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Journeyman, Journeyman, why do you roam? Journeyman, Journeyman, why not stay home?

Not the stuff of even bad folk songs, or folk legends either, NBC’s “Journeyman,” premiering tonight, is an instantly tired and tiring fantasy drama about a newspaper reporter who keeps having blackouts (so far, so good) during which he travels back in time to 10 or 20 years ago (too far, too bad). Why does he travel back in time? Because he hasn’t anything better to do, apparently.

Kevin McKidd, who plays time-traveling Dan Vasser, isn’t a very attractive or charismatic presence, but then he’s called upon to be pained and confused much of the time. Time travel is, let’s face it, pretty feeble as a gimmick by now. You’d think Mike Myers would have killed it off for good when he had the wonderfully ridiculous Dr. Evil (Myers) hopping from year to year willy-nilly in the Austin Powers movies.

But no, that doesn’t stop series creator Kevin Falls from sending his poor schmo back to 1987, where he rescues a mysterious man from an advancing trolley car. Vasser knows something’s amiss because, good heavens, Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel are still hosting the “Today” show! The horror!

Our boy suffers another spell and is transported back to the present, but only one or two commercial breaks later and he’s off on another fling, taking a hike to December 1997 and discovering his younger self boozing it up at a bar. What about the old time travel rule that said you must not run into yourself as you dart amongst the decades? That’s how it worked in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and “Back to the Future” and too many other time travails to count.

The premise is weak and leaky, the star is dull and dreary, and the only trip “Journeyman” ought to take is right back to the shop for repairs — or off to the dump for a decent burial.

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.