After some introductions, the film sends four friends back to a ski valley they last visited as high school seniors. The nostalgic quartet is composed of John Cusack as down-on-his-luck (is there any other kind of John Cusack?) Adam, Craig Robinson (The Office's Darryl Philbin) as discouraged and whipped Nick Webber, Rob Corddry as alcoholic, sexaholic Lou, and Clark Duke as the sheltered Jacob. The four are an eclectic mix with different responses to and advice for every situation, ensuring each encounter they have is a lively one.

There is some genuine camaraderie among the four, as this film is more than a sexual romp (though it's certainly that as well). Each time traveller suffers from regret not only how things turned out twenty years ago, but also the pattern of life choices that have led them to be miserable in the present. Rather than have company for their misery, the former best friends have drifted apart, losing the support and dreams they had for themselves and each other as kids. Returned to 1986, they hope they can recapture that passion and bring it back with them, at the same time that they are forced to face the beginning of their downfall.

The option of avoidance is withdrawn by Chevy Chase, who plays a mysterious repairman who encourages the travellers to not change the timeline. Unlike Don Knotts in Pleasantville, Chase's purpose and motivations are unknown. The four men nonetheless vacillate between sticking to history and avoiding unpleasant situations, even though there is no motivation to listen to Chase or consequence for not doing so. The struggle between doing what they want versus what they're "supposed" to do gives the film some tension, even if it is superficial.

HTTM's temporal mechanics are also paper-thin, with an ending that wouldn't hold up to any fan versed in science fiction. Yet the film does not exist in a vacuum, with several devices that work quite well. For example, the paradox of the four running into their younger selves is eliminated when they discover that they have effectively "quantum leaped" into their 18-year-old bodies, appearing as adults to each other (and the audience) but as kids to the residents of 1986. At times the film reminded me of nothing of much as Back to the Future — a parallel made intentional through several references, not the least of which is a recurring character played by Crispin Glover, aka George McFly. Plus, any movie with an Apple II is okay by me.

HTTM is a film that I can recommend without reservation, but with caveats: some of the humor is very base and even disgusting, and you have to be in the right mood (or have sufficiently low standards) to enjoy or even tolerate it. The movie's actors and director obviously did not take themselves very seriously, and it's important that the audience do the same to maximize their enjoyment. I watched the unrated DVD version of the film; without having seen the theatrical release, I would guess the differences are in the quantity of female nudity.

Finally, a trailer for this ABC series has surfaced, along with confirmation of it airing Thursdays at 10 PM this fall:

I'm a bit surprised by the casting — I'd been led to believe that Colm Meaney would have the lead role, which the Trekkie in me was eager to see. But I find the casting of Jason O'Mara (also an Irish actor) more believable, though that's based only on this brief preview, as I've not seen any of his other work.

It also seems odd that this trailer suggests an almost comedic element. A time-travelling cop hunting down a serial killer sounds like the Dennis Quaid movie Frequency, which had a certain element of incredulity and wonder to it, but humor was not its overarching theme.

As I don't have TV service, I missed the similar show Journeyman and will have to catch it upon its eventual DVD release. Life on Mars will probably come to me via a similar route, a year after everyone else has enjoyed its premiere. If my hopes prove true, it will be worth the wait.

(Hat tips to TrekToday and Den of Geek)

I know you don't watch TV per se, but you might find this past Monday night's NBC show Journeyman quite interesting. You can log onto NBC.com and watch previous episodes, commercial free. 

I don't know if perhaps he was familiar with my taste for Quantum Leap, but I agreed that Journeyman, along with Pushing Daisies and Reaper, would be shows I'd be watching this season, if I were able. (NBC.com's quality doesn't compare to a 36" TV with 5.1 surround sound!) But since I get all my shows, like Heroes (another interest we discovered we share), on DVD, it'll be awhile yet before I can watch this variation on The Time Traveler's Wife (coming soon to a theater near you).

Unfortunately, I was the one to break the bad news when I quoted to him from Wikipedia:

The initial order from the network was for 13 episodes, all of which were produced prior to the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike by screenwriters. However, the series suffered from low ratings, and NBC allowed its option for a full season order to lapse by the 2007-12-11 deadline for renewal. According to trade reports, such an action effectively means a series has been cancelled. The final episode of Journeyman aired on Wednesday, 2007-12-19.

But I was quick to point out the variety of precedents that suggest no show's death is final. Family Guy was cancelled twice but came back based on strong DVD sales. Sliders and Buffy switched networks, with the latter written to a series conclusion, should the show not survive the transition to a new network. Firefly came back as the feature-length Serenity, while Futurama and ReBoot both received direct-to-DVD movies.

