S01.E03: Atomic City

[iMonrey]

Quote

What I really love is how they make use of that expertise of hers: 'Lucy, what happened on September 12st, 1962?' Apparently none of these geniuses is able to handle Wikipedia. Even better was seeing Lucy googling the date herself once she had arrived at the center.

I already addressed this above (because I, too, was initially like whaaaaat????) - but when Agent Christopher first called Lucy and asked "what happened on this date," Lucy couldn't think of anything specific besides that date being a month before something somewhat significant. However - at that point, Christopher and her team had not yet established where Flynn and his crew had gone. Only when. It wasn't until Lucy got to the Mason headquarters that Jiya figured out they were in Vegas. At that point, Lucy cross referenced the date with the location and was able to determine a lot of heavy hitters were in Vegas at that time. So, there wasn't anything significant enough about the date itself to trigger any red flags. I'm unclear on how much info Lucy found online at that point versus what she knew about what was going on in Vegas on that date.

What I want to know is where they keep getting all this money. There's no way on earth for the Mason company to have period specific currency for every era in history. They apparently had enough 1865 cash to rent a hotel room and buy a fancy dress. How on earth did they get their hands  on that?

[dubbel zout]

21 minutes ago, Cobb Salad said:

An interesting story could be about another team being sent out that ends up doing something that affects our team but they don't know it right away or something like that.

That can't happen because there's only the mothership and the eye the current team is using.

[orza]

5 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

What I want to know is where they keep getting all this money. There's no way on earth for the Mason company to have period specific currency for every era in history. They apparently had enough 1865 cash to rent a hotel room and buy a fancy dress. How on earth did they get their hands  on that?

They don't need to have the proper currency on hand for every period in history. They just need to have a supply of gold or gems that the team can convert to cash upon arrival at their destination. Pawn shops and money lenders exist in all eras.

[MissLucas]

Quote

At that point, Lucy cross referenced the date with the location and was able to determine a lot of heavy hitters were in Vegas at that time.

But you don't have to be a tenured history professor to do that - it was just plain silly. What exactly are all those folks doing they have in ops or however it's called? Making sure the paperweights are in place? I'm excluding Jjya who by tracking down Lucy's family history has actually been doing historical research. And since she's also responsible for figuring out how to locate the mothership she's definitely the show's MVP.

[Moose135]

17 hours ago, Kromm said:

This show is certainly very casual about handling of radioactive materials, isn't it?

Also... were the bomb tests actually SO close to Vegas they were visible to the naked eye?  Really? And nobody had like... fertility problems after that or something? 

The Nevada Test Site was about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.  There was a significant increase in the number of cancer cases in southern Utah, where the prevailing winds carried the fallout from the tests.

http://www.citylab.com/politics/2014/08/atomic-tests-were-a-tourist-draw-in-1950s-las-vegas/375802/

Quote

Today, downtown Las Vegas’ Fremont Street is canopied by 90 feet of LED lights, all twinkling images for passing tourists below.  Years ago, another sort of light flashed over Fremont and attracted a crowd: the bursts of atomic bombs.

For four decades, the U.S. Department of Energy tested more than a thousand nuclear devices at the Nevada Test Site, a desert expanse just 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The 1951 detonation of a warhead 1,060 feet over the desert floor marked the beginning of the above-ground trials, whose famous mushroom clouds were easily visible from the nearby tourist magnet.

“They would light up the sky,” says Allen Palmer, executive director of the National Atomic Testing Museum. “It turned night into day.”

In true Las Vegas style, the city capitalized on the atomic spectacle. The Chamber of Commerce printed up calendars advertising detonation times and the best spots for watching. Casinos like Binion’s Horseshoe and the Desert Inn flaunted their north-facing vistas, offering special “atomic cocktails” and “Dawn Bomb Parties,” where crowds danced and quaffed until a flash lit the sky. Women decked out as mushroom clouds vied for the “Miss Atomic Energy” crown at the Sands. “The best thing to happen to Vegas was the Atomic Bomb,” one gambling magnate declared.

