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Spoilers Timeless: Season 1 on NBC

All they have to do is break Connor Mason's family tree.

But then historic Rittenhouse knows, or will know that Rufus invents time travel, so it doesn't really matter which Billionaire they attach to his genius.
 
No, I'm not. Failing to undo a murder committed by someone else does not make one responsible for the murder. If a doctor fails to revive a murder victim, you wouldn't say the doctor condemned them to death. The responsibility for the crime lies with the murderer. Because the murderer thought he had the right to make decisions about other people's life and death. He was wrong to think he had that right. And it would be wrong of me to think that I had the same right.
If the doctor could save the victim but chose not to, yes, the doctor would be responsible for the death. Of course, the murderer would be responsible to an even greater degree (homicide). But, the doctor wouldn't get a pass in my book--probably negligent manslaughter.

Oh, that's a very convenient thing to hide behind when you're trying to justify doing something self-centered.
You're obviously getting worked up and some of your previous comments belittled my POV. So, I'm going to bail on this conversion. I won't take the same tact. It was interesting up to a point. It's OK if we don't agree. These are hard questions that often don't have a definitively correct or incorrect answers. Reasonable minds will disagree.

What I'm saying is that I'm trying to respect the rights of others, not trying to twist ethics to justify what I want to do.
Yeah, I'm not suggesting that either. I'm saying there are consequences when you do something and consequences when you decide not to do something (see the Dr. example). Just being passive and letting something happen doesn't free you of responsibility. If you decide to not act, you're not respecting the rights of the victims and their loved ones.

Mr Awe
 
Lucy is a Rittenhouse.

Near the beginning, they said it was like the mob.

You're born into it, or you marry into it.

We met her dad.

Not a lot of dots to connect.

So she kills the Rittenhouse child in the past, and then arrives home to see that she had never been born.

The past could as easily jiggle the otherway where she is the Rittenhouse true believer because that's how mom and dad brought her up.
 
Yeah, I'm not suggesting that either. I'm saying there are consequences when you do something and consequences when you decide not to do something (see the Dr. example). Just being passive and letting something happen doesn't free you of responsibility. If you decide to not act, you're not respecting the rights of the victims and their loved ones.

Nobody has a "responsibility" to rewrite history. That's too monstrous a power for any single individual to think they have the right to use, for any reason. Because, as I and others have been pointing out repeatedly, it doesn't just affect a few people, it affects everyone. And if you act unilaterally to change the timeline, like Barry Allen did in "Flashpoint," then you're violating the rights of countless other people by changing their lives without giving them a say in the matter. You're assuming absolute power over them, acting upon them without their consent, and that is wrong, no matter what goal you're trying to achieve. It makes you no better than the murderer, because you're arrogantly assuming you have a unilateral right to decide other people's fate. Yes, individuals have a responsibility to help others where we can, but not if it requires violating other people's rights in the process. I have a right, for instance, to donate my own money to a charity, but I don't have a right to steal a bunch of other people's money to donate it to that charity.

In the example of the doctor, what if the patient has a Do Not Resuscitate order on file? In that case, the doctor would have an ethical obligation not to take extraordinary measures to prevent their death, because doing so would violate the patient's consent. We don't have the right to force our own choices on other people.
 
6 billion people on the planet.

As soon as you get 3 billion and one of them to agree to which changes to the timeline need to be made, you are morally good to go.

Satisfied?
 
Wyatt Logan.



I think that using time travel to deliberately prevent someone's birth would still constitute murder. The crime of murder doesn't require direct violence, it requires malice aforethought, i.e. the deliberate choice to act (or fail to act) in a way that would cause a living person to not be living anymore. Maybe the legal definition of murder wouldn't encompass it, because it specifies "unlawful killing," and one could quibble over whether the word "killing" could apply to preventing someone from having been born in the first place (and it'd be hard to have that debate without getting drawn off-topic into the abortion issue). Still, from a moral standpoint I think it would be tantamount to murder. The fact that nobody remembers the person's existence doesn't change the fact that the time traveler has deliberately chosen to destroy that person's life.

I won't delve deep...but regarding abortion-ish thinking... speaking on someone at probably the other end of the spectrum on that issue, i think many pro-life people would NOT consider it murder, especially if that prevention was non-aggressive (i.e. having a couple miss a honeymoon)

Now, the general CONSEQUENCES are different thing...like what City on the Edge of Forever showed.


I think many people (especially pro-life people) won't worry too much of the ethics, since it can't scientifically happen (as far as we know), just like not getting too passionate about Warp Drive debates as that also is not currently "real" science.

I mean, "logically" things should change so much that the time traveler should be affected as well(i.e. not exist any more)... so unless the time traveling is like the British movie with Bill Nighy, it's pretty impossible to happen (and said consequences of erasing people).

By your reasoning, isn't Barry Allen guilty of forced transgenderism on a baby who might not have wanted it (i.e. Sara into John jr.)?
 
