That might backfire. Unless it was a really horrible dystopia, it'd probably still look better than the current reality...
Spoilers Timeless: Season 1 on NBC
- Thread starter Aragorn
- Start date
That might backfire. Unless it was a really horrible dystopia, it'd probably still look better than the current reality...
Well, you could do the opposite too. Have it where the future is actually better in some ways and it makes the team doubt that Rittenhouse needs to be stopped. It would bring up an interesting philosophical question: if a despot, violating human rights, somehow created a better future society or his actions indirectly lead to a better future society, should the despot still be stopped? Questions like that make for good time travel stories. So while Rittenhouse uses deplorable methods, maybe they create some good in the future? Having some grey areas where it is not 100% obvious if the team should stop Rittenhouse, would make things more interesting.
That could be interesting.
Maybe Rittenhouse could decide to reach even farther and expand their control to the entire world.
Again, though, Legends of Tomorrow already did something pretty much along those lines last year. It wouldn't be hard to do a better version of that story than Legends did, but I don't have much faith in Timeless's writers to do it any less clumsily, and even if I did, it would be too soon.
I am still not 100% convinced that it would be a problem. The two shows have nothing to do with each other so it is not like when the same show repeats the same plot again. I mean, would people complain if NCIS did a similar to plot to Blue Bloods a year later? I doubt it.
They might if they watched both shows. I'm not saying they'd be doing anything morally wrong if they used the same plot, I'm just saying it's not an idea that I as a viewer would be interested in seeing again so soon.
Rittenhouses plan for the time machine, is to use the time machine.
I still can't get over how dumb that is.
Besides, look at Trump, ruling in the spotlight is shit.
Ruling from the shadows is neat.
Who says that they actually want to rule in the spotlight?
And who says that they see the liberal heroes as their enemies?
Um. Who are the conservative heroes?
The only bad thing we know that they have done is that they murdered the family of the man who killed Lincoln... Even though Rittenhouse did not know that at the time.
The mild threats that they have used to make sure that they have a say in how time travel is used, is a minuscule fraction of the force exerted by the worlds governments to make sure that nuclear weapons are not confused for toys.
I still can't get over how dumb that is.
Besides, look at Trump, ruling in the spotlight is shit.
Ruling from the shadows is neat.
Who says that they actually want to rule in the spotlight?
And who says that they see the liberal heroes as their enemies?
Um. Who are the conservative heroes?
The only bad thing we know that they have done is that they murdered the family of the man who killed Lincoln... Even though Rittenhouse did not know that at the time.
The mild threats that they have used to make sure that they have a say in how time travel is used, is a minuscule fraction of the force exerted by the worlds governments to make sure that nuclear weapons are not confused for toys.
He was a regular on General Hospital for several years, playing Johnny Zacchara, a mob boss' son who really didn't want to be part of organized crime at first. But circumstances eventually led to him becoming a darker character (albeit with a conscience regarding certain people) and he is currently in prison for several murders.
It was nice to see the actor again; I've missed him.
Is it confirmed that there will be a second season?
No word yet.
Momento.
I doubt David Rittenhouse is the true origin of Rittenhouse.
I doubt David Rittenhouse is the true origin of Rittenhouse.
The question is officially begged as to exactly when Flynn is from. Given that he has possession of Lucy's journal (or at least a Lucy's journal), either he's from further "downstream" than our heroes or is getting help from someone who is.
And no turtles were harmed in the making of this show.
And no turtles were harmed in the making of this show.
Flynn is from the present. The government has records of his past activities before he went rogue, and his family was murdered in 2014.
I just read a fanfic in which the moment they re-entered their own time, Wyatt and Rufus discovered that Lucy was never part of their team and their historian was a blonde woman named Elyse. Everyone swears she's always been part of the team and only Wyatt and Rufus know any different.
I wonder if the show has any similar plans to replace one of the three like that.
I wonder if the show has any similar plans to replace one of the three like that.
Definitely an easy way to replace someone if they ever need to go that route (and last that long). Of course, should have already happened (probably), since they've had an adventure where they left Lucy behind, and another one where they left Wyatt behind. At the very least, the character they return to shouldn't be the one they left behind, what with the muddling with the timeline. Different memories at the very least. But this show isn't good at that, to the point where Lucy and her mom were able to pick up a conversation right where they left off after a trip...
