Travelers: Protocol 6
December 25, 2016 4:19 PM - Season 1, Episode 2 - Subscribe

MacLaren and the team adjust to unexpected challenges in their new lives while trying to prevent an antimatter detonation that could kill thousands.

Boyd/MacLaren: "No plan survives contact with the past."

*Trevor built comms for the team, magic invisible future-tech now installed in everyone's necks.
*In the future, MacLaren and Carly were a couple. In the present MacLaren has a wife, named Kat.
*MacLaren is surprised by there being milk in his coffee. No cows in the future?
*The team prevents the death of 11,000 people who would have died from the explosion of a failed containment unit in a truck convoy transfer of anti-matter by stopping the driver and swapping the antimatter for a normal non-megaton-level bomb that only blows up the truck. Philip points out that there was no way for them to save the driver, but actually the explosion only puts him into a coma.
*Later, Marcy and Philip try to make a handoff of the antimatter to a newly-arriving traveler, but due to a cause-of-death/time-of-death error, the traveler is DOA.
*The team tries to extend the storage time of their antimatter containment unit, but Philip's withdrawal-symptom get in the way and short out the system (and his heart, momentarily).
*MacLaren goes to Officer Boyd for help, she reminds him that per Protocol 6, traveler cells should not be in contact unless instructed to by a messenger or the Director.
*The team decide to return the antimatter to the original containment unit of the scientist, Delaney, and MacLaren warns her to keep it out of the military's hands.
*MacLaren gets a warning via a messenger not to break protocol again. (A messenger is someone under temporary mind-control, who has no memory afterwards of having delivered the message. In this case, a girl scout selling cookies on MacLaren's street.)

Showcase Blog - Episode 2 Detailed Recap
posted by oh yeah! (9 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
I just started this series today. I love all the character development so far but the whole "Director" thing feels so jarring.
posted by gt2 at 5:01 PM on December 25, 2016


I have a bit of an issue with the utter ease that the technical travelers are able to retrofit current technology into future magic level tech, it's one thing to rewire a radio, another to mcgyver a microchip implant. But there do seem to be some limitations witch is good plot wise.
posted by sammyo at 5:54 PM on December 25, 2016


I'm super curious about how they get all the detailed information about the past-especially as their actions in the past change the future. My head hurts if j start thinking about the paradox too much-but that may just be all the wine I've consumed in last 24 hours.
posted by purenitrous at 8:06 PM on December 25, 2016


Just finished this one and stopping for the night but I can't wait to keep watching.Totally cringing about how MacLaren has to fake it with the wife of 11 years though, while clearly being involved with a team member.

I'm guessing these paradoxes are resolving themselves by them living as supposedly dead people. So not only do online records of them stop generating more data (probably ties info then not using their smartphones like how current people do), but timey wimey stuff prevents them from passing out of existence.
posted by numaner at 9:30 PM on December 26, 2016


The pliability of causality is moderately concerning. There are already thousands of travellers in-frame, that's a lot of dead people who kept doing stuff.

By saving 11,000 lives, they've changed their previous future pretty significantly. Or is that why there's a steady trickle of traveller teams, with up-to-date "futures" influenced by in-frame history? Like, the current future is totally different than the futures that were the earliest traveller's past and they're ok with it.

At some point, the future's going to be ok enough (or not) that they don't send travellers back anymore so travellers were never sent back at all? An alternate possibility is that if time was more-not-less linear and will "pinch off" at some point and continue to flow linearly in the same direction. This would weakly imply the impossibility of time travel.

This gets a bit more complicated as no baryonic matter changes time only just, theoretically, information. But I know too much neuroscience for this kind of personality transfer to be even within the realm of possibility. But I don't know enough physics for the time travel to annoy me.
posted by porpoise at 3:55 PM on December 27, 2016


No cows in the future?

Yeah, if the environment so so messed up that cows go extinct, I'm pretty sure (real) coffee would be just as hard to come by (barring hydroponics and an enormous shift away from large meat animals).

Also, he seemed more disgusted than anything else as he quickly and surreptitiously dumps it after the wife leaves.
posted by porpoise at 4:00 PM on December 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think I'm just confused by why they can't save individuals but can save many people. Why let the cop die of the heart attack because death timeline, but not let the people die in the explosion?
posted by corb at 7:41 AM on December 29, 2016


I think that the old cop wasn't used as a host (but something something you had been considered) because his cause of death was a heart attack - which would have happened in a few weeks anyway - made him an unsuitable host.

All other hosts, death was avoided through direct intervening action at the last moment by the incoming traveler.

The issue of saving specific individuals gets address shortly.

The explosion-saved lives contribute (through a semi-twist/reveal) to fixing the future.
posted by porpoise at 3:22 PM on December 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


Was this episode just tasked with a lot of setup or what? I was kinda bored.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:57 AM on January 19, 2017


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