Time After Time

Last week a new sci fi show premiered on ABC called Time After Time. For weeks this show was promoted as Jack the Ripper time travels to the present day and continues his killing spree in America. This came off as preposterous and I had no idea why it was even greenlit. Then in the last week before the premiere they finally revealed they had buried the lead, the time travel is courtesy of H. G. Wells, the author who invented the very concept of time travel when he wrote the Time Machine. According to this show he researched his book by actually inventing a time machine. Coincidentally, he is friends with Jack the Ripper, who he knows as a surgeon named John until the very night he reveals the time machine to his friends the police come looking for Jack the Ripper at every house while John is there and he uses the time machine to escape, again pure coincidence to two days before the actual premiere date of the show. The convenient plot devices continue as the time machine automatically returns within moments unless it's overridden by a key which Hugh(as I shall be referring to Wells from now on) was holding and therefore he gets to use the time machine to pursue John to the future where the time machine is now in a New York City history museum. From here Hugh pursues John through the city, which is difficult because John is adjusting much better than Hugh, but Hugh has some unlikely help from Jane, an assistant curator in charge of the exhibit who has a crush on him and the feeling is mutual though he's too much of a gentleman to do anything about it, and even stranger, Vanessa, the owner of the exhibit who happens to be Hugh's great granddaughter that he had visited three years earlier(time travel brain bender, her three years earlier is still Hugh's future, so he had to leave a note to convince his past self that his future self visited his great granddaughter in her past, congratulations if you followed that).

Hugh and John  have a pretty straightforward hero/villain relationship complicated by the fact that Hugh is struggling with a man that he has long considered a friend is also the most infamous serial killer of all time. Vanessa plays her role well, though it concerns me that she may not be who she says she is and I worry that there may be a secret subplot where she is actually working with Jack the Ripper or someone worse. Jane is the least convincing as a way too nice girl who falls into her role as Hugh's love interest too easily to be believable, but Whovians will recognize her as the companion to Hugh's Doctor and the dynamic actually works despite the contrivances.

So here's the setup, Jack the Ripper has access to H. G. Wells time machine which he will use to visit various points in time expanding his reign of terror while Wells himself with his new girlfriend pursues him and gets the inspiration for his books as they fight over the key to the time machine. The fact that H. G. Wells is the actual protagonist is far more appealing than Jack the Ripper being the antagonist and knowing where the story is now going makes it worth watching. It airs Sunday at 9 after Once Upon a Time so tune in to two hours of the weirdest takes on classic literature I have ever seen.