Helping History Along: Voyagers

Back in 2006, I wrote an article for my fanzine, Argentus, in which I discussed shows that I was looking forward to rewatching when they would finally be released on DVD. One of those shows was Voyagers!, which I have found Michael A. Burstein has a similar affection for. Voyagers! debuted on October 3, 1982 and it ended on July 10, 1983 after one season and 20 episodes. The series starred Jon-Erik Hexum as Phineas Bogg and Meeno Peluce as Jeffrey Jones. The two traveled through time together making right what once went wrong, but unlike Quantum Leap, they not only focused on more historical events, but often visited multiple times in an episode to show how earlier changes impacted later history. Voyagers! was available on DVD, but recently went out of print. It does, however stream on Peacock, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and Google Play.

Set your Omni for Sunday, October 3, 1982, at seven o’clock in the evening, in New York City. If you get your coordinates right, you’ll land just outside a row house in Forest Hills, Queens. Peek in the window of the house and you’ll see a twelve-year-old boy sitting in front of a television set, about to watch the premiere episode of a brand new show. He doesn’t know it yet, but the show will last only one season, a mere 20 episodes. And yet, unlike most one-season shows that are broadcast, canceled, and forgotten, this one will live on in people’s memories for years to come.

Chances are that some of you already know the TV show Voyagers! and, like me, have fond memories of it. For those of you who don’t, a brief explanation can be taken verbatim from the show’s opening theme:

“We travel through time to help history along...give it a push where it's needed. When the Omni's red, it means history's wrong. Our job is to get everything back on track.” Voyagers! (including that exclamation point in the title) was a television show created mainly for one

reason: to be broadcast during the educational programming block the networks were required to provide on Sunday evening. Viewers like me soon discovered that Sunday night educational programming could also be a lot of fun, especially if it was presented as a TV show about time travel. In the first few minutes of the program, we got to meet Phineas Bogg, a Voyager who dressed like a pirate and whose time machine, the pocket-watch-like Omni, malfunctioned. The Omni brought him to the year 1982 when it shouldn’t have been able to take him past 1970. Bogg lands in a high-rise apartment in New York City and through a brief mishap causes young Jeffrey Jones to plummet out the window to certain death on the sidewalk below. Bogg dives after him and rescues him the only way he can: by activating the Omni and taking Jeffrey along with him on his adventures. What the viewer knows, but Boggs doesn’t know until it’s too late, is that Jeffrey’s dog took Bogg’s Guidebook, and without it Bogg is rather lost, since he paid very little attention in Voyagers school. Fortunately for Bogg, Jeffrey is a history ace because his late father had been a history professor, and since Bogg can’t return Jeffrey to 1982...well, you get the idea. Jeffrey joins Bogg as they travel through time to fix history. The Omni tells them when something’s wrong, but it’s Jeffrey who knows what’s wrong and can guide Bogg as they work to “get everything back on track.” Despite only lasting one season, “Voyagers! managed to not only maintain a base of fans who remembered the show from 1982 but has even acquired new fans over the past thirty or so years. There are a few reasons why this is the case. First of all, many of the original fans of the show were young kids who loved both science fiction and the concept of time travel. Time travel is an appealing concept for a lot of people and has been explored in short stories, novels, television, video games, and movies. Whenever a time travel fan who knows this show discovers a new time travel story, we almost always think back to Voyagers! nostalgically. Shows like Quantum Leap and Timeless make us want to revisit the first time travel stories we experienced, and for many of us that was Voyagers! The Omni time-travel device itself was a particular part of the appeal. Throughout the history of science fiction there have been many different types of fictional time machines, usually created to suit the needs of the particular story. The time machine created by H.G. Wells was a vehicle, and not much else. The Delorean from the Back to the Future films required power to operate. The TARDIS from Doctor Who is probably the most comfortable way to travel through time, given that the many rooms presumably include a kitchen and a place to sleep. Compared to those, the Omni is less practical but more elegant. The Omni was a heavy brass device that hung on Bogg’s belt. The front of it bore a stylized V and the phrase “Time waits for no man.” When flipped open, the Omni showed a carved bas relief of the Earth’s surface, which in theory rotated to show a voyager their location. Around the rim were dials that indicated the date and time. Finally, on the top were two lights. The left light, a red one, would blink and make a repeated dinging sound anytime they had arrived somewhere with incorrect history. The right light, a green one, would light up with one chime to tell them that they had managed to fix history. The Omni didn’t include a wardrobe or any way to bring along a change of clothing or period currency–but it looked cool. Apparently, an early concept of the Omni had Bogg wearing it on his wrist, but the showrunners soon realized that this would make it harder for the Omni to get lost or stolen, removing some possible tension. Indeed, because the Omni was loosely attached to his belt, Bogg could toss it to Jeffrey and order him to escape in “Worlds Apart,” giving fans a chance to see the two characters operate separately to fix history. Secondly, the actors who played Bogg and Jeffrey, Jon-Erik Hexum and Meeno Peluce, were quite frankly incredibly charming and had an amazing chemistry together. Young boys identified with Peluce’s character and wanted to be Jeffrey; meanwhile, it has to be said that many women (and probably quite a few men) found Hexum to be, shall we say, easy on the eyes and a great romantic lead. Hexum’s tragic death shortly after the series was canceled also contributes to the show’s popularity in a sad way, as it was a significant news story at the time and reminded people that the show existed. Finally, there’s the show’s own mythology that started to be developed and then was cut off when the series ended. Packed into that first year, we got to meet other Voyagers, learn about Voyager school and the society that educates Voyagers, and even meet a nemesis for our heroes. In 2018 I introduced the show to