It's like I keep saying -- most time-travel shows don't make that assumption because it would make it impossible for the drama to work if the characters had no continuity. Instead, they're predicated on the assumption that the timeline resists change, that only certain things are affected and others remain the same. Timeless is not even remotely unique in this. The Arrowverse does the same thing, with Legends of Tomorrow altering bits of history all the time but Arrow and The Flash still having ongoing narratives -- and when timeline changes are made, like the changes Barry made in Flashpoint, they're only to certain details while others are unaffected. The assumption of stories like this (and Back to the Future and many other time-travel stories) is that, instead of branching off an entirely separate timeline, a time-travel event merely introduces "edits" into the existing timestream. It's continuous except for the parts that get affected, like editing a document in the computer. Or if it is a separate branch, most of it stays so much the same that the difference is meaningless.
It makes no sense to keep harping on what "should" be when it's overwhelmingly clear that the show's time-travel rules are based on a different paradigm. Time travel stories are fantasy; they make up whatever rules are dramatically and narratively the most useful. Arguing that the timeline "should" be changing drastically after each trip is as useless as arguing that, say, Starfleet officers should be incapable of understanding the languages of aliens they've just met, or that Smaug the dragon should be unable to take flight because he's simply too massive. What "should" be in a realistic world has to give way to what serves the narrative purposes of the story. A fictional universe is allowed to invent its own internal logic, as long as it does so consistently.
Just trying to feel out the show's rules, as they make no logical sense and is NOT consistent. Take that for whatever it's worth, I guess.
LoT isn't worth discussing; they're just playing with stuff and none of it really counts. I don't bother trying to logic it out because it's clear they don't take it seriously and are just having fun. Time Travel on that show isn't worth discussing, there aren't any rules, not really.
The Flash is kinda a mess, but at least trying to play to logic, if their own flavor of it. Flashpoint being a good example, though. Basically nothing changed, time-wise, but still all sorts of minute changes. And while the team is still all there, they AREN"T the same people. Different experiences, actions, histories, etc. They look like Barry's team, but he's never getting the original crew back; these people are different.
Timeless isn't even making that effort, they're literally continuing conversations across multiple timelines without missing a beat. And once you leave someone in the present to take actions in the past, I'd think you'd lose that continuity. While they stayed together, you can at least argue that they have the same history and experiences, but once you start leaving people behind and altering the past, you should be coming back to the 'universe-native' version of that character, and the one from the original universe (or at least our POV starting point, as the journal proves this one isn't the Prime universe) should have been absorbed in favor of the native character.
If I leave you here, go back in time and kill Lincoln, it doesn't matter if you travelled with me in the past and remember JWB having done it; once I come back, you should 'remember' it always being me. Not sure of anything in the show that would allow you to stay the original you, no temporal shielding has been name-dropped, no proximity to the device, no chronotrons stuck to you from being a time traveler, etc. Just writers that want to play with time travel but didn't think anything through and have no set rules on how it works.
LoT isn't worth discussing; they're just playing with stuff and none of it really counts. I don't bother trying to logic it out because it's clear they don't take it seriously and are just having fun. Time Travel on that show isn't worth discussing, there aren't any rules, not really.
The Flash is kinda a mess, but at least trying to play to logic, if their own flavor of it. Flashpoint being a good example, though. Basically nothing changed, time-wise, but still all sorts of minute changes. And while the team is still all there, they AREN"T the same people. Different experiences, actions, histories, etc. They look like Barry's team, but he's never getting the original crew back; these people are different.
Timeless isn't even making that effort, they're literally continuing conversations across multiple timelines without missing a beat. And once you leave someone in the present to take actions in the past, I'd think you'd lose that continuity. While they stayed together, you can at least argue that they have the same history and experiences, but once you start leaving people behind and altering the past, you should be coming back to the 'universe-native' version of that character, and the one from the original universe (or at least our POV starting point, as the journal proves this one isn't the Prime universe) should have been absorbed in favor of the native character.
If I leave you here, go back in time and kill Lincoln, it doesn't matter if you travelled with me in the past and remember JWB having done it; once I come back, you should 'remember' it always being me. Not sure of anything in the show that would allow you to stay the original you, no temporal shielding has been name-dropped, no proximity to the device, no chronotrons stuck to you from being a time traveler, etc. Just writers that want to play with time travel but didn't think anything through and have no set rules on how it works.
I haven't watched the other shows that you guys have mentioned. But, I would hope that the Timeless writers would've tried to figure all of this out to some extent. At least name check some sort of shielding. But, it really seems like they're making this up as they go.
