Of course, the real reason for Rittenhouse pre-positioning agents in history is so that our heroes have a reason to go to a specific historical event.
Spoilers Timeless Season 2 - SPOILERS
- Thread starter JD
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It definitely makes it feel like more of a full-scale assault on history. And, agreed, they can send the heroes to potentially any time/location to resist this full-scale assault!
I think the idea is that in season 1, Rittenhouse was merely building up their organization over time but did not have access to the power of a time machine. Now, in season 2, with the power of a time machine, Rittenhouse does not just plan to infiltrate organizations or the government, they plan to use it for a full scale assault on history to radically change it, something they never could have done in season 1.
The idea in season 1 was that Rittenhouse was already everywhere, controlling everything, secretly ruling the United States for centuries and shaping world events from behind the throne. They didn't need to change history because they'd been making history to suit themselves for 250 years or more. It was a huge retcon in itself when they were shown to be nominally brought down by the authorities in the first-season finale, because up until then, we'd been told that they already were the authorities, essentially -- that they controlled every agency and there was no escaping their all-seeing eye. It was your classic self-contradictory conspiracy story where the conspiracy is so ubiquitous and all-powerful that it has no reason to be secret because it already runs everything. So they've had to retcon Rittenhouse into something less pervasive in order to generate a plotline about trying to stop them from becoming pervasive. It's a complete revision of the core premise.
Besides, none of this addresses the logic hole I was talking about. If they put sleeper agents in the past centuries ago, then logically those agents would have already changed history centuries ago. Whatever they were put there to do would already have been done hundreds of years before Lucy and the others were born. So the timeline should already have been changed.
^ Every inconsistency you observe is simply the result of many time alterations by both Rittenhouse and our time team. 
We did discuss the sleeper agents who should've been activated by 2018. Not only activated but also retired and died! That plan would've been a success or failure by 2018.
Perhaps the collective actions of these sleeper agents created 2018 as we know it. That's not good enough for Rittenhouse and so they want a do over. Or multiple do overs. Although, I agree it doesn't address the point that Rittenhouse were presented as the real power throughout our history.
We did discuss the sleeper agents who should've been activated by 2018. Not only activated but also retired and died! That plan would've been a success or failure by 2018.
Perhaps the collective actions of these sleeper agents created 2018 as we know it. That's not good enough for Rittenhouse and so they want a do over. Or multiple do overs. Although, I agree it doesn't address the point that Rittenhouse were presented as the real power throughout our history.
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Imagine the sleepers are unactivated.
Eyes and ears only.
Activating the sleepers, is a message sent through time, which creates a new timeline.
Placing the sleepers to sleep only creates a new timeline mostly identical to the last timeline as it stood before.
Eyes and ears only.
Activating the sleepers, is a message sent through time, which creates a new timeline.
Placing the sleepers to sleep only creates a new timeline mostly identical to the last timeline as it stood before.
Time travel never makes sense. This is how Timeless is doing it so that they can do the old-school visits to historical events and the trendy conspiracy plotline at the same time.
That was quite a radical change in the first two minutes of the episode. It would have been better if it had happened a bit more gradually, but they've only got so many episodes. Having the team operate out of a secret bunker with less support, and more improvisation, is pretty cool, though, so I can live with that. It does seem like the Boss Lady is still using government resources on the sly, so I wonder if that will catch up with them (or her) by season's end.
The most drastic development was Lucy's killing of that soldier. That's pretty hardcore, even if she thought that everyone else was dead and she was planning on a suicide mission to destroy the mother ship. On top of that, she's got to deal with her mother being evil and her mother's partner threatening to make it impossible to have her sister back. The writers are really piling it on this character.
On the other end of the spectrum, Mason got a nice subplot where he became a useless rich guy deprived of his riches, but got his mojo back at the end. Rich people aren't usually treated so generously in fiction these days.
Not much was made of Jiya's visions, except to show that she's still having them. Presumably something will come of that by season's end. It was kind of odd that Mason didn't ask her what she saw that time, though.
This week's historical cameo was kind of cool. It was a nice twist to see Marie Curie in other than a laboratory setting and with her daughter-- one doesn't usually think of Marie Curie in the context of a WWI battlefield.
That was quite a radical change in the first two minutes of the episode. It would have been better if it had happened a bit more gradually, but they've only got so many episodes. Having the team operate out of a secret bunker with less support, and more improvisation, is pretty cool, though, so I can live with that. It does seem like the Boss Lady is still using government resources on the sly, so I wonder if that will catch up with them (or her) by season's end.
