S01.E08: Space Race

[Clanstarling]

3 hours ago, kili said:

Of course, that is what made the virus seem a little improbable. The memory on that sucker was so small, just do a hard re-boot (turn it off) and re-load the software.  They had hours. Try that first. I don't think computers back then had a persistent memory - you always had to boot up from scratch (boot-strapping) and even if it did, erase the memory. There isn't much to reload. Further, would the computers really be running the communication? People with Hamm radios listened in on the moon landing. Wouldn't the computers mainly be used for calculations?

Also, IIRC, the punch tape is actually punched when it's programmed - they seem to have missed that step (unless it was a backup program). That was just a wee bit before my time. Though at my first job they used punch cards. I recall from some documentary or such that they actually still used their slide rules for calculations, rather than the computers. I remember being gobsmacked at the idea (I learned to use my Dad's slide rule when I was a tot).

3 hours ago, saber5055 said:

There were no other careers for them.

Teachers. Up until college I wanted to be a teacher, because I didn't want to work with sick people. And then I realized I didn't want to work with snotty kids either. Love them individually, hate large crowds of them.

49 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

Have they established that Flynn's father is from Europe? Or are we just assuming, because Goran Visnjic is European? Because I'm not sure Flynn is supposed to be European. "Garcia" and "Gabriel" sound like they were maybe going for Hispanic sounding names. 

I've forgotten  now, but they did say the full name of his father - there was nothing Hispanic about it as I recall.

[MzLiz]

2 hours ago, blackwing said:

I think the reason why he always has stubble is because he has such a boyish face that if he didn't have stubble, he would look like he was about 12.

My thoughts exactly!

And Matt Lanter/Wyatt looks damn hot with the scruff. Let Wyatt be his beautiful self. I must be the only one who likes Wyatt. I think ML does a very good job with the role. 

Abigail Spencer looked lovely in her hair and outfit. 

I love this show, though this did seems to be one of the weaker episodes. I'm really hoping this show doesn't get canceled.

Flynn and Anthony are both bad in my book. Killing innocents (or standing by and letting it happen) leaves no room for redemption. Let's assume rittenhouse is evil. If they were going back and killing the founders or key rittenhouse contributors in history, I might could understand it, but not how they are going about it.

[bybrandy]

4 hours ago, saber5055 said:

I watched the moon landing on tv live. And I remember computer systems that took up an entire floor of the government building where I worked. And I have never heard of Katherine Johnson so now must do some research. And no female EVER talked back to a man superior (because all men were superiors) unless she wanted to be fired. Lucy could because she was taking the Flying Eyeball home later. But back then, women could only be secretaries, nurses or wives. There were no other careers for them. I also remember "punchy tape." It was a real thing even into the '70s where I "punched it" to use it at my job. And yes, men kept electric shavers at work to do "touch ups" in the afternoon if they had a heavy beard. There were no beards then, nor stubble, Agent Mulder.

Once again, history is changed by random shooting of people who obviously don't matter, while Lincoln, and others, HAVE to be killed so history doesn't change. WTH.

My mom got her first job as a computer programmer at SDC directly after graduating from college with a math degree in 1964.   

[Sarah D. Bunting]

In case you missed it, here's Chris's post on the episode!

[blackwing]

30 minutes ago, Clanstarling said:

I've forgotten  now, but they did say the full name of his father - there was nothing Hispanic about it as I recall.

Yes.  It was "Asher Flynn".  "Flynn" is usually an Irish surname.  Since Garcia was born in the late 60s, I'm assuming his dad was born sometime in the 40s.  "Asher" back then would have typically been a Jewish name.  It's more common now on babies of all ethnicities, but back in the 40s, I would have thought Jewish.   For what it's worth, "Gabriel" isn't necessarily a Hispanic name.  In the late 60s, it would have been a name popular with Jews, and maybe Catholics.  So my take is that Garcia isn't supposed to be Hispanic at all.  He's just a melting pot.  His dad may have been Irish-Jewish and his mom is of indeterminate Caucasian origin (probably English, given her last name of "Thompkins").

[Moose135]

3 hours ago, blackwing said:

I also didn't really follow the beginning... they interviewed some old guy who said he was there in the control room in 1969 and said he lived in the exact same house since birth.  Then they travel to 1969 to that house and kill the younger version of that man.  What was the purpose of interviewing the old man then?  They must have already known he was there in the control room, otherwise how would they have found his name in the first place?  They could have just travelled to 1969 and killed him then.

As part of their interview, they specifically asked him about security at the control room during the mission, and he told them about the magnetic strip badges they were issued.  I think they met him in present day to help figure out how they would access the facility.

Katherine Johnson received the Medal of Freedom in 1915, and the movie based on the book started filming shortly after.

