S01.E04: Party At Castle Varlar

[blackwing]

I would agree that the show needs to come up with an explanation of why Flynn just doesn't kill the team.  I get that they would just find another Lucy or another Wyatt replacement.  But as far as we have been told, the only two people who know how to operate the mechanical eyeball are Anthony and Rufus.  If Flynn kills Rufus, then the team is done, at least until they can find someone else who can learn how to operate the thing without assistance.

I'm a bit surprised that the time machine has the ability to jump through time and space, but doesn't have any kind of invisibility cloak.  If they are going to make time travel technology, they could have gone all the way and given it some kind of cloaking ability.

Also, why doesn't the team have any stun guns?  For all the brouhaha about not changing history, they really should take more care about trying not to kill people.  What if that guy that Wyatt killed turned out to be the boss lady's father?  He would have wiped her out of existence. 

[dubbel zout]

19 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

And since Flynn was willing to hand Lucy over to the Nazis he clearly doesn't care if she's killed. Why hasn't he killed her before? He's had ample opportunity.

He's her father. And/or some event in the diary he has demands that Lucy stay alive at least until they get to that point.

[Netfoot]

58 minutes ago, Goldmoon said:

I think part of it is the casting of Lucy who just seems like such a drip for most of the adventure. 

Drip?  Every time I saw her this episode, I thought "frump!"

[SyracuseMug]

17 hours ago, Emily Thrace said:

FFS Ian Fleming was never active SOE. He actually washed out of Camp X. He just was a Royal Navy intelligence so he got to read their case files. He sure as fuck was never anywhere near Berlin. I wish this show would decide if it wants to take itself seriously or not.

It's possible that Fleming's background was changed due to the alterations of the Lincoln assassination or the Hindenburg disaster. So I can forgive the writers in this case.

By contrast, I recently watched an old episode of Time Tunnel where the guys went back to the Trojan War. In that episode, the Greeks spoke English, the gods (and Odysseus) were called by their Roman names, and "Ulysses" was in charge of the Greek army instead of Agamemnon. 

Those changes were a lot more difficult to reconcile.

[Netfoot]

1 minute ago, SyracuseMug said:

It's possible that Fleming's background was changed due to the alterations of the Lincoln assassination or the Hindenburg disaster. So I can forgive the writers in this case.

This easily excuses any changes from known reality for the entire show, forever.  Any discrepancy can be explained away by assuming they step on a butterfly at some point in a possibly-not-yet-made trip into the distant past.

[NorthstarATL]

15 hours ago, bros402 said:

Me too. The second they revealed it I had a gigantic smile on my face like "Yessssssssss."

Also, I like the little things about this episode - Lucy wanting a cover story established, for one. The costume room, of course (Do you think they have seamstresses and hair dressers and people like that?)., also, the Bond movie - do you think they had Rufus played by a black actor in the movie?

If they made it today, Wyatt and Lucy would also be black.  But why couldn't they just have made the nod more realistic and say that there were characters clearly BASED upon the three than suggesting that Fleming would use their real names? At the very least Lucy would have some sort of sexualized name.

   I liked that Wyatt has some linguistic skills, and I had assumed a costuming room existed, so the verification of that was cool. Wyatt initially killed tow people, so, yeah, that's two potential changes to the timeline on top of the new Bond film.

  Lucy seemed to be having physical discomfort, so, this being television, I assumed that she was pregnant. What if she were and it was a time anomaly?

[Moose135]

I got the feeling that the big room of clothes was something new - not-Elon-Musk said something that the mission was looking like it was going to take some time.  Also, in the Lincoln assassination episode, they said they got the uniforms from a Civil War re-enactor group.

[sjohnson]

At least one row of costumes was labeled "Mason." The dude had touristy plans.

[smiley13]

I think I am going to have to re-watch this one.  While I enjoyed it, I did not really follow what Flynn was planning.

[iMonrey]

Quote

I'm a bit surprised that the time machine has the ability to jump through time and space, but doesn't have any kind of invisibility cloak.  If they are going to make time travel technology, they could have gone all the way and given it some kind of cloaking ability.

Yeah - that's gotta be a problem somewhere down the line, right? They keep having the good fortune of landing out in open fields or forests and nobody finds their ginormous time machines the whole time they're off on their adventures. Convenient! What if they do land in the middle of a crowded city? Can they just move the machine over a block or two?

