Timeless: Pilot
October 3, 2016 8:37 PM - Season 1, Episode 1 - Subscribe
The trio chase Garcia Flynn to the Hindenburg disaster of 1937 in the series premiere of this sci-fi actioner about a professor, a soldier, and a scientist teaming up to travel through time to battle a master criminal out to alter human history.
This is going to get extremely convoluted very fast.
posted by Small Dollar at 8:53 PM on October 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by Small Dollar at 8:53 PM on October 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
I wish the Timeless characters could go to 2007 and figure out a way to save Journeyman instead.
They packed a lot of time travel cliches into 48 minutes. Even the end twist, the changes in her family, were hardly a revolutionary plot device. (Altho it wasnt clear if that's the only thing in the world that's altered.)
I am a little intrigued by the book in her handwriting-tho again, that type of plot is used in other stories.
I missed what Rufus brought back to the boss. He recorded everything the others said.(?)
posted by NorthernLite at 9:00 PM on October 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
They packed a lot of time travel cliches into 48 minutes. Even the end twist, the changes in her family, were hardly a revolutionary plot device. (Altho it wasnt clear if that's the only thing in the world that's altered.)
I am a little intrigued by the book in her handwriting-tho again, that type of plot is used in other stories.
I missed what Rufus brought back to the boss. He recorded everything the others said.(?)
posted by NorthernLite at 9:00 PM on October 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
Why do the Time Warp Trio have to play time cop anyway? Their original timeline looked stable enough to survive the first jump, so it might have been able to keep on chugging while the bad guys stayed in a new one.
posted by Small Dollar at 11:15 PM on October 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Small Dollar at 11:15 PM on October 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
A little clunky at the start, and I was rolling my eyes a bit at the cliche of Wyatt having a tragically-dead wife
Me too... which is why I feel like they missed a huge opportunity to turn that into a pivotal arc.
I like the fact that Spencer's mom is now healthy and her daughter non-existant even if it wasn't completely revolutionary. But I feel like the narrative imperative here was to have the changes they were making erase Spencer's daughter... and bring back Wyatt's wife. Then you've got a natural, unavoidable, and completely understandable major conflict developing between sympathetic characters where one of them is totally invested in preserving the new timeline and the other is totally invested in reverting it.
Doesn't that seem like it should have been where they were going? I dunno, that's what I would have done.
(Hollywood, call me?)
posted by Justinian at 12:34 AM on October 4, 2016 [3 favorites]
Me too... which is why I feel like they missed a huge opportunity to turn that into a pivotal arc.
I like the fact that Spencer's mom is now healthy and her daughter non-existant even if it wasn't completely revolutionary. But I feel like the narrative imperative here was to have the changes they were making erase Spencer's daughter... and bring back Wyatt's wife. Then you've got a natural, unavoidable, and completely understandable major conflict developing between sympathetic characters where one of them is totally invested in preserving the new timeline and the other is totally invested in reverting it.
Doesn't that seem like it should have been where they were going? I dunno, that's what I would have done.
(Hollywood, call me?)
posted by Justinian at 12:34 AM on October 4, 2016 [3 favorites]
Was I the only one who, once they discovered the bomb and that they were already airborne, was thinking "just throw the bomb out of the blimp!!!!!"? It looked liked they had already started moving, so they should have been able to drop it sufficiently far from the people watching on the ground.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 3:31 AM on October 4, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 3:31 AM on October 4, 2016 [6 favorites]
Was I the only one who, once they discovered the bomb and that they were already airborne, was thinking "just throw the bomb out of the blimp!!!!!"? It looked liked they had already started moving, so they should have been able to drop it sufficiently far from the people watching on the ground.
No, I had that thought too.
I like the fact that Spencer's mom is now healthy and her daughter non-existant even if it wasn't completely revolutionary. But I feel like the narrative imperative here was to have the changes they were making erase Spencer's daughter... and bring back Wyatt's wife.
Wasn't Amy Spencer's sister? As far as Wyatt's wife, I doubt we've heard the last of her.
Why do the Time Warp Trio have to play time cop anyway? Their original timeline looked stable enough to survive the first jump, so it might have been able to keep on chugging while the bad guys stayed in a new one.
I don't think they're doing parallel/multiple timelines; seems like once the original is changed it's changed for everyone in the Timelines universe, the original only exists in the time-travelers' memories.
posted by oh yeah! at 5:46 AM on October 4, 2016 [3 favorites]
No, I had that thought too.
I like the fact that Spencer's mom is now healthy and her daughter non-existant even if it wasn't completely revolutionary. But I feel like the narrative imperative here was to have the changes they were making erase Spencer's daughter... and bring back Wyatt's wife.
Wasn't Amy Spencer's sister? As far as Wyatt's wife, I doubt we've heard the last of her.
Why do the Time Warp Trio have to play time cop anyway? Their original timeline looked stable enough to survive the first jump, so it might have been able to keep on chugging while the bad guys stayed in a new one.