Wow! Talk about time travel! ;-)

[blackwing]

19 minutes ago, Moose135 said:

Wow! Talk about time travel! ;-)

LOL.  I went back and edited to say 2015. :)

She is still alive, 98 years young.  The movie is apparently being scheduled for a limited release on Christmas Day before opening wider in early January.  Not sure if will generate any Oscar buzz but it stars the formidable Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Johnson and also features past winner Octavia Spencer.  Would be so great to see Katherine Johnson at the Oscars.

[Netfoot]

17 hours ago, ketose said:

No way Anthony was born after the moon landing.

Not to mention that they visited Mr. Wayne Ellis when he was retired, to pump him for information, prior to going back and shooting his younger self.   Very doubtful that Anthony or Flynn were as yet unborn when they visited him in his old age!

[Moose135]

8 minutes ago, Netfoot said:

Not to mention that they visited Mr. Wayne Ellis when he was retired, to pump him for information, prior to going back and shooting his younger self.

Which makes you wonder how they were able to see him in the present, when they killed him in 1969???

[Latverian Diplomat]

18 hours ago, KaveDweller said:

I enjoyed all the moments with Katherine going on about their great technology with 2 mb of storage and Rufus being less than impressed.

My only issue with this episode is that messing with the moon landing like that should have had a bigger ripple effect than it seemed to. Oh, and why couldn't Anthony just tell Rufus and Lucy what Rittenhouse will do with the time machine?

As much as I like seeing the changes in formula for the start/end, I kind of miss seeing what's happening with Lucy's mother/fiance in the present timeline.

I don't know about mission control computers, but for flight systems NASA has always gone with reliable, proven technology over bleeding edge. So, the talk about how impressive the computers were rang a little false to me (though it was mostly there to play into Rufus' reaction). The National Weather Service, now there's a place to go to see impressive computers in any era. :-)

I also don't know why the presumably analog radio was so dependent on the computer system, but whatever.

And I agree that a supposed Soviet attempt to sabotage Apollo and murder astronauts seems like it would have had a huge impact on history.

1 hour ago, blackwing said:

Yes.  It was "Asher Flynn".  "Flynn" is usually an Irish surname.  Since Garcia was born in the late 60s, I'm assuming his dad was born sometime in the 40s.  "Asher" back then would have typically been a Jewish name.  It's more common now on babies of all ethnicities, but back in the 40s, I would have thought Jewish.   For what it's worth, "Gabriel" isn't necessarily a Hispanic name.  In the late 60s, it would have been a name popular with Jews, and maybe Catholics.  So my take is that Garcia isn't supposed to be Hispanic at all.  He's just a melting pot.  His dad may have been Irish-Jewish and his mom is of indeterminate Caucasian origin (probably English, given her last name of "Thompkins").

Maybe his folks were big fans of the Grateful Dead and he was named after Jerry Garcia?

[saber5055]

Moose said: "Which makes you wonder how they were able to see him in the present, when they killed him in 1969???" Moose you're killing me. Where's my Advil? In other news, how did Garcia sneak into his "mom's" house unseen by Agent Mulder and Mom, and why didn't they notice the boy passed out having an allergic reaction since it was all happening on the balcony/deck next to where they were standing. And in the beginning, those two were looking to snag the magnetic-strip badge of that control-room guy, but he didn't have it (plus if he did, he would have sold it on eBay). So, they had to fly back farther to kill him ... AFTER they saw him as an old guy. Like I said ... Advil, please.

[iMonrey]

Quote

"Which makes you wonder how they were able to see him in the present, when they killed him in 1969???"

Same way Lucy saw her sister before she traveled back to the Hindenburg crash but not afterwards. He existed until they went back in time and killed him. 

[KaveDweller]

17 hours ago, iRarelyWatchTV36 said:

I agree that Lucy really pulled off the '1969 look' and her getting back at that the scientist was awesome, but I am disliking how unattractively whiny they are making her at Mason Industries; "Flynn saved his brother but you won't save my sister, you meanies!".  I mean I get it, "you've got a deal", but to say that right next to the guy who's wife died tragically, and wasn't the first time that's occurred?

But to be fair, Wyatt's wife always died. Lucy's sister disappeared because of what she did what she was asked to do by Mason and Homeland. It's their fault. Wyatt's wife is unrelated. Saving her would be like Lucy trying to get them to cure her mother's cancer (if it still existed).

9 hours ago, green said:

Also if Armstrong and Aldrin were about out of oxygen how did they have time to go walk on the moon finally?  The for real original historic "walk" happened very late night / wee hours of the morning Houston time and they said they only had 6 hours of oxygen on this TV version so by the time it was full day out and then some (she went to the park on her lunch hour with the kid remember) there would have been no oxygen left for the astronauts to breathe.

Not to mention get back to earth. It's not exactly a quick trip.

1 hour ago, Netfoot said:

Not to mention that they visited Mr. Wayne Ellis when he was retired, to pump him for information, prior to going back and shooting his younger self.   Very doubtful that Anthony or Flynn were as yet unborn when they visited him in his old age!

Did they time travel for that? I thought they were just in the present day.