Sarah and John are different people, like all siblings are different people.

Before the pilot, Connor was under the auspices of Rittenhouse, the secret Illuminati like godmasters of the universe, so Connor had the right to make any changes he wants, because Rittenhouse owns the world, not that he told his chrononauts.

After the Pilot started, Lucy, Rufus and Wyatt worked for the Homeland Security, which means that they were entitled Americans, but that's ever been enough for that nation to dictate the shape of the planet for most of the last century.

The travellers are paradox proof. Every new Universe they arrive in after an adventure in the past has always been a paradox, and it has never effected them, because they are not time travelling, they are sliding between mirror Earths, or creating new mirror Earths.
 
Just read up on HH Holmes and the Murder Hotel... Holy crap!! It's amazing the things that time forgets.. I'd never heard of him or that place... Unbelievable.

I like how this show goes into some of the lesser known histories, like the influence that the African American lady had on the space program.. Simplified the history and took some liberties, but really pretty fascinating. And considering there's now a major motion picture about it, pretty timely...
 
I like how this show goes into some of the lesser known histories, like the influence that the African American lady had on the space program.. Simplified the history and took some liberties, but really pretty fascinating. And considering there's now a major motion picture about it, pretty timely...

And it's so heartening that a movie about black women doing math is an even bigger hit than the new Star Wars movie. That blows all kinds of conventional wisdom right out the window.

I can't help but note, though, how often Timeless seems to be overlapping ideas that other works of fiction have also recently covered. They did the assassination of Lincoln, which was a flashback element in Sleepy Hollow's season premiere last week. They did Katherine Johnson and the space program not long before Hidden Figures opened. They did Harry Houdini half a year after Houdini and Doyle, and H.H. Holmes just a week after Sherlock name-dropped him. And it's been announced that they're going to do an episode featuring Eliot Ness, who appeared in Legends of Tomorrow's winter finale.
 
And it's so heartening that a movie about black women doing math is an even bigger hit than the new Star Wars movie. That blows all kinds of conventional wisdom right out the window.

I can't help but note, though, how often Timeless seems to be overlapping ideas that other works of fiction have also recently covered. They did the assassination of Lincoln, which was a flashback element in Sleepy Hollow's season premiere last week. They did Katherine Johnson and the space program not long before Hidden Figures opened. They did Harry Houdini half a year after Houdini and Doyle, and H.H. Holmes just a week after Sherlock name-dropped him. And it's been announced that they're going to do an episode featuring Eliot Ness, who appeared in Legends of Tomorrow's winter finale.

I haven't been keeping up with Legends of Tomorrow.. That's pretty cool..

It's like they are doing what Asylum does for blockbuster movies - piggy-backing, only with better attention to detail and quality. LOL...
 
It's like they are doing what Asylum does for blockbuster movies - piggy-backing, only with better attention to detail and quality. LOL...

No, that might be the case with the Katherine Johnson episode, but the rest are probably coincidental. I don't think Houdini and Doyle was popular enough that they'd want to imitate it, and the others are too close together or in the wrong order for Timeless to be following anyone else's lead.
 
The first time I'd heard of H. H. Holmes was when an episode of Supernatural referenced him and his murder hotel, around ten years ago. Extremely creepy story behind that dude.

I didn't realize so many major American historical figures showed up at the World's Fair. Makes sense, though, since it was a pretty big deal. Setting a story there was a neat way to give us a glimpse at a variety of different figures without having to focus an entire episode around each one of them.
 
In the example of the doctor, what if the patient has a Do Not Resuscitate order on file? In that case, the doctor would have an ethical obligation not to take extraordinary measures to prevent their death, because doing so would violate the patient's consent. We don't have the right to force our own choices on other people.

In this case, yes, I agree very strongly. In fact, I have health proxy power (not sure the correct legal term) for my Grandmother and she has requested DNR. You can darn well believe that I will honor it if it comes to that.

But, that doesn't apply to other cases.

Cool discussion though. I've enjoyed it. Ethical discussions can get quite thorny with all the shades of gray. And, we've added in a SF wrinkle to it, which only makes it more convoluted. As always, I appreciate how much thought you've put into it.

Mr Awe
 
But, that doesn't apply to other cases.

Of course it does. Respect for other people's rights and consent always applies. And that's why no one person has the right to rewrite all of history just to suit their own personal preferences.
 
In this episode they were told the prototype needs 4 more hours to charge before they can go back to 1893 and save Lucy, everyone seems upset by this. It's a fucking time machine you will still go back to the same time you wanted to whether you wait 4 hours, weeks or years.
 
In this episode they were told the prototype needs 4 more hours to charge before they can go back to 1893 and save Lucy, everyone seems upset by this. It's a fucking time machine you will still go back to the same time you wanted to whether you wait 4 hours, weeks or years.
Nope, this show uses San Dimas time (See Bill and Ted's Excellent adventure). The clock is always running.
 
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