Date of airing: October 24, 2016 (NBC)
Nielsen ratings information: 5.474 million viewers, 3.3/6 in Households, 1.31/5 with Adults 18-49, 0.7/3 with Adults 18-34, 1.8/5 with Adults 25-54
Well, this was the best episode of the show so far, which I guess is not a difficult thing to do, considering the show is still finding its footing at this stage and doesn't even have a handful of episodes yet. This time around the mission wasn’t just a trip into the past to check out how awesome it is to travel through time and to see what the past was up to, but the mission was used for conflicts between the characters as to how to execute the mission, as well as some character development and choices being made.
This episode might be a landmark for TIMELESS, because it showed me that the writers cared a lot about what they were putting on paper. I have no idea why they cared less in the previous two episodes, but during this hour, Wyatt made known how he would decide in a pinch during a mission, and he is capable of changing the entire future in accord with his own decision, while at the same time, Lucy made her priorities known and started to fight for her sister, pulling all her might into it to get her back. The former is a pretty intriguing character treat that might screw up the entire timeline for the show (in a good way though, because this episode only brought a completely new Bond movie), and the latter kickstarts a character arc that might develop Lucy towards becoming a fighter, and a person who will like to bend rules to get what she wants. And her decisions might be riskier for the future than Wyatt’s decision to take the shot next time. Who knows if she will suddenly work together with Flynn (as soon as he explains his behavior) and she sees a way to get her sister back...
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| A British spy and an American time traveler join a German castle party. |
The mission back to 1944 was intriguing because for the first time in the show it created a conflict between the team members. Flynn was ready to kill Von Braun and change history, knowing that he would have changed history if he had pulled the trigger, and even Rufus kind of didn’t care about the repercussions of what could have been his actions when he gave Von Braun the equations of whatever Rufus was currently working on (although that may have just been a random formula for future tech, or just a complex formula in general to show Von Braun that Rufus is a mathematician). The only one having her crap together is Lucy, although, in this episode, she was starting to crack as well, proving that you can’t just hop through time and think that everything will be peachy-dory at the end of the day. If the three main characters suddenly decided to do the missions their own way, and follow their own agendas and rules, the show not only has the chance to play with the relationships of the trio, but the writers could dwell deeper into what makes each individual member of the team tick, besides messing up the timeline. I would have liked to see that earlier in this show, but after four episodes I am glad to see it. SEVEN DAYS, the UPN time travel action pulp hour from the late 1990s, never did that, and I continuously watched the show for all of its three seasons, and it hasn’t survived the first decade of the twenty-first century at all.
I found it interesting that Lucy almost shattered at the thought of having to play a convincing Nazi, although I’m sure she would have done a lot better if she had known the language. It seemed weird at first that she would be more scared of the Nazis who had nothing on her or reason to see her as the enemy, compared to Flynn who was actively searching her out to betray her and stop her mission from succeeding. While I was happy that this part of the story got attention, it was somehow lost when the story became about Von Braun and Flynn’s efforts to hand him over to the Russians. When the episode remembered that it needed to tell a story about time travel and an ever-changing fixed history, it dropped the strong character moments and went back to the time travel shenanigans. It’s almost a shame that the Nazis didn’t know about the time-traveling trio, maybe they would have been in the spot Von Braun was in this episode: between three fronts, each of them fighting to get Von Braun first. Although that would have been an entirely different episode.
By the way, while I’m at it: When is Hollywood finally going to adapt TimeRiders into a movie? The first novel of Alex Scarrow's YA series is perfect for a little World War Two slash Nazi time travel action thriller, and it doesn’t even have to be a super expensive sci-fi CGI action extravaganza. Did the battle to make Michael Crichton’s TIMELINE scare off every movie studio?
Meanwhile, a little more backstory for the series was delivered. I liked that the previous episode’s theft of the nuclear core turned out to be for personal use, instead of blowing something up. Although I was wondering how a core could be turned into a battery for a time machine, which can survive for 300 years (is that even scientifically feasible?), it was good to know that Flynn used time travel to not only change history, but also strengthen himself. Sometimes, resources are only in the past and you can’t do your job without them. Plus, it eliminated the somewhat idiotic plot of Homebase being able to track the mothership in the present when it was established that they couldn’t, but I guess the writers saw that plot hole and decided to get rid of it. How Homebase can still track Flynn in time though is still beyond me, but this show isn’t here to answer every single one of my questions. It wants to be fun, and poking holes at their own stories isn’t fun.
And then there was Rittenhouse. The first face of the mysterious party of evil white dudes was seen, and of course, it was an old white dude behaving evil-ish. Because Rittenhouse could not have been anything else than old and white and male. That they would threaten Rufus though was a poor choice of a story and one that is dragging itself from one episode to the next without the writers knowing how they were going to handle it in the long run. At some point, the thing with the recordings has to come up and be a plot device for something, but I get the feeling it was never intended for the story to run this long, especially since Rufus already had issues recording the conversations of his team and needed to have a stern word about it with Mason.
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| Rufus gifts the Man Of The Rockets a formula from the future. |
Finally, a few words to Ian Fleming. When he introduced himself, and every time James Bond was a topic, I loved the slight use of the Bond theme in the scene. Secondly, see how easy it is for Lucy, Flynn, and Rufus to impress the people they interact with on their travels? It only needs a man to fall in love with Lucy for a day, and all of a sudden an entire movie exists in the updated timeline. I did love the “fangirling” moment, though maybe someone should address the fact that the trio was slowly changing history, one mission at a time. Are they just going to accept that every time they return after a mission, the timeline has been changed slightly? 100 episodes of this and their present is going to be unrecognizable. Also, absolutely no mention of Ian Fleming’s misogyny and racism, but who really knew about him and the problems of James Bond in 2016? Who does now?
