34-Episode Netflix Sci-Fi Series Delivers A Different Kind Of Time Travel Story

Published Oct 27, 2026, 11:00 PM EDT Tom is a Senior Staff Writer at Screen Rant, with expertise covering everything from hilarious sitcoms to jaw-dropping sci-fi epics. Initially he was an Updates writer, though before long he found his way to the TV and movies team. He now spends his days keeping Screen Rant readers informed about the TV shows of yesteryear, whether it's recommending hidden gems that may have been missed by genre fans or deep diving into ways your favorite shows have (or haven't) stood the test of time. Tom is based in the UK and when he's not writing about TV shows, he's watching them. He's also an avid horror fiction writer, gamer, and has a Dungeons and Dragons habit that he tries (and fails) to keep in check. If there’s one concept sci-fi has been fascinated with for almost as long as the genre has existed, it’s time travel. That’s especially true on television, where dozens of shows have sent their characters hurtling back into the past or jumping forward what lies ahead. Even series that aren’t dedicated to the idea still find room for an adventure through time. Space operas, speculative anthologies, and even superhero shows have all explored the consequences of tampering with history or discovering a future that was never meant to happen. The problem is that time travel has been used so often that it rarely feels quite as exciting as it once did. For many viewers, the genre has explored the possibilities from almost every conceivable angle, from disastrous changes to the past to endlessly repeating days. Yet one 34-episode Netflix series proves there are still ways to make the concept feel fresh. Better still, it demonstrates that a clever approach to time travel can sustain a story across multiple seasons. That show is Travelers. Created by Stargate SG-1 and The Outer Limits writer Brad Wright, Travelers focuses on operatives from a devastated future who are sent back to the 21st century to prevent humanity’s collapse. Rather than arriving in a machine or stepping through a portal, they take over the lives of people in the present, carrying out secret missions while maintaining their hosts’ identities. Across three seasons released from 2016 to 2018, Travelers uses this unique setup to prove that time travel is far from an overdone concept. Netflix’s Travelers Puts A Unique Spin On Time Travel The appeal of Travelers for viewers already schooled in time-travel TV shows is in the distinct way it approaches the concept. The bodies of the time travelers in the Netflix show never leave the future. Instead, their consciousnesses are sent back into people in the 21st century, with each transfer timed to occur just before the host would have died. The operatives then take over their hosts’ lives, using historical records and whatever personal information survives to help them blend in while receiving missions from an artificial intelligence known as the Director. The central team includes leader Grant MacLaren (Eric McCormack), medical specialist Marcy Warton (MacKenzie Porter), and historian Philip Pearson (Reilly Dolman). Each traveler has to adjust to a life they know only through records. MacLaren must maintain his marriage and career, while Philip inherits his host’s heroin addiction. Perhaps most drastically, Marcy, the host of Traveler 3569, isn’t the gifted present-day doctor future records indicated, but a woman with severe brain damage. Saving the future is difficult enough without having to conceal a completely different personality from everyone who knew the person whose body they now inhabit, especially when that identity comes with flaws that make actively completing missions infinitely more difficult. That setup gives Travelers a refreshing source of tension and puts a unique spin on the traditional “fix the past to save the future” setup that many time-travel TV shows rely on. The team can’t simply hop back to the past, complete a mission and then return to their own era. They have to remain in the present day and live with the consequences of assuming someone else's identity. Across Traveler’s three seasons, relationships both within the team and with those close to the hosts grow complicated, incomplete records leave dangerous knowledge gaps, and following the Director’s instructions can demand painful sacrifices. The lives MacLaren and his team inherit become just the foundation for story arcs just as gripping as the future they’re trying to save, giving Travelers levels of interpersonal drama few other time-travel sci-fi shows can match. Travelers Isn’t The Only Netflix Show That Makes Time Travel Interesting Again Travelers is a thrilling watch from start to finish, and a refreshing one for sci-fi fans who think they’ve seen all that time-travel has to offer. However, it isn’t the only Netflix series that manages to push the concept into new territory. One of the best time-travel shows Netflix has to offer is the German series Dark. This three-season thriller turns the disappearance of a child into a mystery that stretches across generations, using its tangled timelines to explore the secrets and choices connecting several families. It’s much more unsettling than Travelers, but both shows understand how entertaining people trying to change events they only partly understand can be. Then there’s Russian Doll, which ran across two seasons from 2019-2022 and takes a more darkly comic approach. In this time-travel Netflix original sci-fi series, Nadia Vulvokov (Natasha Lyonne) repeatedly dies and returns to her 36th birthday party, with the time loop forcing her to confront her own behavior. Its second season finds another use for time travel, sending Nadia back to live as not only her mother, but her grandmother too. Meanwhile, the 2023 Netflix miniseries Bodies combines time-travel with a murder investigation: detectives in four different eras discover the same body, leading them toward a conspiracy spanning more than a century. Then there’s, of course, The Umbrella Academy, which uses jumps through time to complicate the already dysfunctional relationships between its superhero siblings and repeatedly threaten them with the apocalypse. Each show uses time travel for a different purpose, whether that’s creating a mystery, examining family trauma, or delivering a chaotic superhero adventure. Alongside Travelers, they make a strong case for Netflix quietly being the destination for inventive time-travel TV shows. The concept has been a science-fiction staple for decades, but these series show just how much life it still has. Release Date 2016 - 2018-00-00 Network showcase, Netflix Directors Andy Mikita, Amanda Tapping, William Waring, Helen Shaver, Martin Wood Writers Ashley Park, Pat Smith, Jason Whiting, Ken Kabatoff, S.B. Edwards, Mika Collins, Amanda Smith-Kolic, Tara Armstrong Cast Eric McCormack Grant MacLaren MacKenzie Porter Marcy Warton