Travelers Season 3 Review Thread
- Thread starter Tom
- Start date
Love this show!! Am so looking forward to it.
Thank you, Tom, for posting this thread and teaser. I really enjoy this show and the new season would have completely missed my radar if you hadn't have brought it up. Netfilx is terrible at promoting their upcoming releases! That said, I've got to do some re-watching to refresh my memory prior to the new episodes this weekend! Can't wait! *squee*
Q2
Q2
I will have to re-watch the the last episode of Season 2 also to get refreshed.
Also, i'm going to assume they will release the whole season at once, since it's on Netflix. Last year, I watched it one episode a week because they showed it on Showcase, then they released the whole season on Netflix. If they release it all at once I will have have to stay away from this thread until i get the time to finish it, I'm pretty busy these days, so it may take a while.
LOL
Also, i'm going to assume they will release the whole season at once, since it's on Netflix. Last year, I watched it one episode a week because they showed it on Showcase, then they released the whole season on Netflix. If they release it all at once I will have have to stay away from this thread until i get the time to finish it, I'm pretty busy these days, so it may take a while.
LOL
Half way though season 3, so far so good. Can tell it's entirely a Netflix show now, a lot of F words!. 
One part I got a laugh at was when Naomi parents were having a priest try to do an exorcism on her , and Grace walks in and say's 'oh for fuck's sake what the hell is this' . Grace is definitely the comic relief for this season.
One part I got a laugh at was when Naomi parents were having a priest try to do an exorcism on her , and Grace walks in and say's 'oh for fuck's sake what the hell is this' . Grace is definitely the comic relief for this season.
I watched the entirety of season 3 in something like 3 days. Very well done. Without getting off to far into spoiler territory, I felt the ending did a nice job as a 3 season story arch completion as well as a potential series completion. It did leave the door open for a reboot for season 4.
Third season was only ten episodes, so I think it is fair to conclude this is the series finale. Even if some subsequent season is somehow produced it will be a soft reboot.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
And, oh, yes.....SPOILERS
[spoilers]----The agent of the series plot resolution is Philip? Reilly Dolman has only managed to beat out Patrick Gilmore in the credits race. He's been the antihero in a show that shares the general distaste for antiheroes. The drug addiction=autism spectrum metaphor hasn't prepared us for this. Also, let's face it, although the rationalization is pretty slick (as befits a series with so much SG-1 DNA) it still relies on a sudden loophole in one of the series most important and most well established rules. Take Seventeen Minutes to think about it.
----Carly's triumphant dramatic choice is motherhood over combat. That's Carly?
----The blatant sentimentality of David's happy ending relies on us not seeing that "Marcy" the veteran physician with a life of hardship is going to see him rather differently than a twenty-something nurse.
----Giving the climactic choice to MacLaren is inevitable. Eric McCormack is the star of the show. Feeling the nobility of his sacrifice for Kat would be much easier if we found Kat worth sacrificing for. She is notably more upscale than anyone else, to be sure, but not quite the same thing.
----It was never going to make any sense that the future would simply turn good, because then why would there ever be people desperate enough to launch the Travelers program in the first place. The future would have to keep modifying until, well, maybe, it was the faction that was launching Travelers in an effort to tyrannize the world by changing the past, and the good guy Travelers were just there to save the past from change. Think the time travelers who took AK-47s back to Lee in Turtledove's Guns of the South.
----If the Director=God, then the resolution is rebellion against God on the grounds that not even God is truly God. It denies an entity that is simultaneously all powerful, all knowing and all benevolent. Contra Meat Loaf, two out of three is bad.
----Travelers program ver. 2 is a refugee program, like the Star Trek episode? Or the guys who built the quantum mirror in SG-1. (Furlings?) [/spoilers]
Despite the imperfections, I would highly recommend this series.
PS Forgot code for spoilers, can't remember where to look it up.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
And, oh, yes.....SPOILERS
[spoilers]----The agent of the series plot resolution is Philip? Reilly Dolman has only managed to beat out Patrick Gilmore in the credits race. He's been the antihero in a show that shares the general distaste for antiheroes. The drug addiction=autism spectrum metaphor hasn't prepared us for this. Also, let's face it, although the rationalization is pretty slick (as befits a series with so much SG-1 DNA) it still relies on a sudden loophole in one of the series most important and most well established rules. Take Seventeen Minutes to think about it.
