#tiny time travel

[personinthepalace]

Odd Squad agents in Tiny Time Travel and Dino Dana -> thanks to @serendertothesquad for the heads up!

[pbskidsnews]

Unexpected news drop with info about season renewals, and short-form content. There's too much to list here so I'll just drop an overview:

Molly of Denali has been renewed for a fourth season. New episodes start March 25th. This season will include a media literacy story arc.

New episodes of Daniel Tiger start on May 6th.

Short-form series for both Donkey Hodie (Donkey Hodie Bedtime Stories) and Nature Cat (Nature Chat with Nature Cat), about bedtime and the environment respectively.

A rare moment where PBS introduces acquired content. British television series Milo will be premiering in May. IIRC the series debuted a couple of years ago in the UK.

Full summaries for the Wild Kratts and Nature Cat movies

A new short form series cammed Tiny Time Travel

Full article here: Exclusive Clip: PBS KIDS' New Live-Action Series "Tiny Time Travel" - Plus Spring Release Schedule for Returning Shows and Specials - (laughingplace.com)

Looks like the Nintendo Direct isn't the only big thing happening today -- we have an absolutely atomic PBS Kids newsbomb!

Looks like PBS is venturing into live-action once again, following the massive success of Odd Squad (and Odd Squad UK, though that'll probably be marketed as Season 4 so assume it's under the Odd Squad banner). We have a new show drop, complete with teaser trailer! We also have more information on the shorts from Donkey Hodie and Nature Cat, information on PBS's move to airing acquired content alongside content they've made themselves, and a ton more. And fuck man if I don't mean a ton more.

I'd provide a complete rundown beyond the ask but I need a nap so I'll encourage folks to peek at the article for the full deets instead.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Tumblydove! (Especially from an underground source not on my radar...very interesting. Will have to add to my sources list!)

[serendertothesquad]

Seren's Studies: Tiny Time Travel And What It Takes From Odd Squad

I didn't think I'd have to write two "Odd Squad knockoff???" essays within the span of a month. But lo and behold, an announcement came, left like a Black Friday sale, and then got extended as it was heavily promoted by PBS Kids up the wazoo.

I talk, of course, about their newest short-form series, Tiny Time Travel.

You might be wondering, "Okay, I can see one resemblance to Odd Squad...but is that really enough to compare it to a decade-old franchise?" And oh. Ohhh! I would say NAY. N A Y .

Because I've seen all the episodes of it. And I'm about to lay everything down on the line when it comes to how it's Odd Squad's adopted child.

Not a knockoff, mind you. This isn't Fear and Loathing in Wordsville 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Below the break. Chop chop. Time can only keep moving forward in the real world, sadly.

Let's start with a rundown for the uninitiated, because I guarantee hardly any of you have heard of this series.

Tiny Time Travel is a short-form series created by Tim McKeon, most famous for being a co-creator of Odd Squad. Unlike Odd Squad, it's under the banners of Marobru Productions, a prodco based in New York, and Easy as Pie Productions, a prodco based in Georgia. (Tim had his own prodco in the form of Hundredth Town Productions, along with Adam Peltzman, the other co-creator of Odd Squad. He doesn't own EAPP.) The series consists of 12 episodes, with no further seasons planned.

As for the premise...see if this rings a bell, hmm?

We have two 11-year-old boys, Tyler and Tony, the former of who invents a time machine that can send them both back and forward only a few hours at a time in order to help people in their town.

You see? All it took was the one whole entire sentence and the one whole entire screencap.

The Odd Squad episode "6:00 to 6:05" was, to absolutely no one's surprise, written by Tim McKeon. Much like Tyler and Tony's time-traveling tales, it involves Olive and Otto using Oscar's Before-Now-Machine to travel backwards by 5 minutes from 6:05 PM to 6:00 PM in order to stop dinosaurs from breaking out of their room and destroying what has to be Oprah's 1,000th Headquarters.

While the tale of Tiny Time Travel runs much deeper than an episode they copied the formula from, it's safe to say that Tim likely looked at this episode for inspiration for the series, among others. Odd Squad is more abundant with time travel than Precure is with kaijus, having several episodes about it and at least one movie. Really, if you're a writer in the TV industry, it's hard to get to a point where any ideas based around a concept you love that are posed in a writers' room are shut down on sight. Tim managed to do that single-handedly and still flipped the bird as a creator by inserting time travel as a solution in the Season 3 finale. In the industry, they call that abuse of power. In the Odd Squad branch, they call that "bending the rules just this one time".

