Travelers

[Chris L]

Travelers may well be the best original science-fiction series currently on Netflix or anywhere else. Even if it isn't, it's certainly in the top two or three. It does what science fiction at its best should do in any dramatic medium: creates a group of fully realized characters that you genuinely care about, casts talented and charismatic actors in the roles (Eric McCormack, Enrico Colantoni, etc.), and puts those characters in situations that affect their lives in compelling ways that would not be possible without the show's speculative premise.

That premise is a familiar one -- time travelers from the future coming to the present day to prevent a disaster that will eventually leave this planet a post-apocalyptic ruin -- yet it neatly dodges all the cliches inherent in that idea with a presentation so deft and original that, while it has some tiny holes in its logic, is so well executed that you don't care. @AmyG and I just finished bingeing (binging?) the second season after re-watching the first and our only regret is that we'll probably have to wait the better part of a year to learn what happens next. Even if you aren't ordinarily a fan of science fiction shows, I hope at least some of you will put time aside for it. Trust me: You'll know from the first episode whether or not you're going to put your life on hold for it.

If you need more prompting, here's a good article about it: "The Meditative Science Fiction of Netflix's Travelers Rewards the Patient."

[nulipp]

I've added it to my Netflix queue ... it's a good thing I don't really have a life since between that and My Crazy Ex Girlfriend (that's your fault, too ) I probably won't be leaving the house except for work for quite some time.

[Gordonb]

I tend to not much like sci-fi, and when they can't even spell 'Travellers' ... well, really ...

[Chris L]

I tend to not much like sci-fi, and when they can't even spell 'Travellers' ... well, really ...

We silly Americans can't spell anything right. (Though it's made in Canada, where they tend to go with the British spelling as often as not, so you'd think...)

[Gordonb]

I tend to not much like sci-fi, and when they can't even spell 'Travellers' ... well, really ...

Rey watches/watched it and reminded me that I did in fact watch a bit of an episode recently until he told me to bugger off as I was asking far too many questions!

[DiveMilw]

I had forgotten that I watched season one.  I remember not liking it much but no particulars so I watched it again.  There are two episodes about 2/3 of the way through that I didn't care for and the rest I liked.  Mystery solved.  I then moved on to season two.  The second season is much better than season one, which is pretty good (expect for the 2 episodes I didn't like   )  My only major critique is that I think the season should have been longer.  It felt like there were a couple of episodes missing which would have rounded out the season better.  Often the story felt rushed to me and a handful more episodes could have tied things together better.

Regarding season three, a website says "Production on the third season will get underway this month, so we could realistically have Travelers Season 3 back on Netflix by Christmas. "  Yay!! 

A few small questions I have - and I might have these because I missed stuff.  The trouble, for me, with binge watching is that I sometimes feel too comfortable watching and am not as attentive as I should be.  

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Did they give up trying to show us Trevor living with his parents?  Admittedly there were too many times a high school student (or anyone for that matter) had to leave at a moment's notice to go on a mission.  It seems to happen nearly every day.
A child can be a messenger because their minds are malleable enough to temporarily be taken over but an adult's brain can handle being overwritten?  I don't really care about this one but in my mind it doesn't make sense.
Where are the labs that are making all this advanced tech?  They can't bring it with them so somewhere in the worlds are many factories making advanced communications equipment, weapons, medical equipment & meds and more. It's only a matter of time before one of these places is discovered.......perhaps in season three?

I'm sick of Marcy being a major side story.  I'd rather have seen how Carly was managing with Jeff but things are different at the end of season two so I might get my wish but in a different way.  

[AmyG]

I agree Season 2 is better than Season 1. Which were the two episodes you didn't like? I had the same thought about your first question. Re your other two questions:

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2. I don't even try to make sense of that stuff. I just accept whatever their rules are. What about the rule that you can't send a traveler back to a time before the most recent traveler was sent? Isn't that really just to make it so the possibility of a do-over doesn't ruin any hope of a suspenseful plot? And we wouldn't have been able to have the best episode yet in my opinion "17 Minutes"
3. I don't know if they've discussed the labs but they most certainly have discussed the engineers sent back early to build the stuff the later travelers will use. I'm surprised after 17 years, their whole operation hasn't been uncovered. But of course, that's where they are going with Season 3. We'll see.

