Voyagers!

Recap
A swashbuckling pirate time traveler teams up with a young history expert to put history back to rights when it goes off track.
Spoiler Level: Way, way past the point of spoilers!
Review
Voyagers Opening Narration
“We travel through time to help history along… give it a push where it’s needed. When the Omni’s red, it means history’s wrong. Our job is to get everything back on track.”
Sometimes history goes awry, and a group of time travelers known as Voyagers traverse time and space to put it back to rights. Phineas Bogg (Jon-Erik Hexum), a swashbuckling hero, was one such Voyager. The only problem is, he didn’t really pay that much attention in Voyager school and depended on his guidebook to let him know what needed to be fixed. When Phineas accidentally lands in 1982 (a year he shouldn’t have been able to travel to) he loses his book but gains a companion, Jeffrey Jones (Meeno Peluce). Jeffrey’s parents were killed in an accident, and he was living with his aunt and Uncle who did not want him, so his chance encounter with Phineas, whisked him away on adventures he could only dream of. His father was a history professor, and with Phineas clueless on the actual history of the world, he had to rely on Jeffrey for instructions on how to fix where history had gone off course. They travel through time using a device called “The Omni” which would flash red when something was wrong and flash green when it was fixed. Even though Phineas liked to act tough he developed a strong bond with Jeffrey and the two made a very formidable team.

VOYAGERS! — “Voyagers!” Episode 1 — Aired 10/3/82 — Pictured: (l-r) Meeno Peluce as Jeffrey Jones, Jon-Erik Hexum as Phineas Bogg (Photo by NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
The show aired on NBC from October 3, 1982 to July 10, 1983. The production value of the show was good, with little post production special effects, but plenty of practical effects. The show was an action adventure at its heart, but with a romantic element as well. Jon-Erik Hexum would always find a woman to woo in nearly every episode, and who wouldn’t fall for the charming and chiseled muscular pirate which Hexum played so well. Meeno Peluce was also very good as the daring and courageous yet smart way beyond his years child, who loses his parents and overhears an argument between his uncle and aunt on how they don’t want him. Feeling completely alone in the world, he finds a father figure in Phineas and Phineas finds a connection to something that went beyond his usual shallow relationships. The show ran for a full season with 20 episodes and did quite well in the ratings on Sunday nights. But NBC believed they had a chance to challenge the top-rated Sunday night show, CBS’s 60 Minutes, and so cancelled Voyagers to replace it with their own news program Monitor. This is one of the rare cases, where a show was not cancelled due to ratings. Meeno would go on to become an actual history teacher and would later return to the industry both as a writer, director and actor. Jon-Erik Hexum’s career would be cut short, while filming his next show, Cover Up, he was playing with a gun loaded with blanks. Not realizing the dangers that even blanks could present, Hexum put the gun to his head and fired, the blunt force of the shot caused a fragment of his skull to enter the brain and caused his death.
I am the same age as Meeno Peluce and when the show premiered in 1982, I found a character I could completely relate to. He was the brains to Phineas’ brawn and together they were both heroes I could look up to. The stories were fascinating to me, and the show definitely had a educational element to it. In fact, at the end of each episode, a voice over of Meeno saying that If you wanted to learn more about the historical stories that were featured in the episode, “take a voyage to your public library. It’s all in books!”. And because of this show, I did just that (this is way before the internet) learning much about all sorts of historical subjects. To this day, this remains one of my all-time favorite shows.
Final Thoughts
This show still remains one of my all time favorites and it is very sad it was cancelled prematurely. On a personal note, Jon-Erik Hexum was my very first celebrity crush, although I didn't realize that is what it was until much later in life.
Forgotten Television: Voyagers!
- Writing - 10/1010/10
- Storyline - 10/1010/10
- Acting - 9/109/10
- Music - 9/109/10
- Production - 9/109/10