Weren't there actually three astronauts on Apollo 11? Only Armstrong and Aldrin got to walk on the surface, but there was a third guy up there. No one seemed to care that he might die up there too.

Quote

 

Quote

He never ever said he couldn't return to a time when he existed in mere years but rather a time where he existed at the same place as his past self.

No, he did not. Nobody on the show has ever said that. That's pure speculation. It makes sense, but nobody on the show has specified anything of the sort. All they have said so far is you can't travel back to a time where you already exist, period. Which they have already contradicted twice.

Yes, they have talked about meeting themselves on the show. There were two separate instances in the pilot where Rufus said they couldn't go to a time where they already existed because of the risk of running into yourself. I just checked the scenes on Hulu. When they first got to 1937, Wyatt asked why they didn't go back 5 minutes before Flynn stole the machine and Rufus said you can't go to "any place you already exist, where you might meet a double of yourself." Then later Wyatt asks about a redo of their Hindenburg mission and Rufus said they couldn't "double-back to a place where we meet ourselves."

The only other time I remember them mentioning anything about the rules was when Flynn told Wyatt he couldn't save his wife and daughter because he couldn't go to a time he already existed.  That's the only time they didn't add the secondary line about not meeting yourself.

Edited November 30, 2016 by KaveDweller

[KateeBar]

2 hours ago, blackwing said:

Yes.  It was "Asher Flynn".  "Flynn" is usually an Irish surname.  Since Garcia was born in the late 60s, I'm assuming his dad was born sometime in the 40s.  "Asher" back then would have typically been a Jewish name.  It's more common now on babies of all ethnicities, but back in the 40s, I would have thought Jewish.   For what it's worth, "Gabriel" isn't necessarily a Hispanic name.  In the late 60s, it would have been a name popular with Jews, and maybe Catholics.  So my take is that Garcia isn't supposed to be Hispanic at all.  He's just a melting pot.  His dad may have been Irish-Jewish and his mom is of indeterminate Caucasian origin (probably English, given her last name of "Thompkins").

I'm throwing this out there because it makes as much sense as anything else with the show - the kids are named after Gabriel García Márquez. His first novella was published in the 50s and One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1967. 

Unfortunately, I cannot come up with explanations for the plethora of other unanswered questions the show leaves us with. Not sure the writers or execs can either, but hey...the costumes are fun!

Edited November 30, 2016 by KateeBar

[kili]

Quote

Not to mention get back to earth. It's not exactly a quick trip.

Once they get the lunar module back to the lunar orbiter, they have access to additional oxygen supplies.

Shouldn't they have more than 6 hours of oxygen on the lunar module? After the damage to the oxygen tanks on Apollo 13, the three astronauts all had to move into the lunar module and survived 4 days. Apparently, the lunar modules have lots of oxygen because every time they open the door, they lose it all. So, when they close the door, they have to re-pressurize.

I think we are going to have to ignore the logic for haste on this one. They would have eventually died up there, but they probably had way more than 6 hours to figure it out.

[Moose135]

21 minutes ago, kili said:

Shouldn't they have more than 6 hours of oxygen on the lunar module?

On the Apollo 11 flight, the LEM spent more than 21 hours on the surface of the Moon, and when you add in time to leave orbit and descend to the surface and return back to dock with the Command Module, the LEM operated on its own oxygen supply for over 28 hours.

38 minutes ago, KaveDweller said:

Weren't there actually three astronauts on Apollo 11? Only Armstrong and Aldrin got to walk on the surface, but there was a third guy up there. No one seemed to care that he might die up there too.

Michael Collins was the Command Module pilot, and remained in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin went down to the surface in the LEM.  He should have been able to return to Earth in the CM even if the LEM was unable to lift off the Moon's surface.  Although I'm still a little confused as to why the LEM couldn't lift off without contact with Mission Control.

[Tabasco Cat]

1 hour ago, kili said:

I think we are going to have to ignore the logic for haste on this one. They would have eventually died up there, but they probably had way more than 6 hours to figure it out.

That's a given, I think. There is no way that tape drive would be able to read that tape with Rufus mounting it on the reel backwards. The yellow ring near the center hole is called a "tape ring" and it must face the inside so that a little switch can sense if it's there or not. Besides, the tape would have been on the wrong side for loading into the drive mechanism if he had put it on the spindle the way he was holding it.

A minor thing, but for someone who used to work mainframes that little oversight pulled me completely out of the rest of the story. So lazy and bad.

[KaveDweller]

2 hours ago, kili said:

Once they get the lunar module back to the lunar orbiter, they have access to additional oxygen supplies.

Okay, that makes much more sense. I couldn't understand how they could have had that little oxygen. If it was just the lunar module it explains it (although, still seems unrealistic they wouldn't have a bit more oxygen than they seemed to).

[RemoteControlFreak]

3 hours ago, Moose135 said:

Although I'm still a little confused as to why the LEM couldn't lift off without contact with Mission Control.