Quote

He's her father. And/or some event in the diary he has demands that Lucy stay alive at least until they get to that point.

Then why did he hand her over to the Nazis? They were about to shoot her before Wyatt saved her and Fleming. (For the record - I think she's more likely his mother. That makes more senses in regards to why/how he has her diary.)

[henripootel]

27 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

Then why did he hand her over to the Nazis? They were about to shoot her before Wyatt saved her and Fleming. (For the record - I think she's more likely his mother. That makes more senses in regards to why/how he has her diary.)

Luka may have read in her diary how back in 1944, he handed her over to the Nazis, and she escaped.  As we've seen, history is mutable so I'd be pretty sure the diary is no longer gospel on how this turns out, but it could explain why Luka both did it but is still not her enemy.  

[dubbel zout]

15 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

Then why did he hand her over to the Nazis? They were about to shoot her before Wyatt saved her and Fleming. (For the record - I think she's more likely his mother. That makes more senses in regards to why/how he has her diary.)

If Flynn really wanted Lucy dead, he'd have killed her. He obviously needs her alive for something. 

Stupidly, I never thought that Lucy might be Flynn's mother, but that makes sense. They're related/connected somehow.

[KaveDweller]

4 hours ago, blackwing said:

Also, why doesn't the team have any stun guns?  For all the brouhaha about not changing history, they really should take more care about trying not to kill people.  What if that guy that Wyatt killed turned out to be the boss lady's father?  He would have wiped her out of existence. 

With all the references to Wyatt's grandfather being in Germany, I was a little worried he was going to almost kill his grandfather and wipe himself out. Well, not really since he's a star, but it felt like they were leading somewhere with that.

[blackwing]

1 hour ago, sjohnson said:

At least one row of costumes was labeled "Mason." The dude had touristy plans.

Weren't they all labelled Mason?  I thought each decade's sign said Mason Industries... the name of the company that built the time machine.

[henripootel]

19 minutes ago, KaveDweller said:

I was a little worried he was going to almost kill his grandfather and wipe himself out.

Pretty sure it doesn't work that way in this world.  The Team now has memories of timelines that no longer exist, meaning they have knowledge of events even when they never actually happened (in this timeline).  Wyatt need not fear his own existence if his grandfather gets killed - he exists, period, even if the new timeline the Team creates doesn't include a thread that leads to him being born.  

Would suck to go home, though, and find out you and your parents never existed.  This would definitely lead to an awkward return to the present where Not-Elon-Musk's guards point guns at Wyatt and ask 'WHO THE FUCK IS THAT?'  Lucy and Rufus would remember him, but not anyone else. 

Edited October 26, 2016 by henripootel

[legaleagle53]

2 hours ago, NorthstarATL said:

 Lucy seemed to be having physical discomfort, so, this being television, I assumed that she was pregnant. What if she were and it was a time anomaly?

Then Wyatt and Rufus are also pregnant, because all three of them experience some physical discomfort (i.e., nausea and even vomiting) as a side effect of the time jumps, going all the way back to their arrival in 1937 New Jersey before the timeline started changing.  In fact, after his usual wave of nausea upon arrival in 1944 Germany, Wyatt said they needed to start bringing Dramamine with them.

[shapeshifter]

I was wondering/worried most of the episode that Lucy would be suspected of being Jewish because her coloring and hair are like my grandmother's, whose parents/grandparents, I am told, left Germany before the 1930s "because they saw the handwriting on the wall." Plus the actress (and director?) did an excellent job of conveying Lucy's extreme nervousness/fear.

[Jodithgrace]

I was thinking that perhaps Lucy IS Jewish, which is why she was freaking out about being in Nazi Germany. But they didn't go there. I think that would have been a bit too cliche. I liked the reason being that the constant tension and feeling of being adrift in time was beginning to get to her. 

[Shanna Marie]

23 minutes ago, Jodithgrace said:

I was thinking that perhaps Lucy IS Jewish, which is why she was freaking out about being in Nazi Germany.

That's what I was thinking when she seemed to be freaking out about putting on the Nazi insignia. It looked like that thing, in particular, was what was bothering her.