PS. The music is so good!

[DiveMilw]

"Room 101" I liked but it really didn't seem to fit in with anything else that happened in season 1.  Of course, it's totally important to season 2.
"Protocol 5" might be one I didn't care for most.  It was slow and I just didn't care what any of the characters did.  
"Donner" might be another one I didn't like too much.  

Part of the problem is that I was watching them right in a row.  Shows can easily fall apart when you watch too much of them.  And once hit "Protocol 5" I sort of put up a wall.  So I was sure to watch season 2 only one episode per day.....until the last couple of days when I polished off the last four or five to finish the season.  It was too exciting for me to resist.  

[Chris L]

"Room 101" definitely had a payoff later. I always assumed that it would, though it took a bit longer than I expected. Still, it gave them

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a great kicker for the end of the second season debut episode.

I thought the first season slowed down a bit after the

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false climax in the sixth episode

, but it gathered steam again. I liked that the show spent a lot of time on character building rather than action. David and Marcy are actually my favorite relationship in the show, with David being so charmingly clueless about how to deal with his attraction to Marcy. And I found Marcy a very appealing character because, as others on the show pointed out later,

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she was so vulnerable due to her knowledge of her impending death, a point that was driven home after she was rebooted to her relatively unlikeable original self. That reboot led to one of the first season's most moving plot beats -- Marcy completely forgetting that she'd fallen in love with David.

I also liked the way they had McLaren

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gradually fall in love with the real McLaren's wife, whether because of the memories left behind in his host's brain or because his future wife was evolving into a strong but rather ruthless character out of her need to protect her host's child. It's funny but, while I understood why Carly did what she did in order to protect the child, when she left her host's husband high and dry after he shot the little girl in order to protect her I began to like her a little less. In fact, I was starting to like her husband a bit more until he reverted to asshole form near the end of Season Two.

I agree with @AmyG that,

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given that there were thousands (or was it tens of thousands?) of Travelers in the 21st Century by the time McLaren's team arrived, they had no doubt created some sort of infrastructure for recreating future technology from scratch. Admittedly this was a bit of a stretch, given that all they could bring back with them was knowledge, but I'm betting that in a later episode we'll see that they have an entire hidden factory replicating future nanotech development -- and once you've got nanotechnology, you can build anything from individual atoms.

[Chris L]

@AmyG mentions the show's excellent music. If you go on Spotify (or other music service) and look up Travelers (Original Series Soundtrack) by Adam Lastiwka, you can listen to it. I found an interesting video online where Lastiwka talks about the score. Apparently he wrote much of it before any of the scripts were written and the writers used the score as inspiration while writing the episodes. That seems a bit backwards from the way most scores are written, but it certainly seems to have worked. (The video is actually embedded in the article that I linked to in the first message of this thread.)

[Chris L]

There are several episodes of this show that I could point to as among the best I've seen on television. I'll list them one by one inside spoiler tags.

"17 Minutes" -

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@AmyG has already mentioned this as probably the best episode of the series, with the director repeatedly trying and failing to use a pair of skydivers to rescue McLaren's team from a surprise attack. From the moment I realized what the episode was doing I was on the edge of my seat. It was one of the best attempts I've ever seen a television show make at non-stop action -- and, for once, it really works. Yet it still finds time for important character moments.

"Bishop" --

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The episode where McLaren is trapped on an airplane with his wife and a congressman that he has to save, but can only save two people. It's not only suspenseful but it's where you first begin to realize that future McLaren is starting to fall in love with 21st Century McLaren's wife.

"Kathryn" --

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The episode following the above, where McLaren, in a coma, finds himself trapped in the remainder of his host's memories and falls in love with his wife for real. I loved the depiction of the coma as something McLaren had to climb out of through a series of ladders. Or was he climbing toward the white light of death, which he then escapes?