There really isn't any further depth behind what we're seeing about Rittenhouse, or interesting paradoxes, etc. Maybe they'll prove me wrong down the road, but that's the sense that I'm getting now. They just had an idea of a fun time travel show where they go to the past, have some shoot outs, make a few fun changes to history, face a generic shadow organization, etc, but nothing explored in more depth. It seems like that's just not the type of series they want. Some series are willing to shake up their format as the stories progress, but Timeless is not one of those. So far, they want to keep things the same despite their own storyline suggesting otherwise!
Mr Awe
There really isn't any further depth behind what we're seeing about Rittenhouse, or interesting paradoxes, etc. Maybe they'll prove me wrong down the road, but that's the sense that I'm getting now. They just had an idea of a fun time travel show where they go to the past, have some shoot outs, make a few fun changes to history, face a generic shadow organization, etc, but nothing explored in more depth. It seems like that's just not the type of series they want. Some series are willing to shake up their format as the stories progress, but Timeless is not one of those. So far, they want to keep things the same despite their own storyline suggesting otherwise!
Mr Awe
But my point is that these are just two examples of a convention that many, many time travel stories use, because it just makes narrative sense to use it. If you're telling a continuing serial narrative, you need the characters to be the same continuous people and to remember a common past, unless there's a story need for them not to. If they become completely different people in each episode, with no memories in common with the main characters, then it becomes impossible to do an ongoing dramatic narrative, or for the audience to invest emotionally in characters who are totally different people every week. Timeless and LoT and countless other time-travel stories do it this way because it's narratively logical and necessary to do it this way, regardless of whether it makes sense in other ways.
For instance, Back to the Future used this trope as well. When Marty came back to 1985 after his first trip, the Doc Brown he found in the mall was from a different, altered timeline, but the story assumed that he and Marty had been through the exact same events in the mall with the terrorist attack -- the only change being that he'd worn a bulletproof vest because of Marty's letter, plus the name of the mall being different because Marty had knocked down one of the Twin Pines. It was treated, not as a totally different, alien timeline where everything was changed, but as the same reality inhabited by the same individuals, just with certain details edited. That has been a standard bit of time-travel fantasy logic for decades, because it's necessary to preserve the audience's emotional investment in the characters and their shared history, and I find it astonishing that you think it's somehow unique to Timeless.
You keep stubbornly insisting on how you think it "should" be, but that's not the way they've chosen to tell this story, and it's not the way most time-travel fantasy writers choose to tell it. Like I keep telling you, every time travel story is a fantasy. The only realistic approach to time travel is not to do it at all. Or to do it like Interstellar did, where it's very hard and requires incredibly rare and powerful cosmic phenomena and it only applies in a very limited circumstance and it can only produce a self-consistent outcome. Any other way of approaching time travel in fiction is a fantasy making impossible assumptions for the sake of drama, so you just have to stop worrying about what "should" be, because that's some other story. Just learn the rules of the story you're watching. Timeless's rules are the same ones used by many other time-travel stories going back generations -- yes, sloppier in some ways, but not fundamentally different, certainly not in the ways you keep dwelling on.
Stubborn Insistence, huh? Sorta like how you've spent about 15 of these 31 pages telling us the lifeboat couldn't possibly be capable of independent travel, and that some of this only made sense if it was a tethering-type situation? Or you getting hung up on genetics when no one was arguing it, and then later trying to bash us over the head with the point we were TRYING to make at the time? You crack me up sometimes. 
BTTF is a great example. When Biff messed with the past, and then Marty went forward in time in BTTF 2, things were a tad different, weren't they? If Marty was having a conversation with car wax Biff before he left (or his mother, or the principal, or...), can't pop back to 1985 and finish it. Even when Marty 'fixed' everything in the first movie so that things were basically the same, they weren't the exact same, and if Marty was talking with his parents at the start of the movie, he's not continuing it later. For things to make sense, more changes like at the end of BTTF ought to be happening regularly. Most everyone's still there, but minute differences, maybe someone random is there or someone is missing occasionally, etc.
I understand that it's tough to maintain a series if the characters don't retain anything week to week, but they need to work with the premise to allow it somehow, or maintain that things are happening similarly, but not always exactly the same. Some sort of bubble around the facility would allow for most of that, but it's never come up.
With that in mind, when Rufus and Wyatt stole the lifeboat to save his wife, they left Lucy behind. Wyatt asked Lucy the outcome right when he got back, and she was able (if i'm remembering correctly) to tell him that he saved the other two, but his wife still died. How would she know about the other two women? They just returned to a timeline where they never died, and wouldn't be part of the history where his wife died.
