Journeyman

Canceled NBC series that got a brief run in late 2007. It was about an Everyman who goes back in time involuntarily, regularly experiencing Mister Sandman Sequences, to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.

Later in the show (now finished), the impact of his travel on his present-day life was essentially the focus of the show, and the actual reasons for the travel into the past were dealt with in each episode as an afterthought (both by the writers and by the main character himself, who often got yelled at by his more experienced companion for inattention to duty).

Not to be confused with The Journeyman Project, a series of point-and-click adventure games which also deal with time travel but are otherwise unrelated.


 * Blessed with Suck: Yay, he can travel through time, helping people! But he can't control it, his wife thinks he's cheating on her, his friends think he's addicted to gambling, and his brother thinks he's a possible criminal.
 * Can You Hear Me Now: When he travels back to 1987, his iPhone doesn't work, so he has to break into an apartment and steal a contemporary phone. From himself.
 * Cosmic Plaything
 * The Eighties
 * The Everyman: Dan Vassar
 * Fake American: Kevin McKidd as Dan Vassar
 * For Want of a Nail and In Spite of a Nail: Both apply. Little things Dan does add up--such as saving a woman who is going to be the mother of a gifted surgeon. But on the other hand, he always comes back to his life exactly as he left it. The episode where he accidentally jumpstarts technology (see Timeline-Altering MacGuffin) and erases his son strongly insinuates that whoever is sending him back is also protecting his family from minor alterations.
 * It's a Small Net After All: Varies between being used straight and subverted; Dan gets all the information he needs on his subjects by typing their names into a Brand X version of Google, but somethings he has to narrow down the search four or five times before he gets anything relevant.
 * Meanwhile in the Future
 * Mood Lighting: Just about every time Dan travels to the past, a yellowish filter is used.
 * "Mister Sandman" Sequence: It seems each episode had to have at least one.
 * Never the Selves Shall Meet: Dan seems to assume this applies, later subverted.
 * Newspaper Dating: Once an Episode, more or less.
 * The Nineties
 * Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory
 * San Dimas Time: Somewhat subverted considering that Dan doesn't have any control over when he time-travels; however, he is always returned to the present "later" than when he left it, though it doesn't seem to be proportional to how long he was "gone."
 * Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Whole premise of the show.
 * The Seventies
 * This Is My Boomstick: Subverted; Dan's iPhone doesn't work in the past, though it still looks awfully weird in 1987.
 * Timeline-Altering MacGuffin: Dan accidentally leaves a digital camera in the early 1980s, which caused rapid technological progress in his own time, such as holographic monitors and newspapers that play video; also, his son is replaced by a daughter due to a "nanotech accident" causing Dan and his wife not to conceive a child at a specific moment.
 * Time Travel
 * Victim of the Week
 * What Year Is This?
 * Write Back to the Future: Dan does a version at the end of the pilot to prove to his wife that he can travel through time.
 * You Can't Fight Fate: "Game Three"