HG Wells’ character in the Time Machine, could control his time travel and we tend to think of this as the first time travel saga. There was also the dream/time travel tale of the Great Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee At King Arthur’s Court.
However, arguably, the Dickens character Ebenezer Scrooge was the first literary time traveller, albeit only able to view the past, and see possible futures and within his own lifetime. It seems fitting that the Doctor should be in a Christmas Carol drama, being the UK’s premier, adopted, time traveller. Able to travel through time but not entirely under his own control either, due to the vagaries of the Time And Relative Dimensions In Space.
George Bailey, in It’s A Wonderful Life, was given a chance to see a world in which he had never existed, in an American update on the Christmas Carol theme. Where as Scrooge was shown how the world could be if he continued in his present ways, George Bailey was shown what would have happened if he had never had any influence at all. It’s a Wonderful Life was not particularly popular with audiences at the time of its release.
Possibly due to the supernatural element of angels, and the main character travelling to a time in which he didn’t exist, a parallel universe.
Film Noir, was a popular genre in immediate post war cinema and yet this was a piece of smalltown, apple pie, whimsy. Except, as David Thomson * points out, it becomes a Film Noir like nightmare for George.
The subsequent re emergence of It’s A Wonderful Life, through TV re runs, and the support of more recent filmmakers, Speilberg for example, has helped lead into the present era in which Sci-Fi and Fantasy/Horror, movies and literature are more than common place, they are the norm. These genres are no longer just a male preserve, if they ever really were. Harry Potter and the Twilight series, and the Time Travellers Wife attest to this.
What each of these tales have in common are characters travelling in time/struggling in parallel universes yet never the less, waging the age old battle of good against evil. Fantasy and Science (fiction) applied in our worlds against these perennial opposing religious forces.
Whether it’s the first time traveller Scrooge mending his ways and crossing the divide, or the selfless actions of George Bailey, ensuring Bedford Falls survives, or the Doctor pitting wits against the Evil Daleks and guaranteeing that our world never descends into a form of dystopia - Pottersville. They are never completely in control of their time travel, but they are engaged in this age old battle.
* A Biographical Dictionary Of Film – David Thomson