Edited October 19, 2016 by Moose135

[withanaich]

1 hour ago, iMonrey said:

What I want to know is where they keep getting all this money. There's no way on earth for the Mason company to have period specific currency for every era in history. They apparently had enough 1865 cash to rent a hotel room and buy a fancy dress. How on earth did they get their hands  on that?

I'm guessing that's the main reason the government is involved at this point: logistics. It's not so hard to handwave that they have those kinds of resources, and can scare up period-appropriate money and clothing at a moment's notice. At this point, it would even make sense for them to start collecting a variety of props and keeping them on hand for future trips.

[methodwriter85]

22 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

 They've even been a little contradictory, with him desperate to save the woman in the pilot, regardless of what it would do to history, because of his wife and in this episode he's willing to put the woman on the line and use her for bait, so I guess he's not going to go into "must save all the women!" territory.

I thought it was pretty clear that he tried to save the woman in the pilot because she had blond hair and vaguely resembled his wife. Moll woman didn't endear herself to him in that way.

I kept expecting for Lucy to convince him to stop the letter, or for her to do it herself. I did kind of expect for it to work, but for his wife to die a different day or something.

Man, I wish they would have been a little bit better with the period dressing, especially the hair on the moll that was so wrong for the period. I do think they're not letting Matt Lanter shave because it's both trendy now, and because he has a baby face. What's funny is that even with the scruff, viewers still seem to be thinking he seems too much like a little male model boy.

I didn't like this as much as the first two, but it is good that they're not just going back to big events.

[iMonrey]

Quote

But you don't have to be a tenured history professor to do that - it was just plain silly.

Oh, I agree it was silly. I was just responding to the question of why Christopher and her team didn't look the info up themselves - they hadn't yet determined Flynn was in Vegas when they first called Lucy. But big picture, Lucy is on hand not just to tell them about historical events. Yes, certainly any of them can look that up. She's there to accompany the sniper (*cough cough*) and the pilot to fill them in on the fly what's historically appropriate and what they can expect. I'm sure the Mason company can pull up all the research in the world about a specific date in history. But - the time traveling team does not have enough time to sit and learn it all. They have to get into the capsule and take off immediately. That's why they need a history "expert" along for the ride,

[wmdekooning]

14 hours ago, bros402 said:

When they were handling it, I couldn't help but think "oh no are we gonna get a demon core?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

Reading that wikipedia entry, I just have to say, "Deng..."

After these incidents the core, originally known as "Rufus", was referred to as the "demon core".

[Shanna Marie]

The historian going along and somehow knowing all those pertinent little details that allow them to blend in throughout all of history rather than having a rotating group of specialist historians would make a lot more sense if it turned out that Flynn had a pattern and he was visiting things that are all related under a theme, so you might have a historian who knew those particular events because she specialized in events of that sort throughout history -- like, say, aviation disasters. She's the leading expert on aviation disasters, so they brought her in on the Hindenberg disaster, and then he went to some other aviation disaster. Or assassinations. Or something like that. It's a little harder to buy that any one history professor would be an expert on day-to-day life and major events in the 1860s, the 1960s and the 1930s. The lower-level survey classes might cover 1865 to the present in American history, but I don't think the professors who teach that would necessarily be able to provide much guidance on fitting into society during all those times. They'd be better at spotting overall patterns and trends. It might work better if Lucy's role starts to be more about keeping her out of the timeline so she can tell what's changed and start to see how the ripple effects are working rather than about her being particularly useful in every time period they visit. She can't stay behind and still notice the changes, so she has to go along, even if that time period isn't one of her areas of expertise.

[saber5055]

I don't give a care HOW old the actor who plays Wyatt is, he does not look the part he is playing, which makes me lack confidence in him. Someone can be 50 and look 20 ... so what. If they do not look and act like the character they should be playing, a kick-ass Delta Forces guy who can take care of anything and protect everyone, then phooey. That is why Jim Caviezel worked so well as John Reese on Person of Interest. I just knew if he were in the room with me, I would be safe from everything and everyone. This Wyatt guy ... I feel like I'd have to be saving HIS ass.