I don't think they're doing parallel/multiple timelines; seems like once the original is changed it's changed for everyone in the Timelines universe, the original only exists in the time-travelers' memories.
posted by oh yeah! at 5:46 AM on October 4, 2016 [3 favorites]
I get the feeling that Spencer is going to turn out to be an expert on every aspect of every historical period ever — 1930s clothing styles this week, 1860s firearms the next, 1780s food and cooking....
Sort of the historian version of the movie scientist in this comic.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:44 AM on October 4, 2016 [4 favorites]
Sort of the historian version of the movie scientist in this comic.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:44 AM on October 4, 2016 [4 favorites]
Maybe it's just hard to make an original time travel story now, but I felt like the plotlines Timeless borrowed were the most famous and obvious ones in science fiction. A chance in the past changes the present, a la "A Sound of Thunder," "Back to the Future" and probably 56% of time travel stories. In spite of knowing that, a male character wants to save a woman in the past from her necessary death, a la "The City on the Edge of Forever." Someone has a diary from the future that lets them know what is coming up, like the one River Song has in Doctor Who. It's okay to pick and choose cool stuff from other stories if there is an original twist, but "we have to stop this bad guy from changing the timestream" is not an original twist. And, okay, maybe he's not a bad guy and I guess there's some kind of conspiracy with Mason and Rufus, but "this character obviously has hidden motives" is also increasingly played out. Blah. I might tune in again next week, but if it doesn't do something more than stitching threadbare tropes into a bland pattern, I'm out.
Also: why give me only one minute of Matt Frewer? If you're going to have Frewer, I want maximum Frewer.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:00 AM on October 4, 2016 [3 favorites]
Also: why give me only one minute of Matt Frewer? If you're going to have Frewer, I want maximum Frewer.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:00 AM on October 4, 2016 [3 favorites]
I will say this, though: I spent more time than I should have last night pondering this question: If a bad guy takes a time machine into the past to alter the timestream, and you happen to have a second time machine, is there any real urgency to go after him? What's the difference between leaving ASAP and preparing for a week before you go back?
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:03 AM on October 4, 2016 [12 favorites]
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:03 AM on October 4, 2016 [12 favorites]
Pater: If you're wondering how he eats and breathes
And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show,
I should really just relax
posted by Justinian at 1:18 PM on October 4, 2016 [9 favorites]
And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show,
I should really just relax
posted by Justinian at 1:18 PM on October 4, 2016 [9 favorites]
Nobody else found the capsule, or whatever they're calling it, reminiscent of Seven Days with Jonathan LaPaglia? (I just really love Norman Lloyd.)
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 11:06 PM on October 4, 2016
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 11:06 PM on October 4, 2016
So did they put a stake in the ground that they could not go back and "fix" the timeline? Pretty smart writing that a change affects the future timeline in both good and bad ways. I'm betting that the pretty reporter is the soldier's wife that died from another time cycle. If the show works and is renewed I bet he'll have to go and repeatedly re-save and re-kill his wife in a continuous cycle that never ends.
posted by sammyo at 8:32 AM on October 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by sammyo at 8:32 AM on October 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
Has anyone seen El Ministerio del Tiempo, the Spanish tv series whose creators are suing this show as a ripoff?
According to the allegations in the lawsuit, the creators of the Spanish show sent a DVD of their program to the agency whose talent eventually ended up making Timeless. Negotiations were said to have begun with Sony to adapt the show for the US with Eric Kripke producing. A month after that, Sony announced its totally unrelated show about an agency tasked with dealing with time travel incidents, to be produced by Eric Kripke.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:48 AM on October 5, 2016
According to the allegations in the lawsuit, the creators of the Spanish show sent a DVD of their program to the agency whose talent eventually ended up making Timeless. Negotiations were said to have begun with Sony to adapt the show for the US with Eric Kripke producing. A month after that, Sony announced its totally unrelated show about an agency tasked with dealing with time travel incidents, to be produced by Eric Kripke.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:48 AM on October 5, 2016
LEM!! Oh Malcolm Barrett, it has been too long since Better Off Ted was cancelled, never leave us again.
The nerdchild and I enjoyed counting references to other, better science fiction
(mothership fires up: ooh, a ring of spinning blue light, just like Stargate!
older machine fires up: well no wonder they had problems, this is from Contact, concentric rings send you across the galaxy not through time)
and we legit guffawed at Lucy's "When?" just before the fade to black. Was it good? No. Will we keep watching? ...yeah, for a few episodes at least. Although the evil leaper arc was not Quantum Leap's best work so I hope this takes a different turn.
posted by Flannery Culp at 7:56 PM on October 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
The nerdchild and I enjoyed counting references to other, better science fiction
(mothership fires up: ooh, a ring of spinning blue light, just like Stargate!
older machine fires up: well no wonder they had problems, this is from Contact, concentric rings send you across the galaxy not through time)
and we legit guffawed at Lucy's "When?" just before the fade to black. Was it good? No. Will we keep watching? ...yeah, for a few episodes at least. Although the evil leaper arc was not Quantum Leap's best work so I hope this takes a different turn.
posted by Flannery Culp at 7:56 PM on October 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
I really wanted them to decide that, to restore "our" timeline, they needed to hunt down and kill everyone who "should have" died on the Hindenburg. "Oh, it's okay -- we're preventing the Nazis from winning."
