TIME TRAX

   US tv series (1993-). Gary Nardino Productions in association with Lorimar Television. Created by/Co-exec prod Harve Bennett, Jeffrey Hayes, Grant Rosenberg. Exec prod Gary Nardino. Starring Dale Midkiff , Elizabeth Alexander, Mia Sara. Writers include Bennett, Harold Gast, David Loughery. Two-hour pilot Jan 1993, written by Bennett,directed by Lewis Teague. Series proper, beginning in 1993, around 45 one-hour episodes to date.

   Harve Bennett is an almost legendary figure in sf tv production and writing, and fulfilled both those roles on THE INVISIBLE MAN (tv series 1975-76), THE BIONIC WOMAN (tv series 1976-8), GEMINI MAN (tv series1976), THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN (tv series 1973-78), amongothers, and also on most of the STAR TREK movies: his metier being the creation of populist,action-packed, comparatively routine sf adventure. TTis more of the same, and runs in syndication to independent tv stations. In the year 2192 police officer Captain Darien Lambert (Midkiff) finds that majorcriminals are disappearing, and discovers that megalomaniac physicist Dr Mordecai Sahmbi (Peter Donat) is sending criminals back in time to the20th century, indeed to our present day. He follows them there.Apart from the time travel, and a few super-scientific accessories for Lambert (including Selma, a mainframe computer contained in something that lookslike a credit card and can project a female hologram in visual mode, played by Elizabeth Alexander), most of the action is not especially science fictional, and is more concerned with running down criminals hiding out in our time. There is a degree of humour in Lambert's attempts to adjust culturally to 20th-century customs. Lambert has superpowers by our standards (IQ 204, runs the 100 metres in 8.6 secs, can use "time stalling" to slow down visual perception and thus react faster) butthese are not unusual, we are told, for the 22nd century.TT has been popular according to surveys with young men. The series is filmed in Australia, and some post-production is also Australian.

   PN/GF