6 of The Best Time-Travel Heroes

Whether it is a 50-year-long saga like Doctor Who or newer sci-fi hits like Primeval and Heroes, time travel has become a stable part of modern-day sci-fi. Time travelling heroes and heroines have been saving Earth from dinosaurs, aliens and monsters for decades, with some using their superpowers to jump through the aeons whilst The Doctor chooses his famous blue box to zip through space and time. To celebrate the DVD and Blu-ray release of DC’s own epic time-travelling saga, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow out August 29th, let’s take a look at the sci-fi spectaculars and their brilliant main characters.

Doctor Who – The Doctor

The mighty and mysterious Gallifrayen known only as ‘The Doctor’ is a renegade Time Lord who travels through time and space with various witty, brilliant and sometimes eccentric companions in his obsolete and “borrowed” Type 40 TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space). The Doctor has travelled through time and across stars on our TV screens for over 50 years, saving the cosmos thousands of times from Cybermen, Daleks, The Silence and the Weeping Angels to name but a few.

Primeval – Nick Cutter

When a secret government research team is tasked with investigating the appearance of doors through time and space known as ‘anomalies’ , they suddenly realise that a host of creatures from the Earth’s distant past and far off future are beginning to wander into the 21st century. The original team leader from seasons 1-3 was the evolutionary zoologist Nick Cutter. Cutter and the team saved London from a 17-foot-long aquatic Mosasaur that appeared in a swimming pool, returned a Mammoth that was terrorising the M25 to its home 8,000 years ago and fought off a brood of future predators that threatened humanity’s existence.

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow – Rip Hunter

After seeing a future threatened by an immortal evil, the time-travelling rogue, Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill) assembles a team of not just heroes, but of legends. This rag-tag team of winged heroes (Hawkman and Hawkgirl), ice-gun-wielding criminals (Captain Cold), former assassins (White Canary) and even meta-humans from the future (The Reverse-Flash) travel through time to prevent the rise of the evil Vandal Savage and save the universe. The former Time-Master Rip Hunter led the Legends behind the Iron Curtain of the USSR, brought them crashing down to Star City in 2046, and even fought gangs of outlaws in the Old West.

Back to the Future – Marty McFly

The awkward Californian teenager (played by Michael J. Fox) is the main protagonist of the timeless Back to the Future trilogy and is the ‘first person to travel backwards in time’ after Doc Brown creates a time machine out of a DeLorean DMC-12. Marty first is sent back to 1955 where he accidently intervenes in his own parent’s meeting, and must ensure they fall in love to remain in existence. The first sequel to this classic movie involves Marty travelling forward to the year 2015 to help his future children, with the third instalment needing Marty to go back in time to 1885 to save Doc when he is trapped there.

Life on Mars – Sam Tyler

The amazingly talented John Simm takes the role of Sam Tyler in the BBC show Life on Mars. After being hit by a car in 2006, the DCI (Detective Chief Inspector) wakes up in 1973 working in the same police station, albeit at a lower rank of DI (Detective Inspector). It remains unclear throughout the series whether Sam is in a coma, mad or travelled through time, as parts of 2006 seem to bleed through into 1973.

Heroes – Hiro Nakamura

This shy evolved human developed the ability to bend time and space following an eclipse, and quickly starts to expand on his teleportation abilities to jump from Tokyo to New York in the blink of an eye. Hiro also has the ability to travel in time, which he uses to try and save the girl he loves, Charlie, from the murderous Sylar, but also travelled back to ancient Japan to restore Takezo Kensei to glory. Time-travel became an essential part of defeating the onslaught of villains in the Heroes saga, with more to come in Heroes: Reborn.

The Best Time-Travel Heroes – Own Legends of Tomorrow Season 1 on Blu-ray & DVD August 29.