STARLOG 187
TIME POLICE

Grant Rosenberg dispatches a future cop to track down tomorrow's criminals on today's mean streets.

When we first came up with the idea, we were seen as a cross between Terminator, Quantum Leap and MacGyver," reveals executive producer Grant Rosenberg about the origins of Time Trax, a Warner Bros. TV syndicated series premiering this month on the Prime Time Network, made up of loosely-associated independent TV stations. "You know, what are you going to do?" Rosenberg, a 20-year TV veteran, further describes how difficult it is to classify the show. "Time Trax does have an underlying science-fiction foundation that you need to buy into, but short of that, it isn't science fiction. It's very action- and law enforcement-oriented, with a real intelligence and sense of humor. It's much more of an action-adventure show than a science-fiction one."
Time Trax's basic premise sends a police officer
from the year 2193, armed with a special computer,
back to 1993 to apprehend and return
fugitives who have time-warped from his era.

"In the year 2183," the co-creator elaborates, "renegade scientist Mordicai Sahmbi created a time machine. Unfortunately, it was only able to send and retrieve things, in a fixed 2000-year span. As a result, it didn't have many practical applications for science or the military, and its funding was shut down. Being a true scientist, Sahmbi figured a way to keep funding going by using the machine to provide escape for people who could afford it and who wanted to get out of the 22nd century, That would be primarily bad people,. Over the next 10 years, many people disappeared.
"The man who has been tracking down most of them is Darien Lambert, a ranking captain in the Fugitive Retrieval Section in Washington, D.C. In his investigation, he comes upon the time machine and realizes what's happening. Darien goes back to hunt down these fugitives who've come back over the years [into 1983-93]."
To assist him, Darien carries two important futuristic devices, the MPPT and Selma."The first is a miniature pellet projection tube, or MPPT, which looks kind of like a car alarm," he divulges. "It shoots imperceptible-sized pellets which osmose through the skin into the body. They can render someone stunned for a few minutes or hours, or prepare the person for teleportation to the future.
"The other is a credit-card sized, fully functional, conversational computer that can work both in voice and visual modes. In visual mode, Selma is a hologram he can see through, walk all the way around and talk to. She's probably most akin to a female Spock in her logic."

On Trax
In the two-hour premiere, written by Harve (Star Trek 2) Bennett, the basic premise is set up and Darien must stop a political conspiracy. "Darien gets his inside information from a woman named Elissa Knox, and he falls in love with her, "Rosenberg discloses. "In the middle of the movie, Darien breaks into the Trax operation, where Sahmbi is holding Elissa hostage. Sahmbi steps into the machine, and Elissa, who hasn't been physiologically prepared to make the trip, dies. So, what thrusts Darien into the past is not only to chase Sahmbi and the fugitives, but also the fresh memory of the death of the woman he loves.
"When he comes back [to 1993], he finds there's a plot afoot by Sahmbi and others to take over the government. A villain named Sept Dietrich is sent to kill the President of the United States. Sept had assassinated the United Nations President in 2193, was incarcerated and awaiting trial, and disappeared. So, Darien has to stop Sept instead of really chasing down Shambi."
Rosenberg explains that Time Trax has a 10-year span in which the fugitives fled to their pasts so that they have various levels of assimilation into our culture, thus providing Darien with difficult decisions. "There are instances where Darien will find someone who has been back for a couple of months, " he says, "and times when he comes across people who've been back for nine years. Some are even productive members of modern society. At hat point, Darien faces a moral dilemma if their future crime isn't a terrible one. Does he yank this father, husband, pillar of the church and upholder of justice, and send him back, or does he turn his head and walk away?".
Another important factor is that the Trax unit only allows a person a single round trip. In a sense, Darien is trapped in today until his mission is complete. "When he goes back home, that's it and the series is over, " comments Rosenberg. "People also come from the future to bring him information or for other reasons. He can send them back, and once he has done so, there's not an option for them to re-occur in the series. It makes him more of a stranded person, which is what we want. The show really deals with an outsider's view of what today's world is like, done through humor and action."

Making Trax
The original idea for Time Trax came from Rosenberg just a few months before meeting with his three partners to consider a project for the Prime Time Network. "Gary Nardino, Harve Bennett, Jeff Hayes and myself formed a team to produce something in Australia to sell to the consortium, " he says. "We all brought ideas and threw them on the table. I had come up with the idea of a man 200 years in the future who comes back to chase down fugitives from his time. Everyone sparked on it and thought it was something that not only could be fun to do and write, but also made sense to do in Australia for the production costs."
Bennett, Hayes and Rosenberg worked together and share credit for taking that short basic description, developing and fleshing it out, and better defining the characters. As in any creative process, there were changes and additions. "The hologram computer wasn't part of my initial thinking at all, "Rosenberg declares. "That's something we did in the group, and Harve, who brought most of the dimension to the characters, came up with it. It was a wonderful addition and very important, because it gave Darien someone to talk to. In the series, we're trying to have him make observations about things that happen in our day-to-day lives which are strange. wonderful or stupid to him. The creation of a constant companion who rides along in his shirt pocket was very essential, so he wouldn't be talking to himself."

