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The fall season is officially off to a start tonight with some of the most hotly anticipated shows returning, and with them some incredible time slot battles. While the war between reality competition megalith Dancing with the Stars, NBC’s Chuck, and Fox’s Prison Break begins at 8pm, CBS chugs along with its two hour blog of alternative programming in the form of two new half-hour-sitcoms, The Big Bang Theory, and Rules of Engagement, sandwiched between the can’t lose lead-ins of How I Met Your Mother, and Two and a Half Men. The real shake up of the evening may come much later, during the 10pm battle between fixtures The Bachelor, C.S.I: Miami, and NBC’s prolific newcomer Journeyman.

If this evening, the official ‘beginning’ of the fall season, were to be played out based on quality, Journeyman would come out of the day as it’s biggest success story. Of all the lofty returning shows, and the high-concept new shows, Journeyman is the one that most steps outside of its preconceived ‘genre’ trappings to deliver a brilliantly written story. Those who have checked out the pilot and are beginning to buy into the reality that Journeyman is most likely the best show of the season, the good news is it doesn’t unwind after the pilot.

Journeyman is plagued by a few negative connotations. First, time travel as a foundation seems drawn either from current programs that have delved - successfully or not – into the genre, or past shows that have achieved idolatrized followings such as Sliders or Quantum Leap. The second is the fact that serialized sci fi is not exactly a ‘safe’ genre these days.

In fact, Journeyman is quite well insulated from these concerns. In many ways, Journeyman is comparable to the first season of Lost, perhaps even exceedingly. Lost relied on vivid characters with a sense of history. Journeyman achieves the same level of character connectedness, but it begins in such a grounded world that the canvas of Journeyman’s world rings much truer in many ways. As a result, the fantastic circumstances that lead Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd) must endure are, oddly, more believable as well.

For certain, the ‘supernatural’ elements of Journeyman’s story are deeply meaningful to the situations in the character’s lives, and this is a theme that continues, with spades, into the subsequent episodes. Journeyman not only has the ability to wow you with it’s debut tonight, it has the staying power to continue wowing you next week.