Time Patrol Villains

Although Babylonian recruits to the Time Patrol are given a battle-of-the-gods routine, the series is remarkably restrained as regards good guys versus bad guys story lines. However, when it comes, the war between the Patrol and the Exaltationists is spectacular, although even that is not the climax.

The earliest collection was Guardians Of Time, originally complete with just four stories. In the first story, two new recruits to the Patrol apprehend an individual time criminal but then both the recruits become criminals with different consequences for each of them.

The second and third stories show other kinds of problems encountered by the Patrol. The fourth, originally published second but moved to the end of the volume to provide a climax, shows a successful temporal change by a group who, although they appear in just this one story, receive almost a collective continuing villain status:

"'...Neldorians, two-hundred-fifth millennium...an age of bandits who had 'already' given the Patrol a lot of work."
-Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 221.

"Neldorian," like "Danellian," is a term invented for a particular purpose and does not bear any other meaning.

(Similarly, Moriarty, introduced in what was meant to be an ultimate story, received a retrospective continuing villain status.)

A fifth story, added in later editions, showed another kind of problem encountered by the Patrol.

A second volume, Time Patrolman, comprised just two longer stories. Again, the second of these showed another kind of problem, but the first, "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks", instead of reviving the Neldorians, not only introduced a more flamboyant criminal group, the Exaltationists, but also included among their numbers an individual continuing villain, Merau Varagan. Despite, as yet, appearing in only one story, Varagan manages to be a continuing villain because a reminiscence and flashback show us Everard's first encounter with this leading Exaltationist and Everard arrests him at the end, although others escape. Others escaping could imply a sequel featuring Exaltationists although, at the time, I just took it to mean that the Patrol's work is on-going.

The third volume was the short juvenile, Year Of The Ransom, set, from Everard's point of view, before "Ivory" so that Varagan is still at large and a Conquisador stealing an Exaltationist time cycle becomes an individual time criminal, only the second in the series, after Stane in the opening story. Suddenly, we are surrounded by villains.

The fourth volume, The Shield Of Time, is a long novel but also three interconnected stories. The first is the spectacular showdown with the Exaltationists, including yet another flashback with Varagan, this one set just after his arrest. This time, the main villain is his female clone who inherits the name of a spear-carrying character in ...Ransom. The second and third stories and two later works are back to showing other kinds of problems, although, in the climax of The Shield Of Time, a personal causal nexus, i.e., an individual whose world line interacts with so many others that small changes to his career alter the course of history, has almost the status of a time criminal.

Counting The Shield Of Time as three, the series comprises thirteen installments of which five have literal villains. Everard fights the Exaltationists four times in three stories. A suitable rearrangement of volumes would give them a trilogy.