The premise of a time-traveler with a holographic companion has led to some comparisons with Quantum Leap, Aware of possible criticism, Rosenberg is quick to point out the contrasts between the two shows. "The primary difference is that Darien has moved from point A to point B and has made point B home," he comments. "It's not him going back to play in the 1919 World Series or whatever. Sam Beckett can come back as a child, a woman, a black man or a dog. Darien is Darien and he stays the same. Our show is more action-oriented than Quantum Leap, which is really a weekly character study.
"In terms of the holograms, we didn't feel there was a conflict. The hologram in Quantum Leap is a cigar-chomping, wise-cracking guy who comes in, makes a few comments and leaves. He serves his function for that show, and it's very appropriate. Ours is much more of a tool and an information base. Selma is used not so much in visual mode, but as a very advanced computer. She's much more multi-functioned than the companion in Quantum Leap."
Delving deeper into the characters, Rosenberg notes the basics of the show's three main individuals. "Darien is a very noble, very altruistic man who has given up a tremendous amount to come to 1993. He's very driven, has a wry sense of humor and is very moralistic. He's anal-retentive, but is learning that he must bend a little more and roll with the punches. He loves sports, is adventurous and eager to try things. He's not a guy who's going to get romantically tied down; he'll certainly have romantic interludes, but he feels his job is more important. He's a little wistful and sad since he grew up as an orphan, and that echoes through some of the storylines. Overall, Darien Lambert is an American hero, the kind of guy you want as a best friend.
"Selma is very logical and prone to make mistakes in judgment because she is just logical. She's very reluctant to admit making mistakes. She comes across visually a little bit like Mary Poppins because she's British and has that schoolmarm kind of thing. We specifically did not design her to be a 25-year-old beautiful, leggy blonde, because we didn't want any inferences of sexual tension between Darien and this computer."

As for Mordicai Sahmbi, he'll appear approximately six times during the first season in various guises and forms. "Sahmbi won the Nobel Prize for Physics and really had good intentions until they pulled the funding on his Trax project. His dedication to improve the machine led him down nefarious alleys, and he compromised all of his morality to the point where he became an evil person. He always has another scheme cooking, and he primarily wants to accrue money and power, ultimately to build another machine. Used to the finest things, he wants to be treated like a king. He's like Miguelito Loveless in the Wild, Wild West. He'll be a recurring villain who will plague Darien throughout the years."

Keeping Trax
Despite the existence of such people as Mordicai Sahmbi and Sept Dietrich, Rosenberg says the world of 2193 is generally a pleasant one , and viewers will get subtle hints of that during the series. "One thing we want to do-- and Harve Bennett brought this idea to Time Trax-- is project the image that the future is a positive place. If Darien came back and said the future is like Blade Runner--full of murder and mayhem, terrible smog and all owned by a single multinational conglomerate--there would be an unease about watching this guy, because he would represent something very dark. But if the future is primarily an uplifting, good place, it's more positive.
"There are fewer borders in the year 2193, and there are larger land masses working together. The U.S. is part of the Northern Hemisphere Alliance, and the United Nations President is the key world figure. We just filmed an episode where a lady lawyer comes back to 1993 to help Darien track down a man. There go to a town, and she asks a hotel clerk if it's the home of Amalgamated Clinics. He doesn't know what she's talking about. As they're climbing the stairs, she asks Darien, 'How can he not know about Amalgamated Clinics"They found the cure for cancer!" Darien reminds her that the company was founded in the year 2012, or whatever. It's subtle, but it says that in the future, cancer will be cured."
One SF element the series will not examine is a time paradox from events being altered by Darien or a fugitive. For one thing, Time Trax will not be going back to the future, so the audience won't see how any events here affect it. "The other aspect, " he adds, "is that we're making the scientific affected by people from the future is an event that will set the course of the future in its proper perspective. Otherwise, you get crazy."
An example of this policy occurs in one of Rosenberg's own episodes, "The Contender," which centers around a boxer who comes back. "Imagine Mike Tyson," he says. "This guy Mikk Davis, comes back and is basically the number one contender for the heavyweight championship of the world. His father comes back and tells Darien he has been sent to say that Mikk will kill his opponent in his next bout. He asks Selma if there's any way to stop it, and the speech she gives him is basically that any events which are projected to occur by people from the future won't occur until they physically do. In addition to the boxing story, Rosenberg has written an episode called "Darien comes home," in which the futuristic police officer travels to Chicago, his hometown. "We play up the fun of him trying to find the place where he'll be born 164 years from now,"he says. "Basically, it's about a billionair boys' club. Two young, very bright and very dangerous brothers came from the future and are involved in a big computer theft. Darien works his way into their company and has to stop them. It's really a youth-oriented episode with lots of glamor and glitz, and a big helicopter chase and fight at the end.".
The executive reveals that a large bulk of the writing for the series is being done by the staff, with only a few outside scribes getting assignments this season. Bennett and Rosenberg work closely as partners on the writing, and is supervising freelancers.
In the meantime, Hayes is in charge of the day-to-day production and post-production operations in Australia, while Bennett, Nardino and Rosenberg are involved in casting and making decisions on both written and visual materials sent from Hayes. "The way it works is that they'll finish an episode down there, assemble it and send us a rough cut," Rosenberg explains. "We'll look at it, make notes and send it back to Jeff, and he'll supervise its post-production - everything from the scoring to the FX. We do a lot of faxing. We certainly couldn't do this if it weren't for phones, faxes and computer modems."
Looking at the team's resumés reveals a common shared experience with Star Trek in its various forms. They all worked at Paramount Pictures at one point or another. Rosenberg says they tried very hard to stay clear of doing a similar show. "We've all kind of touched on it. When we met, we were very cognizant of the fact that we didn't want to do Star Trek because we didn't think we could do it. We had seen a lot of Star Trek clones come and go because the audience is very finicky. We wanted to come up with a show that would work in first-run as well as Next Generation but stay well away from it."