\n<\/p>\n
Not to date myself, but it was, oh, 40 years ago or so when I first watched the now mostly forgotten TV show Voyagers!<\/u> 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\u2019uns like me who were watching. On top of that, the kid (Jeffrey, played by Meeno Peluce) was kind of a nerd \u2013 big on history and basically the \u201csmart one\u201d in his pairing with the \u201cVoyager\u201d Phineas Bogg (the late Jon-Erik Hexum). Hey, I knew about the Wright brothers too \u2013 maybe I could also be a time-traveller!<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
So anyway, I became fixated on this hunk of metal. And you know, this was of course way before the internet, so it wasn\u2019t like you could just google \u201cvoyagers omni\u201d to learn more about the device, or the show, or how the prop was made. It also didn\u2019t help that Voyagers! was cancelled after its first season and basically consigned to TV oblivion for decades, so all a kid like me had was my memories of the Omni to keep this particular bit of fandom going. (My fixation on the watch-like Omni was certainly tied to my interest in the even-more-forgotten TV movie The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything<\/u>, which was about a gold pocket watch which could stop time. Which is without a doubt why I got a pocket watch as my First Communion gift!)<\/p>\n
The thing is, eventually I did <\/em>google \u201cvoyagers omni\u201d and I realized that there were various fans<\/u> out there who\u2019ve attempted to build their own Omnis over the years. And some of them have looked pretty amazing<\/u>, too. But they always seemed hard to find and\/or very expensive. Still, that changed for me recently when I discovered a (mostly) 3D-printed version of the Omni on Etsy<\/u>. At like $250, it was a steal, and so I finally got my own. Check it out:<\/p>\n