"It began in the future. A scientist turning to evil; a time machine, called Trax. Criminals who vanish, and a lawman who must pursue into the past...Now, he is among us, a special breed of man. A hunter, traveling through our world, searching for fugitives from his own...knowing he can not go home, until he has found them all. His name is Darien Lambert, and this is his story." TIME TRAX was an absolutely fabulous show that was killed way too soon. Dale Midkiff ("Love Potion No. 9", "The Crow: Salvation") was simply brilliant in his role, as were Elizabeth Alexander & Peter Donat as SELMA and Dr. Mordicai Sahmbi (respectively). I loved this series, and would love to see it come out on DVD. Heck, even shows that only lasted a year like "Tru Calling" get a DVD release, and TIME TRAX lasted 2 years, with no DVD in sight as of yet. Get moving, WB!

Time Trax - OK, here's the deal: a cop from the future (Darien Lambert) travels back in time to track down roughly 200 escaped fugitives from his time and to settle the score with the time machine's creator, who just happened to have killed off the only woman the cop loved for a long time. Simple, right? Well, yes. That was basically the problem - from a theatrical point of view. Sure, the show's writers worked hard at kicking in some complications. For example, the cop happens to be an ethnic minority in the future, a "blanco," but that seats him in the majority here. They give him disguised weaponry: namely, his futuristic Star-Trek-in-a-box computer hologram projector and historical archive widget and a nifty non-lethal gun formed to look like a credit card and car-alarm. However, he loses this things constantly - just multiply the number of times you've forgotten where to put your keys by like 1 million, and that's about par for the show. In addition, either the convicts he's chasing will sniff them out, or some plucky 20th century kid will inevitably treat them like the mundane objects they're made to resemble. Overall, this was not enough to give the show much "drawing power." As noted above, these are plot devices and not necessarily related to developing the character. Having said that, I must say that this was still one of my favorite shows to watch between the ages of 13-14; like MacGyver or the A-Team, this show had a very dynamic episode-to-episode style with no complicated soap opera sagas to slow down the enjoyment - things were always wrapped up neatly in about an hour. To speak plainly: the show's main export is just plain fun. It's fun to watch the time-displaced cop rediscover everything about the 20th century that we take for granted (like junk food, boxing [which is outlawed in his time but not any other martial art - go figure], amusement parks, and the fact that here he's not a minority at all (which is something one commenter already hit on - they could have done a LOT more with - if the goal had been character development). It's also fun to watch him struggle with being two hundred years in his own past where his favorite restaurant has only one location and the chef hasn't figured out the signature recipe yet, where the Chicago Cubs suck even though they're a dynasty 200 years from now [which is a shame - it really only took about 8-9 years for the Cubs to make that leap, not 200], and he struggles with the idea that he may never go home, though that might not be bad considering he's found the cute ancestor of his former love.All of this didn't make the show great per se, but it did make the show special. In many ways it was akin to the radio shows of old, like the Shadow, where the contrived plots and weak villains are less important than the overall aesthetic that the show inspires. It was the genuine sense of wonder and amusement from rediscovering the present that helped the audiences simmer in Darien's nostalgia and homesickness.Fans of sci-fi will appreciate the techno-widgets and special effects for what they are - a means of conveying the storyline with dazzling and emotional spectacle; however, if you're looking for spectacular drama, you've come to the wrong place. Here's my advice: don't go to the circus and expect to sit next to Hamlet, but if you do go, grab some cotton candy, ask a clown to teach you to juggle, pet the lions, and flirt with as many cute acrobats as you can see because you'll enjoy going a whole lot more.

"These are the journals of Darien Lambert, Captain, Fugitive Retrieval Section, AD 2193..."One of the first shows made for what would eventually become the WB, "Time Trax" does bear similarities to "Quantum Leap," but this formulaic SF/action show also owed more than a little to the minor classic "Trancers" (criminals time travelling with drugs, etc). Too bad it was never really as witty or as interesting, though - though it's not like that movie's writers Paul De Meo and Danny Bilson are strangers to TV shows that, though entertaining, never really flourish (witness "The Flash" and "The Sentinel").While our hero was hardly a superman, he did have more endurance than most 20th century people (an indication of how stronger people get as time goes by), and the feature-length pilot also proposed that Lambert was something of a prejudiced-against minority in his own time, a notion that, since the series never went back to the 22nd century, was never seriously brought up again... but if it had been set back there the show might have ended before it did. Creators (and writers) Harve Bennett, Jeffrey Hayes and Grant Rosenberg were straitjacketed somewhat by their premise - note that the villain who Darien caught and sent back in the pilot was brought back (deformed of course; the series set up the rule that it's not safe for anyone to travel through time more than twice) to give him a recurring nemesis that he could actually fight, since the head villain Mordecai Sahmbi was hardly a physical threat; and the three-person rule about Darien's holographic partner Selma (activating Selma when another person is around, making it three people in that area, isn't allowed) also got broken, though they did acknowledge it.With Australia standing in for the entire world (even Australia in one episode), it certainly looked nice - except for the episode where Darien went to a foggy London - but the show never had what it took to be a real contender, in spite of OK acting; blame the scripts. I've always enjoyed time travel movies and TV shows (though strangely enough I never got into "Doctor Who"), but it's impossible to think this'll really develop a cult following the way "The Time Tunnel" did. But then, that show didn't have a gratuitous plug for Continental Airlines in its opening credits.

It is rare that I find myself looking forward to watching re-run TV programs, "Time Trax" is one of those interesting shows that I keep tuning in for on the SciFi Channel.Darien Lambert (Dale Midkiff) is a policeman from the future (25th Century or so) who must travel back in time (usually the present) to find and send back to his time "criminals" who have also time travelled and are usually endangering the current time's inhabitants with advanced devices ("of EVIL").Darien is assisted by his holographic computer "Selma" (smartly played by Elizabeth Alexander) who appears from his rather futuristic credit card / weapon / transporter.This show is pure fantasy and, at times, corny, but Dale Midkiff makes his character impressively believable.