The most drastic development was Lucy's killing of that soldier. That's pretty hardcore, even if she thought that everyone else was dead and she was planning on a suicide mission to destroy the mother ship. On top of that, she's got to deal with her mother being evil and her mother's partner threatening to make it impossible to have her sister back. The writers are really piling it on this character.
On the other end of the spectrum, Mason got a nice subplot where he became a useless rich guy deprived of his riches, but got his mojo back at the end. Rich people aren't usually treated so generously in fiction these days.
Not much was made of Jiya's visions, except to show that she's still having them. Presumably something will come of that by season's end. It was kind of odd that Mason didn't ask her what she saw that time, though.
This week's historical cameo was kind of cool. It was a nice twist to see Marie Curie in other than a laboratory setting and with her daughter-- one doesn't usually think of Marie Curie in the context of a WWI battlefield.
Time travel never entirely makes sense, but some versions of it are more nonsensical than others. Even in a fantasy story, it's important to keep the story's internal logic consistent with itself, so that the pieces fit together. Timeless has failed to do that, either with its time travel or its inane conspiracy theory. They just make stuff up as they go and toss it out without any consideration for how it fits together.
Also I gather they've moved production from Vancouver to LA (the reverse of what Supergirl did in season 2). So they didn't want to go to the trouble of rebuilding the huge Mason Industries set, thus they wrote it out of the show almost immediately. The brief opening scene set there was mostly shot in closeups, and the rest was probably stock footage and greenscreens.
Which is the value of this series. The Curies' work in WWI really happened, but most people don't know about it. It's good that the show wants to explore the parts of history that have been ignored because they weren't about white men. I just wish all the other stuff around it weren't so utterly idiotic.
There is still a strange tethering going on where if takes 5 days for something to happen in the past then nothing will happen in the future for 5 days. This could be related to the sleeper agents, they have been placed but haven't been activated from the present so nothing has changed yet. In current history they were never activated.
In season 1, it seemed that changes made in the past only kicked in when the travelers (or at least their time machine) returned to the present. But it doesn't make sense that the same logic would apply with the sleeper agents. For one thing, presumably the Mothership dropped off the sleepers one by one in the past and then went back, which should've kicked in the changes. For another thing, the sleepers' infiltrations presumably last a variable length of time. The sleeper they met here was in place for years, rising through the ranks. Others could've been in place even longer.
The fact is, of all the time travel shows out there with sloppy temporal logic, Timeless would be the sloppiest in recent memory if Legends of Tomorrow didn't also exist. They just don't think through how things work, or if they do, they never adequately explain it to the audience. So the temporal logic and story dynamics feel arbitrary. And since it plays things more seriously than Legends, that arbitrariness is harder to accept.
Meh, I'm not that concerned with the stuff you guys are complaining about as long as I'm enjoying the story, and while I do have issues with Timeless, I still enjoy it overall.
The one thing I wasn't clear on was when they put the sleepers agents in place. Did they do it using the mother ship during the time gap?
The one thing I wasn't clear on was when they put the sleepers agents in place. Did they do it using the mother ship during the time gap?
Part of the difficulty for Timeless in terms of sticking to a consistent set of rules is that the show is all about attempts to change history. Usually time travel stories involve attempts to avoid changing history. This helps avoid paradoxes and related complications. They're still not perfect but it's easier to mask inconsistencies. At least they're not front and center.
In Timeless, a major goal of the conspiracy is to change history and goes back armed with modern technology to do just that. Consequently, those paradoxes and problems are front and center. Even the good guys cause damage to the timeline. And, to make things more confusing, both groups operate from our present, so the changes to the timeline will affect themselves--which should actually make things more complicated for them than has been portrayed.
If they were smart, they'd operate at some point in the distant past so any changes they make in the timeline won't overwrite themselves (possibly out of existence). I suppose they'd need to bring back some modern infrastructure to support and power their operations.
In Timeless, a major goal of the conspiracy is to change history and goes back armed with modern technology to do just that. Consequently, those paradoxes and problems are front and center. Even the good guys cause damage to the timeline. And, to make things more confusing, both groups operate from our present, so the changes to the timeline will affect themselves--which should actually make things more complicated for them than has been portrayed.
If they were smart, they'd operate at some point in the distant past so any changes they make in the timeline won't overwrite themselves (possibly out of existence). I suppose they'd need to bring back some modern infrastructure to support and power their operations.
Well that was one of the dumbest sleeper agent plans ever. You really needed years of embedding for something anyone with a bomb could've pulled off in minutes?
