Spoilers Timeless: Season 1 on NBC
- Thread starter Aragorn
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But that doesn't mean that Timeless can't be more accurate.
Sorry, but I think you misunderstood me. I didn't meant to say that every time travel has to be goofy fun, what I meant was that it felt to me like Legends of Tomorrow knew what it wanted to be and embraced that, while Timeless felt to me like it was trying to be something the writers weren't able to pull off.
Sorry, but I think you misunderstood me. I didn't meant to say that every time travel has to be goofy fun, what I meant was that it felt to me like Legends of Tomorrow knew what it wanted to be and embraced that, while Timeless felt to me like it was trying to be something the writers weren't able to pull off.
That's a surprise. I will check it out next season. I'm not sure that making the show more "family friendly" is what it needs to do to fix the problems. The writers will need to up their game and put more thought into it. I will give them a chance as there were things about the show I liked. It has potential. But, if the main thrust of improvements is being more family friendly, that is not a good sign.
According to the article, it's already very popular for adults and kids to watch together, so I guess they're just leaning into that. Hopefully that means it won't change too much, although I do hope they put some more thought into it.
I think it's better to be cancelled than bought back as "family friendly" - see Galactica 1980 for a example (on second thoughts - don't see - read about it which will be less painful).
I think that was an extreme case that's unlikely to be a template for anything else. After all, in that case, nobody involved with the show actually wanted to make it; the only reason it existed was because ABC had lost money on the expensive effects, sets, props, costumes, etc. and wanted to amortize the cost of those assets by reusing them in more episodes, and building a larger syndication package for resale. So none of the producers actually gave a damn about what they were doing. And it was ABC that insisted on doing it as an "educational" show for kids.
In this case, it sounds like the production company and the show staff really believe in the show and want it to continue, and it was the showrunners themselves who pitched the new approach to the network. And the network accepted it because they believe in the creative potential of the show too, according to the Hollywood Reporter article. So it's a completely different situation.
It's been so long since I've seen it, not since it originally aired actually, but did they reuse the sets? I thought it took place mainly or even entirely on Earth and did not reuse the BSG sets. But, my memory might be faulty. Maybe a few props and costumes perhaps. I remember a Viper, I think.
yeah I don't think they used many of the BSG previous sets - they had quarters for Doctor Z. some for dillion and troy and not much else (the later wasn't used after the initial episode.
That's true, they didn't reuse most of the sets. In the flashbacks in "The Return of Starbuck," the scenes supposedly set in the command center were just in this small area over to the side, which would be comparable to shooting all the bridge scenes in a Trek episode in the turbolift. We did see Adama's office in the pilot, I think. Mostly they shot on location -- the whole reason to bring them to present-day Earth was to save money on sets and the like.
But they did reuse the Vipers regularly (albeit modified with a two-seat cockpit), as well as the costumes and a lot of stock effects footage (which created a problem since the modified Viper canopies didn't match the stock footage). They even reused the all-white uniforms from the "Ship of Lights" episodes of BSG, although it was passed off as an effect of time travel, oddly enough. And they didn't just recycle stuff from BSG. In the pilot, they created a "simulation" of a Cylon attack on Los Angeles by superimposing Cylon Raiders and blaster bolts onto stock footage from the movie Earthquake.
Then there was the episode where they showed a Cylon attack on the fleet's Agro Ships, which was a reuse of stock footage from a BSG episode that showed an essentially identical Cylon attack on the fleet's Agro Ships -- but the Agro Ships were already reused effects footage from Silent Running. So it was stock footage of stock footage.
Wow! I'm impressed you remember that. Believe it or not, that was my very first published novel (co-written with "Nick Baron," aka late Scott Ciencin). And, yes, the original Silverberg novel had a lot more sex and drugs than the Young-Adult spin-offs!
FYI, if you like Time Tours and the Time Patrol, you might like a short-story anthology I contributed to only a few years ago: TIMESHARES, edited by Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg. It's a collection of stories about time-travel tourism, along the lines of Time Tours.
(My story is about a struggling true-crime writer, badly in a need of a new bestseller, who travels back to Victorian England to find out who Jack the Ripper really was. Needless to say, things go awry.)
Meanwhile, I'm pleasantly surprised to find out that TIMELESS has been uncancelled. There is much rejoicing.
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Well that's the paradox.
Time travellers couldn't come back to stop the cancellation, because they they wouldn't have a reason to come back, but they could come back to reuncancel the series.
Theory.
When NBC saw that making History had been cancelled by Fox and that Frequency had been cancelled by the CW, and time after time was cancelled by ABC, where there was once no room for another time travel show show suddenly there was an abhorred vacuum that must be filled, so they rushed to fill it.
Time travellers couldn't come back to stop the cancellation, because they they wouldn't have a reason to come back, but they could come back to reuncancel the series.
Theory.
