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Travelers Season One Discussion Thread

Tom

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Travelers is a Canadian time-traveling TV series starring Eric McCormack. The series is a co-production between Netflix and Showcase. First season is 12 episodes.

The Travelers cast includes: Eric McCormack, Mackenzie Porter, Patrick Gilmore, Jared Abrahamson, Nesta Cooper, Reilly Dolman, J. Alex Brinson, Arnold Pinnock, Dylan Playfair, and Ian Tracey. Travelers is written, created and produced by Brad Wright. Nick Hurran is directing the pilot. Andy Mikita, Helen Shaver, Martin Wood, Will Waring, and Amanda Tapping will also direct in the first season.

In the future, the last surviving humans discover the means of sending consciousness back through time, directly into people in the 21st century before they would have died, replacing the person's existing consciousness since they would have died anyways. These “travelers” assume the lives of seemingly random people, while secretly working as teams to perform missions in order to save humanity from a terrible future. These travelers are: FBI Special Agent Grant MacLaren (Eric McCormack), the team’s leader; Marcy (Mackenzie Porter), a young, intellectually-disabled woman in the care of her social worker, David (Patrick Gilmore);Trevor (Jared Paul Abrahamson), a high school quarterback; Carly (Nesta Marlee Cooper), a single mom in an abusive relationship; and Philip (Reilly Dolman), a heroin-addicted college student. Armed only with their knowledge of history and an archive of social media profiles, the travelers discover that 21st century lives and relationships are as much a challenge as their high-stakes missions.


I thought I would make a thread about this show, instead of trying to talk about in in the generic time travel shows thread. Has anyone else been watching it? I like it so far.
 
Netflix will add Travelers to the US catalog December 23.

Another time travel show. Can the space time continuum handle it? :confused:
 
EARLIER I was thinking that the Director is AI.

If it was sending an updated (numbered) version of itself into the past also, when ever it sent a traveller back into the past, it could then take the slow road up the timeline, until it reaches "home" that would mean that the Director could survive as a resident of some future/present, where the highest numbered Director would be dominant, no matter how intensely or subtly that the travellers derail history.

Meh? Subsequent episodes make that seem unlikely.

Also...

Unless you have to cut a brain in half to "digitize" a conciousness, all of these people, the original templates, are still in the future, and furthermore, why just send back one copy of each digital conciousness?

It'd be an excellent reason not to talk to the other cells, if you happen to also be in half dozen other bodies per timezone. :)
 
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Presumably there are over 3000 travelers, it is already changing the future by having all those people 'alive' when they should be dead (even if they are inhabited by another consciousness). You would think the Travelers future (what ever year that is) would already be significantly altered. I guess it begs he question of what time travel model they are using, just one timeline, or parallel timelines. If parallel than their future is already different from the original one and maybe they did prevent the Helios asteroid from hitting Earth. Just because they are 'still there' does not mean the mission failed.

That said, all the evidence points to a the single time line model since they are getting messages from the future based on their interactions in the present.
 
Temporal shields are also possible.

Notice how the Director knows when their plans start fucking up, and they send aid to any traveller teams that needs it? At one point they say something like (but nothing like) "We know we are going to succeed because the Director has chosen not to yet interfere."
 
I've been watching and enjoying it so far. ^YES! GUY, I agree the Director must have some sort of protection because how the hell did he know to keep sending people back to turn the key! OR maybe he was just sending a simple command into their brains -- 'turn the key, you must turn the key!!!'

Edit: btw do we need to put a spoiler tag in the title?
 
It's fine.

Is Racetrack going to react poorly to being spurned for another woman?

Rat poison cornflakes, here we come. :)
 
There's still 3 episodes left to season one. :)

The final episodes, 20th, 27th and 3rd( of Jan 2017).

So that's cool.

I get to watch the final two episodes, early on Netflix.

Which will screw with the ratings?

Unless Showcase plans to dump the final episodes before Netflix can?

Seems like they are shooting themselves in the foot?

(Netlflix co-produced Travelers. This must have always been the plan.)
 
Netflix provides.

Finished episode twelve a few minutes ago. :)

What happened to Marcie was so freaking sad, but Marcie vent shooting was completely badass. :)

Are Turtles bullet proof?

Was that just the regular FBI with nothing to do with the Future who attacked the farm?

How bizarre.
 
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Watched eppy 1. Very 2 dimensional in it's complexity. Not sure if I'll continue. Something about the departed being hijacked when their personalty made them.
 
First off, Merry Christmas to all...

Now episode one...
Okay, so Agent MacLaren won't be having a Merry Christmas. Did Our group of heroes just kill Mac in order for their comrade to have a host body to quantum leap into???! Knowing he was destined to die is one thing, but they saved him from the elevator shaft fall. He isn't dead as a result, so isn't taking him over.... murder? Not quite sure how I feel about (the characters) doing that. From their perspective, everyone's already been dead for decades anyway, but it was a pretty cold move on their part to initiate a Host's demise.
That aside, I'll keep watching. Sort of a Continuum vibe, and I am curious as to how their mission develops.
 