The episodes of Tiny Time Travel range greatly in terms of plot, because each episode focuses on a different client person that Tyler and Tony help. And I use the term "plot" very loosely, because while My Little Pony: Tell Your Tale can stuff lore into 5 minutes (to...varying degrees of success), Tiny Time Travel...doesn't. It's not as lore-filled as Odd Squad and isn't even half as crazy because it's purely episodic. About the craziest thing I've seen is the neurodivergent and Hmong rep, and after watching Jelly, Ben and Pogo, that surprises me next to none. (And Odd Squad, because it's got rep up and down both streets.)

There's also the matter of differing morals. While Odd Squad teaches about mathematics, and later STEM stuff, Tiny Time Travel teaches more about social language and language in general, in a way that isn't really as seamless as Odd Squad. When creating Odd Squad, there was intent to hide the lessons so kids can watch the show and not have the math be in-your-face and up-your-butt. Tiny Time Travel is far more in-your-face and up-your-butt about the lessons by a complete longshot, which I personally can't really fault it for because 5 minutes can only get you so far. (If anything, I'll fault PBS execs, because that method of delivering morals has been standard since the 90s. But I digress. I can spew about PBS later.)

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So I might as well address the elephant in the room: is Tiny Time Travel an Odd Squad knockoff?

Short answer: no.

There's a lot of Odd Squad influence within it, in terms of humor, characters (Samira reminds me a hell of a lot of Polly Graph, and that's not even getting into the alliterative naming of the two protags) and general vibe, which is quite common with two pieces of media that share a creator. I'd also throw in that it's made in, and features, New York as a setting, which is where the Odd Squad pilot takes place, but that's a little irrelevant.

However, it's important to note that "inspired by" and "ripping off" are two very distinct things.

Take Wordsville, just as an example. Which I'm bringing up because, y'know, Odd Squad has more knockoffs than I've had good nights of sleep, but anyway. Wordsville is, as discussed before, a complete bonafide knockoff. It bounds over "inspired by" and goes straight into "I wanna watch you bleed!" territory by basically being Odd Squad but with a coat of literacy and digitization on it. Tiny Time Travel, by contrast, has very few straight similarities to Odd Squad. There's the alliterative names of Tyler and Tony, the inclusion of time travel (with limitations), similar music (thanks to Paul Buckley coming back on board), and a specific brand of humor that is pulled off well. But they are very few and far between, and there are far more differences. Tim looked to Odd Squad for inspiration, but he didn't seek to create a whole entire ripoff of Odd Squad. (Knowing PBS, though...maybe an Odd Squad ripoff was what they wanted originally. Wouldn't be the first time network execs made a request to Tim only for him to find a compromise.)

Likewise, another thing that sets Triple-T apart is how it was made. You're gonna wanna sit down for this one if you aren't sittin' already, because the amount of irony could probably level the planet.

If you're one of the old-timers of the Odd Squad fandom who qualifies for a senior's discount and Medicare, you're probably well-aware of Tim McKeon's absolute adoration for time travel, something that leaks into Odd Squad just as much as it leaks into his personal media preferences. Like I said, the franchise has had a ton of time-travel-related material, so much so that any ideas involving it were barred from the writers' room. All of it pretty much came from Tim McKeon's love of the concept. (And his love of pies. That too. Though whether that came from the prodco or from Tim himself remains up in the air. And yes, Triple-T does mention pie in one episode. And toast, believe it or not!)

Tiny Time Travel is basically what would happen if Tim flipped both birds at whatever writer bopped him with a newspaper and said "no more time travel episodes", and he made an entire series out of it with both government money and our money. It's like if you had a fanseries idea, money, enough passion, money, good connections, and money, and you turned it into a show. That's what Tiny Time Travel is. It's purely, unequivocally, a passion project for Tim.

Of course, there's also the underlying, less moral side to its making, in that it was made in order to fill a quota of PBS to get at least 25 new shows out by end of year. But this is one of the ones that's definitely filled with more quality. Let's be honest, the question of "am I gonna grow up to be a rebel leader and save humanity" is not something you'd find in typical PBS Kids fare. (And it also somehow passed S&P. But Odd Squad has over 70 questionable moments in the series alone -- and yes, I've counted -- so it's clear the rules of S&P don't apply to the god that is Tim McKeon. He flips the bird at that too.)

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So overall, Tiny Time Travel is one hell of a short-form series. City Island threw me for a loop a couple years back based on the object show comparisons alone (and when you get Adam Katz himself to recognize that shit, you're nigh-unstoppable), and this series threw me for a loop similarly just due to the sheer premise and near-immaculate quality.

