Travelers: Donner
December 26, 2016 7:56 PM - Season 1, Episode 8 - Subscribe

MacLaren handles a misfired traveler while Trevor and Carly deal with personal issues, and Philip notices a minor change to the timeline.

*MacLaren, Trevor, and Philip chat with cam-girls on their laptops while a man in an alley fiddles with a bomb. They welcome the incoming travelers, but the chat connections are lost when the bomb goes off instead of being defused.
*MacLaren and Forbes go to the bomb site to investigate; when MacLaren discovers that the bomber (Aaron Donner) survived, he gets his address from Philip. On his way there, a woman flags him down and tells him (in Cantonese) an injured man barged into her restaurant kitchen. MacLaren finds him and tells him he's a fellow traveler offering assistance, but Donner knocks him out with a wrench, busting his comm. When he comes to and gets to Donner's address, Forbes has gotten there first (tipped off to the bomber's identity by the surviving cam-girl Donner was obsessed with) and made the arrest.
*Trevor gets called into Miss Day's office; he did so well on his physics midterm that everyone thinks he must have cheated, but she has arranged for a supervised re-test and offers to help him study.
*Carly has custody hearing over baby Jeffrey. Philip shows up and fakes being a lawyer to help, but Jeff provokes Carly into a rage to make her look unfit.
*David's boss, Ken, suspends him after receiving a report from Jeff about his improper relationship with client Marcy. David tells him to come to dinner so he'll understand the truth about Marcy.
*Marcy asks Philip to arrange some additional funds for her.
*Trevor has his study session with Miss Day, and she lends him book "The Perfect Day", which he speed-reads in the hallway later.
*In FBI custody, MacLaren tries again to get Donner to explain what went wrong and to offer assistance, but Donner says he has no idea what a traveler is, and MacLaren realizes he must be a misfire.
*MacLaren comes to David's looking for help from Marcy with his broken comms, interrupting dinner with Ken. Ken tries to question MacLaren about the nature of Marcy's FBI work but he tells Ken it's none of his business.
*The CPS woman visits Carly again. Carly says she knows it looked bad at the hearing, visits again
*When Donner's lawyer arrives, Donner tells him he wants to make a deal with the DA for his information on the vast Traveler terrorist network.
*Philip gets his winnings back from the bookie, but only 3 of the 5 bets were winners; the timeline is changing. He receives a notice from the deep web and calls Marcy, Carly and Trevor back to Ops.
*Trevor gives Miss Day her book back, and lends her one that he says got him through hard times. He misses his make-up exam appointment in order to get back to Ops.
*Ken fires David, believing that Marcy has defrauded social services and blaming David for not coming to Ken when he found out she was not mentally incapacitated.
*At the DA's office meeting, Donner accuses MacLaren of being a traveler. When no one believes him, he insists he can reveal all of the travelers' methods because he is a traveler too after all, not a misfire.
*MacLaren reveals that everyone in the room is a traveler, and this is now a treason trial. All the other travelers cast votes via the deep web, and Donner is found guilty and sentenced to death by immediate overwrite.
*The CPS agent visits Carly again, convinced that she is a victim of domestic violence. She says she will do her best to help her maintain custody of Jeffrey, and says that since Jeff has accused her of being a prostitute, she needs to get a regular paying job to disprove him.
*Marcy bring Ken money, and insists that he needs to keep Jeff employed, or Ken will be replaced himself.
*MacLaren apologizes to new-Donner for his being sent to prison, but Donner says it's still better than the future he came from. In prison, his cellmate is Luca.

Showcase Blog - Episode 8 Recap
posted by oh yeah! (3 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
"Death by immediate override"
- why does it take longer than inhabiting a non-inhabited host? (for dramatic purposes)
- confirmation that hosts can be arbitrarily taken - immenent death not required
- travel is probably one-way; the consciousness is not a copy, but some kind of transference
...- is the cessation of life (of a traveler) in the future an administrative decision, or a consequence of the transference mechanism?
... - apparently being taken over by a traveler is akin to death (of one's consciousness, throughout all time)

"only 3 of the 5 bets were winners"
- ah, future is mutable and on-the-fly; traveler's past futures are not necessarily the future-to-be and incoming traveler's history may not be previous traveler's histories
- also confirmed with McLaren/new-Donner's conversation cf Protocol 2

"deep web"
- ok, so history can be recorded so that the future can access it (so, future can't see directly into the past, but only reports that drifted through the hard currents of time)
... - contradicts the future's ability to sequentially travel into Gleason's team from a couple of episodes ago (unless there were cameras at the anti-mater reactor site that got recorded at an off-site location into the "deep web")
...... - but how does that work? First Director sees Bloom dead, targets one soldier to travel into, does the video show that soldier failing? Does there need to be reiterations of time travel in the future to capture differences in the past? Or was it "ok, travel into A to turn it on." bzzt "ok, we're still in the shit, lets look at the footage again. Crap. Send in B to turn it on." bzzt "ok, we're still in the shit, lets look at the footage again. Crap. Send in C to turn it on." bzzt "ok, we're still in the shit, lets look at the footage again. Crap. Send in D to turn it on."
......... - that's gotta be a mindfuck for the Director(s) and they're probably not stable after much time in that capacity. Is the Director a consortium, a super-individual, or a succession of individuals?
- short of sending another traveler back to communicate through in-frame infrastructure, is there any way to communicate with current travelers in-frame?
- new travelers need to be sent back to implement the Director's orders, by logging into the current deep web?
- is it possible to send travelers to earlier time points than travelers have already been sent?
... - ie., one operation keeps failing, can the future keep sending travelers back before the event to re-re-re-re-re-re-re-try the event?
...... - if so, why not send someone to send a message to tell the teams not the leave Bloom or to tell Bloom to make a automated mechanism to turn the key at the right time?

"Protocol 2"
- not supposed to tell the 'past' about the current future?
... - more evidence that the "Director" is possibly corrupt (in some manner)
- I'm assuming that the traveler that expelled the failed Donner is there to ensnare 2587 - who seems to belong to a faction that opposes the mainstream one
... - since this assignment, in incarceration, is a preferable one to staying in the future; suggestive of multiple hostile factions controlling traveling

I'm still on board; McLaren's team members are all interesting characters, the mystery is still afoot, but I feel like I'm going to ultimately be disappointed when it goes all hand-wavey donald-trumpey waah waah very very waah waah The Aristocrats!
posted by porpoise at 7:23 PM on December 30, 2016


"Protocol 2"
- not supposed to tell the 'past' about the current future?


Protocol 2 is "Leave the future in the past"; I never thought of it applying to travelers not telling people in the 21st about the future, it seems like it is always used as a directive to the traveler, to forget about the life they left behind and focus on their life/mission in the 21st.
posted by oh yeah! at 8:37 PM on December 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


I was a little disappointed at how easily Mac was able to assemble a team of fake lawyers, guards and a DA. Why not use his own team, they wouldn't be recognized, or are these folks also in place in these actual positions?

I was intrigued at the prospect that a new future pathway would mean lottery numbers and horse races would change so quickly, it's a good move to make the acquisition of money a bit more difficult too.
Was that a confirmation that Helios was diverted? New Donner shouldn't have even known what Helios was if it missed earth centuries before his time and was never a thing....
posted by OHenryPacey at 12:40 AM on January 20, 2017


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