----Carly's triumphant dramatic choice is motherhood over combat. That's Carly?
----The blatant sentimentality of David's happy ending relies on us not seeing that "Marcy" the veteran physician with a life of hardship is going to see him rather differently than a twenty-something nurse.
----Giving the climactic choice to MacLaren is inevitable. Eric McCormack is the star of the show. Feeling the nobility of his sacrifice for Kat would be much easier if we found Kat worth sacrificing for. She is notably more upscale than anyone else, to be sure, but not quite the same thing.
----It was never going to make any sense that the future would simply turn good, because then why would there ever be people desperate enough to launch the Travelers program in the first place. The future would have to keep modifying until, well, maybe, it was the faction that was launching Travelers in an effort to tyrannize the world by changing the past, and the good guy Travelers were just there to save the past from change. Think the time travelers who took AK-47s back to Lee in Turtledove's Guns of the South.
----If the Director=God, then the resolution is rebellion against God on the grounds that not even God is truly God. It denies an entity that is simultaneously all powerful, all knowing and all benevolent. Contra Meat Loaf, two out of three is bad.
----Travelers program ver. 2 is a refugee program, like the Star Trek episode? Or the guys who built the quantum mirror in SG-1. (Furlings?) [/spoilers]
Despite the imperfections, I would highly recommend this series.
PS Forgot code for spoilers, can't remember where to look it up.
I'm done with this season. Good closure at the end, but room for more seasons, or a reboot with different characters perhaps. It definitely an interesting concept, hope it goes on in some form.
I was a bit confused about the Marcy and David coda at the end on the bus. So Mac goes back to 2001 and sends and email to the future saying the Traveler program failed, do not send 001. Yet, we see traveler Marcy (not mentally handicapped original Marcy, mind you) meet David for the first time on a bus. My guess would be that when the Director initiated the 'Traveler version 2 program', it moved traveler Marcy's (from the future) consciousnesses to original Marcy's body in a year before original slow Marcy even met David. That my guess anyways.
Sad Mac did not get with Kat in 2001. At that point she would not have known of any other Grant other than 3468's Grant. So it would not have been a problem. I guess Grant thought she would be more happier with John.
Oh! and we were finally given an exact year the travelers came from, when Grace said they were from 431 years in the future, so 2018 + 431 - 2449! (somebody better tell Buck Rogers to save them! )
I was a bit confused about the Marcy and David coda at the end on the bus. So Mac goes back to 2001 and sends and email to the future saying the Traveler program failed, do not send 001. Yet, we see traveler Marcy (not mentally handicapped original Marcy, mind you) meet David for the first time on a bus. My guess would be that when the Director initiated the 'Traveler version 2 program', it moved traveler Marcy's (from the future) consciousnesses to original Marcy's body in a year before original slow Marcy even met David. That my guess anyways.
Sad Mac did not get with Kat in 2001. At that point she would not have known of any other Grant other than 3468's Grant. So it would not have been a problem. I guess Grant thought she would be more happier with John.
Oh! and we were finally given an exact year the travelers came from, when Grace said they were from 431 years in the future, so 2018 + 431 - 2449! (somebody better tell Buck Rogers to save them!
)The Marcy we see in the coda is the original Marcy. Mentally handicapped Marcy wasn't congenitally handicapped. Her mind was damaged in experiments conducted by Traveler 0001. When the original Traveler program is canceled by a time paradox (if there was no first program, how did MacLaren know it was a failure?) there was no one to damage the original Marcy. David meets a young nurse. I thought the assumption that a young nurse would appreciate a David to be daring. The whole Marcy/0001 meet storyline relied on retconning some medical dialogue, but that's big words and they don't count for most people. I just did my best to ignore it.
It's a surprising ending, one that pretty much makes it impossible to continue with the current cast of characters. As soon as the catastrophic things started happening, I figured they'd just send their minds back into their own bodies a few weeks earlier, overwrite themselves like the way Marcy was overwritten once (they certainly referred back to that event often enough), and then prevent the worst from happening. Instead this is the end of the show as we know it.