Exactly. It's not as if Mission Control had any powers of remote control.  All they could do is monitor all the telemetry and give instructions to the crew.  So without the computer, they wouldn't have monitoring ability.  I'm not sure why they also didn't have video and audio from the moon. But even without communications and monitoring, the astronauts should have been able to complete the mission, or at least take off from the moon, dock with Collins and the CM and head back to Earth.

Another big question ... why would it be necessary to put a computer virus on what is essentially a closed system? The danger in a computer virus is its ability to spread from one computer to another through network communications.  Wouldn't it have been easier for Flynn and Anthony just to quickly mess with the code?  It appeared there were no logins and passwords required to access the system.

[ketose]

13 hours ago, MrPissyPuppy said:

Because no one in TV Land EVER just flat out tells people anything that might solve the whole problem.  No talkies!  We have to make this last x number of episodes.  

I'm going to give Anthony a pass on monologuing. He might not want to tell Rufus much because somehow he knows Rufus has a recorder for Rittenhouse on him. Far fetched, but possible.

I'm starting to feel like Timeless either hasn't decided on the rules for time travel or decided it made story lines too difficult. Something has to progress on this show, and I don't mean romance between Lucy and Wyatt.

[green]

5 hours ago, KaveDweller said:

Yes, they have talked about meeting themselves on the show. There were two separate instances in the pilot where Rufus said they couldn't go to a time where they already existed because of the risk of running into yourself. I just checked the scenes on Hulu. When they first got to 1937, Wyatt asked why they didn't go back 5 minutes before Flynn stole the machine and Rufus said you can't go to "any place you already exist, where you might meet a double of yourself." Then later Wyatt asks about a redo of their Hindenburg mission and Rufus said they couldn't "double-back to a place where we meet ourselves."

The only other time I remember them mentioning anything about the rules was when Flynn told Wyatt he couldn't save his wife and daughter because he couldn't go to a time he already existed.  That's the only time they didn't add the secondary line about not meeting yourself.

 

Yes, thank you so very much for checking and getting the exact quotes.  I kept posting here that it was all about not meeting yourself in the past and they clearly stated that in the pilot but didn't have access to the actual quotes so it kept getting a bit frustrating to constantly see people assuming something entirely different than what we were told in the pilot.  I was starting to question my memory if not my sanity.  So now we finally have the exact quote and everyone should be on the same page with the head writer.  I'd give you a Junior Time Traveler Decoder Ring for finding those quotes if  I had one, heh. 

And the second time with Flynn they were discussing the incident when his wife and daughter were murdered like you said thus it was clearly implied by the context of the conversation that was the reason he couldn't go back there.  I doubt the writer ever considered people would take the lack of a second detailed exposition to get everything askew and lead to tons of posts in TV forums over same, haha.

3 hours ago, Tabasco Cat said:

That's a given, I think. There is no way that tape drive would be able to read that tape with Rufus mounting it on the reel backwards. The yellow ring near the center hole is called a "tape ring" and it must face the inside so that a little switch can sense if it's there or not. Besides, the tape would have been on the wrong side for loading into the drive mechanism if he had put it on the spindle the way he was holding it.

A minor thing, but for someone who used to work mainframes that little oversight pulled me completely out of the rest of the story. So lazy and bad.

Yeah we still used big reels of tapes in one computer room where I worked a few decades after this and when I saw Rufus put the yellow ring facing outward I was thinking w-h-a-t?? too.  I thought they had the close up to show he was bungling the job and kept waiting for something to mess up.

[bros402]

17 hours ago, benteen said:

The show is very good on this kind of detail.

Yeah, it's odd how good it is on the really small details - since sometimes the bigger details are off

13 hours ago, iMonrey said:

I know, right? And yet, they keep saying "you can't travel back to a time you already existed." Why the repeated contradiction if they won't clarify?

No, he did not. Nobody on the show has ever said that. That's pure speculation. It makes sense, but nobody on the show has specified anything of the sort. All they have said so far is you can't travel back to a time where you already exist, period. Which they have already contradicted twice.

Yeah, this is really starting to get on my nerves. The show has become overly simplistic in its formula. What exactly are Flynn and Anthony trying to do by traveling to all these different historical events to stop Rittenhouse, and if it's just that they don't want Rittenhouse to use the time machine then destroy the damn thing. Easy- peasy. The show is stuck in a cycle of lather, rinse, repeat.

I agree with you and it's really disappointing they've chosen to make Flynn such a two-dimensional villain when I had been hoping we'd find out he was actually one of the good guys. They keep destroying any hope of this guy having layers by painting him as such a comic book villain. The show has so much potential and they keep squandering it.

I know you're all ragging about Wyatt's stubble but the thing that really annoyed me was the lack of smoking. We saw Rufus emptying ashtrays and we saw one guy stick an unlit cigar in his mouth after the computer came back up. We also saw a hint of smoke in the foreground but we never saw one single person smoking. This is 1969 people, and it was as ridiculous as the Vegas nightclub where nobody was smoking in 1963. Not possible. 