[KaveDweller]

1 hour ago, henripootel said:

Pretty sure it doesn't work that way in this world.  The Team now has memories of timelines that no longer exist, meaning they have knowledge of events even when they never actually happened (in this timeline).  Wyatt need not fear his own existence if his grandfather gets killed - he exists, period, even if the new timeline the Team creates doesn't include a thread that leads to him being born.  

Yes, but having knowledge of events isn't the same as still existing when your father was never born. Lucy still has knowledge of her sister existing even though she doesn't. That was how Lucy determined that the man she thought was her father wasn't really her father, because she still existed. That implies the team would expect Wyatt to not exist if he killed his grandfather.  He might, but they can't really safely test this theory.

[blueray]

1 hour ago, KaveDweller said:

With all the references to Wyatt's grandfather being in Germany, I was a little worried he was going to almost kill his grandfather and wipe himself out. Well, not really since he's a star, but it felt like they were leading somewhere with that.

I was thinking that it was going to go that direction too and have a major plot point be him almost wiping himself out.

 

Quote

I was thinking that perhaps Lucy IS Jewish, which is why she was freaking out about being in Nazi Germany

I was hoping for this. It would have been a good reason for her to freak out when she was putting the pin on. While the reason they gave with her worrying about all the changes make sense, it should have been impacting that exact moment to the point where she was just staring at the mirror while getting ready.

[henripootel]

3 hours ago, KaveDweller said:

Yes, but having knowledge of events isn't the same as still existing when your father was never born. Lucy still has knowledge of her sister existing even though she doesn't. That was how Lucy determined that the man she thought was her father wasn't really her father, because she still existed. That implies the team would expect Wyatt to not exist if he killed his grandfather.  He might, but they can't really safely test this theory.

Actually, it is. Having experienced the world in their own timeline, they carry the physical results of that timeline, namely the biochemistry which enables them to remember their own past (which may now have changed).  Their memory of the past doesn't bring things into existence, so just because Lucy remembers her sister doesn't mean that the new timeline will cooperate and pop her into existence.  Nor will Lucy's or Rufus' expectation that Wyatt might disappear mean that he actually will.  Timey-wimey - if you exist, you exist, and not every effect has a cause, not with time travel.

Just like their memories, they themselves are artifacts of the previous timeline.  They exist, and it doesn't matter if the new timeline agrees with their memory, just like with Lucy's sister.  So it's entirely possible to exist but have no parents in the current timeline that might have produced you here.  You're not a product of 'here', so the cause-effect need not apply.  This is why the whole Back to the Future 'Marty fades away' thing is ridiculously wrong (in a movie that actually gets rather a lot right about time travel).  If you exist, you exist, even if nobody remembers you or your parents or whatever.  The guys from your own timeline will remember you, but that's about it.  The guys back at the base should really prepare for this because it's bound to happen eventually - random chance means someone's folks didn't meet this go-round, and now you've got an operative with 'no past' that they have no memory of ever meeting.  

Edited October 26, 2016 by henripootel

[MisterGlass]

15 hours ago, BookElitist said:

After being continuously ordered about in previous episodes by Lucy PRESTON and Wyatt LOGAN, ol' Rufus doesn't even get the dignity of his last name mentioned during The Trio's introduction to Ian Fleming.

I've missed the joke. It did not occur to me until seeing the names in a row that they are all references to Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure - Bill S. Preston, Ted "Theodore" Logan, and Rufus, who gave them the time machine.  If his last name is Carlin I'm going to laugh.

[ketose]

5 hours ago, NorthstarATL said:

If they made it today, Wyatt and Lucy would also be black.  But why couldn't they just have made the nod more realistic and say that there were characters clearly BASED upon the three than suggesting that Fleming would use their real names? At the very least Lucy would have some sort of sexualized name.

   I liked that Wyatt has some linguistic skills, and I had assumed a costuming room existed, so the verification of that was cool. Wyatt initially killed tow people, so, yeah, that's two potential changes to the timeline on top of the new Bond film.

  Lucy seemed to be having physical discomfort, so, this being television, I assumed that she was pregnant. What if she were and it was a time anomaly?

 

2 hours ago, KaveDweller said:

Yes, but having knowledge of events isn't the same as still existing when your father was never born. Lucy still has knowledge of her sister existing even though she doesn't. That was how Lucy determined that the man she thought was her father wasn't really her father, because she still existed. That implies the team would expect Wyatt to not exist if he killed his grandfather.  He might, but they can't really safely test this theory.