No, that was the original Marcy. I checked her Wiki biography. We learned in season 2 that she originally worked at the hospital and her mental disability was caused by Vincent Ingram/001's experiments. Since Mac prevented 001 from ever being sent back, that means Marcy's brain was never damaged.
I don't think it's sad at all. Mac's entire relationship with Kat has been an ongoing rape by fraud, the ickiest thing about this show. This season in particular, with all the lies he spun to trick her, especially the Kavanaugh-esque entitled-white-dude temper tantrum he threw to get out of the therapist's meeting, he came off more than ever like an abuser gaslighting his victim, and it disturbed me deeply. Removing himself from her life altogether was the only non-predatory thing he ever did to her (although he did murder the real MacLaren in the process and wiped out their actual marriage).
And yes, I know that Mac was compelled to pretend to be Kat's husband by the Protocols. But it should be understood that he was forced to do something dark and immoral, something that was an ongoing violation of Kat, and anything but a sweet, romantic story. She was a victim. After all that, I don't think he has the right to be a part of her life in any timeline. He'd still be lying to her about who he was, using an unfair advantage to satisfy himself. Under the circumstances, he made the right choice by letting her go.
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MacLaren was killed chasing the criminal in the first episode. He was not murdered by the Travelers. Worse, the notion that there is an immaterial soul which is the true person and the body is a shell is a nasty superstition that shouldn't be heeded. MacLaren was physically continuous, just like Philip and, in a different way, Marcy.
That said, in a turn of events, fragments of MacLaren were reassembled. His love for Kat continued, which is why Kat's repudiation of MacLaren was tragic.
Kat was worried precisely because MacLaren didn't have normal marital relations, rather than MacLaren "using an unfair advantage" to have sex with her. He only resumed when under the influence. And she was deeply hurt when MacLaren continued the affair with Carly. So far as the bad results of the Protocols are concerned, the only true issue was...Philip letting his friend die. Complaining about how the writing armored Traveler-MacLaren from the issues is one thing. Or thinking the fantastic elements made the whole thing too silly to be relevant also makes sense. But ignoring what happened on screen to focus on the sex is just prudery gone stupid. That guy died!
The general objection to the Travelers program may be said to be endorsed by the conclusion, with the line about program version 2 serving as a horror movie scene, like the villain rising from the grave. I do not exactly understand why the past should be held to be sacred. And I especially despise the flip side, that the future should just happen and not be designed by mere mortal men. All stinky reactionary thinking as far as I'm concerned. Fortunately there is no time travel so there are no real moral issues at stake.
That said, in a turn of events, fragments of MacLaren were reassembled. His love for Kat continued, which is why Kat's repudiation of MacLaren was tragic.
Kat was worried precisely because MacLaren didn't have normal marital relations, rather than MacLaren "using an unfair advantage" to have sex with her. He only resumed when under the influence. And she was deeply hurt when MacLaren continued the affair with Carly. So far as the bad results of the Protocols are concerned, the only true issue was...Philip letting his friend die. Complaining about how the writing armored Traveler-MacLaren from the issues is one thing. Or thinking the fantastic elements made the whole thing too silly to be relevant also makes sense. But ignoring what happened on screen to focus on the sex is just prudery gone stupid. That guy died!
The general objection to the Travelers program may be said to be endorsed by the conclusion, with the line about program version 2 serving as a horror movie scene, like the villain rising from the grave. I do not exactly understand why the past should be held to be sacred. And I especially despise the flip side, that the future should just happen and not be designed by mere mortal men. All stinky reactionary thinking as far as I'm concerned. Fortunately there is no time travel so there are no real moral issues at stake.
See, that's what I don't buy -- that the only "TELL" they had available was that one. Surely they knew where they themselves had been a few months earlier, and we know from Marcy's previous overwrite that someone who's already a Traveler can be overwritten by a new copy of their own mind. So why not just send one of them back into themselves a few months earlier with foreknowledge of what's about to happen and how to head it off?