There's apparently some dumb rule or law that says you can't show people smoking on network TV for some unfathomable reason but they really need to make an exception on a show like this where they keep going into the 60s and yet we don't see a single person smoking. In those days people were smoking at their desks at work, even the secretaries. Why do they have to whitewash the past? Do they really think they have to protect the kiddies from the visual of people smoking? Cripes.

There is no law against showing people smoking on TV. There was some smoke show on this - and they had the ashtrays. Here's some people answering the question about smoking in shows on TV - it is pretty interesting. https://www.quora.com/I-thought-this-level-of-cigarette-smoking-was-banned-on-TV-What-are-the-facts

[bros402]

3 hours ago, RemoteControlFreak said:

Exactly. It's not as if Mission Control had any powers of remote control.  All they could do is monitor all the telemetry and give instructions to the crew.  So without the computer, they wouldn't have monitoring ability.  I'm not sure why they also didn't have video and audio from the moon. But even without communications and monitoring, the astronauts should have been able to complete the mission, or at least take off from the moon, dock with Collins and the CM and head back to Earth.

Another big question ... why would it be necessary to put a computer virus on what is essentially a closed system? The danger in a computer virus is its ability to spread from one computer to another through network communications.  Wouldn't it have been easier for Flynn and Anthony just to quickly mess with the code?  It appeared there were no logins and passwords required to access the system.

They put a virus that acted as a Denial of Service attack - basically, have it get flooded with information so it can't be used - he was making it so the computers were not functional.

[RemoteControlFreak]

3 hours ago, bros402 said:

They put a virus that acted as a Denial of Service attack - basically, have it get flooded with information so it can't be used - he was making it so the computers were not functional.

Right, but a DOS attack is a very inefficient way to attack a 1960s-era closed computer system.  I'm not even sure it would work. It would be much easier and more efficient to just delete a good chunk of the code. This would also be much harder to recover from.  I suppose the DOS idea makes a more recognizable story line.

Edited November 30, 2016 by RemoteControlFreak

[wanderingstar]

"Sorry Agent Mulder."

Ha! 

Rufus and Lucy continue to be an awesome pair. Loved their last scene.

Solid episode. I liked learning a bit more about Rufus and Anthony's relationship.

Did Mason not appear in this ep?

[dubbel zout]

8 hours ago, ketose said:

21 hours ago, MrPissyPuppy said:

Because no one in TV Land EVER just flat out tells people anything that might solve the whole problem.  No talkies!  We have to make this last x number of episodes.  

I'm going to give Anthony a pass on monologuing. He might not want to tell Rufus much because somehow he knows Rufus has a recorder for Rittenhouse on him. Far fetched, but possible.

Even if Rufus has a recorder, he can decide not to hand it over. Or erase parts of it. It's a TV trope more than anything else.

6 hours ago, bros402 said:

Yeah, it's odd how good it is on the really small details - since sometimes the bigger details are off

In some ways the smallest details are easiest for exactly that reason. They don't affect anything else, where the big details have a broader range, as it were.

1 hour ago, Gillian Rosh said:

Did Mason not appear in this ep?

Nope, and neither did Jiya. Even though they have regular billing, the actors must not appear in every episode.

[shapeshifter]

14 minutes ago, dubbel zout said:

Even if Rufus has a recorder, he can decide not to hand it over. Or erase parts of it. It's a TV trope more than anything else....

Except his family would be wiped out by the big bad if he doesn't hand it over, although I would think he would have the skills to edit it in an undetectable manner.

[Raja]

10 hours ago, RemoteControlFreak said:

Exactly. It's not as if Mission Control had any powers of remote control.  All they could do is monitor all the telemetry and give instructions to the crew.  So without the computer, they wouldn't have monitoring ability.  I'm not sure why they also didn't have video and audio from the moon. But even without communications and monitoring, the astronauts should have been able to complete the mission, or at least take off from the moon, dock with Collins and the CM and head back to Earth.

Another big question ... why would it be necessary to put a computer virus on what is essentially a closed system? The danger in a computer virus is its ability to spread from one computer to another through network communications.  Wouldn't it have been easier for Flynn and Anthony just to quickly mess with the code?  It appeared there were no logins and passwords required to access the system.

It wasn't just lift off they had to lift off at the exact moment to intercept and dock with the orbiter. It was either the computers in Houston did it or the astronauts broke out the slide rules and hoped to get close enough to somehow pull off what the Apollo 13 crew did. And their task wasn't to dock just get pointed in the right direction.

[saber5055]

This chat room has at least two people who know how to load a punch tape correctly. If this show is "so good on small details," couldn't they have found at least ONE person in Hollywood (or online, like ... HERE?) who could have told them which way to insert the tape? Me, I'm still irked that it's okay for the time travelers to kill anyone anywhere without regard to "history," yet they refused to save Lincoln? I'll always hate this show for that "small" oversight.