These questions are all about the rules that Timeless follows. Time travel shows and movies have different rules. On this show, if you pulled yourself out of the time line, then anything that changed in your life does not impact your memories. If that is true, it shouldn't impact you physically, either. The weird part is that there's an alternate history where the alternate team traveled back, but the "original" timeline team is the only one that returns.

For example, in the pilot, in order for the Mason people to know Lucy et. al. went back in time, an engaged Lucy with no sister would have gone into the machine. However, Lucy with a sister and no guy returned. But if Lucy in the original time line never went at all, the returning Lucy would be dead, because you can't cross the streams.

[thuganomics85]

Hey, the team inadvertently helped create a new James Bond film!  For them, that's actually a win!  Of course, that makes me wonder about a whole bunch of things like if this one change caused some of the other films not to get made, or if this somehow effected the post-Sean Connery actors in future bonds.  The possibilities are endless!

I did notice that this particular episode was piling up the bodies more then normal, but it being Nazis means it is cool, since Nazis are pretty much always killable.  But unless they are were always destined to die around that time, I have to imagine the team changed a lot of lives in Germany during their little adventures.

Sean Maguire was pretty good as Ian Fleming.  Even if whenever he was hitting on Lucy, I just kept thinking "Regina isn't going to like that, Robin!"

Wyatt fanboying over Ian and Bond, was probably the most I ever liked him.

Enjoyed Rufus' scenes with Ian and then Von Bronn.  He is still my favorite character out of the main three, and Malcolm Barrett is doing a good job with the role.

So, the nuclear reactor was just so Matt Frewer's character can make Flynn's time machine no longer need to charged and risk them getting caught, again?

Flynn was so the "guy" who rescued Lucy from drowning, back when she was in college.  Every freaking sign is pointing to it.  If not him, it has to be another time-traveler.

The sooner they get to Rattinhouse and what the deal is between them and Mason, the better.

I did like that they finally addressed how Lucy will keep being able to get away from her job, at a moment's notice.

The show is still fun and entertaining, if a bit silly.  But as long as it doesn't get ridiculously stupid or boring, I'm in. 

[henripootel]

1 hour ago, ketose said:

The weird part is that there's an alternate history where the alternate team traveled back, but the "original" timeline team is the only one that returns.

Not necessarily, and here's where it get's really weird.  By far the most likely scenario (I'd argue) is that when you time travel, you're virtually guaranteed to return to a future with 'you' in it, or rather, alt-you.  This you had a slightly (or highly) different life experience, depending on how far back you went.  Go back 5 minutes and you'll re-appear to find yourself pretty much exactly the same as when you left, and you can witness yourself leaving.  5 minutes isn't enough time for a bunch of random events to seriously change the timeline (if you just observe) that led to you leaving in the first place, so no harm, no foul.  But what about 5 years?  What about 50?  In that time, random events will change the timeline even if you do nothing while back in the past.  At the very least, you'll pop back to find out that alt-you probably didn't take the time trip exactly when you did, so you will both be there.  But it won't be your life, it'll be alt-you's life, just as happened to Lucy.  

So I ask the same question I too asked after the pilot - what happened to the other Lucy?  The one who got engaged.  She's obviously not our Lucy, so what, did she just disappear?  That Lucy lived a whole life, and now she's gone.  There is absolutely no reason why there can't be two Lucys, and there's every reason to suspect that there should indeed be two Lucys.

I think the only argument for why there isn't is that it'd just be too complicated for the show, so they just pretend that there's only one Lucy, our Lucy, and she just doesn't remember.  It's not a perfect solution but for the purposes of the show, I'm willing to let it slide.  Them allowing for little changes in history to become big deals for them personally is sufficiently interesting and amusing that I'll cut them some slack.

