Maybe I should avoid this thread until I've finished... I'm only up to episode four, so go easy on the spoilage, please.
Travelers Season One Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Tom
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Okay, up to episode 10, and it's now explicit that the show is set in Washington State. But the shot of the helicopter flying over the city in episode 5 was just about the Vancouveriest thing I've ever seen. There were so many familiar TV shooting locations in that one shot -- I hadn't realized how close they all are to each other until now. The helipad in that scene was apparently the same one used by Supergirl's second-season premiere for the Lena Luthor helicopter rescue and in the climax of the "Invasion!" crossover for the superheroes' big battle with the Dominators; you can tell because of the distinctive Space Needle-like Harbour Centre tower in the background. And that helipad is literally just across the street from the Central Library building that's one of the most popular Vancouver filming locations, and that's just three blocks from the BC Place stadium that's used for STAR Labs exteriors in The Flash, which is right next door to the building used as the Vancouver PD headquarters in Continuum. (It seems that a lot of subsequent shows have now inherited that police-department interior, since it's been used in shows including Lucifer, Frequency, and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.)
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You guys jumped ahead of me, I watch week to week with the Episode 10 being the last I watched. I forget the this weekend that they were dumping all 12 episodes on Netflix, so now I have to watch the last 2. 
All evidence points to the transfer to the host being a one way transfer with no way back. Once your in the host then that were you stay there permanently . We did see in Episode 9 that that can put another traveler in the same host an existing traveler is in, thus killing that traveler. It was interesting to see tha in Episode 10 that some of the some of McLaren's host memories were still intact.
One thing that puzzles me is that the style of the music in this show is very similar to the music in Dark Matter, tending to rely heavily on similar melodic sequences of low-pitched electronic notes at a fast, constant rhythm, and yet they have different composers, Benjamin Pinkerton for DM and Adam Lastiwka for Travelers. So is that sound representative of some larger electronic-music genre that both composers work in? Or is there some personal/professional connection between those composers? Or, since both shows are the creations of writer-producers who worked together on the Stargate franchise for years, maybe the showrunners have similar musical tastes and they asked their respective composers to write in that style.
One thing I don't get about the season finale...
If the people sent back from the future after the Helios event are from a different timeline and don't remember the collapse of Dome 41, then how come the rebooted version of Marcy that they downloaded still had the memories of the original timeline? Where, or rather when, did they download her from? If her personality was somehow stored in the future, then it stands to reason that they would've downloaded her from the altered future and she wouldn't remember the dome collapse. But she clearly did.
Looks like season 2 hasn't been received an official greenlight at this point and it will come down to the decision by Showcase but the money from Netflix definitely won't hinder the decision.
https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/travelers-season-2-netflix-release-date-series-renewal-status/
I hope it gets renewed. It's pretty good. It's an interesting, fresh twist on time travel tropes, and I like the slow burn of how information about the future is revealed. And the situation as of the end of the season has become a lot more complicated and ambiguous, so I'd like to see where it goes from there. It does a fairly good job of filling the void left by Continuum.
I do wish, though, that it had followed Continuum's lead in actually being set in Vancouver, since it's so obviously shot there, and since it's a Canadian-produced series to begin with. What's the Canadian equivalent of the FBI? Why couldn't they have used that instead?
I do wish, though, that it had followed Continuum's lead in actually being set in Vancouver, since it's so obviously shot there, and since it's a Canadian-produced series to begin with. What's the Canadian equivalent of the FBI? Why couldn't they have used that instead?
Maybe her consciousness was stored somewhere in the 21st?
On another note, I wonder if McLarens partner in now a Traveler?
On another note, I wonder if McLarens partner in now a Traveler?
Here's another plot hole I realized last night:
The Travelers occupying Grace and Ellis claimed that the Faction from the future had been the ones to abduct the team in episode 5. But that was just before the Helios deflection, and the Faction only exists in the new timeline created after the deflection. So that doesn't add up. Also, the abductors were asking questions like "When are you from?" and "How does the world end?" The questions didn't suggest rival time travelers, they suggested some present-day agency that had pieced together the fact that time travelers were here and was trying to find out more about them. Okay, maybe that was just a pretense; it did seem that the abduction was just a distraction so they'd miss their mission. But between that and the timeline inconsistency, I'm not convinced by Grace and Ellis's explanation for the abduction. Either the writers changed their minds midstream about that plot point, or Grace and Ellis were lying about who was really behind the abduction.
Good point!
The future should be very different you would think not only by the Helios deflection (saving millions!!) but by the mere fact that there are probably thousands of travelers worldwide that are occupying people that are suppose to be dead. Think of how much the timeline would change by all the interactions of those that not suppose to be around anymore. Even though an exact date in not given in the future it is suppose to be hundreds of years from now. That would plenty of time for changes in our time to multiply (butterfly effect) to be very noticeable in the future
Well, as I've pointed out in discussions about other time-travel shows, that's only half the equation. What people don't get about the butterfly effect is that it isn't talking about something that's guaranteed to happen -- on the contrary, it's an illustration of chaos theory and the impossibility of making definite predictions about the future because of the sheer number of interacting variables, not all of which can be known in advance, and not all of whose impact is in proportion to their apparent strength, because how much effect they have depends on their interaction with all the other variables. But those interactions can be either amplifying or damping. If you kick aside one pebble in a landslide, it's unlikely to change the direction of the entire slide. It's only if you kick aside the right pebble in the right place and time, so that its effects are amplified by its interactions with other factors rather than damped out, that large-scale change can be achieved. The butterfly in Asia only causes a hurricane in the Atlantic if it flaps its wings at just the right place and time that the effect is improbably amplified; most of the time, you can set a butterfly free without worrying that you're causing hurricanes. It's not required to happen; it's actually extremely unlikely. The point of the thought experiment is only that it can't be ruled out. Or rather, that the hurricane is the cumulative result of all the butterflies in the world flapping their wings, along with every other movement that affects the currents of the air around the world, and that's why it's so hard to predict where and how it will happen and what would be necessary to prevent it.