Unless something even crazier is going on, and you displace your 'current universe' counterpart when you show up, but don't get affected by other changes somehow? The team is from history 1 (well, 2 really, but whatever). They left Lucy 1 behind in history 2, but she remembers history 1 only. They change the 80s, return to history 3, but somehow Lucy 1 is still there? Where did Lucy 3 go?
The show very much needs shielding or a protective bubble or something to explain why the support crew isn't affected at all by this. Although they remember the Bond movie and whatnot, so sometimes they ARE affected. Ugh....
I'm really not convinced that the writers sat down and came up with many, if any, rules for how this works. I get that concessions need to be made, but it really ought to be somewhat consistent and make sense in-universe at least. This is all just random and week to week, and ignored completely when they feel like it. Very frustrating, no internal logic. Easier to accept a silly premise or rules if they stick to them and they make sense. When they slap it together (like the lifeboat being able to travel independently ought to let them end the show in the first episode or two, instead they're intentionally showing up at bad times?), it's tough to take seriously.
To bring it around to Star Trek, take The Enemy Within. Real answer is that they hadn't thought of the shuttles yet (or budgeted to show them, or whatever), but they were trapped on the planet because they couldn't use the transporter. No dialog about why they didn't just fly down and grab them instead. It was early, we forgive them, etc. but not the sort of thing you can keep doing over and over again and have it make any sense. I'm going to just pretend that something made it unsafe to fly and no one mentioned it on screen, but hey, retcons are wonderful. In Timeless, though, they already had the equipment and a reason to use it, and just don't. Over and over again. Why?
BTTF is a great example. When Biff messed with the past, and then Marty went forward in time in BTTF 2, things were a tad different, weren't they? If Marty was having a conversation with car wax Biff before he left (or his mother, or the principal, or...), can't pop back to 1985 and finish it. Even when Marty 'fixed' everything in the first movie so that things were basically the same, they weren't the exact same, and if Marty was talking with his parents at the start of the movie, he's not continuing it later. For things to make sense, more changes like at the end of BTTF ought to be happening regularly. Most everyone's still there, but minute differences, maybe someone random is there or someone is missing occasionally, etc.
I understand that it's tough to maintain a series if the characters don't retain anything week to week, but they need to work with the premise to allow it somehow, or maintain that things are happening similarly, but not always exactly the same. Some sort of bubble around the facility would allow for most of that, but it's never come up.
With that in mind, when Rufus and Wyatt stole the lifeboat to save his wife, they left Lucy behind. Wyatt asked Lucy the outcome right when he got back, and she was able (if i'm remembering correctly) to tell him that he saved the other two, but his wife still died. How would she know about the other two women? They just returned to a timeline where they never died, and wouldn't be part of the history where his wife died.
Unless something even crazier is going on, and you displace your 'current universe' counterpart when you show up, but don't get affected by other changes somehow? The team is from history 1 (well, 2 really, but whatever). They left Lucy 1 behind in history 2, but she remembers history 1 only. They change the 80s, return to history 3, but somehow Lucy 1 is still there? Where did Lucy 3 go?
The show very much needs shielding or a protective bubble or something to explain why the support crew isn't affected at all by this. Although they remember the Bond movie and whatnot, so sometimes they ARE affected. Ugh....
I'm really not convinced that the writers sat down and came up with many, if any, rules for how this works. I get that concessions need to be made, but it really ought to be somewhat consistent and make sense in-universe at least. This is all just random and week to week, and ignored completely when they feel like it. Very frustrating, no internal logic. Easier to accept a silly premise or rules if they stick to them and they make sense. When they slap it together (like the lifeboat being able to travel independently ought to let them end the show in the first episode or two, instead they're intentionally showing up at bad times?), it's tough to take seriously.
To bring it around to Star Trek, take The Enemy Within. Real answer is that they hadn't thought of the shuttles yet (or budgeted to show them, or whatever), but they were trapped on the planet because they couldn't use the transporter. No dialog about why they didn't just fly down and grab them instead. It was early, we forgive them, etc. but not the sort of thing you can keep doing over and over again and have it make any sense. I'm going to just pretend that something made it unsafe to fly and no one mentioned it on screen, but hey, retcons are wonderful. In Timeless, though, they already had the equipment and a reason to use it, and just don't. Over and over again. Why?
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