Now Rufus is starting to make me feel like he can do a better job of "saving" me. So at least there is that.

[ketose]

18 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

The history books basically say that Judith Campbell (later known as Judith Exner following her second marriage in 1975) was full of it as far as her later accounts of her alleged affair with JFK was concerned.  From Wikipedia:

Thanks. I remember the name Judith Exner. I had no idea about Judith Campbell. Also enjoyed seeing Elena Satine in the role.

Lucy's role kind of suffered from pilot syndrome. In the first episode, she rattled off this list of reasons why her outfit was not period-specific. Last week, she knew more about the plot to assassinate Lincoln and other staff, this week she's reduced to using Google and identifying Judith Campbell. It makes sense to have a historian if they plan to do this multiple times, but if they just went in guns blazing during the Hindenburg, it would have been a big timeline change, but only one out of many.

The problem is that it looks like Lucy is integral to the mission and therefore her book will only tell Flynn to go to times where she is knowledgeable. Of course, that predestination aspect is annoying because NBC is trying to pull a Blindspot and not explain anything until Episode 13. If the writing is really lazy, it will be like the Blacklist and perfect fiancee will be a Rittenhouse plant.

[iMonrey]

Quote

 It's a little harder to buy that any one history professor would be an expert on day-to-day life and major events in the 1860s, the 1960s and the 1930s.

Could she be an American history professor? Wouldn't that make her more well-rounded in American history, in general? I have to agree, the notion that any character is a walking, talking encyclopedia of historical facts is absurd unless they're a robot. Which is maybe why they need to move faster and reveal what the connection is between Flynn and Lucy. Since he has her diary/notebook, it's probably not a coincidence that she's familiar with the specific histories of the time periods he's visiting. 

There could be this weird temporal loop where Lucy ended up writing all this crap down after myriad trips to the past, and that's where Flynn got the info from in the future, so he's actually following her movements, from his point of view.

[dubbel zout]

30 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

Could she be an American history professor? Wouldn't that make her more well-rounded in American history, in general?

She could, but even then she'd most likely have an era/area of concentration. 

[EyewatchTV211]

1 hour ago, saber5055 said:

I don't give a care HOW old the actor who plays Wyatt is, he does not look the part he is playing, which makes me lack confidence in him. Someone can be 50 and look 20 ... so what. If they do not look and act like the character they should be playing, a kick-ass Delta Forces guy who can take care of anything and protect everyone, then phooey. That is why Jim Caviezel worked so well as John Reese on Person of Interest. I just knew if he were in the room with me, I would be safe from everything and everyone. This Wyatt guy ... I feel like I'd have to be saving HIS ass.

Now Rufus is starting to make me feel like he can do a better job of "saving" me. So at least there is that.

Speaking of John Reese on Person of Interest, I have been thinking that it would make more sense for the Wyatt character to have a similar career history as Reese's and Shaw's characters for the job he is supposed to be doing - more government spy/assassin.

[MissLucas]

Since wrote a book on Lincoln it's safe to assume she's a professor for American history. But yeah, that field is too wide. In her very first scene she told an anecdote about LB Johnson. Kennedy, Johnson, Lincoln  - looks like knowing all sorts of trivia about US presidents seems to be her (main) area of research.

The all knowing historian/archaeologist (some shows don't even bother with the distinction) is a tv staple. But normally in shows that have a lot more humor in their DNA than this one (s. The Librarians featuring an interesting variation of the trope with Christian Kane as art historian).

I agree they better move things along and reveal the link between Lucy and Flynn in order to stop our complaining about her qualifications. We still have Wyatt to pick on.