Odd Squad was, on all accounts, a major influence in Triple-T's making, to such an extent where there's a cameo of two agents walking in the background that someone managed to spot long before I got to the "Tennis Talk" episode that featured the cameo to begin with. The show's cute, it's sweet, it's got hella good rep, and it's short enough to please attention spans around the world. (Or at least in 'Murica. And maybe some parts of Canada.) It wholeheartedly has the Seren seal of approval, and if you're tired of waiting for Odd Squad UK in 8 months like I am, this will tide you over in the meantime.

As for whether it'll get a Season 2...after "Surprise Party", I can't see that happening. Unlike with Odd Squad, which is constantly under the threat of cancellation, Tim had a chance to end the show on his own terms without PBS giving it the sharpest axe in the shed, and he wrapped it up beautifully. It doesn't need a second season. It's beautiful as it is. Keep it as a one-hit wonder. (And preserve it, because otherwise it'll become lost media by the time half the century is up.)

I'll see you all in the next essay. Seren out!

[kizzer55555]

Blanked

Some time anomalies happen and a bat member is completely erased from existence. That bag only realizes this when none of their family know who they are. I’m talking completely erased like they were never born. No media coverage, no pictures (exiting pictures altered), no birth records or anything. Not their family, not their friends, not fellow heroes, not even their parents (depending on who it was, default is Bruce and Alfred though) remember them. All except one. Phantom, who confusedly asks said bat why they are upset. Addressing them by name. (because he has a time medallion stuck in his chest that makes him immune to time anomalies.)

Danny is just passing by and sees the upset bat and goes “Hey! (Insert bat), what’s going on?” The bat freezes and then practically tackles Phantom like he’s their only lifeline.

[padawansuggest]

AU where Jango time travels, saves Jaster, and accidentally becomes Dooku’s controversially young boytoy and accidentally convinces him to become Obi-Wan’s master when he meets the 10 year old in the temple while avoiding Jaster in the archives and gets attached to Smolbi-Wan. He is now a stepdad. Fuck. Jaster keeps stealing the kiddo while Jango is getting his back blown out by a sorta former Sith.

[stealingpotatoes]

The last (4) Jedi time traveling to the Clone Wars era is just a comedic goldmine. Erza’s chasing after young and adorable Caleb Dune while Depa chases him to get him to leave her Padawan alone. Cal and Ahsoka and trying to make sure no one meets their younger selves, most of all themselves because they’d have questions for Big Soka and Cal. Luke’s just smiling like a sun in the middle of all the chaos, happy to see Yoda again.

alternatively, Cal and Ahsoka are trying to heal their childhood traumas through various means:

(commission info // kofi support!)

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 179

“Pa, there’s a weird lookin’ cat outside!” 

 -Said by a sleep deprived Danny Phantom while in Clockwork’s Lair, about a hero displaced in time. Clockwork is in fact amused. Batman is simply confused about the entire situation.  

[phykoha]

"weird little things..."

[attachablepenis]

i want a obkk fic where obito time travels back in time to fix everything and immediately becomes enthralled with bratty baby kakashi

like obito thinks wow how did old him find young kakashi so annoying?? hes so cute and bossy and tiny and adorable and so so different from the traumatized and guilt filled war veteran of the future that all obito wants to do is spoil him and pinch his masked cheeks

which leads to obito indulging baby kakashi as much as possible and kakashi becomes even more of an absolute bratty terror because obito eggs him on and pampers him to his lil demanding hearts content

[arrow-gt-ace]

thinkin about lonely giants. giants who are alienated by their size in a tiny world. giants who don't have many friends because people are afraid of them/other circumstances that come with being a giant have made it so that they're always alone, despite being such a gentle soul then maybe they finally end up making a friend with a tiny. and the giant is just so tender-hearted and sweet that they end up crying with affection and happiness at finally having a friend

[personinthepalace]

Odd Squad characters appearing in Dino Dana and Tiny Time Travel

[claradrawsocs]

Sometimes u just gotta draw non-canon sillies of ur ocs

[goddessofbees]

Day 1 for Jason Todd Week @jasontoddweek2025

Drive, Time Travel, Batman's Tires

[aroaceleovaldez]

It's honestly wild to me that ToA went through so much trouble to emphasize the fact that Will did not magically fix all of Nico's problems and was explicitly not Nico's only doctor.

Only for TSATS to have Will fix all of Nico's problems and have Nico be entirely reliant on him the entire book and literally helpless without him and LITERALLY have Nico's problems be magically removed.

[inumbrapugnabimus-maybe]

working on something rn and just. There are zero thoughts in four’s head

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt in Memes 6

Let's make it some in-world memes this time :)