So though Journeyman's travels appear over for now, there's always hope for the future… but should this truly be the end, at least picking up the complete series on DVD ought to be a cheap affair. In the meantime, we have the time-travel series Life on Mars to look forward to, along with news that Early Edition is finally coming to DVD. Good things come to those who wait!

Sean Astin plays a government physicist with a handheld, software-based temporal translocation unit. By using nearby cell phone towers, he can send himself and anyone in contact with him back in time up to ten minutes, displacing their selves of that previous moment. But the movie applies this concept unevenly. Are their bodies affected, or just their mind? Are objects affected, or are they duplicated? Frequency could be criticized for having an illogical temporal mechanic, but that film was both creative and internally consistent. Slipstream fails in this regard, as we see no truly clever applications of the device other than for do-overs.

It's typical for a movie to introduce the main character and show us his invention in action as buildup for when things go awry. Slipstream rushes this important getting-to-know-you stage by immediately putting Astin in a bank that gets robbed. And not just by any thugs; no, these are British mods and rockers who kept their outfits, hairdos, and tattoos when they turned 40. Despite the heist going off with a hitch and losing several of his comrades, the gang leader has time to stop and steal what he assumes is an expensive cell phone — but is, in fact, the titularly codenamed time machine.

It is the first of the story's many weak points. Already we have stereotypical villains, a loser scientist protagonist, and unrealistic behavior from both. Such examples continue: when the bank robbers get into a car accident, the first squad on the site are… the FBI? They should've gone with the local police, as maybe they've seen Quick Change and then that old "terrorist disguised as a hostage" trick wouldn't've worked again. The masquerade continues moments later as we see the evil mastermind demonstrate that anyone wearing a captain's uniform can get on a plane, without ID.

Worse than any plot holes is the film's ego. It draws out scenes for seemingly no reason than to revel in its own creativity. Other scenes alternate between speeding up and slowing down, as if to hammer into the audience's thick skulls, "Hey, time is fluid in THIS film!" A couple scenes feature the background slowly revolving around the actors, or vice versa. It's like bullet time with one camera and a green screen. But Slipstream is just a shadow of the many films it wishes it was. Just as Overdrawn at the Memory Bank channeled Casablanca, Slipstream imitates Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Now that's what I call cinematic hubris.

Slipstream's first five minutes — filled with cheesy narration, slow-motion sequences, and screen savers — immediately suggested, "Oh, it's going to be one of THOSE films": not a bad one, but one that sets its sights low. Proper expectations can make or break a film, but even given the proper mindset, I still enjoyed Adam Sandler's Click (and Sean Astin's performance in same) more than this. Slipstream's goofy characters and illogical science make me think it was made for a younger audience, but language and violence have rated it 'R' — yet another inconsistency. Whatever target this film was aiming for, it slipped and slid right off the map.

I had grown up on the writings of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke, but I had watched the original 1960s Star Trek only in reruns. During freshman year, I had fought for the dorm lounge television with people who preferred The Late Show With David Letterman over some old show with people wearing colorful pajamas, odd makeup, or both. But we were a small but dedicated band, and we made it to the stars. Among the friends I met then was my future wife.

Over the course of many late nights and foosball games, I learned about the United Federation of Planets, its Starfleet, and the Prime Directive that forbade its explorers from interfering in the internal affairs or development of alien worlds. The so-called "Wagon Train to the stars" combined Westerns with ray guns, and mythology with scientific speculation.

By the time TNG began, I was indeed a Trekkie — or "Trekker," as some prefer — having learned the cant among the franchise's fans: phasers, warp speed, and the Vulcan nerve pinch and salute. Of the eventual six movies with the space opera's original cast, the best two — Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and IV: The Voyage Home — had already been released. Thanks to magazines such as Starlog and various "technical manuals," I learned about transporters and Jeffries tubes (the access tunnels throughout starships, named after an original series art director). Around Thanksgiving of 1987, I would attend my first science fiction convention, one run by Creation Entertainment in New York.

It's also worth remembering the context into which this Enterprise was launched — that, despite the success of multimedia franchises such as Planet of the Apes and Star Wars, there was little genre entertainment on television at that time. As we look forward to 2007's premieres of Heroes, Lost, or Battlestar Galactica: Razor, among others, note that 20 years ago, there was only Stephen Spielberg's anthology Amazing Stories, horror drama Friday the 13th: the Series, and another Earth-based movie spin-off, Starman. Weak visual effects, even weaker writing, and a lack of interest among mainstream viewers and networks had doomed all but the U.K.'s Doctor Who to short lifespans or syndication.