[Lugal]

Wyatt does not seem to work as a character.  He's only there for the gunfights with Flynn, which he can't actually win, because well... no show.  And who is in charge, Wyatt or Lucy?  They can't seem to agree on that.  IMO Wyatt would have worked batter as a veteran of the time travel project rather than a soldier.  He's been to enough eras he's justified being in charge and he knows enough people in various eras.  He could be a legend that people know about, or the temporal equivalent of that guy who if you ever need something he's got you covered.

If it weren't for her knowledge of the Hindenburg in the pilot, we could say that Lucy was a presidential historian, since the past two weeks she interacted with Lincoln and less directly with Kennedy.

I also wonder how many languages they speak because if they go back before 1600 they will have trouble communicating at best (and even in the 1600s they would stand out even in an English-speaking area)

[OtterMommy]

2 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Could she be an American history professor? Wouldn't that make her more well-rounded in American history, in general? I have to agree, the notion that any character is a walking, talking encyclopedia of historical facts is absurd unless they're a robot. Which is maybe why they need to move faster and reveal what the connection is between Flynn and Lucy. Since he has her diary/notebook, it's probably not a coincidence that she's familiar with the specific histories of the time periods he's visiting. 

 

I agree that it is hard to buy Lucy as history professor...and it did seem from her lecture in the pilot that her area of expertise was 20th century US history. Still, to get a degree in History, you have to study a wide variety of areas/eras so it isn't out of the realm of plausibility that she would know all this.

That being said, so far the show hasn't gone too far into obscureville.  We got a very top level bit of the Hindenburg, and everyone knows about the Lincoln assassination (at least as far as the show went into it).  I will admit that I wasn't as familiar with the characters in this episode, although I'm sure I could watch a few Rat Pack movies to catch up.

[smiley13]

I like Wyatt and think that the actor portraying him is hot.    I don't like that they keep letting Flynn get the best of him though.  But I guess if he shot Flynn there would be no more show.

I really liked the time period of this episode.  How cool would it be to have been in Vegas at a Rat Pack show during that era?

[MisterGlass]

20 hours ago, lordonia said:

If the show wants us to see how Lucy is coping with the jarring changes in her personal life, then take a week or so between jumps to show us! It's annoying that she trudges home, acts bizarrely to people close to her, then mysteriously rushes off to work again for history emergencies.

I agree strongly with this.  This is not going to work well if the stay so focused on case of the week episodes.  I realize that time travel is the core principle of the show, but it would be good to have some real ramifications.

I'm still on the fence.  Paterson Joseph's performance in Neverwhere 20 years ago is 50% of why I started watching this show, and he's only in it a little.  Rufus is mildly interesting, I will always enjoy Matt Frewer, and the mytharc could turn out to be interesting, but I'm not sure how much more of an attention span I have for this.

[jzygayle]

On October 18, 2016 at 9:59 AM, sjohnson said:

The plutonium in fission bombs is never a critical mass at normal pressures. Only when an implosion radically compresses the plutonium does the density of decaying atoms reach a high enough level to sustain a chain reaction that escalates into a nuclear explosion. That said, the physical danger from the toxic metal and the normal radiation does make the casual way they were handling the pit kind of hair-raising. 

True.  And when a show gets ME to start yelling, "Atom bombs don't work that way!!" at the television (when the actors did the whole "be careful, it'll explode!!!" thing), there are issues.  I mean, the least they could have done was show hair falling out or something.

[Camera One]

On 10/17/2016 at 9:32 PM, ketose said:

I get the feeling Timeless is going to drag out this Rittenhouse thing for the rest of the season. So far we know that Rufus is indirectly working for Rittenshouse and that Flynn and Anthony are working against it / him. We're also pretty sure that at some point in her future, Lucy is going to write the instruction book. So, we're left to assume that RH is either influencing history as some sort of generic Illuminati or that RH is actually using time travel, which is an even more confusing possibility.