When NBC saw that making History had been cancelled by Fox and that Frequency had been cancelled by the CW, and time after time was cancelled by ABC, where there was once no room for another time travel show show suddenly there was an abhorred vacuum that must be filled, so they rushed to fill it.
Honestly, the "family-friendly" thing doesn't worry me overmuch. It's not like the show ever required a "For Mature Viewers" advisory or was pushing the envelope where sex and violence were concerned. We're not trying to make KILLJOYS or PREACHER more family-friendly here. Nor does family-friendly necessarily mean they're going to dumb it down to a kid's show; they just want to make sure it's a show that adults and kids can enjoy together--like THE LIBRARIANS, perhaps.
My guess? We're talking the difference between PG and PG-13. Maybe a little less violence, or less graphic violence, and they may think twice between before doing an episode about Gypsy Rose Lee or the Donner Party, but I suspect that most of us grown-ups won't even notice the difference.
Heck, even the serial-killer episode set during the World's Fair was pretty discreet when it came to actually depicting H. H. Holmes' killings. As Christopher already noted, the show has always been fairly family-friendly by network standards. They're just going make more of an effort to lean into that.
My guess? We're talking the difference between PG and PG-13. Maybe a little less violence, or less graphic violence, and they may think twice between before doing an episode about Gypsy Rose Lee or the Donner Party, but I suspect that most of us grown-ups won't even notice the difference.
Heck, even the serial-killer episode set during the World's Fair was pretty discreet when it came to actually depicting H. H. Holmes' killings. As Christopher already noted, the show has always been fairly family-friendly by network standards. They're just going make more of an effort to lean into that.
As I recall, we had a PM conversation about your novel.
I belong to Robert Silverberg's Yahoo! group (he doesn't do Facebook), and happened to mention the reaction of that woman in my reading group. He was a bit put out by that, and said he'd written the character, Jud Elliot, to be that kind of jerk.
Well and fine - I've read that book so many times that my first copy literally fell apart, and the whole Byzantine milieu is partly what inspired my Society for Creative Anachronism persona. But yeah, if that novel were ever to become the basis for a TV series, a few tweaks would be in order for modern sensibilities. It was such a fun story, though, and I'm glad that you and a few other writers were able to give us some more stories from that setting.
This is actually a pretty common thing to do among television shows. And weirdly, in Christopher's world, this kind of thing worth commenting on and not commenting on depending on whether or not you're Christopher.
TC
I deleted this from my watchlist too soon. Now that we're getting more episodes, I should finish the first season up. They should really just drop the Garcia Flynn stuff and just stop history from being changed without the convoluted mess of having him in every episode.
For a historical genius Lucy comes up short often.
I've posted most of my thoughts on this show in the "cancelled shows" thread but I have to say this show is entertaining enough, but I wouldn't mark it off on my calendar as a "must watch" show. There's a lot of stuff I found hokey, and a lot of stuff that just downright annoyed me.
Flynn was the luckiest bad/good guy that ever lived. The amount of times that the good guys had to off him and just chose not to. That just made me yell at my screen. I do love the look of the time machine, but more the secondary one as that had more moving parts, kind of reminded me of a concept I have written but mine uses liquid metal for some parts.
The B plot with Rittenhouse yeah can we ditch that? Honestly it's been done to death and it felt like they had scoured the pages of youtube and grabbed a bunch of conspiracy tropes and made a story out of it. I didn't like it. It annoyed the heck out of me.
I hope the 10 episode season 2 is OK but family friendly really? What was so wrong with season 1? It didn't feel that out of place in terms of concept. Oh and the cast my only gripe is the lack of chemistry between everyone.
5/10
PS. Oh add me to the list of people who haven't watched an episode of Game Of Thrones. It just doesn't interest me..
I've posted most of my thoughts on this show in the "cancelled shows" thread but I have to say this show is entertaining enough, but I wouldn't mark it off on my calendar as a "must watch" show. There's a lot of stuff I found hokey, and a lot of stuff that just downright annoyed me.
Flynn was the luckiest bad/good guy that ever lived. The amount of times that the good guys had to off him and just chose not to. That just made me yell at my screen. I do love the look of the time machine, but more the secondary one as that had more moving parts, kind of reminded me of a concept I have written but mine uses liquid metal for some parts.
The B plot with Rittenhouse yeah can we ditch that? Honestly it's been done to death and it felt like they had scoured the pages of youtube and grabbed a bunch of conspiracy tropes and made a story out of it. I didn't like it. It annoyed the heck out of me.
I hope the 10 episode season 2 is OK but family friendly really? What was so wrong with season 1? It didn't feel that out of place in terms of concept. Oh and the cast my only gripe is the lack of chemistry between everyone.
5/10
PS. Oh add me to the list of people who haven't watched an episode of Game Of Thrones. It just doesn't interest me..