Although I guess the overall idea of this season was to show that everything had gone incurably bad -- Trevor was dying, Philip was losing touch with reality, the Traveler program was failing, etc. -- and the only real solution was to reset everything from the start so that 001 never came back and neither did anyone else. But the way they set it up felt contrived, especially with Kat, who suddenly reveals out of the blue that she almost married someone else and regrets ever marrying the real Mac, even though there was no previous indication of that as far as I recall.
It's kind of weird -- Netflix picks up the show exclusively for season 3 after two seasons on Showcase, and then that one season ends with a complete reset? Why do that?
Well, yes. Acute observation, sir. Traveler-MacLaren also meant for humanity in the futurity to die as well. But it finally occurs to me Traveler-MacLaren should also have known the TELL for 0001 and over written him seconds after his arrival, then died in that host body, rather than murdering MacLaren. The thing is of course is that for a Christopher, 0001's fight against the future was right. And MacLaren's murder was justified by preventing the rape of Kat. And presumably Traveler-Trevor's rape of Trevor's girl friend, too.
PS A repeated over-write damages the host, as demonstrated by Philip's updates, which were not even full over-writes. (The over-write on Marcy was very much a special situation. Not even 0027 could send the whole Marcy back in an over-write.) Also, how is it obvious that over-writing, say, Marcy with knowledge of how David's death lost the last chance of maintaining the Director guarantee they could stop all the nuclear attacks world-wide? There was actually no other point at which the Travelers knew enough about the Faction's and 0001's activities to control the outcome.
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^Huh? I never said I agreed with 001's agenda. Nor did I say Mac's murder was justified. I just said the whole Mac-Kat relationship was icky and should not be seen as something beautiful or romantic. And that I dislike the way Mac was written this season because he came off like an abusive husband. Reality is not binary; it is possible to disagree with the characters on both sides of an argument. So criticizing the way the protagonists are written does not equal agreeing with the villains.
Really, one of the core ideas of this show was that Travelers have to do morally questionable, even awful things out of grim necessity in order to save humanity in the future. They were never meant to be clear-cut heroes. Still, I feel the show often backed down from really confronting that -- it paid lip service to the moral ambiguity and darkness of the situation but then let the protagonists off too easily. I guess the ultimate conclusion in the finale here was that the whole Traveler program was fatally flawed to begin with, so in a way that's making a moral stand that the whole thing was wrong, but it feels unfocused because the portrayal of the protagonists made them seem too benevolent even as they participated in really disturbing things.
Although it occurs to me that erasing the entire Traveler program is far from a happy ending for the characters. We know that Marcy didn't die because her history was changed due to the absence of 001, and presumably Mac's entire life is different from 2001 onward, but do the real Trevor, Carly, and Philip all die of their original causes? And what happens to the numbered people in the future who are never sent back in time to become Marcy, Trevor, etc.? Do they just live out their dystopian lives in a dying world?
Really, one of the core ideas of this show was that Travelers have to do morally questionable, even awful things out of grim necessity in order to save humanity in the future. They were never meant to be clear-cut heroes. Still, I feel the show often backed down from really confronting that -- it paid lip service to the moral ambiguity and darkness of the situation but then let the protagonists off too easily. I guess the ultimate conclusion in the finale here was that the whole Traveler program was fatally flawed to begin with, so in a way that's making a moral stand that the whole thing was wrong, but it feels unfocused because the portrayal of the protagonists made them seem too benevolent even as they participated in really disturbing things.
Although it occurs to me that erasing the entire Traveler program is far from a happy ending for the characters. We know that Marcy didn't die because her history was changed due to the absence of 001, and presumably Mac's entire life is different from 2001 onward, but do the real Trevor, Carly, and Philip all die of their original causes? And what happens to the numbered people in the future who are never sent back in time to become Marcy, Trevor, etc.? Do they just live out their dystopian lives in a dying world?
As far as getting a forth season is concerned. It could be that Eric McCormick may not want to be in the show anymore since Will & Grace is doing good in the ratings, and he may not want to be stretchered doing both shows. Not sure about the other cast members, but it may leave a way to have an almost new cast. We shall see what Netflix does, or does not do.
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