"A 'Timeless' Review" Topic

One of the new shows this fall is the sci-fi/historical adventure ‘Timeless.' NBC has high hopes for this high concept genre series which banks on the well-worn tropes of time travel (back in time), the causal conundrum and the butterfly effect. Scheduled for the 10 p.m. timeslot on Mondays behind ‘The Voice,' the show's "live" audience will likely be limited and its success will hinge on how many people DVR it.

Part ‘Time Cop' and part ‘Voyagers!' (for those not in the know, ‘Voyagers!' is a time travel TV show from the 1980's), ‘Timeless' is set in the present and proposes that humanity has perfected the time machine but it's a deeply held secret. When a mysterious "terrorist" known as Flynn (Goran Višnjic) commandeered a machine to go back to May 6, 1937, the day of the Hindenburg disaster, the unlikely pairing of history professor Lucy Preston (Abigail Spencer) and ex-Delta Force sergeant Wyatt Logan (Matt Lanter) are recruited by Homeland Security to intercept and stop him from whatever he is (or was?) trying to carry out in the only other machine in existence, the prototype.

While the premise sounds interesting, the show suffers from a lackluster script, one-dimensional characters and tepid action scenes. There is little chemistry between Lucy and Wyatt, and to say that the acting from these two and the cookie-cutter supporting cast are unconvincing and uninspired would be an understatement. The show plans to take us back in time each week to key wink-wink moments in history and we may even see famous historical figures, but is that enough to keep us tuned in every week? That is an answer only the future will know.

Well, it's good to know if the show has problems they can go back in time to fix them.

Been there, done that.
link

I saw the first episode and was not impressed.

I was hopeful but underwhelmed. Looking forward to the return of "The Expanse" and "Orphan Black."

Yeah, underwhelmed. I was hoping for something more like Connie Willis's excellent time travel novels (If you haven't read The Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and the two-parter Blackout and All Clear, you've missed a treat, and some of the best science fiction currently published).

There was just too much excessive "life drama" crammed in from the start, from the comatose mother to the dead wife (and the historical figure who magically resembles her) to the over-the-top racial speech of the Obligatory Black Character (though his earlier "there is literally no time in American history that is going to work out well for me" was a funny line). Apparently no one on the writing staff has heard of the concept of "subtle."

On top of this (and a minor point), they got the Hindenburg disaster wrong. From what I've read, yes, the static electricity sparked the fire, not by igniting the hydrogen, but by igniting the aluminum powder coating on the ship's skin. Of course, I could be wrong, but I really don't expect a television show to get that sort of thing correct. "Print the myth," as it were.

I do admit to being intrigued by the mystery of what the heck the "bad" guy is up to, but I have little hope that in the end it will turn out to be all that imaginative.

Did like the counter-rotating rings that powered the time device, which I vaguely seem to recall encountering as potential time travel concept (super conductors? Super dense material? Tipler cylinders? All this is welling up back in the corners of my mind, but I can't quite recall exactly what the details were…).

Might still fall into "something to watch" category.

The pilot is repeating tonight at 8PM, I'll give it a try.

But if it's not OMG-Amazeballs! there's no way it can compete with Conviction (which is the other show on Monday nights at 10PM).

I liked it, but Conviction has Haley Atwell.

So it wins.

Best time travel show are the time travel episodes on family guy. (After doctor who of course)

I'm wondering how often the timeline can get changed before the three travelers come back to a world where they were never born? Or one in which the time machine had not been invented. Then they're stuck (and the series is over).

I think a better premise would have been to have shows where it's their duty to preserve the original time line.

I thought the various Star Trek TV shows (e.g Voyager and Deep Space 9) did an excellent job when it came to story lines about time travel. Timeless could learn from them.