The National Broadcasting Company series Timeless (2016-2018) seems to have made a swan song with the two-hour double episode that aired on December 20th, 2018. The series takes what the International Movie Database (IMDB) calls an “unlikely trio travel through time in order to battle unknown criminals and protect history as we know it.”
(Malcolm Barrett, left, Abigail Spencer, center, and Matt Lanter starred in Timeless).
The trio that traveled into the past to protect history against changes by a group of competing time travelers was the hook of this series. Abigail Spencer stars as Lucy Preston, the female lead and history teacher with the knowledge of history to help navigate the trio through the past. Matt Lanter stars as Wyatt Logan, whose military acumen and leadership skills make him essential. Malcolm Barrett as Rufus Carlin is the technical wizard and time machine pilot that flies the time machine.
(Paterson Joseph as Connor Mason).
Connor Mason, as played by Paterson Joseph, invented the company and technology responsible for the spherical time machine that is in the hands of both contingents of time travelers. Much of the first season saw Mason getting blackmailed by the nefarious band of time travelers, with their “Mothership” and “Rittenhouse” view of history alteration.
(Paterson Joseph, left, and Malcolm Barrett).
We learn early in the first season that Rufus Carlin, portrayed by Malcolm Barrett, had been recruited to Mason Industries due to similar personal circumstances. The elder Connor feels some sense of guilt and kinship with Rufus. The storyline grew through the first season to have both characters explicitly subject to Rittenhouse blackmail. With the bond between Rufus and Connor firmly established, this line of storytelling, as well as the entire series, was abandoned with the end of the first season.
(Malcolm Barrett, left, and Claudia Doumit).
Wait, what? Timeless would be granted a 10-episode second season after first being cancelled following the end of its first season in the spring of 2017. Rufus’ character would take a stronger turn towards his relationship with love interest and technically inclined Jiya, as portrayed by Claudia Doumit.
We would see that Jiya was having strong premonitions and visions around Rufus’ future through the experience of dreamlike flashbacks, which were symptoms of a time travel related illness that Connor Mason knew more about than anyone. For reasons of seeming embarrassment and interest in setting history right against the likes of Rittenhouse, Connor had been withholding his awareness of the effects and reality of the illness from the “Lifeboat” team of time travelers.
(Sakina Jaffrey as NSA agent Denise Christopher).
A leader of the lifeboat team of time travelers, and recruiter of the likes of main characters Lucy Preston and Wyatt Logan, was agent Denise Christopher. It was Christopher, as portrayed by Sakina Jaffrey, who would at times conflict with Connor Mason about the course of the lifeboat team while simultaneously posing a large cliffhanger turn at the end of the first season.
(Goran Visnjic as Garcia Flynn).
Garcia Flynn, as portrayed by Goran Visnjic, straddled two worlds within the Lifeboat faction. Flynn spent the first season as an untrustworthy foil to the efforts of the Lifeboat team to set a coherent strategy of stopping Rittenhouse from the desire to save his wife and child, who had been killed in 2012 at the hands of the Rittenhouse faction. Flynn had sworn to get his family back and aimed to change history in any way that he could to achieve that goal.
Goran Visnjic, left, and Abigail Spencer).
It had been a future version of Lucy Preston, as portrayed by Abigail Spencer, who had shared a diary of the events of the lifeboat team. This action had occurred before we as an audience are introduced to Flynn, Preston, agent Denise Christopher, or Connor Mason. Preston and Flynn have a tense relationship through the first season as Preston is concerned with maintaining history as we know it. Despite backstory that I am not sharing, the end of the first season of Timeless sees Preston aim to unify the mission of the Lifeboat team with Flynn while agreeing to help him restore his family. Agent Christopher intervenes, sending Flynn to federal prison.
Much of the 10-episode second season with the 2-episode add-on that aired December 20th of last year gets into stories of love interests between Jiya and Rufus, Flynn and Preston, Preston and Wyatt Logan, and finally Logan and his murdered then resurrected wife, Jessica Logan. Flynn, Preston, and Logan each have underlying stories involving the desire to restore family members lost to the changing history prompted by Rittenhouse and the time machines Mothership and Lifeboat. Agent Denise Christopher has this to a lesser but just as authentic degree.
The 2-episode special that seemingly brings an end to the fictional playing in history that began with the humanity of the Hindenburg Disaster and ended with Hungnam Evacuation of the Korean War. The series brought resolution to many questions surrounding the central characters. A proper handling of the raised questions deserved a longer narrative arc of at least a third season.
The premise of the series was one that I enjoyed. The episodic feel of the events and storytelling was not unlike one might expect from the series Quantum Leap (1989-1993), even with a distinctly different focus and storytelling sensibility. I had hope for more of the stories being contemplated by the series Timeless. I am sad to see it go. With the realization that the abrupt ending to the stories could not be helped due to a decision to cancel the series, my overall rating of the series is 3.75-stars on a 5-star scale.
Matt – Wednesday, January 2, 2019
Matt Lynn Digital 