However, the stuff with the other driver was cool. I also wonder if this will start being a trend for season 2 with history already changed without the main characters knowing it.
However, the stuff with the other driver was cool. I also wonder if this will start being a trend for season 2 with history already changed without the main characters knowing it.
One of them said "Our memories have been changed" which is not how time travel works in this Universe, I thought.
I agree. Also, why send Emma back in the Mothership if you have a trained agent that was planted in history precisely for the purpose of doing this mission? It appears that Emma and her partner were sent back to make sure that the sleeper agent carried out the mission but that seems like a waste of resources. Either trust the sleeper agent to carry out the mission and only send someone back in time if the sleeper agent screws up or don't use a sleeper agent at all and just send someone back in time to do the mission but don't do both. I think if the episode had shown the sleeper agent to be having second thoughts about the suicide mission because of the wife and baby, it would have explained better why Emma was sent back in time.
I did really like the african-american driver. He was an interesting character. I like how the episode depicted the racial problems of that time period. The "dukes of hazzard" car chase was super fun. The ending with the mural was cool in a mustache twirling kinda way.
Timeless is a fun show. It kinda reminds me of Legends of Tomorrow without the superhero element. Both shows are basically fun romps through history. They don't even try to make sense. The historical events are just an excuse for a fun backdrop to the adventure of the week.
This made no sense. If the presence of the sleeper agent had already changed history by making him a famous stock-car driver, then how was the bombing not also already part of history as well? Or was it that he originally chickened out of the bombing and Freckles had to go back to force him to go through with it?
Even if that part makes sense, the rest of it was pretty dumb. The contrivances they had to go through in order to justify a stock-car race being a pivotal event in American history were awfully convoluted, and the plot wasn't all that engaging. The attempt to create suspense with the guards checking the trunk while Lucy & Wyatt were hiding made no sense, since we'd already been shown that the driver had a hidden compartment behind the trunk.
In general, the villains this season are less impressive than last. Flynn was at least an interestingly ambiguous character, doing horrible things for what he truly believed were good and necessary reasons. But Emma seems to be just a one-note psychopath, and the new "Rittenhouse leader" guy Nicholas is just some eccentric megalomaniac. (Seriously, what was supposed to be so intense and shocking about the fact that he painted a mural?) I guess Lucy's mother is supposed to be the source of villainous ambiguity this season, but that ambiguity is just in their family feeling for each other; Mrs. Preston seems unambiguously committed to the whole conspiracy nonsense.
And I have to say, I'm getting very sick of hearing the word "Rittenhouse" at this point.
Even if that part makes sense, the rest of it was pretty dumb. The contrivances they had to go through in order to justify a stock-car race being a pivotal event in American history were awfully convoluted, and the plot wasn't all that engaging. The attempt to create suspense with the guards checking the trunk while Lucy & Wyatt were hiding made no sense, since we'd already been shown that the driver had a hidden compartment behind the trunk.
In general, the villains this season are less impressive than last. Flynn was at least an interestingly ambiguous character, doing horrible things for what he truly believed were good and necessary reasons. But Emma seems to be just a one-note psychopath, and the new "Rittenhouse leader" guy Nicholas is just some eccentric megalomaniac. (Seriously, what was supposed to be so intense and shocking about the fact that he painted a mural?) I guess Lucy's mother is supposed to be the source of villainous ambiguity this season, but that ambiguity is just in their family feeling for each other; Mrs. Preston seems unambiguously committed to the whole conspiracy nonsense.
And I have to say, I'm getting very sick of hearing the word "Rittenhouse" at this point.
I suspect the writers thought doing a "dukes of hazzard" style car chase would be cool. And stuffing Wyatt and Lucy in the hidden compartment was just an excuse to give the characters a romantic moment. The show is clearly pushing the "Wucy" relationship.
Obviously, but that doesn't mean their flimsy excuse to fit it into their premise was convincing. What matters isn't the underlying intention, what matters is how well it's pulled off. In theory, I like the idea of a mystery where the bad guys try to change history in a place and time that has no obvious historical significance, but the payoff to that mystery was weak and felt very forced.
I wasn't objecting to that part. I was saying that the attempt to create suspense that they'd be discovered during the search of the trunk was a complete failure, because we'd already been shown that the hidden compartment was behind (or rather, in front of) the trunk. So the suspenseful direction and the characters' worry when the guard insisted on searching the trunk was obviously phony, because we already knew they weren't in the trunk, they were in the hidden compartment. The attempt to make it suspenseful relied on the audience forgetting what they'd been clearly shown before, and that's fairly insulting to the intelligence of the audience.
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