posted by Etrigan at 6:06 AM on October 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by Etrigan at 6:06 AM on October 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
... like the real hero of the Final Destination movies is the shadowy force of death preventing timeline alteration leading to the end of the human race?
posted by Justinian at 4:28 PM on October 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Justinian at 4:28 PM on October 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
I want to like this show, but...it's not looking too good. On the one hand, I want to give them some props for acknowledging that it's not super safe to be a PoC time traveling. On the other hand...no, seriously, it's a terrible idea AND handled badly. I was wincing through the whole rant about the Michaels thinking, "Dude, this dude in 1937 don't know who that is or give a shit." It also makes me wonder when the time travel inventor is also a PoC. And why, despite the super dangers, is Rufus being forced to go?
Even beyond that, the rest of it's not that great. I think History Professor will be an expert in all histories (please let there be an episode with LBJ and his Jumbo in it, please), but the white dude is not that interesting. And it seems pretty haphazard. And at the moment, who cares about the terrorist guy?
I do think the idea that maybe the timeline has already changed from ours is interesting, but...I dunno if I'd stick with this.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:55 PM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
Even beyond that, the rest of it's not that great. I think History Professor will be an expert in all histories (please let there be an episode with LBJ and his Jumbo in it, please), but the white dude is not that interesting. And it seems pretty haphazard. And at the moment, who cares about the terrorist guy?
I do think the idea that maybe the timeline has already changed from ours is interesting, but...I dunno if I'd stick with this.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:55 PM on October 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
Was I the only one who, once they discovered the bomb and that they were already airborne, was thinking "just throw the bomb out of the blimp!!!!!"? It looked liked they had already started moving, so they should have been able to drop it sufficiently far from the people watching on the ground.
Yeah, I hollered "the lounge has windows you can open! Or, hell, break a window in the cockpit, it'll be OK" when they started running.
I will say this, though: I spent more time than I should have last night pondering this question: If a bad guy takes a time machine into the past to alter the timestream, and you happen to have a second time machine, is there any real urgency to go after him? What's the difference between leaving ASAP and preparing for a week before you go back?
Ugh. _Every time_, right? "We need to hurry up to make sure they don't do anything!" Well, how would you know if they hadn't already done something? Later on it's clear that the people who stayed behind had no memory of the changed timeline, so as soon as anything changes *zoop* there go the chronitons and the future is changed. That's like the flipside to the causal paradox, innit?
I was _maaaaybe_ mocking it as a Time Tunnel ripoff when the wife and I started watching Timeless.
posted by Kyol at 6:49 PM on October 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I hollered "the lounge has windows you can open! Or, hell, break a window in the cockpit, it'll be OK" when they started running.
I will say this, though: I spent more time than I should have last night pondering this question: If a bad guy takes a time machine into the past to alter the timestream, and you happen to have a second time machine, is there any real urgency to go after him? What's the difference between leaving ASAP and preparing for a week before you go back?
Ugh. _Every time_, right? "We need to hurry up to make sure they don't do anything!" Well, how would you know if they hadn't already done something? Later on it's clear that the people who stayed behind had no memory of the changed timeline, so as soon as anything changes *zoop* there go the chronitons and the future is changed. That's like the flipside to the causal paradox, innit?
I was _maaaaybe_ mocking it as a Time Tunnel ripoff when the wife and I started watching Timeless.
posted by Kyol at 6:49 PM on October 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
They could at least have thrown in some babble about the tether between the two bubbles having a time limit or something.
posted by Karmakaze at 12:05 PM on October 12, 2016
posted by Karmakaze at 12:05 PM on October 12, 2016
Yeah, the version of time travel is shaky indeed. The question of why they cannot get a do-over of 1937 is that they cannot cross paths with themselves? Well, it is tragic indeed that our three leads are the only ones who can go back, then.
I was interested enough to keep going, but I dunno if this will get better. The notion that they have returned to an altered timeline and that it actually a problem* is nice to see, but I would be far more engaged if it was our timeline that their history is being incrementally altered to. I guess that is a hard sell for a weekly TV show, though.
*i.e. it is not just "the McFly family now have better jobs and cars."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:12 PM on November 5, 2016
I was interested enough to keep going, but I dunno if this will get better. The notion that they have returned to an altered timeline and that it actually a problem* is nice to see, but I would be far more engaged if it was our timeline that their history is being incrementally altered to. I guess that is a hard sell for a weekly TV show, though.
*i.e. it is not just "the McFly family now have better jobs and cars."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:12 PM on November 5, 2016
I just started watching after seeing a chunk of my internet circle upset after it was canceled. Enjoyable, with some nice touches (Why yes, a time traveling POC is going to have very specific difficulties) and some dumb ones (so cram another set of travelers in the ship and have them change things back). I’ll watch in honor of my old love for Quantum Leap and the pleasure of seeing all the old tropes taken out for a spin.
posted by PussKillian at 8:52 PM on July 2, 2018
posted by PussKillian at 8:52 PM on July 2, 2018
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posted by oh yeah! at 8:46 PM on October 3, 2016