Fortunately, syndication gave TNG the time it needed to develop, unlike many shows until The X-Files. Many fans of the original crew and earlier Trek films had difficulty accepting a new cast and style. The captain was now a bald Frenchman rather than a Kennedyesque Canadian-American; the jumpsuits and military uniforms were now spandex (later with 1980s shoulderpads); and the acting and scripts/dialogue were a bit stiff. I found the first episode, "Encounter at Farpoint", to be slow, preachy, and not particularly promising.

But it soon grew on me, and at a time in my life when I wasn't watching much TV, I was pleasantly surprised to see TNG and, by extension, science fiction working its way back into mainstream consciousness. The strength of the show was not its pyrotechnics (which were better than in the 1960s) but in the heroic ensemble cast.

Patrick Stewart as the noble Capt. Jean-Luc Picard solved problems more often with diplomacy than with fisticuffs. Other memorable characters included Brent Spiner's Asimovian android Data, who yearned to be more human, and Michael Dorn's warrior Worf, who wanted to be more Klingon. LeVar Burton, as eventual chief engineer Geordi La Forge, was actually the best known actor at the time.

Despite the occasional bad writing, I came to appreciate creator Gene Roddenberry's optimistic vision of the future, in which the best and brightest from hundreds of inhabited planets came together for the shared goals of exploration and defending galactic peace. Over time, even supporting characters became like family, and many episodes revisited humanistic themes and even specific plots from the original series, strengthening archetypes that nearly every genre show has followed since then: time travel, alternate universes, court martials, and so on.

But there can be no drama without conflict, and TNG reintroduced the classic adversaries of belligerent Klingons and scheming Romulans. While the mercantile Ferengi turned out to be better for comic relief, the nearly omnipotent "Q" (John de Lancie, following a long line of godlike beings in the otherwise agnostic or atheist Star Trek), martial Cardassians, and cybernetic, collective Borg transcended a mere TV show where the weapons were really made of plastic and the sets of plywood. Just as Capt. James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock are now part of popular culture, so too are the nightmarish Borg, which columnists for Computerworld still refer to.

By its third year, TNG became a worthy successor to Roddenberry's legacy, even as the "great bird of the galaxy" was in failing health. The introduction of the Borg, the Klingon civil war, and incremental character development (including the return of Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher) started a balancing act between purely episodic plots and longer story arcs that continues to this day. Yes, TNG is in hindsight rather static, but it laid the groundwork for the more arc-driven shows like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, and the aforementioned Lost and Heroes.

Many of my favorite episodes — "Yesterday's Enterprise", "Sins of the Father", "Sarek" and "The Best of Both Worlds" — are from Season 3. (Yes, we Trekkies like to refer to specific episodes by title.) Unlike some of its descendants, the crew of the starship Enterprise (registry NCC-1701-D) was composed of the best and brightest who were able to rise to the greatest challenges and still be sympathetic people.

As the Cold War ended in the real world, Star Trek continued exemplifying SF as social allegory. On the other hand, Roddenberry's direction of the franchise relaxed, the story arcs and character development got stronger, if not always successfully. Star Trek, and indeed much genre fiction, has shown few happy families, competent admirals, or foes who don't eventually get watered down.

The eventual trend toward a "darker" tone was offset in TNG by lighter character studies, allowing even underdeveloped characters such as Marina Sirtis' Counselor Troi and Wil Wheaton's ensign Wesley Crusher to evolve past a touchy-feely pseudoshrink and an annoying child genius, respectively. Author David Brin has lauded the Federation's meritocracy, which has made the novels and various books and games based on Star Trek (one of the largest shared universes in SF, if you count all the contributors) especially accessible.

The show was further strengthened by guest stars: from Whoopi Goldberg as recurring bartender Guinan, to physicist Stephen Hawking as himself in a holodeck scene, to members of the original cast (most notably Mark Lenard and Leonard Nimoy as ur-Vulcans Sarek and Spock, respectively). In fact, like its later peers, Quantum Leap, Highlander, and Lois & Clark, many actors passed through TNG on their way to later success.

By the time TNG wound down in 1994, it had earned its place among the best SF shows of all time. Its seven-year lifespan has guaranteed many years of reruns in syndication, and it launched spin-offs Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) and Star Trek: Voyager. The Enterprise-D continued its voyage on the silver screen, though I feel that the movies featuring the Next Gen cast focused too much on conflict rather than on crew's strengths of diplomacy and friendship, but they each had something to offer the fans.