Edited October 26, 2016 by henripootel

[ketose]

10 minutes ago, henripootel said:

Not necessarily, and here's where it get's really weird.  By far the most likely scenario (I'd argue) is that when you time travel, you're virtually guaranteed to return to a future with 'you' in it, or rather, alt-you.  This you had a slightly (or highly) different life experience, depending on how far back you went.  Go back 5 minutes and you'll re-appear to find yourself pretty much exactly the same as when you left, and you can witness yourself leaving.  5 minutes isn't enough time for a bunch of random events to seriously change the timeline (if you just observe) that led to you leaving in the first place, so no harm, no foul.  But what about 5 years?  What about 50?  In that time, random events will change the timeline even if you do nothing.  At the very least, you'll pop back to find out that alt-you probably didn't take the time trip exactly when you did, so you will both be there.  But it won't be your life, it'll be alt-you's life, just as happened to Lucy.  

So I ask the same question I too asked after the pilot - what happened to the other Lucy?  The one who got engaged.  She's obviously not our Lucy, so what, did she just disappear?  That Lucy lived a whole life, and now she's gone.  There is absolutely no reason why there can't be two Lucys, and there's every reason to suspect that there should indeed be two Lucys.

I think the only argument for why there isn't is that it'd just be too complicated for the show, so they just pretend that there's only one Lucy, our Lucy, and she just doesn't remember.  It's not a perfect solution but for the purposes of the show, I'm willing to let it slide.  Them allowing for little changes in history to become big deals for them personally is sufficiently interesting and amusing that I'll cut them some slack.

The conservation of matter would be the reason there can't be two Lucys. I think that was what they were implying by not being able to send someone back to their own history. I guess that means Anthony is younger than Matt Frewer, because the show has already gone as far as 1962. Luckily, the time travel departures and returns must match in either timeline pretty well.

[henripootel]

11 minutes ago, ketose said:

The conservation of matter would be the reason there can't be two Lucys. I think that was what they were implying by not being able to send someone back to their own history. I guess that means Anthony is younger than Matt Frewer, because the show has already gone as far as 1962. Luckily, the time travel departures and returns must match in either timeline pretty well.

That rule doesn't make much actual sense.  The matter that makes up all of us is billions of years old, and has been around for that long.  All the matter that makes up Lucy existed in 1962, it was just all over the place, in the air, in other people, in cows, whatever.  If you couldn't duplicate matter (or, if you prefer, matter couldn't exist twice during the same time), time travel itself would be completely impossible. 

It also doesn't make dramatic sense for the reason you say - Frewer was certainly alive in '62.  So it doesn't even quite work as a 'rule' for the show, but if this is the 'reason' they can't just hop back and fix their own mistakes, eh, I'm cool with it.   Doesn't explain why they can't just send back another team to fix mistakes, but ... fine.   My love of time travel shows is such that I'm willing to suspend on all cylinders.

[Tara Ariano]

In case you missed it, here's the Previously.TV post on the episode!

Timeless Knows How To Have Fun. Real Fun.

Which isn't easy to do when hanging out with Nazis.

[Camera One]

This episode really bored me, unfortunately, despite wanting to like it.  I couldn't care less why they were chasing Flynn around in Germany and didn't have the energy to figure out what Flynn even wanted in that time period.  So I sort of half watched while doing something else.

I do like the dynamic of the three team members, especially Rufus.  Though it's starting to grate how Wyatt is so cavalier about changing history.  Their "fangirling" over James Bond was fun to see though.

I didn't care for the portrayal of Ian Fleming... the actor was bland.  

I feel like we're seeing too little of their everyday lives to care.  I would like to see the bigger picture of how this job is affecting them.  The pre-destination mythology isn't grabbing me, so it's up to the characters and the time-period-of-the-week to keep me engaged.  Neither of those worked for me this week, but here's hoping to next week.

Quote

 Some historians couldn't learn a second language even if they tried for years.  They just don't have the ear for it.  

I looked into several Masters in History programs back in my school days, and all of them required proficiency in a second language.  

Edited October 26, 2016 by Camera One

[shapeshifter]

37 minutes ago, ketose said:

The conservation of matter would be the reason there can't be two Lucys....

— unless the writers decide to go with the trope that each new timeline creates an alternate universe. SG1 and Fringe did this.

 

5 MINUTES AGO, CAMERA ONE SAID:

...I looked into several Masters in History programs back in my school days, and all of them required proficiency in a second language. 

That's what I was thinking too, but maybe times have changed (no show related pun intended)?

Edited October 26, 2016 by shapeshifter

[henripootel]

20 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I looked into several Masters in History programs back in my school days, and all of them required proficiency in a second language.  