 

On 10/18/2016 at 10:35 AM, iMonrey said:

And there's the show's problem, in a nutshell, which is becoming more and more apparent with each passing episode. How much longer can they rinse and repeat this same formula? Go into past, screw up trying to stop Flynn, Flynn gets away. Only this time they did not manage to prevent him from achieving his goal. Maybe the story will shift now? Hope springs eternal.

Yeah, in this episode, I started to feel fatigue with this formula.  Every week it's basically watching failure, so I don't think I can watch them chase Flynn for an entire season, much less more than one season.  I also don't like the Lucy's future being already written.  It takes away from free will.  

I find myself not caring about Rittenhouse.  You can't have an underlying mystery which is boring.

I liked the characters in the past episode but all three was starting to grate in this one, especially Wyatt.  The "parallels" between Lucy and the mistress didn't work at all.  

[bros402]

9 hours ago, wmdekooning said:

Reading that wikipedia entry, I just have to say, "Deng..."

After these incidents the core, originally known as "Rufus", was referred to as the "demon core".

Uh oh, is Rufus gonna explode?

6 hours ago, VMepicgrl said:

Speaking of John Reese on Person of Interest, I have been thinking that it would make more sense for the Wyatt character to have a similar career history as Reese's and Shaw's characters for the job he is supposed to be doing - more government spy/assassin.

Every episode so far, I keep thinking "You know, it'd be so much better if the character of Wyatt were replaced by Reese..."

Someone like a CIA agent who is skilled with firearms would be a much better fit for the team than "super duper ex delta force man!"

[shapeshifter]

16 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

On the other hand, you might find a closet full of clothes you've always wanted to wear but couldn't afford!

Or that the ones you regret giving away are back — in my case, hand embroidered and hand painted (by me) garments from the 70s and 80s. 

About Lucy or any history professor having broad enough knowledge to be useful on the fly with no internet: It would make more sense if she was Matt Frewer's age so she would've taught a variety of periods over the course of her career. But I guess they needed/wanted a younger lead female.

[dubbel zout]

3 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

20 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

On the other hand, you might find a closet full of clothes you've always wanted to wear but couldn't afford!

Or that the ones you regret giving away are back — in my case, hand embroidered and hand painted (by me) garments from the 70s and 80s. 

Hee. Time travel opens up a can of worms in every facet of life.

[green]

6 hours ago, bros402 said:

Uh oh, is Rufus gonna explode?

Every episode so far, I keep thinking "You know, it'd be so much better if the character of Wyatt were replaced by Reese..."

Someone like a CIA agent who is skilled with firearms would be a much better fit for the team than "super duper ex delta force man!"

Well Garcia Flynn is a former CIA agent and he can shoot better than soldier boy too.  I'd hire him on the spot!   :-)

They are using the fact that Lucy is a historian as a "cover" to make her believe that is why she is on the missions.  It is all about her and her notebook apparently.  If she ran a deli they would  have recruited her for the missions with the "cover" that they needed the team "catered" every mission.

[LoneHaranguer]

On 10/19/2016 at 1:28 PM, dubbel zout said:

That can't happen because there's only the mothership and the eye the current team is using.

But who's to say they can't have a different team use that same eye once in a while?

[dubbel zout]

No one. There just can't be two chase teams flying around at the same time.

[Canada]

I've officially given up on this show.  It's so bad.  These people are so stupid.  It's like Zoo, but with time travellers and without the (possibly unintentional) humour.

[bros402]

17 hours ago, green said:

Well Garcia Flynn is a former CIA agent and he can shoot better than soldier boy too.  I'd hire him on the spot!   :-)

They are using the fact that Lucy is a historian as a "cover" to make her believe that is why she is on the missions.  It is all about her and her notebook apparently.  If she ran a deli they would  have recruited her for the missions with the "cover" that they needed the team "catered" every mission.

They really should have an episode where they talk about how much they have messed up history.

 

Though, huh, stuff should already be diverging from what Lucy knows - changing the Hindenburg should alter some things slighty - same with Lincoln

[Chaos Theory]

14 hours ago, LoneHaranguer said:

But who's to say they can't have a different team use that same eye once in a while?