The seventh Star Trek film, Generations, finally had Captains Kirk and Picard meet, even if the plot was a bit muddled. First Contact was the best, using the Borg and the Enterprise-E. Insurrection and Nemesis tried to bring back some intrigue and family, but weren't strong enough to retain interest from the general audience.

DS9 continued Roddenberry's ideals as it continued to explore post-Cold War uncertainty and conflict with an even stronger ensemble. The Odyssey-inspired Voyager and retconning Enterprise were weaker, to the point that Trek is now taking a break before Paramount and J.J. Abrams attempt to reboot it with the eleventh movie in 2008.

Fortunately, TNG's influence can still be seen. The story arcs of non-Trek space operas Babylon 5, Farscape, Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, Serenity/Firefly, and the revisionist Battlestar Galactica all share ideas and sometimes writers and actors from Trek. While this subgenre of SF is not as popular at the moment as cyberpunk, comic book superheroes, or alien conspiracies, I continue to be inspired by the intrepid cast and crew of The Next Generation.

To my fellow Trekkers, may you Live Long and Prosper –

— Gene

GeneD is a lifelong science fiction fan and a copy editor at Computerworld magazine near Boston. As "Ensign Barney Blintz" and "Capt. Tzu Tien Lung," he participated in various Star Trek RPGs. Read his blog at http://360.yahoo.com/edemaitre.

Also in the TNG at 20 series:

• T-Minus One Week and Counting
• To Everything, There Is a Season
• Where, Oh Where, Has My Little Spock Gone?
• The Human Condition
• But Don't Take My Word For It
• A Good Day to Die

There are many ways to separate the wheat from the chaff. Various fan collectives offer thematically-related content, so if you like time travel or Q, you're bound to be satisfied — unless you dwell on what these packages miss, such as "Future's End". For my money, The Jean-Luc Picard Collection is the best value, as I prefer episodes that offer not an anomaly of the week, but significant, focused character development. "Tapestry", "Darmok", and "The Inner Light" are worth their weight in latinum, and with the former two both coming from season five, perhaps that is the series' best season. Other fifth-season episodes "I, Borg", "The Perfect Mate" (another Picard episode, and one which first unites Patrick Stewart with Famke Janssen, prior to their X-Men team-up), Spock's return in the two-part "Unification", and the first half of "Time's Arrow" supports this theory.

But only with the new, complete DVD collection can you get all the above along with gems like "The Best of Both Worlds", "Yesterday's Enterprise", and "Relics" — so if you have money to burn, take the good with the bad and splurge on all seven seasons (plus exclusive features and documentaries). But if you don't, then what season (or fan collective) do you recommend, and for what episodes?

Also in the TNG at 20 series:

• T-Minus One Week and Counting
• Where, Oh Where, Has My Little Spock Gone?
• The Human Condition
• The Voyage Continues
• But Don't Take My Word For It
• A Good Day to Die

Yet even Sean "Hobbit" Astin couldn't elevate Slipstream out of obscurity. But before I review this film, I'd like to rewind the clock and examine its ancestry of other little-known time travel films: Time After Time, Time Changer, Timestalkers, Out of Time, and Happy Accidents.

I first became aware of Time After Time from the preface of Time and Time Again, a Superman graphic novel about time travel. In this movie, H.G. Wells' time machine is a reality and is stolen by Jack the Ripper, who uses it to travel from 1893 London to 1979 San Francisco. The most biting social commentary we get out of this situation is Jack's observation to Wells: "Ninety years ago, I was a freak. Today, I'm an amateur." The rest is a fairly typical murder-thriller. Malcolm McDowell was adorable as H.G. Wells, with plenty of laughable moments as he encountered various technological advances (though in general, his acclimation was much too smooth). David Warner, the villain, was recognizable from Tron, Quest of the Delta Knights, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, Titanic, Star Trek VI (as Chancellor Gorkon), and his voice work on animated films and shows. It was neat to see Mary Steenburgen in the role as the love interest of a goofy, time-travelling scientist, which she reprised in Back to the Future Part III. Overall, this mediocre story vacillated between amusing, gripping, and not much of anything.