And I went through one (not history) - the 'proficiency' requirement usually just means two years of classes.  So you're back going through french 101 through French 202, but if it didn't stick in high school, it's unlikely to stick in college.  The purpose of getting into grad school is to get out of it, so you check the boxes.  

[legaleagle53]

47 minutes ago, henripootel said:

And I went through one (not history) - the 'proficiency' requirement usually just means two years of classes.  So you're back going through french 101 through French 202, but if it didn't stick in high school, it's unlikely to stick in college.  The purpose of getting into grad school is to get out of it, so you check the boxes.  

Exactly.  Just because Lucy might have been required to take, say, two years of French as part of her graduate studies, that doesn't mean that she's retained any of it.  I took five years of Spanish and three of French in school as my first two foreign languages, and the only reason I'm still fluent in them today is that I've continued to study, speak, read, and write them for over 40 years now. And some languages are harder than others -- I speak four of the major Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian), Latin, Greek, and German fluently; I speak Russian, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Romanian, and Japanese at a basic conversational level; and I'm still struggling with Hungarian, Polish, Finnish, and Mandarin Chinese at even the basic level.  And that's after 40 years of working at it -- so I'd be surprised if Lucy remembered anything of what she was required to learn if she didn't keep up with it.  As it is, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Wyatt speaks four foreign languages fluently, including German.  I'm curious as to what the other three are (probably Spanish, Arabic, and either Russian or Japanese, depending upon where he served in the Army and for how long).

Edited October 26, 2016 by legaleagle53

[bros402]

3 hours ago, MisterGlass said:

I've missed the joke. It did not occur to me until seeing the names in a row that they are all references to Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure - Bill S. Preston, Ted "Theodore" Logan, and Rufus, who gave them the time machine.  If his last name is Carlin I'm going to laugh.

Well, uh, shit - I didn't notice that. Ffffffffffffff

[niklj]

One thing I like about this show is how they manage to address race relations in each episode because of Rufus, but not in a preachy way, more like a "These were the times, as terrible as it may be." It was a smart decision to make his character a person of color as usually time travel storie ignore that aspect.

I also agree that having Ian Fleming back would not be disagreeable lol

[dubbel zout]

8 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

Hey, the team inadvertently helped create a new James Bond film!  For them, that's actually a win!  Of course, that makes me wonder about a whole bunch of things like if this one change caused some of the other films not to get made, or if this somehow effected the post-Sean Connery actors in future bonds. The possibilities are endless!

If that means no "A View to a Kill," despite the awesomeness of Grace Jones, I'm A-OK with that.

7 hours ago, Camera One said:

Though it's starting to grate how Wyatt is so cavalier about changing history.

I agree. I mean, okay, this time he's killing Nazis, so it's a little easier to not care. But in general, his "Whatever; I don't care" attitude is irritating. The disillusioned widower who learns to love again is not something I'm looking forward to. And even though we've only seen changes in Lucy's life, Wyatt's dead wife will come back, probably right after he and Lucy admit they have feelings for each other/sleep together. Chekov's gun, yo.

6 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

 As it is, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Wyatt speaks four foreign languages fluently, including German.  I'm curious as to what the other three are

Did he say he spoke four foreign languages or four languages? If the latter, one's native tongue is usually included, so he'd speak three others. Regardless, the other three are whatever the plot demands, heh.

5 hours ago, niklj said:

One thing I like about this show is how they manage to address race relations in each episode because of Rufus, but not in a preachy way, more like a "These were the times, as terrible as it may be." It was a smart decision to make his character a person of color as usually time travel storie ignore that aspect.

I agree, but to be annoying, Rufus was right when he said there was no time in the past that would be good for him to go back to, so I don't like how it's limiting his contribution once he gets the team to the right time. They did a decent job in the 1962 episode of getting around that, but he's basically stood around in the other three. The show needs to incorporate his spying on the others more, IMO.

Edited October 26, 2016 by dubbel zout

[shapeshifter]

5 minutes ago, dubbel zout said:

...The disillusioned widower who learns to love again is not something I'm looking forward to. And even though we've only seen changes in Lucy's life, Wyatt's dead wife will come back, probably right after he and Lucy admit they have feelings for each other/sleep together. Chekov's gun, yo...[1]

...I agree, but to be annoying, Rufus was right when he said there was no time in the past that would be good for him to go back to, so I don't like how it's limiting his contribution once he gets the team to the right time. They did a decent job in the 1962 episode of getting around that, but he's basically stood around in the other three. The show needs to incorporate his spying on the others more, IMO.[2]

1. A slightly better plot than the Lucy-Wyatt ship would be that Lucy's sister comes back and then his wife comes back but Lucy's sister is gone again, so they struggle to get both back.

