Timeless - NBC's "Hard SF" & "Historical" TT Series

Parson said:
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I thought that was pretty well explained in that one of the Hindenburg survivors descendants marries her mother instead of the person she thought was her father. Viola, no sister.
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I didn't see it in comparison to the other main characters. Duh!
*light bulb shines over my head*
Lucy is the only one of the three time travelers who has had an ancestor affected by one of the changes in the timeline. Thus, her mother never had cancer, and Lucy never had a sister.
I imagine Wyatt and Rufus will have similar changes in their lives resulting from changes made in coming trips to the past.
 
The one thing they haven't really explained the ability of how they track vessels. In theory, the newer vessel leaves a measurable signal that the rescue ship follows through time. It'll also means they are able to be in the same place to observe and alter the events. But, not for once they have claimed to be able to measure time flux, even through it's observable that the vessels can track the entry and exit signal in the stream.

What I mean that for the technology to exits and for it to be able to do the function, they've a poor way to show that they have ability to measure and record time fluctuations without a traveller. Yet, both vessel crews trump through the time as if they don't have a slightest idea about creating paradoxes, which ultimately affect the fate of whole civilisations.

Who knows what the alterations cause in the future?

It hasn't been written, but it it certainly shaped by allowing travellers into the events as actors and not observers. In certain way Timeless is proper material for the dark autumn horror and scifi months. But in the other, I'm kind of glad that the future is locked to Twelve Monkey like full blown out chaos.

Timeless is a show of temporal agents participating in historical events without having a real clue of what the alterations cause down the line. Yet, it's really captivating and a really good series that uses almost everything we know about the factual science.
 
I have been thinking about the Hard SF status and Time-Travel flair that they have in this historical show. Basically TT the producers are showing is hard to a point, but I believe it isn't going too hard into fantasy genre. So, I don't think we are ever going to see a monster of week pattern in this show. Instead, like Baylor said, Timeless is showing a very good example of hard science mixed with historical facts and showing to the audience well known events down the line.

But...

... like I said about the future being unknown, the hypothesis is that they have to investigate to really understand the end result. What do you think?
 
REBerg said:
After two episodes, I still like the show.
So far, neither the good nor the bad guys have able to change major historical events to initiate massive changes in the future. I'm wondering why the less significant changes made have altered Lucy's life but have had no effects on the lives of fellow travelers Wyatt and Rufus -- at least none that have shown.
I probably should just sit back and enjoy the show. :D
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This is a cool problem I have in my time travel WIP. Are we rooting for the right guys? With Time travel in the equation should you want to change things or keep things the same? What is the right way? I think Timeless will have us constantly guessing, who the good guys actually are, because isn't it obvious that Mason (the boss) is doing bad things as well?

So will the guys who want to change things namely Wyatt with his wife, end up turning on the others? He has that bit of cockiness just to get into that type of trouble. He clearly wants to change things, and Mason is telling him that he shouldn't.
 
Yes, and we have enigmatic little piece there where Garcia Flynn says to Lucy that one day she will be helping him and he seems to have a log that either she wrote, or that was written about her leaving the question open as to what has happened "up-time."
 
Cli-Fi said:
This is a cool problem I have in my time travel WIP. Are we rooting for the right guys? With Time travel in the equation should you want to change things or keep things the same? What is the right way? I think Timeless will have us constantly guessing, who the good guys actually are, because isn't it obvious that Mason (the boss) is doing bad things as well?

So will the guys who want to change things namely Wyatt with his wife, end up turning on the others? He has that bit of cockiness just to get into that type of trouble. He clearly wants to change things, and Mason is telling him that he shouldn't.
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I can think of a few historic events Id love to change.:(
 
What did you guys thought about the Alomos episode and handover of the Bowie knife? I know it's a real deal. All watchers know same thing, but if you take an item out from the time-line and transport it to future, he are you going to authenticate, when it skipped history and it wasn't subjugated to the atom bomb tests for example.

A pawn owner would immediately see its prime condition and think it as a fake even though the item in question was handed to down by the creator himself. Same thing would apply to every other item as well, but what's really intriguing is are those two 9 mm cases that were left on Alamo's battlefield. Wouldn't an archaeologist find that question really intriguing? "How can you explain two modern, traceable cases that are so old and too modern for being important artefacts associated to the Alamo's case?"

Do we need to start applying tin foil around?
 
I am really enjoying this series, a lot more than I should. It's on the same basic level as S.H.I.E.L.D and I am loving the Rittenhouse mythology that they keep throwing at us which makes you keep guessing about what their true intentions are and who they even are. Now it really seems like the team is on the wrong side, being that if Flynn is right, that means all of history is on the wrong side... Early on I suspected that Mason Industries was a front for something, that guy just didn't sit right with me. He had to be in cohorts with someone.
 
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Great cliffhanger ending for the "fall finale."
I'm thinking that the actions taken in this episode are going to have greater consequences for the present than any of those taken in earlier episodes.
This show has a lot going for it in terms of plot and likeable characters.
 
