TV Drama Timeless falls down a rabbit hole
With great disappointment, I watched last Sunday’s final episode of the NBC drama Timeless, fairly certain it won’t be renewed for a third season. Despite being average at best, it’s the only time travel drama on network TV we got. Outlander is on Starz and sometimes ages pass between seasons and Dr. Who also on BBCA.
Timeless started well enough last year when the main female character came back from her first trip into the past and her sister no longer existed and her mother no longer suffered from a terminal illness. Good time travel stuff. But the flaw in the ointment was the length of time given to each trip. 42 minutes. The amount of story time in an hour on commercial TV. That’s not enough to flesh out an excursion into a dramatic moment of history such as the Alamo, or the Civil War and Lincoln. 42 minutes! It would have been far better to go with stories that spread over two or three episodes, even ten like the best cable shows.
With their characters, an accomplished modern woman, a Seal Team member, and a black scientist, think of the possibilities for a multi-episode story in the Civil War.
But not to be. Instead, one episode per point in history and worse: the show took its main conflict from this cockamamie secret Rittenhouse conspiracy. Not from time or the past. Any writer or reader of Time Travel could have told the show runners that the conflict characters find in past and how they deal with it is what makes this genre compelling.
As an example, if the time travelers int Timeless went back to 1350 England in the midst of the Plague, the show runners would have our heroes chasing after Rittenhouse baddies or being chased by them. Maybe a character would momentarily pause, glance around and say, “Oh, look at all the sick people.” Then chase some more modern baddies.
The characters are just wearing period costumes. The past is secondary.
I’ve written two fairly well-received time travel novels, Assassin 13 and The Far Journey. My attempt was to take the primary conflict from the situations in the past. That to me is what time travel is about. Sadly, Timeless didn’t see it that way. It joins a large graveyard of failed time travel dramas that never seemed to learn that lesson. Now, to see new episodes of the show, you must find your own time machine and travel into the past.
Tom Reppert
Tomreppertauthor.com
Timeless started well enough last year when the main female character came back from her first trip into the past and her sister no longer existed and her mother no longer suffered from a terminal illness. Good time travel stuff. But the flaw in the ointment was the length of time given to each trip. 42 minutes. The amount of story time in an hour on commercial TV. That’s not enough to flesh out an excursion into a dramatic moment of history such as the Alamo, or the Civil War and Lincoln. 42 minutes! It would have been far better to go with stories that spread over two or three episodes, even ten like the best cable shows.
With their characters, an accomplished modern woman, a Seal Team member, and a black scientist, think of the possibilities for a multi-episode story in the Civil War.
But not to be. Instead, one episode per point in history and worse: the show took its main conflict from this cockamamie secret Rittenhouse conspiracy. Not from time or the past. Any writer or reader of Time Travel could have told the show runners that the conflict characters find in past and how they deal with it is what makes this genre compelling.
As an example, if the time travelers int Timeless went back to 1350 England in the midst of the Plague, the show runners would have our heroes chasing after Rittenhouse baddies or being chased by them. Maybe a character would momentarily pause, glance around and say, “Oh, look at all the sick people.” Then chase some more modern baddies.
The characters are just wearing period costumes. The past is secondary.
I’ve written two fairly well-received time travel novels, Assassin 13 and The Far Journey. My attempt was to take the primary conflict from the situations in the past. That to me is what time travel is about. Sadly, Timeless didn’t see it that way. It joins a large graveyard of failed time travel dramas that never seemed to learn that lesson. Now, to see new episodes of the show, you must find your own time machine and travel into the past.
Tom Reppert
Tomreppertauthor.com
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