TRAVELERS season 3; now really a Netflix original [SPOILERS]

[Corvinus85]

I know there a few people watching this. The only thread I've found is archived, so I thought to start a new one.

I'll start watching tonight. I am excited for this show.

[Zorral]

I've already watched Continuum, in which the middle sections got really good!  Front and back matter, not so much.

 

 

[Martini Sigil]

I really like this show... just finished Frontier, and we're gonna start the new season tonight.

[Spockydog]

Was surprised and delighted to see this pop up today - one of the benefits of Netflix's general lack of promotion. 

This is a cracking show. A fascinating concept, underpinned by great writers and actors.

[Corvinus85]

Moving through this fairly quickly. I've reached episode 4 last night.

Spoiler

Damn, I was hoping Amanda Tapping was going to have a recurring role this season. At least, she is directing a bunch of the episodes.

 

[Corvinus85]

Finished!!! Once again, one of the most binge-worthy shows out there. High pace, solid drama, strong characters, just overall brilliant. 

Spoiler

But on that note, I am slightly in shock after the last two episodes.

1) I had a feeling David was going to die, even back in season 2, as his role grew. Too nice of a person not to suffer some horrible fate. 

2) The ending was extremely bittersweet. 

It may be that this is the last we'll see of the show. I think Brad Wright had that feeling, too, considering how he ended it. Yes, there's that small nugget at the end, just in case there will be a 4th season, but even if that's the case, there may be a hard reset on everything. Will even the same characters return?

 

[RedEyedGhost]

WTF was episode 3?  That felt so out of place.  Not a fan of episode 5 either, but I was flagging pretty hard when I watched it last night, and woke up with about 15 minutes remaining in episode 6.

[Corvinus85]

56 minutes ago, RedEyedGhost said:

WTF was episode 3?  That felt so out of place.  Not a fan of episode 5 either, but I was flagging pretty hard when I watched it last night, and woke up with about 15 minutes remaining in episode 6.

Maybe it feels out of place now, but Travelers has always been a show where they tried to combine the episodic format with a streamlined story telling. It works better in some episodes, less so in others. Since you're only at Ep. 5-6?  I'll say only that Ep 3 will feel less out of place by the end. There's a recurring theme with what happens there, and it also touches on Mac's character. That being said, it's also a style of Brad Wright's which was done many times in Stargate, where a story is told start to finish in an episode, but in a follow up season the setting is revisited with another story that can be considered a sequel to the previous.

If there's one thing to criticize about this season, it's that it's too short. 10 episodes is not enough for this format, imo.

 

[Martini Sigil]

This show keeps getting better... Love the S3 ending.... Man there were some gut wrenching moments

[divica]

1 hour ago, Corvinus said:

Maybe it feels out of place now, but Travelers has always been a show where they tried to combine the episodic format with a streamlined story telling. It works better in some episodes, less so in others. Since you're only at Ep. 5-6?  I'll say only that Ep 3 will feel less out of place by the end. There's a recurring theme with what happens there, and it also touches on Mac's character. That being said, it's also a style of Brad Wright's which was done many times in Stargate, where a story is told start to finish in an episode, but in a follow up season the setting is revisited with another story that can be considered a sequel to the previous.

If there's one thing to criticize about this season, it's that it's too short. 10 episodes is not enough for this format, imo. 

 

It is clear that is one of the streams with best pacing. Kind of what I think a stream should be instead of a 10/13 hours continuous story that 99% of the times just gets boring or never ending.

However the series was clearly a huge mess. First they had to clear last season's finale with their closed ones forgeting that they are from the future and the agencies becoming their partners instead of potential enemies.

Then the characters were in a point where their personal story was just boring. Trevor had no personal story with the exception of some weird moments with the counselor (why give him one gf in the previous seasons if they never delved into that?), philip keeps geting problems with drugs and no outsider friend, carly lost the personal story about the son and boyfriend, marcie and mac still had personal stories but much less interesting than in previous seasons.

I think the final was exactly what this series needed. And if we are lucky next season the team will have less elements so that they can focus on developing the characters personal stories more. Otherwise it would be better to just make them all agents instead of having them having personal lives to hide what they are because the show just ignores the characters personal lives...

[Alarich II]

I really liked this season, but the ending pretty much meant that this was the show finale. I liked the ending and I don't think that they are seriously considering a S4.

Spoiler

The paradox of timetravel means that there's no plausible chance for the same team to reunite - the characters of S3 are dead or will die in the incoming nuclear strike, the only chance would be if they are sent back a second time into Grants new timeline, where he basically cancels the entire plot of S2 and S3 and a good part of S1 as well (that's how In interpreted the note reading "Helios" that he gave the scientist).

And if they send the team back in the same hosts in this timeline, they will pretty much destroy the happy ending for Marcy/David (I found that final scene in the bus really well done) and in any case Marcy et al. will have all their character developments reset to S1E1.