Conversely, Time Changer had a bit too much commentary — not only on the state of society, but the causes for our supposed descent. This film has Gavin MacLeod (Murray Slaughter from The Mary Tyler Moore Show) sending a Bible professor from 1890 to the 21st century to see the consequences of eliminating Jesus' name from Jesus' teachings. I hesitate to call this movie "propaganda", as I'm sure the creators felt they were addressing a valid concern. But the film is so heavy-handed in its preaching of Christianity that it is obviously intended to be not just a sci-fi film, but primarily a vehicle for religious teachings. It was interesting to view this take on time travel, though, as the main character spent his time not ooh-ing and ahh-ing over our technological advancements, but instead despairing at the degradation of society and its morals — all as a result of us not letting Jesus into our hearts. The film ends rather pessimistically (and, again, not too subtly) by suggesting that our world has fewer than 45 years left in it before the literal second coming of Jesus and his Rapture.

Timestalkers and Out of Time are both made-for-TV movies from the late Eighties. Both continue the Time After Time trend of chasing futuristic criminals to our day. Neither film is on DVD, and only used copies of the former are available on VHS. Timestalkers features William Devane, Lauren Hutton, John Ratzenberger, and Forrest Tucker in a film in which a modern-day history professor becomes involved when police from the future track a fugitive to our own era. I remember this movie featuring some creative applications of time travel, such as getting around physical barriers by temporarily shifting to a period in which the barrier did not exist.

Out of Time's villain is pursued by time cop and talk show host Bill Maher, who teams up with his great-grandfather, a present-day cop. The film ends with a temporal paradox that I saw through even though I was only nine years old at the time of the viewing. But just as memorable and more enjoyable were the array of high-tech toys Maher brought with him to our time, such as the cellophane gun. Who knew being a lawman could be so much fun?

Finally, Happy Accidents stars Marisa Tomei and Vincent D'Onofrio in the cliched "man comes back in time to prevent a murder and fall in love" plot. Except here, we never really know if D'Onofrio is a time traveller or a lunatic; all his evidence and support are extremely suspect. It's ultimately a love story that tried my patience with unlikable protagonists and a plodding plot. Give me Somewhere in Time any day.

It was this drive that led me to The Lake House, despite reviews urging against such desperate action. For those who didn't get the memo, this newest pairing of the Speed duo of Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock has them sending letters (but little else) to each other via a mailbox that transports Bullock's notes two years into the past, to 2004, and Reeves' two years into the future.

The Lake House is what you get when you cross the concept of Frequency — two-way communication between temporally-displaced individuals in the same house — with the plot of Happy Accidents — someone trying to change the past to find a soulmate. I found the former film fascinating: I love Dennis Quaid, and though the movie's application of temporal mechanics may've been illogical, it was both unique and internally consistent (and applied to a murder-mystery, which is infinitely cooler than a romance). The latter film tried my patience with unlikable protagonists and a plodding plot. The Lake House falls firmly in the middle of those two, not just in quality but in devices, featuring both unlikable protagonists and internally inconsistent mechanics.

First, these actors typify the wooden acting of which only Keanu is normally indicted. Their only feature that changes is Bullock's hair; their facial expressions and tone are flat, doing little to convey feelings, intent, or any other human character. Keanu's familial relationships have some depth, but no other interactions are worth much. The characters' deductive powers aren't vast, either. You'd think that all the records at our fingertips in today's information age would've addressed their unsolved mysteries, but such never occurs to them.

Second, akin to The Time Traveler's Wife (coming soon to a theater near you), the two characters' eras influence each other in a self-fulfilling prophecy fashion. Though I appreciate that the film demonstrates this capacity from the get-go, it leaves little to either subtlety or coincidence, cluing the audience in to this quality sooner than either character. Though it's fun to see certain scenes play out, we can generally predict their appearance and conclusion long before anyone on-screen recognizes what's happening.

Continue reading for spoilers….

The lack of subtlety reaches its climax with the film's, when the mother of all temporal paradoxes is created to ensure a happy ending. The Lake House could've appealed to my morbid fascination by letting time flow along its natural course, with no do-overs — but I would've been upset by the pointlessness of it all. Who wants to watch a film that reaffirms the futility of life and love and which diminishes hope? Isn't that the same kind of logic that gave us cubicles?

But the film's plot had painted itself into two extreme corners: a picture-perfect, clichéd Hollywood ending, or a dark, depressing one. The one they chose is a violation of the sensibilities of any logical viewer. Though Star Trek is often criticized for its dependency on such temporal devices, it has at least occasionally been used to sublime effect. Likewise, I'm told the ending of The Lake House's inspiration, the South Korean film Il Mare, is more upbeat and subtler than this movie's. I cannot attest to that from experience, but nor can I fathom it not being true.

I actually did like this film, even if I don't understand why. Maybe it was the attractive cinematography, or the cute dog. But I also comprehend and concur with the critics' lament: almost anything The Lake House does has been done better elsewhere.