Because at this point it's not an exploration mission.  They don't want to leave a footprint in time.  They are trying to avoid it as much as possible.  The less people bumping around in time the better.   

[Clanstarling]

10 hours ago, Canada said:

I've officially given up on this show.  It's so bad.  These people are so stupid.  It's like Zoo, but with time travellers and without the (possibly unintentional) humour.

I may not have the same opinion (yet), but bringing Zoo to the table is a most excellent burn, I salute you.

[legaleagle53]

8 hours ago, bros402 said:

They really should have an episode where they talk about how much they have messed up history.

 

Though, huh, stuff should already be diverging from what Lucy knows - changing the Hindenburg should alter some things slighty - same with Lincoln

It did, and it still does.  That's what Lucy nearly always finds out when she has her debriefing after getting back from a mission, that the people in the lab remember history differently than she does.  This last mission to 1962 Las Vegas was an exception, because Flynn apparently never had as his goal to change anything that happened on September 21, 1962; rather, his specific goal was to use Judith as a way to gain access to the plutonium he wanted to steal.

And then of course there are the major changes in her own existence (a sister who was never born, a mother who is very much alive and kicking rather than dying from Stage 4 lung cancer and who apparently had a secret affair that Lucy had hitherto known nothing about, and the biggest change of all -- being engaged to a man she's never met before because he didn't exist in her life in the original timeline).

Edited October 21, 2016 by legaleagle53

[LoneHaranguer]

1 hour ago, Chaos Theory said:

Because at this point it's not an exploration mission.  They don't want to leave a footprint in time.  They are trying to avoid it as much as possible.  The less people bumping around in time the better.

That still leaves room for a relief team to chase after Flynn whenever the primary team needs a break.

[orza]

That would have to happen off-screen and then do some awkward exposition in the next episode to get viewers caught up on Flynn's actions. That seems unnecessary. I don't see how showing on-screen relief teams would help the show establish a loyal audience. This show was not promoted as an anthology or something with a rotating cast. Most viewers tune in every week to see the established main characters, not random guest stars filling in for them.

[green]

32 minutes ago, LoneHaranguer said:

That still leaves room for a relief team to chase after Flynn whenever the primary team needs a break.

Why would we want to see three more actors running around on Team 2?  Makes no sense for a TV show to do that.

And, again, it is all about Lucy and her notebook from the future or an alternate timeline anyway which is Flynn's "template" map now. And Rufus being forced/guilted into recording anything she and Flynn may say to each other if/when they bump into each other for the shady head dude and Team (Corp? Agency? Cabal?) Rittenhouse back at the base.  Also Rufus is the only other pilot other than Anthony who can operate the clunker they are chasing Flynn around in.

Lucy is apparently the key to everything so she has to be there though she does not know she has to be there.  She thinks she is there cause she is some uber historian.  Not really so.  But shady head dude knows she is the special snowflake so he will use her "historian" thing as a cover to get her to go on all the missions.

So Lucy and Rufus have to be on the chase team anyway.  But yeah I'm all for losing stubble-faced hobo-looking teeny bopper soldier boy immediately from said team.

Also realize that there is only a couple of days gone by since Flynn and Anthony made off with the primo time ship.  And given how poorly gov't bureaucracy is at  organizing anything in a timely matter it is surprising they have managed to find any kind of era appropriate clothing let alone money to use in these eras. 

And shady head dude has his own agenda in not wanting any more people than absolutely necessary to know that a working time machine has been invented.  That's a bigger deal/secret than stealth technology times a thousand.  The gov't wouldn't want that secret out either.

[dubbel zout]

10 minutes ago, green said:

And given how poorly gov't bureaucracy is at  organizing anything in a timely matter it is surprising they have managed to find any kind of era appropriate clothing let alone money to use in these eras. 

They're probably just raiding the Smithsonian. Heh.