[blackwing]

I loved the reference to Agent Mulder too, particularly because it was Agent Christopher who assigned him the identity and not himself.  What are all of the other modern day pop culture references they have used, is there a list?  My favorite so far was in 1754, when Lucy said to the French soldier, "I'm Dr. Quinn, and I'm a medicine woman".

[basiltherat]

Nitpicking is fun!:

Lucy's "I Am Woman" pose was dangerous for one who needed to stay under the radar.  Any good historian would know about context (just the way that Rufus knows what era would be bad to be a black man).

Whether Anthony is from the future or not, his trip that landed him in the hospital for months obviously scrambled his brain.  He should never have been near the eyeballs at that point, so bad on Mason.

Flynn going back to save his brother and inspire his mother showed that he is good-ish. 

These people never talk about important stuff because of the precedent set by The Lost Rule.

If people had problems figuring out that John Getz was both the Evil Rittenhouse Guy and Lucy's Father, why did Show throw in Robert Pine as the older Mission Control Guy?  Even I was confused for a moment, and I had no problem with Getz/Getz.

[legaleagle53]

3 minutes ago, basiltherat said:

Nitpicking is fun!:

Lucy's "I Am Woman" pose was dangerous for one who needed to stay under the radar.  Any good historian would know about context (just the way that Rufus knows what era would be bad to be a black man).

On the other hand, she was also in the middle of getting the computer tape to the basement when Mr. Sexist picked right then to make his move and wouldn't take her "sorry, not right now" for an answer.  The stress that she was already under, plus her accumulated annoyance at this dick who wouldn't back off, resulted in her perfectly natural urge to go off on him -- and as I said, you had to have noticed the subtle approval she got trom the other secretaries who were witnesses to her smackdown of Mr. Sexist.

[Netfoot]

16 hours ago, KaveDweller said:

17 hours ago, Netfoot said:

Not to mention that they visited Mr. Wayne Ellis when he was retired, to pump him for information, prior to going back and shooting his younger self.   Very doubtful that Anthony or Flynn were as yet unborn when they visited him in his old age!

Did they time travel for that? I thought they were just in the present day.

Hmm.  Good point.  Maybe they just drove up to his house instead of flying there in the large eyeball.  

16 hours ago, KaveDweller said:

Armstrong and Aldrin got to walk on the surface, but there was a third guy up there.

Michael Collins.  Unsung hero of Apollo 11.  Moving on...  

14 hours ago, Tabasco Cat said:

That's a given, I think. There is no way that tape drive would be able to read that tape with Rufus mounting it on the reel backwards. The yellow ring near the center hole is called a "tape ring" and it must face the inside so that a little switch can sense if it's there or not.

Good catch!  The ring is probably the Write Protect Ring.  "No ring, no write!"   I feel like I should have caught that.  But then, it's been 38 years since I last ran a classic 4-tape merge sort...

[psychoticstate]

So why did they have to kill younger Robert Pine when they went back to 1969?  Couldn't they have knocked him out, tied him up or something?  And why kill the plumber?  

Is the time machine Flynn and Anthony use sophisticated enough to determine exactly where to land?  I mean, 20 feet or so more and they would have gone directly into the house.   

Did they ever explain exactly why they wanted to jack up the moon landing? 

Rufus killed the Men in Black guy so why didn't he go ahead and kill Anthony too?  As was pointed out, without a pilot, Flynn is screwed.  I know, it would be the end of the story but still . . . I hate the "innocent bystanders get in the way" trope. 

Like others, I wonder if Flynn saving his half brother's life could mean that he was never born . . . 

I still love this show, even if it makes my head hurt.

[iMonrey]

Quote

Yes, they have talked about meeting themselves on the show. There were two separate instances in the pilot where Rufus said they couldn't go to a time where they already existed because of the risk of running into yourself. I just checked the scenes on Hulu. When they first got to 1937, Wyatt asked why they didn't go back 5 minutes before Flynn stole the machine and Rufus said you can't go to "any place you already exist, where you might meet a double of yourself." Then later Wyatt asks about a redo of their Hindenburg mission and Rufus said they couldn't "double-back to a place where we meet ourselves."

This is still too vague. When Flynn and Wyatt were talking in the Nixon tapes episode, Wyatt asked Flynn why he didn't just go back and save his wife and children since he had a time machine. Flynn replied, same reason you don't go back and save your wife and child - you can't go back to a time where you already exist.

Now - if the only danger is running into yourself, why can't you simply go back in time and make sure you don't run into yourself? In other words, either Flynn or Wyatt can go back a few days before their respective wives are killed and just stay out of the way of their past selves while manipulating events to save their wives from afar somehow. Surely that would be worth trying. If Flynn is willing to annihilate all history in an attempt to save his family,  wouldn't he risk running into himself? It's not like he's too chicken.

Quote

I'm starting to feel like Timeless either hasn't decided on the rules for time travel or decided it made story lines too difficult. Something has to progress on this show, and I don't mean romance between Lucy and Wyatt.