one of my daughters; she delighted in every episode and then said exactly what I had said back in 1983 when the show ended: “I want to see the next episode!” Alas, it was not to be. But an unresolved mythology helps keep the show in the forefront of the fans’ minds. In particular, the idea that their new nemesis, a voyager named Drake, could have a different agenda than Bogg and Jeffrey intrigued me. How could the Voyager school end up with a graduate who is dedicated, along with a presumed like-minded group, to destroy history? In that final episode, “Jack’s Back,” Drake attempts to murder Arthur Conan Doyle and Nellie Bly and even states his goal outright: “My life is dedicated to ruining history, not people. You, Miss Bly, are just a piece of history to obliterate.” As an adult, I thought about this for many years and I have to admit that I now tend to look at the show with a slightly more skeptical eye, thanks to Voyager Drake. The idea that history might have gone “wrong” and needs to be put back on track makes sense in the context of a show that is trying to teach kids history. But who decides what is “right” in history? In the episode “Created Equal,” for example, the Voyagers meet and rescue Harriet Tubman (a storyline that we see today has other issues), but they never think that they need to wipe out slavery from the start even as they acknowledge that slavery is bad. Given the premise of the show, in theory, if Bogg and Jeffrey discovered that history had gone wrong and somehow slavery had never happened, their job would have been to restore it. Obviously this is not something you would have put in a show for kids, but the implication in the show's premise is undeniable. It’s even noted in the episode “Voyagers of the Titanic,” when Bogg tells Jeffrey that they have to let people die because that’s what happened. That’s probably why the episodes were mostly crafted in a way that played up the good more than the bad, such as helping Thomas Edison invent the light bulb or Babe Ruth become a power hitter. Had the show continued after its first season, I doubt they would have dealt with these moral dilemmas. After all, as noted, the point of the show was to teach history and not to confuse the intended audience. The show even ended with Meeno Peluce advising the kids watching that if they wanted to learn more about the historical figures featured in that week’s episode, to “take a voyage down to your public library. It’s all in books.” I suspect that many kids ended up having a greater love of history than might have otherwise, and even more would have, if only the show had lasted more than one season. Speaking of which...I’m in 1983 and my Omni is blinking red. Apparently, Voyagers! was supposed to last for at least three seasons and end up in syndication and with sequel serieses. Pardon me while I head over to Los Angeles to talk with Brandon Tartikoff, the president of NBC, and James D. Parriott, the creator of the show. We need to get everything back on track.