Saw the pilot, and though it was good, I wouldn't call it "hard SF or, "historical." I would call it an adventure series with a lot of historical facts thrown in.
 
Once you see it you can't unsee it: Flynn always wears his apple watch in every episode in every time period no matter what. I guess he just doesn't care.
 
Timeless isn't hard science-fiction, because science hasn't found a way to prove time-travel possible. The engineers don't know how to build a time-machine so that we could test theories. But what scientists has proved to be correct is the multiverse theory. Parallel worlds instead of mirror worlds that you'll see in the Man in the High Castle.

If NBC would have an access to an time-machine, they would have used it. Same things applies to the BBC. I have no doubt about that, but instead of making Timeless to be a mirror copy of Doctor Who, they Americanized the product and slapped on a lot of theoretical science. Things we cannot prove to be correct, until we have a way to travel back and forth in the time. Therefore making time being a stream/funnel/loop and so forth until the dawn of end times.

In places Timeless dips into fantasy, especially with the journal paradox. It exists before it's written. Nobody really talks about it, or other paradoxes that has happened during their multiple TT's. They only show the changes afterwards without devoting much of time to explain how the scientists would try their damnest to understand: "How these things are possible?" and "Is there anything we can do about it?"

So instead of going down that sort of narrative, the plot in the Timeless is as fantastical as it is in the Doctor Who, except in the Timeless you haven't seen alien species or fantastical creatures. All that you'll ever see are the 'historical settings' and at some point 'a vision from the future.'

They do very well with their placing. That I have to admit, because all places Timeless team has visited has been believable. It's just they cannot compete in the detail with the Man in the High Castle. Amazon clearly has done remarkable job in that job, making it better than 11-22-63.

King's series never saw the budget but what's equal is that both are fairly complex for an average viewer to understand. Put it up a notch and both are understandable, but Timeless is like Doctor Who. They both speak to an average man.
 
Timeless does take a shot at explaining things. What is in the "lifeboat" does not change. --- Therefore the watch is not really a problem.
 
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How traumatic will it be for Agent Christopher when Lucy presents her with the flashdrive containing the memories of a life that has been erased by another jump into the past? You know that's going to happen.
 
Devastating, but then this probably moves her further into the team's corner.


"I'm more interested in how the bad guys are going to change now that their founder dies early.[/COLOR]"

Well, that's not how that spoiler tag is supposed to work, but at least it works.
 
I think this is a great show, but it isn't hard science fiction if you believe all time travel is fantasy. There are some big inconsistencies with the disappearing sister story-line. If her mother and father never got together and Lucy wasn't ever born then no one would remember her. Instead of old photographs with her fiance on the beach, they would instead be asking who the hell are you - which happened in Back to the Future - a film they referenced when Wyatt sent a telegram back to the future. It wasn't explained why that telegram didn't work either.

I do like the fact that there is an arc story here that has been well thought out beforehand (so very much like Continuum in that respect.) I don't think 'monster of the week' is the relevant term to use here though. It is more like Sliders than it is like Time Tunnel in that things progress and change as we go on, rather than being reset each week at the end. Also there is a constant villain and evil corporation. I liked that the plutonium was stolen to make a battery so that they weren't tied down to one place to recharge, but that it also gave rise to an episode where it might have been a V2 payload. I like that the good guys might be playing for the wrong team. I hope some of the puzzles will be revealed before the end of the Season.

I've not seen it all, so a lot of the above comments are spoilers to me, but Rufus needs to fess up soon. His family can't be in as much danger from the suited man with The Day the Earth Stood Still car immobiliser than they already are from a possible change in the timeline. After hearing about Lucy's family problems, that would be my major concern, so tell the people you can trust about it.

While I don't see it in competition with, or even very like Doctor Who at all, the original concept for Doctor Who was to be exactly this - a historical based show, to educate children in history. There was an executive order that were to be NO bug-eyed-monsters. Of course, the second story introduced the Daleks and that rule book was torn up. I wonder how long it will be before Timeless introduces it's own bug-eyed-monsters? Sliders did it with the Kromags and that was when it jumped-the-shark.
 
Dave said:
While I don't see it in competition with, or even very like Doctor Who at all, the original concept for Doctor Who was to be exactly this - a historical based show, to educate children in history. There was an executive order that were to be NO bug-eyed-monsters. Of course, the second story introduced the Daleks and that rule book was torn up. I wonder how long it will be before Timeless introduces it's own bug-eyed-monsters? Sliders did it with the Kromags and that was when it jumped-the-shark.
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I hope the answer to that question is "never." But if it goes on for more than a season or two, I would suppose there will have to be some new and even more dangerous villains.
 
Dave said:
I think this is a great show, but it isn't hard science fiction if you believe all time travel is fantasy.
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Time travel is always entertaining, but it is never logical. If you want to enjoy it, you can't get overly analytical. :)
 
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