The Checklist: Timecop (S1 Ep7) “Lost Voyage”

If you are going to make a television series based on a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, Timecop was easily the best bet. Not only did the time travel element provide almost endless opportunities of where the show could go, the 1994 movie was also Jean-Claude Van Damme’s biggest blockbuster, so the Timecop property was a proven winner in the eyes of Hollywood executives.

As a huge JCVD fan, I was well aware that ABC had greenlit a Timecop series. And even though I was also well aware that Jean-Claude Van Damme was not going to be a part of the series, I was still intrigued and had every intention of giving the series a chance. But ABC scheduled the show as the lead in for Monday Night Football, not a bad slot for most viewers… but for a professional wrestling fan like myself there was no way in hell I was going to watch Timecop at the height of the “Monday Night Wars” being waged on basic cable between the then WWF and rival WCW… especially since this was years before I would have DVR capabilities.

But wrestling fans weren’t the only ones not tuning in to Timecop and after Episode 5 the series was put on the shelf with the remaining 4 episodes that were already in the can airing the following summer in a Saturday night TV death slot. Now thanks to Tubi I finally had the opportunity to watch the show I missed out on nearly 25 years ago and the opportunity to put a randomly selected episode to The Checklist test…

#1. Did the show have a quality open?

The show open quickly establishes the premise for those who may have been unfamiliar with the movie or the comic book series through narration that is reminiscent of Quantum Leap. It is 2007, time travel is now a real thing and criminal elements are using it to their advantage, thus the formation of the TEC, that’s Time Enforcement Commission for your edification. The TEC is a top secret agency responsible for policing the temporal stream. The TEC’s elite team of agents track unlawful travelers across time, to protect the past and to preserve the future… these agents are known as Timecops! The open also includes a lot of motion and some upbeat music, the font choice did leave a lot to be desired, but that’s a minor gripe. 1/1

#2. Did any of the characters from the movie appear in the series?

I mentioned at the start that Jean-Claude Van Damme was not a part of the series, but that didn’t mean his character Max Walker from 1994’s Timecop could not be in the series… but that was not the case. T.W. King (aka Ted King) would step in as Officer Jack Logan, the lead for the series.

But one character from the movie would appear in the series, Eugene Matuzak, the head of the Time Enforcement Commission. In the movie Matuzak was played by Bruce McGill, but in the series Don Stark would get the nod. After the failure of Timecop as a series, Stark would do some time traveling of his own and go back to the 70s as Bob Pinciotti on That ’70s Show. 2/2

#3. Was there any romance teased between Jack Logan and his fellow TEC Officer, Claire Hemmings?

TV shows love to make the audience play the “Will They? Or Won’t They?” game… you take two attractive leads, have them work closely together week after week and let nature take its course. At this point in the series the relationship between Jack Logan and Claire Hemmings (played by Cristi Conaway aka the Ice Princess from Batman Returns) is still in the butting heads stage which makes sense. As a reminder we are seven episodes in, so you don’t want to pull the trigger on the romance too soon… it’s all about the anticipation. If this was Episode 27, I would probably consider this a negative, but since it is only Episode 7, it is actually a positive. If anything “Lost Voyage” made it seem like Jack was going to hook up with Claire’s grandmother instead of Claire. And speaking of Claire’s grandmother… 3/3

#4. Were there any notable guest stars?

This episode finds Jack and Claire aboard the transatlantic cruise liner the Empress of the Americas on July 4, 1939. Wealthy businessman J. William McNeil has chartered the cruise liner to transport his employees working in Europe back to the United States due to the strong possibility that World War II is about to break out… but McNeil has some ulterior motives, he’s also secretly transporting his stockpile of gold. One of the employees working for McNeil is the outspoken Edith Thomas, the woman who decades later would become Claire Hemmings grandmother! Obviously this makes the mission very personal for Claire. Edith Thomas was played by none other than Melora Hardin of Iron Eagle fame. Edith ends up assisting Jack and Claire on their mission and she definitely has eyes for Jack.

The gold attracts the Cooke Brothers, who in 2007 host a wannabe Jacques Cousteau like show where they go on various underwater adventures. So Dean Cooke goes back in time along with two heavies, Mr. Fuqua and Mr. Kiefer, to sink the Empress in the deepest part of the Atlantic, so he and his brother Eric can then use 2007 submersible technology to recover the gold in the present day. The aforementioned Mr. Kiefer was played by Patrick Kilpatrick of Death Warrant fame. I also once witnessed Kilpatrick have an uncomfortable conversation with friend of the site, Paul London, but that’s a story for another time. 4/4

#5. Did the same matter occupy the same space?

One of the things I will always remember from the Timecop movie was the finale, where JCVD’s Max Walker takes the present day McComb (Ron Silver) and pushes him into the time traveling McComb proving the law of physics that the same matter can’t occupy the same space in a spectacular way. So I was more than a little disappointed when smarmy Dean Cooke did not meet a similar fate in this episode and he merely got arrested instead. 4/5

• Final Score = 4/5 (80%) Timecop had all the makings of a fun television series… as I mentioned earlier the time travel aspect gave the show so many creative possibilities and the opportunity to keep things fresh with “villains of the week”. T.W. King and Cristi Conway were solid leads and I didn’t even mention Kurt Fuller as Dr. Dale Easter, TEC’s technical guru. Fuller along with Don Stark were both strong supporting players. But timing is often the key to success… maybe the show was too far removed from the movie to really capitalize or maybe it was just not the right time slot. Or maybe it wasn’t the right network. Timecop would have fit in perfectly on the SyFy network… what could have been.