Time Warp Trio

A 2005 Discovery Kids series based off the book series of the same name.

The show mainly focuses around ordinary kid 10-year-old Joe, who, on his birthday, is given a mysterious book by his magician uncle who he was named after. This book, simply called "The Book", uses Time Travel to send Joe and his best friends, Sam and Fred, to the time of Blackbeard. They get out okay, but more time travel ensues. They soon travel to 2105, where they meet their own great-granddaughters named after them: Jodie, Samantha, and Freddi. Soon, the six of them go on time-warping adventures-usually three an episode, mix and match- and are sometimes joined by Joe's little sister Anna.

It ran 26 episodes from 2005 to 2006. A second season was ordered but has not been announced, although it was recently moved to a new and more appropriate time slot. Now airs on The Hub.

Note: This article is NOT for the books, but the TV show adaption!

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This show contains examples of:

• Absentee Actor: None of the original trio (Fred, Joe, and Sam) appear in Lewis and Clark....and Jodie, Freddi, and Samantha; and The High and Flighty, which instead focus on Freddi, Jodie, and Samantha.
  • As for the boys separately:
    • Fred is absent in Nightmare on Joe’s Street, Breaking the Codex, and Plaid to the Bone. 
    • Joe is absent in Birdman or Birdbrain, My Big Fat Greek Olympics; What’s So Great About Peter?; The Caveman Catastrophe; and Harem Scare’m.
    • Sam is absent in Birdman or Birdbrain?, Breaking the Codex, and Plaid to the Bone.
• Adaptation Expansion: A lot of it. For example, the books had no Big Bad.
• A Day in the Limelight: Along with adding a big bad, the girls get their own adventures by themselves.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In "The Seven Blunders of the world", there's this with Hamonri and "Marduke"

Mardude': And so you will. or i will rain fire upon your house, dry up your wells plague you with itches in hard to scratch places!

• Annoying Younger Sibling: Joe's sister who tags along every now and then. Ironically, she's said to have more skills in using the Book than her brother.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Uttered in the opening and played straight in the series; let's just say that imagining being into a historical setting compared to being IN it is two different things all together.
• Big Bad: Mad Jack
  • Give him points for being Joe's uncle.
• Book Dumb: Fred
• Cliff Hanger: At the end of "Able Was I Ere I Saw Elba", the book is seen being stolen by someone. this is continued in "The 7 blunders of the world
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Fred
• Deus Ex Machina: Sam and Samantha's pocket watch, the latter who modified it to allow them to hope forward or backward in time (albeit in random locations or only a few minutes back). Allowed the crew to fix major blunders during crucial moments.
  • It's also a Chekhov's Gun.
• Early-Bird Cameo?: Mad Jack appeared in the background of every episode before his official appearance. no joke.
• Foot Focus: Joe was forced to kiss a female priest's foot in "See You Later, Gladiator".
  • Oh, he didn't kiss just any female's; he kissed his SISTER'S because she had The Book and wouldn't save them unless he did so.
• Frankenstein's Monster: In "A Nightmare on Joe's street"
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: For a kids' series, the show is surprisingly violent. No blood or gore shown but a few historical characters do get killed (the camera pulls away when they do).
• Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: In one episode, Joe, Samantha and Fred accidentally cause Napoleon to win the Battle of Waterloo. When they return to the present, the U.S. is now "New France" and they are forced to go back in time and fix it.
• How We Got Here: The preview before the opening shows the gang stuck in the past. After the opening, we figure out how the heck they get there.
• Inn Between the Worlds: Mable's Diner is a diner for time travelers that exist out of any one time zone.
• Megane: Sam and Samantha
• Memento MacGuffin: The Book was given to Joe on his 10th birthday.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: More often, it's Fred's fault that they're stuck in the past.
• Not a Game: Both trios are in real danger of being killed during their time travels, largely due to less then savory historical characters.
• One Steve Limit: Averts it hard.
• OOC Is Serious Business: In Where's My Karma, Fred becomes amazingly smart when he notices that Joe was a horrible magician, so he couldn't have been making himself disappear.
• Panthera Awesome: In "Me Oh Maya", the kids are kidnapped by Mayan soldiers and taken to be eaten by jaguars.
• Pun-Based Title: Time Warp Trio does this for the episode titles. Examples: "Me Oh Maya", "My Big Fat Greek Olympics", "You Can't, But Genghis Khan".
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Fred being the one who's off to face whatever's in front of them, Sam being the one who wants to think logically.
• Stable Time Loop: Most of the time when the trios go back to the past, they don't affect the future (save for a few cases). A major danger though is that the crew have to avoid being killed during their adventures and keep their book intact. Especially true for the boys cause if something happens to them in the far off past (or get stuck too long in the future), their granddaughters will never be born.
  • This was definitely played straight in the Amelia Earhart episode. Freddi wants to figure out what happened to her...only to find out that when the Female Trio got to the plane that Amelia was asking who THEY were and how they got on her plane.
• Talking Animal: In "Harem Scarem", a monkey at first appears to be a case of Consulting Mister Puppet. It turns out to be this.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Samantha loves onion rings so much she regularly goes to the past of or to Maples to get them.
• The Un-Reveal: There are two instances of this: The first one is Joe fighting his uncle in an epic fight, and Sam being told he'd invent something super amazing that'd change everything.
• Walk the Plank: Subverted. Some pirates hear them mention it and think it's a good idea. Later on, some British guy hears this and tells another British guy to write it down, as it's "a splendid idea".
• Wild Hair: Seems to be genetic in Sam's family (sams hair is an unruly black blob, Samantha's hair is styled oddly in a series of wavy bun-like things, and Sam's Russian ancestor has an unruly beard that his refusal to shave almost gets him executed over and that he uses to hide things in).
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Subverted.