2. I hate the spying plot and hated even more this week's do-our-bidding-or-your-family-will-suffer trope. Rufus has enough bad stuff to deal with in the past; give him a little joy in the present. It's a frickin time travel show, so just ditch the spy bit and have a loving wife and adorable kid appear — that's more than enough present drama for him to adjust to. 

[Netfoot]

9 hours ago, MisterGlass said:

If his last name is Carlin I'm going to laugh.

It is, indeed, Carlin.

[DFWGina]

19 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

He's her father. And/or some event in the diary he has demands that Lucy stay alive at least until they get to that point.

I don't see a large enough age gap for him to be her father?  I do think he could be who saved her in the car wreck...

[basiltherat]

Lucy doesn't seem the type of woman to inspire James Bond.  She is not voluptuous, does not have a confident personality and isn't falling all over him.  In other words, she is the anti-Bond girl.  Does this mean that future Bond flicks will eliminate Ursula Andress and replace her with Gladys Ormphny?

[Ripley68]

Since it's time travel, there doesn't need to be an age gap.

Question:  If Flynn is using Lucy's diary, why is he also so pissed when they beat  him at something? So far they've changed every outcome he's been going for...shouldn't he already know that?  And since it seems that part of the continual time travel is because the last mission didn't work, shouldn't the diary not have all the destinations he needs to go to, or missions he needs to complete?  You can argue that the diary is from the original time line, thus doesn't show the changes necessary, but he is obviously using the diary for every mission.  I just don't get his frustration about  missions failing.

[LoneHaranguer]

On 10/24/2016 at 11:06 PM, Gillian Rosh said:

"It was in Skyfall." ha!

The problem with that is that Fleming didn't write Skyfall; except for Casino Royale, which had been taken by Woody Allen, the movie franchise used up the last of his Bond titles back when Dalton was playing the character. He didn't write anything called Never Say Never Again either; that film was a remake of Thunderball.

[Ariah]

2 hours ago, basiltherat said:

Lucy doesn't seem the type of woman to inspire James Bond.  She is not voluptuous, does not have a confident personality and isn't falling all over him.  In other words, she is the anti-Bond girl.  Does this mean that future Bond flicks will eliminate Ursula Andress and replace her with Gladys Ormphny?

So she's kind of Vesper Lynd. Who was inspired by a Polish spy whom Fleming met: Krystyna Skarbek.

And Lucy inspired a Lucy in a different book.

[iMonrey]

Quote

You're not a product of 'here', so the cause-effect need not apply. 

I think it's easy for me to grasp this concept because I was a big Sliders fans. For those not in the know, that show explored the concept of alternate timelines/worlds/earths. In each one, history unfolded in a different manner. Since the lead characters came from their own world, they existed as themselves wherever they traveled, even if they didn't exist in that world, i.e. had never been born in that reality. However, if they had been born in that reality, then suddenly there were two of them: the ones who had traveled there, and the ones who had been born there.

Quote

So I ask the same question I too asked after the pilot - what happened to the other Lucy?  The one who got engaged.  She's obviously not our Lucy, so what, did she just disappear?  That Lucy lived a whole life, and now she's gone.  There is absolutely no reason why there can't be two Lucys, and there's every reason to suspect that there should indeed be two Lucys.

Arrgh! That's a good question, if head-splitting. The best I can wrap my head around it is this: there were not 2 Lucys - one with a fiance, one without. There was just one Lucy who got in a time machine and altered history and, consequently, her own reality. But - not to the extent that in the new timeline she was never recruited by Mason Industries and never traveled back in time. If she had altered her own history to that extent, then yes - there should have been two Lucys upon her return.

Quote

 Frewer was certainly alive in '62.

Hey, that's a good point. Didn't they say they couldn't travel back to a past where there would be two of them? Or did they just mean it was too dangerous to encounter their past selves?

[legaleagle53]

15 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

Quote

 Frewer was certainly alive in '62.