So it's hard to see how they can have a continuity between the end of S3 and a potential new S4 that goes beyond playing in the same universe.

 

[Corvinus85]

4 hours ago, Alarich II said:

I really liked this season, but the ending pretty much meant that this was the show finale. I liked the ending and I don't think that they are seriously considering a S4.

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The paradox of timetravel means that there's no plausible chance for the same team to reunite - the characters of S3 are dead or will die in the incoming nuclear strike, the only chance would be if they are sent back a second time into Grants new timeline, where he basically cancels the entire plot of S2 and S3 and a good part of S1 as well (that's how In interpreted the note reading "Helios" that he gave the scientist).

And if they send the team back in the same hosts in this timeline, they will pretty much destroy the happy ending for Marcy/David (I found that final scene in the bus really well done) and in any case Marcy et al. will have all their character developments reset to S1E1.

So it's hard to see how they can have a continuity between the end of S3 and a potential new S4 that goes beyond playing in the same universe.

 

Spoiler

Well I hope there will be a season 4, but yeah, this could definitely be the end of the series. I think the ending allows the writers to do whatever. There's still room to have the same characters, just slightly different. Or they could completely change it. Recall in season 2, episode "17 minutes" when the Director keeps sending travelers over and over again to help the team out, it implies the Director can either go big or go small, making only minor tweaks. 

It probably depends on whether or not the actors are willing and able to return, what budget Netflix will give it, etc that will decide matters. This is a show where the same actors can be present, but play different characters, as we've seen with Jeff this season.

The ending with Marcy and David was bittersweet, since it wasn't the same Marcy, but considering that 001 fucked up the original Marcy to begin with, and David really deserves his happiness, it was a good ending. So, of course, they have to mess it up in a future season. 

In all honesty, I was kinda bummed by the ending, as it showed humanity being incapable of improving. Personally, I'd like to feel more optimistic of the future.

 

[drawkcabi]

Just finished season 3.

Would love more of this show because I love the concept and the characters, but I don't know if a season 4 incarnation would be any good.

Spoiler

I was very confused about Marcie and David at the end. Was she original Marcie? If so, why wasn't she mentally impaired? Not sure what was going on there. Maybe it's just there for a happy ending for those two and if there is season 4 it would then be explained?

Anyway, didn't enjoy season 3 as much as 1 & 2 but I still enjoyed it a lot. Even if most of this season I kept feeling like I was skipping ahead and missed an episode just abut every time I started on a new episode. Previous seasons did that to me too sometimes but season 3 was just crazy like that.

And because it is now a Netflix show, having the actors say "fuck" felt a lot like a kid who got a new toy to play with.

[Alarich II]

2 hours ago, drawkcabi said:

Just finished season 3.

Would love more of this show because I love the concept and the characters, but I don't know if a season 4 incarnation would be any good.

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I was very confused about Marcie and David at the end. Was she original Marcie? If so, why wasn't she mentally impaired? Not sure what was going on there. Maybe it's just there for a happy ending for those two and if there is season 4 it would then be explained?

 

Spoiler

Marcy lost her mental capabilities when Ingram used her in his experiments to build his present day mind-transplantation machine (in S2). So it's original Marcy.

 

[drawkcabi]

10 hours ago, Alarich II said:

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Marcy lost her mental capabilities when Ingram used her in his experiments to build his present day mind-transplantation machine (in S2). So it's original Marcy.

 

I have no recollection of that at all.

Last year when season 2 came out I did a complete rewatch of Season 1, I guess I should have done that this year with season 2. Oh well.

Thanks for explaining that!

[dbunting]

I watched S2 and S3 back to back so the issue of the loved ones memory worked ok for me.

As to a S4, if they do it I think it has to be a whole new cast, location everything. I mean, why would the director go to the same thing that didn't work the first time?

 

 

[karaddin]

Does the director at this point even have memory of what its first steps were? It's a weird mix that really makes it hard to follow, given its existence is changed by every alteration to the past, it only gets knowledge of what was changed via the archives and a bunch of that data was lost right?

[dbunting]

2 hours ago, karaddin said:

Does the director at this point even have memory of what its first steps were? It's a weird mix that really makes it hard to follow, given its existence is changed by every alteration to the past, it only gets knowledge of what was changed via the archives and a bunch of that data was lost right?

And this is where time travel shows get in trouble!  In the one episode the director resent someone into that some skydiver over and over and over until it was done right, so why wouldn't it do that with 001 or any other traveler?

[karaddin]

2 minutes ago, dbunting said:

And this is where time travel shows get in trouble!  In the one episode the director resent someone into that some skydiver over and over and over until it was done right, so why wouldn't it do that with 001 or any other traveler?