Agreed. I think the rule about not being able to go back to a time where you already exist was put into place so the writers had an excuse to say "no do-overs" for every episode. Otherwise, they could keep going back to the Hindenburg crash over and over again until the caught or killed Flynn. The fact is, they could in fact go back to a few hours before they arrived the first time without risking running into themselves, and then avoid themselves. But the show doesn't want to address those kinds of nuances - they just want a blanket rule to excuse the fact that these people don't try harder and just move on to the next adventure.

[orza]

If they had left young Pine alive in 1969 after they got his badge he might have remembered them in 2016 when they came to pump him for information and not told them what they needed to know. I suppose they killed the plumber so he couldn't give descriptions of them to police and NASA security that could be used to identify them the next day.

[LoneHaranguer]

6 hours ago, RemoteControlFreak said:

Right, but a DOS attack is a very inefficient way to attack a 1960s-era closed computer system.  I'm not even sure it would work.

The idea may have been to confuse the NASA staff by doing something they wouldn't have seen before. It would have worked for maybe ten minutes. That's what it would have taken for some WTF fumbling, try a reboot, then do a cold start with an uncorrupted copy of the system.

[J-Man]

Quote

So why did they have to kill younger Robert Pine when they went back to 1969?  

Maybe they REALLY hate Chris Pine and wanted to make sure he never existed.

The recapper seems to think that this episode exists primarily to promote "Hidden Figures." Unfortunately, that makes no sense since "Timeless" is from Sony and Universal, and the movie is being released by Fox 2000. I can't any reason why they'd want to promote another studio's product. If this were done AFTER the movie, and assuming it became a moderate success, then I could see wanting to jump on the Katherine Johnson bandwagon. But before? Why?

Edited November 30, 2016 by J-Man

[CooperTV]

After last week this episode was a letdown. When the cold open was going on and on about Flynn and his plot, I got bored instantly. Goran Visnjic is one dull actor with one-note performance, and Flynn went from ruthless to complete psycho and also over moral event horizon into the sun.

The idea of Flynn attempting to sabotage the Moon landing (and saving his brother at the same time, apparently! How convenient) was solid, the execution was terrible. There were so many anachronisms that I couldn't take anything that happened seriously. And yet again, the characters served the plot not other way around, that's why there was no proper team dynamic and they flat out forgot Wyatt was even there (because Flynn Plot Tumor reasons).

The last scene with Lucy and Rufus was touching, and I'd say Rufus was MVP of the episode. But his interactions with Anthony still seemed flat and unearned because I don't think a lot of viewers have sympathy for Anthony after so much dead bodies he's culpable of creating.

[dubbel zout]

20 minutes ago, J-Man said:

If this were done AFTER the movie, and assuming it became a moderate success, then I could see wanting to jump on the Katherine Johnson bandwagon. But before? Why?

The movie has gotten a decent amount of attention, and maybe someone on the writing staff thinks it's nice to give the movie a quick shoutout since the episode deals with one of the main characters? 

[ketose]

Maybe Anthony is actually Berlinghoff Rasmussen.

[psychoticstate]

1 hour ago, orza said:

If they had left young Pine alive in 1969 after they got his badge he might have remembered them in 2016 when they came to pump him for information and not told them what they needed to know. I suppose they killed the plumber so he couldn't give descriptions of them to police and NASA security that could be used to identify them the next day.

And maybe this opens a whole other can of worms but when they went to see older Pine, they hadn't yet traveled back to 1969 so he would have no reason to remember them, giving them the photo and info.  So if they then went back to 1969 and knocked him on the head and took his badge, there would be no worry of him recognizing them in 2016 because it wouldn't happen?  Does that make sense?  

Also, if they hadn't plopped the machine down right outside his back door, they could have snuck in and potentially never been seen.

 

FWIW, I don't think they necessarily had to kill Pine.  I think that was done to show that Flynn and Anthony are the "bad guys" and Rufus, Lucy and Wyatt are the "good guys" who only kill when absolutely necessary.  Of course MMV.  I do think it should be addressed more how these killings do affect the future.  The show seems to gloss over that. 

Edited November 30, 2016 by psychoticstate

[henripootel]

19 hours ago, psychoticstate said:

So if they then went back to 1969 and knocked him on the head and took his badge, there would be no worry of him recognizing them in 2016 because it wouldn't happen?  Does that make sense?  

No.  If Pine had correctly recognized them at all after over 40 years, my eyes would have rolled back so far all I'd be able to see was my own brain.  I think they totally didn't need to kill him (and they introduced all sorts of down-stream issues), and I agree this was solely to make Flynn look entirely ruthless.  What it really did was to make him look stupidly murderous, which was weird because we're clearly supposed to sympathize with him some.  So we get the odd juxtaposition of Flynn killing  guy for no reason and Flynn's own mom essentially giving him license to do so ('If someone did that to me, I'd do anything to find them').  Seemed an odd beat they hit there.

