Doctor Who returned for its eighth modern season, with Peter Capaldi’s Twelve enjoying a Victorian adventure with his latest companion, Clara Oswin Oswald (Jenna Coleman). And that’s a big part of the appeal of Doctor Who, isn’t it? The idea of getting a guided tour of all of time and space. If the TARDIS suddenly materialized in your living room and the Doctor invited you in, who wouldn’t be tempted to sign on for as long as he’d have you? But if you’re going to travel through time, you want to have good company and you want it to not be an enormous pain in the ass. As you’ll see in this article, that’s not always guaranteed. Sometimes you get a sweet-ass DeLorean, sure…but sometimes you get Ashton Kutcher.

Just in case you’re in the market for a vacation into last week, you’ll definitely want to consider your options. Thankfully we did the legwork for you. Here are our picks for which time travelers would be worth your time, and which ones you’ll want to avoid at all costs.

If you’re old enough to have been hooked on Quantum Leap back in the day, actor Dean Stockwell will always be the amusingly lecherous Al Calavicci. He was Dr. Sam Beckett’s guide through the timestream, tasked with helping Sam maintain his sanity and figure out why he had been dropped into a given time and place. He was also the comic relief to Scott Bakula’s straight-man Sam, forever arguing with Ziggy, ogling at any female that wandered into his field of vision, and delivering a barrage of double entendres whenever Sam found himself trapped inside a woman’s body. But Stockwell made Al more than just a vehicle for exposition and cheap jokes. At times his performance carried enormous emotional weight, especially during the leaps where Sam found himself involved in Al’s tragic past — he was held as a POW during the Vietnam War, during which time his wife believed him dead and remarried. Seriously, if you made it through the scene where he holographically danced with his wife to “Georgia on My Mind” without tearing up, you’re a cold-hearted monster. (Annoyingly, I can only find the clip in Spanish, but the feels are still there.)

Today Doctor Who fans all over the world finally got to see the much-ballyhooed 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor. Since I’m writing this some time before I finally sat down to watch it, I’ve got no idea what surprises the special has to offer, aside from the ones already revealed. I’m going to guess it will probably have plenty of thrills, possibly some chills. I’m pretty much certain it will make us laugh, quite likely everytime David Tennant and Matt Smith are onscreen together. I will probably get a little choked up somewhere toward the end of it.

But after all these months of anticipation, there’s bound to be a sense of anti-climactic frustration. Now that we’ve seen The Day of the Doctor, the wait for the Christmas special — and with it, a new Doctor — has begun. So now what? I know several Who noobies who have been frantically marathoning their way through at least the modern episodes of the show so they’d be caught up in time for the special. If that’s you, or if you’re just a loyal fan looking for a new bit of entertainment (or an old one to revisit), here are several excellent choices to fill your eyeholes with. And they’re all available streaming online, because that’s just how much we love you.

With the ridiculous popularity of YouTube and the widespread availability of editing software, it’s easier than ever to become internet famous. Maybe you shoot a hilarious short video that explodes across the Twitter-verse. Maybe you luck into having your camera phone ready when a local celebrity is hit in the crotch by a migrating red-breasted nuthatch. Or maybe — just maybe — you realize that footage from the Back to the Future movies would be awesome if edited together beneath the audio from the Knight Rider intro.

I don’t think anyone saw this coming, which is perhaps why no one was really paying attention when Scott Bakula broke the news at Comic Con that Quantum Leap is being turned into a movie. There’s a problem though: Bakula isn’t involved. No surprise, he’s now too old. Here’s what Blastr picked up from the original Sam Beckett:

The good news is that Don [Quantum Leap creator Donald P. Bellisario] is working on the film script and has a big time Hollywood producer who wants to do it … It’s about time. But what I always thought would happen, happened … [that he’s now too old for the role]. But Dean [Stockwell, who played Al] and I will have a part in it somehow.

Don did say that as he was writing, he told me he was having trouble, ‘getting you and Dean out of my head.’ But I know he will do it.

It’s hard to imagine the Leap without Bakula in the lead and Stockwell has his ever-present sidekick Al, but there’s no denying that they’re both probably too old for the role now. On the other hand, the storyline of the show could be fantastic if turned into a movie series and because of the way the show was structured, with Sam leaping into a completely different life every week, they could do it without having to really revisit territory the show already covered. Don’t think of it so much as a reboot as a resurrection of one of the greatest science fiction stories ever told on television.

Before Hollywood announces yet another reboot of some already beloved science fiction movie franchise, let’s give them a few better ideas. Since we’re talking about the entertainment industry, we can’t expect anything to original. But it doesn’t have to be. There’s a wealth of science fiction out there, just waiting for some movie studio to pick it up and do something with it. No more waiting. Drop that Back to the Future remake Hollywood and do something with these already brilliant sci-fi properties instead:

FuturamaIt worked for The Simpsons and they ran out of jokes ten years ago. Futurama on the other hand, thanks to frequent network cancelling, is still young as when the world was new. Matt Groening’s other animated masterpiece has never gotten a fair shake, but with its spacey setting and tendency towards blaster fire, it’s far more suited to the big screen than Springfield’s favorite family. It’s animation, yes, but animation for adults. Feel free to take things up a notch for the theatrical version, hook Bender up with a three-nippled robot hooker, and slap it with an “R” rating. Or if you’re really feeling spendy, ditch the animation and give us a live action version.

The Pitch: A pizza delivery boy is accidentally frozen for a thousand years, and wakes up in the future. There he finds employment at the interplanetary delivery company, Planet Express, and struggles to fit in with the company’s strange assortment of employees. His best friend is an alcoholic robot, he’s in love with a smoking hot kung-fu Cyclops who finds him repulsive, and he’s employed by a mad scientist with an increasingly bad case of dementia. Hilarity ensues. Think Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy meets Encino Man.

Quantum LeapWe’re running out of time on Quantum Leap. Scott Bakula isn’t getting any younger. In fact we’re probably out of time and if there’s any hope that the early 90s most brilliant sci-fi show will ever get its cinematic due, it’ll have to start all over with a new Sam Beckett. Much as I love Bakula, I can live with that. It’s Dean Stockwell Quantum Leap can’t live without. Stockwell’s stint in Battlestar proved he’s still spry enough to play the wise-cracking, cigar-smoking Al and Quantum Leap’s resonate style of character-driven storytelling is still as relevant as it ever was. Maybe even more so. Imagine Sam leaping into 9/11. Oh boy.

The Pitch: A botched experiment sends Sam Becket leaping through time. But Sam can explain it better than I can. “It all started when a time travel experiment I was conducting went… “a little caca”. In the blink of a cosmic clock, I went from quantum physicist to Air Force test-pilot. Which could have been fun… if I knew how to fly. Fortunately, I had help – an observer from the project named Al. Unfortunately, Al’s a hologram, so all he can lend is moral support. Anyway, here I am, bouncing around in time, putting things right that once went wrong, a sort of time traveling Lone Ranger, with Al as my Tonto. And I don’t even need a mask… Oh Boy”