Seven Days

Alien Technology

Remember that alien spacecraft that crashed at Roswell, New Mexico back in the 1940s? Well, turns out our government has been studying that craft for a long time. By reverse engineering, they've created a large blue sphere using the alien technology. Does it travel through space? Well, no. But it does travel through time. So now the government has a working time machine.

There's a catch, several in fact. The craft can only carry one person, and it can only travel back in time seven days. It's still a mighty handy thing to have around if you have a cataclysm you want to undo. Assuming you can find someone to fly it.

Time Travel: Not All It's Cracked Up To Be

That's the other catch. Controlling the blue sphere is not easy. It takes lightning reflexes and a high pain threshold. The scientists at Project Backstep test many potential 'chrononauts', including military test pilots, and only one man makes the grade. His name is Frank Parker (Jonathan LaPaglia) and they've sprung him from a CIA loony bin.

Fortunately for the sake of the nation and the world, Parker's insanity is of the hard-drinking, brawling, can't accept authority lone-wolf variety, so it turns out he's the ideal person, not just to pilot the sphere, but also to be sent back in time to singlehandedly save the day. Over and over again.

Seven Days Cast

When not saving the world, Frank tries to make time with no-nonsense Russian scientist Dr. Olga Vucavich (Justina Vail), who keeps insisting she's not interested. But... is she? Captain Mike Donovan (Don Franklin) is the military liaison and Frank's old buddy. Wheelchair-bound genius Dr. Johnathan Ballard (Sam Whipple) keeps the sphere in working order, Dr. Isaac Mentor (Norman Lloyd) lives up to his name and is the resident sage, while Security Chief Nathan Ramsey (Nick Searcy) is the thorn in Parker's side, the man who regularly insists that Parker is untrustworthy and not right for the job. Overseeing the whole is Talmadge (Alan Scarfe).

The Show

In the pilot episode, the sphere and the Backstep team are by no means fully tested and ready to go, but they have to go anyway. A terrorist attack has destroyed the White House and killed the President, Vice President, and Speaker of the House.

Seven Days did not have recurring villains (though Ramsey seemed to be trying out for the part), just an endless series of catastrophes and generic bad guys. The technology itself was often the drama-engine. The Project Backstep engineers had managed to get the sphere to work, but that didn't mean they knew exactly how it worked. And of course, what sci-fi series would be complete without the well-known 'caught in a time loop' episode?

In the pilot episode, Parker was a downright obnoxious character. Many TV series heroes start out this way, but the producers tend to tone down and sand off the rough edges so that by the middle of the first season, the character has become a generic action hero. It is to the Seven Days producers' credit that they allowed Parker to remain refreshingly obnoxious throughout the run of the series, while still letting us in on his better qualities.

Production/Air History

Seven Days premiered on UPN in 1998 and ran for three years.