Hey, that's a good point. Didn't they say they couldn't travel back to a past where there would be two of them? Or did they just mean it was too dangerous to encounter their past selves?

Matt Frewer was born in 1958, but that doesn't mean that Anthony was.  Anthony could have been born in 1963 or later.  Actors very frequently take on roles that are far younger than their actual ages, one very famous example being Lucille Ball.  She was a good decade older than Lucy Ricardo was, although you wouldn't have known it when she first started I Love Lucy.

Edited October 26, 2016 by legaleagle53

[Dowel Jones]

5 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

Though it's starting to grate how Wyatt is so cavalier about changing history.

Sooner or later, if they keep screwing it up, they're likely to come back to a future where their entire team never existed and the time traveling eye was never built.

[legaleagle53]

1 hour ago, Dowel Jones said:

Sooner or later, if they keep screwing it up, they're likely to come back to a future where their entire team never existed and the time traveling eye was never built.

In which case, the timeline will automatically reset to the original, since there's no longer anyone around to mess with it.  Grandfather Paradox knows when you've been naughty.

[henripootel]

2 hours ago, iMonrey said:

There was just one Lucy who got in a time machine and altered history and, consequently, her own reality. But - not to the extent that in the new timeline she was never recruited by Mason Industries and never traveled back in time. If she had altered her own history to that extent, then yes - there should have been two Lucys upon her return.

Ah, but this just begs the question - what happened to engaged Lucy after she traveled back in time?  Someone else asked this upthread - if that Lucy got into a time machine in her timeline, she disappeared along with all her memories, and when the time machine returned, our Lucy stepped out.  Kinda horrifying for engaged-Lucy, she's still just gone.  

38 minutes ago, legaleagle53 said:

In which case, the timeline will automatically reset to the original, since there's no longer anyone around to mess with it.  Grandfather Paradox knows when you've been naughty.

Nope.  1865, as it now stands, with Luka as Lincoln's assassin, stands.  Time travel existed back then, so it exists, forever forward from that point.  I mean the ship might get destroyed or Luka killed, and that'd end it, but random chance is a real problem for a time traveller wishing to go 'home'.  Luka may well return to the future at some point and find himself in a world where the time machines were never built, but that doesn't un-make the one he's in.  Heck, that might be the best way to protect your monopoly on time travel: go back in time, take Not-Elon-Musk as a kid for a ride to a point in history where the math and materials simply don't exist for him to invent time travel, and leave him there.  He'll grow up and die in the past, time travel will never be invented, and Luka now has the only time machine in existence.  It doesn't matter that nobody ever invented time travel in the new timeline, the time machine exists, so it continues to do so.  Time travel makes it not only possible to have tech and people who have 'no history', it pretty much makes it inevitable.  Take enough time trips (especially deep enough into the past) and this will happen, unless you take steps to avoid this, which is possible but that's another discussion.  

Edited October 26, 2016 by henripootel

[OtterMommy]

Sigh...I think I'm willing to give this show one, maybe two, more episodes before it is off my watchlist.  This episode did absolutely nothing for me and, instead of growing on me, Abigail Spencer and Matt Lanter are annoying me more and more.  I like the premise, but I'm starting to think that the writers haven't really thought much of it through.  I'm also annoyed that Abigail is becoming too much an expert on everything.  Yes, I know that she would have taken a variety of history classes as an undergrad, but it was established within the first 10 minutes of the first episode that her expertise was 20th Century US History (and wasn't it also mentioned that she wasn't "living up" to expectations professionally?).  The level of detail she spits out when needed on topics NOT within her expertise is a bit unbelievable.

Oh, and I bet that they knew about the Priestholes because, during a brief stop in the modern day, they went to see or read "Miss Peregrine".....just sayin'.

[Dowel Jones]

1 hour ago, henripootel said:

Heck, that might be the best way to protect your monopoly on time travel:

Or, I'll even posit the complete opposite.  They muck history up so much that they come back to find that time travel is not only possible, but everyday, and commercialized.  Oy vey.  Tesla has one.  Virgin Galactic has one (forget about space, let's make some real money), Disney has one at each end of the US.  Microsoft had one but Windows 12 crashed and God knows where they are now.  And of course there's a government agency to regulate all of these cue balls rocketing around space and time.