[LoneHaranguer]

23 minutes ago, green said:

Why would we want to see three more actors running around on Team 2?  Makes no sense for a TV show to do that.

Generally, you wouldn't, any more than you'd expect to tune into Stargate: SG-1 and see one of the other SG teams, but from a story POV it makes sense for there to be a Team 2, even if you don't usually see them, and the potential for a related story. What if the show needed to write out Lucy for a couple of episodes? They could do a story where Lucy is gone because history got changed on a trip by the other team, and Wyatt and Rufus have to fix things.

[officetemp]

3 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

They're probably just raiding the Smithsonian. Heh.

Yeah, in the same way that Hodgins just helps himself to the stuff in the exhibits at the "Jeffersonian" in Bones whenever he wants to conduct an experiment with an obscure piece of historical equipment (which is always[???!!!] functional, by the way) or has to generate power during an outage or when the interns need dress-up costumes to attend Brennan's wedding.

Re:  Lucy's fiance--maybe he's not a Rittenhouse plant.  Maybe he's Rittenhouse.  (If this series ends up being all about Lucy and her Family Drama, I'll be very annoyed.)

[Netfoot]

4 hours ago, green said:

Also realize that there is only a couple of days gone by since Flynn and Anthony made off with the primo time ship.

You'd think one of their primary goals would be to follow Flynn into the past and steal back the time ship!

[MissLucas]

I don't care that there is not a second team - what I care about is why there's not a huge team analyzing each time-jump and the micro-changes they created in order to figure out what Flynn is up to. There should a team working 24/7 in front of a wall of crazy trying to establish a variable shared by all three jumps. They should also be much more concerned by the one glaring pattern evolving: that out of three jumps two wrecked havoc on Lucy's biography. Yet, nothing nada - they seem to shuffle paperweights around and waiting for Flynn to jump again.

Edited October 21, 2016 by MissLucas

[Wryly]

This show needs something. A change that will make everything click, a new ingredient, catalyst, something. The team isn't really synergizing for me (I consider Wyatt to be the weak link), and the plot format is decent but needs better character writing to make it shine.

[bros402]

15 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

It did, and it still does.  That's what Lucy nearly always finds out when she has her debriefing after getting back from a mission, that the people in the lab remember history differently than she does.  This last mission to 1962 Las Vegas was an exception, because Flynn apparently never had as his goal to change anything that happened on September 21, 1962; rather, his specific goal was to use Judith as a way to gain access to the plutonium he wanted to steal.

And then of course there are the major changes in her own existence (a sister who was never born, a mother who is very much alive and kicking rather than dying from Stage 4 lung cancer and who apparently had a secret affair that Lucy had hitherto known nothing about, and the biggest change of all -- being engaged to a man she's never met before because he didn't exist in her life in the original timeline).

Yeah, but societal differences - things beyond her personal life. I want something big, like one of the moments in Fringe.

Heck, or at least she makes a reference to something in pop culture and it either never happened or turned out totally different (Like Eric Stoltz instead of Michael J. Fox in Back To The Future)

[Dowel Jones]

I'm just curious as to what military base keeps a nuclear weapon in a shed with only a padlock on a chain for security.  And, as has been pointed out, plutonium is heavy, and that sphere would weigh about 15 pounds.  Not the easiest thing to hold in one hand for any length of time.

Regarding the testing in Nevada during the 50's-60s, if you have access to Google Earth, type in Nevada National Security Site, and zoom in a bit.  It's 75 miles NW of Las Vegas, (and one ridge SW of Area 51), and the amount of craters there is astounding.  They might not all be from nuclear weapons, but it's very obvious that large things went boom in that area, and would likely be visible for a long distance.

[Trooper York]

I don't it is a problem for any well read history professor to be totally familiar with each of the scenarios that have been portrayed so far. I mean I am just an ill educated mook but I read a lot and I have read a book or books on each of these situations and knew everything that happened before it happened. In fact I had to stop it to explain what was going on to the wife since the exposition that they do is piss poor. So I went into the whole Sam Giancanna West Virgina why the Mafia killed JFK thing. Also the conspiracy of Booth and the Prisoner of Shark Island which didn't make it into the show.