I think the only explanation for not immediately overwriting 001 once it got a tel on the wife is dramatic license. Best I can come up with is that it didn't understand he had flipped on the mission and wanted to interrogate him, something that isn't possible with overwrite. The sky diver repeated overwrite vs all the other cases I assume it came down to an existential threat to itself allowed relaxed rules - if that meteor was taken by 001s group then the director ceases to exist. You can also see it keeps overwriting the sister until she's no longer usable, but at that point the brother was also going to die as a result of the collision that happened in the overwrite - he wasn't a candidate at the start of the operation as he wasn't meant to die (I assume). At that point the faction weren't targeting the archives so I guess the director was still getting full updates on what happened.

The thing I find really hard to keep in mind is that while it appears in the presence as though the director is intervening just in time as different things fail, its actually hundreds of years later that its reacting which completely invalidates my above point about an existential threat. Unless the director can keep open the tunnel to the past for a short period of time to get "real time" updates on the situation if you will. It seems a plot hole if something like that isn't going on. And I guess it has to be able to project its intelligence back as well as communicating through the other AI wouldnt work otherwise.

I'm more confused than when i started this post.

[Corvinus85]

Imo, this show has done time travel better than most. Here is my analysis of the whole thing:

While I'm no physicist, and really have no knowledge about quantum theory and all that, I'm assuming the writers are drawing what they're doing from theories that deal with quantum physics. We know the Director is an AI, and I believe they call it a quantum AI, which, imo means that the Director exists in all the possible timelines. Not multiple directors, just one, ie God, or this show's way of exploring themes of destiny, religion/spirituality, self awareness, and society. (btw, I'm kind blowing my own mind as I'm thinking about this) Considering that the Director knowingly gives up on the timeline at the end of season 3 (protocol Omega), telling all the Travelers to just stop their work and simply live out the rest of their natural lives, it's not worried about its own end. 

So in terms of what @karaddin said, the Director really isn't worried about its own existence, unless somehow all the timelines become affected in a similar way, but it can be worried about its ability to save mankind in a given timeline. I suppose the Director might be under one rule it cannot break, and that is to save mankind, even if some timelines need to be completely trashed.

OK, all that I said up until this point is probably bullshit, but in terms of the actual mechanics of time travel, what the show has given us is two technologies that go hand-in-hand: human mind transfer between bodies and time travel itself. The human mind transfer was achieved through the program Trevor was part of in the future, when in near real time, a human mind was moved from body to body. This technology was likely developed because when time travel was invented, it was clear that only information could be passed on through the quantum tunnel/wormhole/whatever, and not matter. So on time travel I disagree with this:

14 hours ago, karaddin said:

The thing I find really hard to keep in mind is that while it appears in the presence as though the director is intervening just in time as different things fail, its actually hundreds of years later that its reacting which completely invalidates my above point about an existential threat. Unless the director can keep open the tunnel to the past for a short period of time to get "real time" updates on the situation if you will. It seems a plot hole if something like that isn't going on. And I guess it has to be able to project its intelligence back as well as communicating through the other AI wouldnt work otherwise.

It think the transfer of information through the time tunnel goes only one way. Otherwise, when 001 arrived, and in the wrong host body, he wouldn't have had to send an email. The Director could have ascertained that 001's travel was successful, by getting a few seconds (or milliseconds) of information back. So, really the Director does depend on the records it receives, but they did well to show us the nanites-in-blood tech that can hold vast amounts of information.

15 hours ago, dbunting said:

And this is where time travel shows get in trouble!  In the one episode the director resent someone into that some skydiver over and over and over until it was done right, so why wouldn't it do that with 001 or any other traveler?

Two things about this:

1) It's established early on that the Director can only send a Traveler as far back as the most recent Traveler. This is probably in order to main the same timeline. In the episodes with the skydivers, after the first one failed, the second one was sent like a millisecond or so after, overwriting not the original person, but the previous Traveler. This is what exhausted the host body. Thus a number of Travelers, 16?, were killed until that mission was successful. Kinda defeats the purpose of saving humans, if you're gonna kill Traveler after Traveler. But for that mission it was important to so so, up to a certain point; and if the mute bodyguard hadn't fucked up and murdered the truck driver, thus providing an additional host for the Director to use, it's likely the Director would have to abandon that timeline right there and then.

2) On 001 - he got sent in the wrong host. That was because of incomplete information. He was supposed to take over the stock broker's body, which historical records showed he died at 9/11, and was at his desk, probably transmitting information via the internet. But the process of transmitting a human mind in time, while dependent on time and location, doesn't need to have these variables at pinpoint accuracy. Otherwise, 99/100 moments of transmittal that we've seen would not have worked. It's what happened to Marcy - the only preserved record about her was the fake facebook account David had made for her. And it's this level of inaccuracy that caused 001 to betray the program, as he felt disillusioned with the Director. 9/11 happened, the WTC was destroyed, and no record of an IT guy that had made an urgent site visit to an office there, but then quickly left, was maintained anywhere.

I'm done... for now.