{"id":1413,"date":"2017-02-03T10:29:36","date_gmt":"2017-02-03T10:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/?p=1413"},"modified":"2017-02-03T10:29:36","modified_gmt":"2017-02-03T10:29:36","slug":"timeless-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/2017\/02\/03\/timeless-appeal\/","title":{"rendered":"Timeless appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of all the current TV shows about time travel, the last one I imagined would be in trouble is Timeless. But apparently while it\u2019s doing fine in streaming video, iTunes, downloads, catch up and every other way you can watch television now, it\u2019s struggling to find viewers who tune in to NBC on Monday nights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t watch NBC, I\u2019m in the UK. It\u2019s airing here on E4<\/a> but even if it got record-breaking ratings everywhere else in the world, NBC would at the very most say that\u2019s nice before they cancelled it. What counts for them and therefore for the show is eyeballs on NBC. So if you\u2019re in the States and especially if you happen to be one of the households that the Nielsen ratings counts, do take a look at it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just good. I\u2019ve been a professional TV critic and that\u2019s all I can usefully say. I\u2019ve also been obsessed with time all my writing life and Timeless is the time travel show that isn\u2019t about time travel. I\u2019m not interested in time machines, I\u2019m obsessed with regret and with experiencing events from different angles. Timeless has plenty of regret but it\u2019s also a deep-dive into an adventure series which specifically avoids Doctor Who-style timey-wimey stories.<\/p>\n

In this show created by Shawn Ryan and Eric Kripke, our three heroes continue their pursuit of a baddie. Calling them the heroes is reasonable: they are the protagonists and while we\u2019re seeing widening gulfs in whether they\u2019re good or not, they are doing what they do with the best of intentions. Calling their antagonist the baddie is more of a stretch, though, as unusually this fella has good reason for what he does.<\/p>\n

So there he is doing something foul yet there\u2019s a part of you that can\u2019t help but at least understand why, maybe even agree.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m compelled by that but I\u2019m also just relishing how each week is broadly similar in shape but totally different in tone and location. There was an episode set during the Alamo which really felt like movie. Ian Fleming pops up in a Bond-like adventure fighting the Nazis. The good guys got stranded in the 1700s. The good guys kill people and they don\u2019t exactly shrug about it afterwards.<\/p>\n

I also relish how since the show is set in different historical periods, the research is excellent and there\u2019s always something true yet completely unexpected. I heard that some history classes are using the show for that and I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s true, especially so soon into its run, but I can understand it.<\/p>\n

Only, as a time obsessive, the thing that feels fresh and fun to me is that the show goes into history and messes it up. It has been such a rule of time travel stories that you do not do this: Back to the Future centres on putting right something that got changed. Even Doctor Who, right back in the William Hartnell days, maintained that \u201cYou can\u2019t rewrite history\u2026 Not one line!\u201d<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s Timeless where \u2013 sorry, spoiler \u2013 the baddie has gone back to the day the Hindenburg exploded and he saves it. You know from the start that he\u2019s going to do something bad but, grief, hats off to Timeless: the bad thing he does is save it. And then we learn why that\u2019s such a bad thing: it\u2019s fascinating.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also fascinating back in the present day of the show as people who died on the Hindenburg now didn\u2019t so there are ramifications and repercussions. Throughout the series, the baddie and eventually the goodies kill people and it\u2019s necessary, you can see it, you kind of root for them, but there are repercussions.<\/p>\n

Well, there are and there aren\u2019t. There\u2019s not yet been a repercussion where the goodies\u2019 time machine wasn\u2019t ever invented, for instance. <\/p>\n

What this willingness of the show to let history change gives me is the impact on the characters. They\u2019re not required to be some model citizens protecting the fabric of the spacetime continuum, they are scared people trying everything they can to stop very, very bad things happening. <\/p>\n

So Timeless is a show about time travel, sure, but it\u2019s about characters who travel in time and what that is like for them. It\u2019s action adventure, it\u2019s not as astonishingly deep into time as 12 Monkeys is, it\u2019s not using a TARDIS as just a way to drop the Doctor into trouble. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s something new and that seems especially gratifying in a season where even I think there are too many time travel dramas.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve forgotten the count now but I remember learning that there would be something more than ten, possible fifteen shows about time during this year and there\u2019s no way they\u2019ll all survive. But the one I\u2019d miss is Timeless.<\/p>\n

So if you can watch NBC on Monday nights, please do. And while I\u2019m in the UK where E4 is now screening the show, I\u2019ve got a US iTunes account so I\u2019m watching each week as soon as it\u2019s available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of all the current TV shows about time travel, the last one I imagined would be in trouble is Timeless. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[215,932,935,909,933,931,467,900,934],"class_list":["post-1413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-selfdistract","tag-drama","tag-eric-kripke","tag-history","tag-nbc","tag-ratings","tag-shawn-ryan","tag-time-travel","tag-timeless","tag-viewers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4chyI-mN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1413"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1415,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413\/revisions\/1415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}