And I explained how George C Scott blew up the Hindenburg. 

I love time travel shows. In fact I just recently rewatched Time Tunnel on Hulu which was from the sixties. The best part of it is the fashion choices and the fact that the bit parts are all people you would remember from similar bit parts on the Original Star Trek. Way cool for time travel buffs.

[LoneHaranguer]

On 10/21/2016 at 5:43 PM, MissLucas said:

what I care about is why there's not a huge team analyzing each time-jump and the micro-changes they created in order to figure out what Flynn is up to.

For everyone back at the base, history has always been that way, so there are no changes for them to analyze. The team should start taking some sort of device with them containing as much historical data as possible so that the next reality they come back to will have a shot at doing something like that. It would have to be self-contained in case the next reality has a different technology.

[MissLucas]

Nope,

6 hours ago, LoneHaranguer said:

For everyone back at the base, history has always been that way, so there are no changes for them to analyze. T

At least in the pilot Lucy and the others told them what had changed, the same goes for Lincoln's assassination. From that they could have established different timelines. And this where Lucy being a historian is actually relevant. There should be extensive debriefing sessions after every jump. Especially once it was established that Lucy's personal biography is influenced by the jumps. The fact that those things are either hand waved away or ignored makes no sense.

What Jiya did for Lucy's family history should have been done on a massive scale for all the events Flynn so far has changed. That Jiya and Lucy kept her genealogical research a secret is plot-driven idiocy - those are the things they should concentrate on.

They are all acting blind instead of trying to figure out Flynn's game-plan and nobody seems to bother that all they know about him is that he's an agent gone rogue because his family got killed - agent for whom - what was his assignment - who killed his wife and kid - Vandal Savage?

[iMonrey]

Just re-watched this one. There was a modest attempt to suggest a smoky haze around the stage where Sinatra was performing, but nobody in that room was seen to be smoking. There were two shots of men holding cigars, although neither appeared to be lit, and a brief shot of someone ashing a cigarette in an ash tray. Ironically there was a cigarette girl walking around during the show even  though nobody was smoking.

I know that showing a character smoking on TV has been taboo for decades, because networks do not want to be seen to be promoting smoking. But we are now so far removed from an era where smoking was commonplace that - in a time travel show - it's downright silly not to use that visual as shorthand to suggest an era. It's not as if kids are going to run out and buy cigarettes because the people smoking on the TV show looked cool. Especially considering how much they cost nowadays.

And yeah, Judith's hairstyle was also unrealistic for 1962. She should have had a bona fide AquaNet helmet head.

I know these are just details but if the show is going to do this, they ought to do it right. Just dressing them up in period costumes seems lazy if they don't go the extra mile.

Edited October 23, 2016 by iMonrey

[OtterMommy]

12 hours ago, MissLucas said:

 

At least in the pilot Lucy and the others told them what had changed, the same goes for Lincoln's assassination. From that they could have established different timelines. And this where Lucy being a historian is actually relevant. There should be extensive debriefing sessions after every jump. Especially once it was established that Lucy's personal biography is influenced by the jumps. The fact that those things are either hand waved away or ignored makes no sense.

 

There was an interesting point in this episode where Lucy had something that had gone with her--was it a locket with a picture of her now non-existent sister?--that stayed true to the history pre-time travel.  I would think that one of the officials (or even the tech girl) at the time travel org would wise up and send something that would record the current history with the team in the time travel unit so that they could compare it after they returned from a mission.

[dubbel zout]

32 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

I know these are just details but if the show is going to do this, they ought to do it right. Just dressing them up in period costumes seems lazy if they don't go the extra mile.

They never seem to have much time to prepare for a mission—it's always urgent, and the team has to get ready as soon as possible—so I don't really mind the sloppiness here.