lynn Kurland

  Daughters of the Glen 1: Thirty Nights with a Highland Husband by Melissa Mayhue

  Daughters of the Glen 2: Highland Guardian by Melissa Mayhue




No Time Travel. Move along.
  “Missives from Possible Futures #1” by John Scalzi, Subterranean Press, Winter 2007 [alternate history ]

  Idiocracy by Mike Judge and Etan Cohen, 25 Jan 2007 [long sleep ]

  “Domine” by Rjurik Davidson, Aurealis, Mar 2007 [time dilation ]

  The Adventures of Teddy P. Brains by Gerard Brown and Lea Henry, 24 Apr 2007 (direct-to-video) [prequel ]

  Next by Gary Goldman et al. (Lee Lamahori, director) [just precognition ]

  Transformers by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and John Rogers (Michael Bay, director), 3 Jul 2007 [long sleep ]

  Afghan Knights by Brandon P. Hogan and Christine Stringer (Allan Harmon, director), 31 Jul 2007 [ghost story ]

  “In the Beginning, Nothing Lasts” by Mike Strahan, Intergalactic Medicine Show Oct 2007 [odd entropy ]

  CSI: NY (“Time’s Up”) by Trey Callaway, 17 Oct 2007 [despite appearances, no time travel ]

 

59 items are in the time-travel list for these search settings.
Thanks for visiting my time-travel page, and thanks to the many sources that provided stories and more (see the Links and Credits in the menu at the top). —Michael (main@colorado.edu)