821-Time Chasers

Film Year:  1994
Genre:  Science Fiction, Adventure
Director:  David Giancola
Starring:  Matthew Bruch, Bonnie Pritchard, Peter Harrington, George Woodard
MST Season:  8

The Movie

Time travel.  It’s that one sci-fi trope that sparks much creativity but rarely ever makes sense, even when the story is well told.  To any avid follower of science fiction those words are bound to give a headache.  Just mention them to a Star Trek fan and you’ll hear hours of bitching and moaning about the subject.  Honestly, I love the story in the writer’s room of Next Generation which ends with one of the debaters slamming his fist on the table and screaming “Damnit!  That’s not how time travel works!”

Back to the Future came out in 1985, was a huge hit, cue lackluster attempts to recreate it.  While I’d rather not assume that was the intentions of the creative force behind Time Chasers, originally titled Tangents, but let’s face facts, it’s the most logical conclusion.  Or at the very least I imagine the people who pushed to make it watched Back to the Future and became one of those people that slams their fist down and says “That’s not how time travel works!”

At the heart of Time Chasers is a pretty good idea.  It features a man who created time travel finding the wondrous future turned to crap the minute he exposes the technology to the world, as endless tangents through history take their toll on the timeline until dystopia results.  The unfortunate problem with this movie is that they don’t have proper funding to develop their script and execute their story.  When a time travel movie’s pivotal moments involve a depiction of an ideal future involving spandex, spandex, and more spandex and a dark alternate future of an empty alleyway with a bit of littering, it’s hard to get fully invested in it.

If I were to give Time Chasers credit where credit is due, the movie has a whole lot of heart.  It’s clear the people making this movie want it to be as good as it can possibly be under the circumstances, and they look like they’re having the time of their life doing it.  It’s enough to push it into mediocre territory, but it rarely can be considered objectively good.  Just try not to slam your fist down and scream “That’s not how time travel works!”

The Episode

Recently Rifftrax revisited Time Chasers for one of their live shows, and while I felt they had a lot of good fortune with re-riffs of Manos, Santa Claus, and to a lesser extent Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, lightning unfortunately didn’t strike twice (ONE POINT TWENTY-ONE GIGAWATS?!?!) with this particular movie.  This my first time watching this episode since seeing the live show and I find it particularly odd that they would revisit this particular movie.  They’ve re-riffed other classic MST movies, but this one, one that Mike, Kevin, and Bill have all tackled before, seems like they did something far more special with.  I don’t mean that as a knock to the other re-riffed episodes, which were good in their own right, but Time Chasers was molded into a unique MST episode, one that the movie influenced and feels like should be exclusively to it.

I might not feel that way if the movie inspired host segments didn’t exist, which features Crow going back in time to convince Mike to never take the temp job that sent him up into space during the Mitchell episode.  Upon returning to the altered future Crow discovers he accidentally killed Mike and for an entire movie segment he and Servo are forced to riff the film with Mike’s replacement, his temperamental brother Eddie (also played by Mike).  This plotline is far more creative than the series usually pumps out, and considering they’ve been struggling to maintain a “story arc” that has been mandated by the Sci-Fi Channel this entire season, they pretty much prove they can do a strong one if they’re motivated to do so.  The problem with doing the season arc is that they really had no inspiration for it, so they wandered about wherever they felt like going.  With this episode, the seed is planted by the movie, and they ride it to a glorious high.

That said, Eddie’s movie segment is a bit weak.  Mike seems to be struggling to keep the laugh quota up while staying in character, while Servo and Crow spend too much time pandering to this character to really keep the work up on their own.  The other three movie segments are strong, however, bringing solid steady laughs throughout the episode.  One weak segment is a small price to pay for a whole episode experience.  That’s what Time Chasers is to me, and unfortunately I would have been perfectly happy to leave this episode as its sole exorcise in the riffing world.

Classic

The DVD

Time Chasers was gifted upon us in Rhino’s Volume 5 collection, with swell picture and sound.  The only special feature was an intro by Mike, who reflects on being contacted by the makers of this episode.

Volume 5 was re-released by Shout Factory.  Time Chasers maintained it's intro by Mike.