This is the model that's been followed by most time-travel series, including Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Continuum, 12 Monkeys, apparently Timeless, and clearly this one as well. They all show that history can potentially be changed, but it's not easy to change on a large scale, because there are larger historical forces converging to cause the main events and so they're still likely to happen even if certain details are altered. It makes sense that it's the optimum model dramatically if you're doing an ongoing series driven by the effort of the heroes -- or villains, in Continuum's case -- to undo a specific version of history. It has to be possible in theory for them to change it, otherwise the whole thing is pointless, but it has to be difficult to change the key event, otherwise the effort to do so would never sustain a long-running series. (Note that Legends of Tomorrow followed this theory -- "Time wants to happen" -- in its first season, whose arc revolved around the heroes trying to undo a single event in the future; it had to be hard to undo that event so that it could drive an entire season. But in season 2, now that the heroes are trying to preserve the timeline instead, they've switched to a model where history is far easier to change on a large scale, because that makes it more challenging for the heroes.)
We even saw them address this after episode 6.
One of the Travelers suggested that, since rival governments would've seen that it was an antimatter explosion, then deflecting Helios might still have triggered the same kind of arms race that occurred in the wake of the Helios impact. History is the result of many interacting factors, after all; the Helios impact would've been a game-changer, sure, but it would've happened in a specific geopolitical context that would've led the nations of the world to react to that catalyst in a certain way. Since the antimatter explosion happened in roughly the same geopolitical context (even without as large a death toll), it could've served as a catalyst for the same reactions. If you're sitting on top of a powderkeg, it doesn't matter if it's set off deliberately by a match or accidentally by a spark of static two minutes earlier. The same conditions will lead to essentially the same outcome, even if you change the triggering event.
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So we learn that:
The Director is actually a computer (hello Ziggy from QL ) and the season finale introduces us to the fact that there are now 2 factors of humans (apparently because of the Helios change in the timeline). One faction (most of the travelers) blindly believe in following the machine and the others don't belive in following a machine.
) and the season finale introduces us to the fact that there are now 2 factors of humans (apparently because of the Helios change in the timeline). One faction (most of the travelers) blindly believe in following the machine and the others don't belive in following a machine.Man does this show love the f-bomb!
Canada seems to be looser about such things, although I don't recall seeing any of Showcase's previous shows using that particular word. It's not just Canada, though. Syfy's new original show Incorporated has bleeped f-words in the dialogue, even though it's made for them. I surmise they're unbleeped on the home-video or streaming version. I guess everyone's trying to be Game of Thrones now.
Incorporated I like better than Travellers so far--it's a little easier to follow, or maybe I'm just intellectually lazy after a long day of translating... 
Incorporated I like better than Travellers so far--it's a little easier to follow, or maybe I'm just intellectually lazy after a long day of translating...
I think I prefer Travelers, but Incorporated isn't bad. It's a bit heavy-handed, but it's a sadly plausible-looking future given recent events. There doesn't seem to be a thread for it here, though. I wonder how much attention it's getting.
So we learn that:
The Director is actually a computer (hello Ziggy from QL
But wait, there is another...
Our travelers discover that since they are from a demolished timeline, dissimilar to the current future date that they used to call home, that they are a third faction, obeying orders from a future that has never met them. Which truthfully means that every traveler cell is from a different yet similar future, if every alteration any of them effects, overwrites their home in the future.
(Although all their actions are predetermined from the moment they arrive in the 21st, so future history is not jiggled by every decision made by every idiot in the past making choices.)
Our group can't trust the Director, because it's not their Director, and even if all the people upstream haven't noticed that all their agents in the past are each from a uniquely different timeline, the Director knows, because there are persons in the past demanding new orders that haven't left yet, and might have no plans on sending back.
(Although all their actions are predetermined from the moment they arrive in the 21st, so future history is not jiggled by every decision made by every idiot in the past making choices.)
Our group can't trust the Director, because it's not their Director, and even if all the people upstream haven't noticed that all their agents in the past are each from a uniquely different timeline, the Director knows, because there are persons in the past demanding new orders that haven't left yet, and might have no plans on sending back.
Hadn't noticed the F-bomb in travellers but in general they seem to have more freedom with the language on the Canadian shows - Continuum which was also made/distributed/backed by Showcase (who could almost out sci-fi Space on occasions) was fairly liberal with the language.
Killjoys and Dark Matter (shows on Space which is owned by Bell Media who are the backers for the two shows) have also been fairly free.
Probably a combniation of being produced for cable channels and Canada not having the complaining types to same degree as the U.S