Just binge-finished and loved it, more for the character dynamics and dialogue than timey-wimey stuff. Looking forward to S2. Has some really great quirky reflexive lines and really interesting cinematography. Plus nice to see Helen Shaver getting to direct two episodes, as well as Amanda Tapping (which expected anyway given the Vancouver-SGworld six degrees). Some favourite parts include the Tom McBeath-Grace double act in season closers :)
 
I've seen two episodes so far, and it's not bad. Not in Continuum's league so far, but interesting in concept. It's a cleverly low-budget way to handle time travel -- we don't see the future, we just see the people who come back and affect the present.

I have some concerns about the approach, though. It bugs me that both female hosts were killed by sexual or domestic violence, and it troubles me that a few of the characters have sex partners who don't know their partners have been replaced by impostors. The term for that is rape by fraud. At least the teenage-boy Traveler showed some discomfort about sleeping with his host's girlfriend. But what about MacLaren and his wife? Also, it's kind of a creaky old male-fantasy cliche for the beautiful female time traveler/alien to come from a culture that doesn't understand nudity taboos. How many times have we seen that? And how come none of the male Travelers are walking around casually naked too?

I'm wondering where the show is supposed to be set. It sure looks like Vancouver, but the fact that the lead character is an FBI agent means it must be somewhere in the US.


Tom said:
That said, all the evidence points to a the single time line model since they are getting messages from the future based on their interactions in the present.
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Or a dual timeline model where the people in the future are able to observe events in the alternate timeline. I think Time Trax worked that way. (Anyone remember that show? It ran for two years, but it seems to have vanished into obscurity.)


cylkoth said:
Okay, so Agent MacLaren won't be having a Merry Christmas. Did Our group of heroes just kill Mac in order for their comrade to have a host body to quantum leap into???! Knowing he was destined to die is one thing, but they saved him from the elevator shaft fall. He isn't dead as a result, so isn't taking him over.... murder? Not quite sure how I feel about (the characters) doing that. From their perspective, everyone's already been dead for decades anyway, but it was a pretty cold move on their part to initiate a Host's demise.
Click to expand...

I'm wondering if it is like Quantum Leap and the personalities of the hosts have swapped bodies with the Travelers in the future, so they've actually been saved from death and are now alive within the Travelers' original bodies. So sort of a cross between QL and John Varley's Millennium.

At first, I wondered if saving MacLaren before he died would mean that his original personality would still be in there alongside the Traveler, but there's no hint of that after two episodes. And of course that clashes with my other speculation.
 
Christopher said:
I've seen two episodes so far, and it's not bad. Not in Continuum's league so far, but interesting in concept. It's a cleverly low-budget way to handle time travel -- we don't see the future, we just see the people who come back and affect the present.

I have some concerns about the approach, though. It bugs me that both female hosts were killed by sexual or domestic violence, and it troubles me that a few of the characters have sex partners who don't know their partners have been replaced by impostors. The term for that is rape by fraud. At least the teenage-boy Traveler showed some discomfort about sleeping with his host's girlfriend. But what about MacLaren and his wife? Also, it's kind of a creaky old male-fantasy cliche for the beautiful female time traveler/alien to come from a culture that doesn't understand nudity taboos. How many times have we seen that? And how come none of the male Travelers are walking around casually naked too?
Click to expand...

MacLaren had concerns as well - in fact I'm not sure if has had sex with Kat. He seems to have gone out of his way for the most part to keep her at arm's length.

I'm wondering where the show is supposed to be set. It sure looks like Vancouver, but the fact that the lead character is an FBI agent means it must be somewhere in the US.
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Washington I'd say - in Ep 10 there are some cop cars marked with big WA.





I'm wondering if it is like Quantum Leap and the personalities of the hosts have swapped bodies with the Travelers in the future, so they've actually been saved from death and are now alive within the Travelers' original bodies. So sort of a cross between QL and John Varley's Millennium.

At first, I wondered if saving MacLaren before he died would mean that his original personality would still be in there alongside the Traveler, but there's no hint of that after two episodes. And of course that clashes with my other speculation.
[/QUOTE]

Nope.

It's a one way trip and the host personality is over written as was shown pretty conclusively in Ep 8 (or maybe it was 9).
 
The personality in the future ready to be sent back, is a digital packet, that they can send more than once, if they want to, which might not have been confirmed that they ever do under normal circumstances.
 
Guy Gardener said:
The personality in the future ready to be sent back, is a digital packet, that they can send more than once, if they want to, which might not have been confirmed that they ever do under normal circumstances.
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I'm pretty sure there was one instance where the transfer from the future failed and the traveller was considered dead (can't recall if another agent was sent straight away.
 
Yup, that happened, but I meant that it's copy and paste, not cut and paste. The personality they send back. There's still a mastercopy of it in the future, that they can re-send back to the 21st if necessary. No one has however said that your brain needs to be cut in half, before they can copy the future persons brain.

The misfire killed the host in that case.
 
Marc said:
MacLaren had concerns as well - in fact I'm not sure if has had sex with Kat. He seems to have gone out of his way for the most part to keep her at arm's length.
Click to expand...

Oh, they definitely had sex in later episode. But writers addressed that in show: quite nicely I think.
 
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