Frank Parker becomes the world's first chrononaut when a disaster occurs resulting in the first proper run for Project Backstep, a sphere that allows the occupant travel back in time seven days.
Pilots can be a bit slow sometimes, but that's the only problem the pilot for Seven Days really suffers from. It looks good, the characters are interesting, the lead is charismatic and time travel is invariably a great concept to base a successful show around (see Doctor Who, Quantum Leap as the best examples), although having the tiem travel tecvh left over from Roswell is a bit unnecessary.
In this first episode, Project Backstep auditions a group of applicants to become the first time traveller, and selects a man who has faithfully served his country as a Marine, Frank Parker, although one mission on which he was tortured left him in an asylum. The other Project members are: Captain Craig Donovan, an old friend and colleague of Parker's, Talmadge, the project head who reports directly to the NSA, Olga Vukavitch, a Russian scientist, Dr Ballard, a wheelchair-bound scientist, Isacc Mentor, another scientist who advises the Project, and Nate Ramsey, in charge of security and not a big fan of Parker, who he believes is unstable.
Parker's backsteps are only allowed when authorized by the NSA, so each week the series has to come up with some kind of major disaster that Frank is sent back to fix. This time, an aircraft hits the White House, killing the Presidnet, Vice President and many staff. But what Frank is more concerned about is that fumes from the plane spread to a nearby school, killing several kids, one of which was his son. This works well to give Parker a personal stake in succeeding.
The episode cleverly plays on the fact that Parker can only go back seven days. When the plane crashes, time obviously marches onward. Therefore, the longer it is before Parker backsteps, the less time he has to avert disaster. However, he can't go back if he doesn't know how to alter the event. This rush to get enough information is handled well, although once Parker backsteps, he simply has to ring in and give the Project team the information, and they're able to stop the crash within about five minutes, which is a little too easy.
There must be plenty of story ideas in the Seven Days concept, and as long as it can steer away from Sci-Fi cliché, it could be a huge hit show.
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