Not to date myself, but it was, oh, 40 years ago or so when I first watched the now mostly forgotten TV show Voyagers! as a kid. A time-travel romp with an occasionally steampunk vibe, the short-lived series featured a kid as one half of its time-hopping duo, so the self-identification factor was built into the show for the young’uns like me who were watching. On top of that, the kid (Jeffrey, played by Meeno Peluce) was kind of a nerd – big on history and basically the “smart one” in his pairing with the “Voyager” Phineas Bogg (the late Jon-Erik Hexum). Hey, I knew about the Wright brothers too – maybe I could also be a time-traveller!

But the real appeal of Voyagers! for me was in the time-travel mechanism that the Voyagers like Bogg used: the Omni. For whatever reason, this thing really hit me where I lived.

The Omni was a handheld device that, while sci-fi by its very nature, was very much centered in that steampunk design realm. Seemingly cast in brass and complete with mechanical dials and a tiny globe that allowed its user to zero in on a specific time and place to travel to, the Omni also had rivets and a hinge that its cover hung from, red and green lights, and a push-button mechanism to activate it. The prop’s very design also told a story about the Voyagers (a group of time-travellers whose mission is to make sure the timeline stays on track) that the short-lived show never quite got the chance to do: These people were advanced enough to invent time travel, yet they preferred their tech to be more Jules Verne than Gene Roddenberry in style.

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