Flynn also didn't need to show up himself to save his brother (was there no emergency services available in '69?) but if he did, I'd think he'd have brought an epipen with him.  These certainly didn't exist in '69, but from the look of the syringe he used, Flynn was working with pharmaceuticals he scored back then. This is his brother's whole life on the line here - plan ahead, Flynn.  And just to be on the safe side, call for an ambulance just to be sure, in case you have to leg it.  

Edited December 1, 2016 by henripootel

[KaveDweller]

5 hours ago, iMonrey said:

This is still too vague. When Flynn and Wyatt were talking in the Nixon tapes episode, Wyatt asked Flynn why he didn't just go back and save his wife and children since he had a time machine. Flynn replied, same reason you don't go back and save your wife and child - you can't go back to a time where you already exist.

I know, I mentioned that what Flynn said was different from what we'd previously been told.  But the original comment was that no one on the show has talked about not being able to run into yourself. That's not the case.  If the issue was just not being able to be in the same time no matter, there would be no reason for Rufus to (twice) bring up the risk of running into yourself. He would have just said you can't go back to that time, period. So we've been told two different things.

I agree it is very vague. The writers clearly haven't really decided everything and are trying to leave themselves options (while still acknowledging the obvious question about going back 5 minutes to stop Flynn).

Now - if the only danger is running into yourself, why can't you simply go back in time and make sure you

don't run into yourself? In other words, either Flynn or Wyatt can go back a few days before their respective wives are killed and just stay out of the way of their past selves while manipulating events to save their wives from afar somehow. Surely that would be worth trying. If Flynn is willing to annihilate all history in an attempt to save his family,  wouldn't he risk running into himself? It's not like he's too chicken.

Well, Wyatt can't do it because he doesn't have control of the machine and Flynn can't do it because then there'd be no show.

But seriously, in all the scenarios we've had mentioned, the time travelers would have had a really hard time not running into themselves. They can't go back five minutes before Flynn stole the machine because they were all witnesses to that and don't know where Flynn was before that. They can't go back to re-do the Hindenburg because they were running around right under the thing.  As for Flynn, what could he do a few days before the wife was killed. Find her and tell her to get out of town? Then what happens when she mentions this to past Flynn? And if he screws up he is essentially dead, which may not be a risk he wants to take. He has no problem killing others, but I haven't see anything to suggest he's suicidal.

[Camera One]

I found this episode interesting, though I didn't like the gratuitous and unnecessary murders.  Wyatt also murdered someone last week, although it was supposed self-defence.  For a time travel show, they're sure sloppy with the consequences.

I liked Lucy and Rufus's scene at the end... they're not quite there yet, but I'm starting to like the characters more.  

[jcin617]

On 11/28/2016 at 11:18 PM, benteen said:

I figured that was Flynn's mother but didn't expect the kid to be his half-brother.  That was a hell of a risk he took, as changing his mother's past could have wiped him out of existence.  

Even if it did change Flynn's timeline, the travelers seem to be shielded from changes to the timeline, e.g. they remember the original timeline and have no knowledge of the changes until they read about it.   Of course even if it doesn't erase Flynn himself, it could create a paradox when they return (no known Flynn, no theft, no missions)

Edited December 1, 2016 by jcin617

[legaleagle53]

10 hours ago, Camera One said:

I found this episode interesting, though I didn't like the gratuitous and unnecessary murders.  Wyatt also murdered someone last week, although it was supposed self-defence.  For a time travel show, they're sure sloppy with the consequences.

Killing someone in self-defense is by legal definition not murder.  There is no legal or moral duty to passively allow oneself or someone else to be killed simply to avoid taking the killer's life.

Edited December 1, 2016 by legaleagle53

[TexasGal]

On 11/29/2016 at 5:10 PM, Moose135 said:

Which makes you wonder how they were able to see him in the present, when they killed him in 1969???

Timey wimey.

[bros402]

19 hours ago, RemoteControlFreak said:

Right, but a DOS attack is a very inefficient way to attack a 1960s-era closed computer system.  I'm not even sure it would work. It would be much easier and more efficient to just delete a good chunk of the code. This would also be much harder to recover from.  I suppose the DOS idea makes a more recognizable story line.

Yeah, I don't know anything about 60s era computers, but I was thinking "Wait, would that even work?" since I have read a lot of stuff on wikipedia - one time I read an article on timeline of big computer viruses, and the wy the article on it was talking about it, it seemed like a DOS attack wasn't viable until the 80s

[Tabasco Cat]

18 hours ago, Netfoot said:

Good catch!  The ring is probably the Write Protect Ring.  "No ring, no write!"   I feel like I should have caught that.  But then, it's been 38 years since I last ran a classic 4-tape merge sort...

That's exactly what the tape ring is for. I had a geeky collection of assorted colors but most of them were yellow.

Edited December 1, 2016 by Tabasco Cat