S01.E08: Space Race

[RemoteControlFreak]

23 hours ago, Raja said:

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.

Sure. It's harder to launch, rendezvous and dock without Mission Control giving them timing and directions, but they wouldn't have just given up and declared themselves dead on the moon.  I just finished reading Gene Kranz's autobiography and it might be surprising to some to learn how minimal of a role Mission Control plays in managing the actual flight.  

[Hanahope]

So what was that thing that Flynn took from Lockeed, something red, about the size of his hand that was in a drawer with others, some yellow, some red?

So yeah, it was fun seeing whatshername tell off the sexist engineer.

[withanaich]

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What exactly does stopping the moon landing have to do with stopping Rittenhouse?  I asked this before but what is it about these specific trips to important points in history will actually stop it? Yes, Lucy always gives us a quick precis on ... if this [important event we are at now] doesn't happen then [this will pave the way to this unhappy consequence].  But still...  how does that exactly tell us anything?

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I enjoyed this episode.  Although I didn't fully "get" some of it, chief of all, what is Flynn's purpose in trying to sabotage the Apollo 11 mission?  Is it that he once again seems to want the United States to fail for some still unexplained reason?  I thought they showed us several episodes ago that he's doing all of this to try and find a way to bring his wife and daughter back to life.

Stopping the moon landing means that Russia doesn't give up on getting there first and essentially abandon its space program, which means that they are in a position to be more of a viable threat to the U.S. later on, which means Rittenhouse loses some or all of its power, which means they are probably not in a position to murder Flynn's wife and kid in retaliation for his snooping (or, they don't even exist by the time he would have stumbled on to them). The goal of most of Flynn's trips is hobbling or destroying Rittenhouse, which usually means hobbling or destroying the U.S., since they're so closely intertwined. 

Flynn compared what he's doing to chemotherapy. He's attacking the body (the U.S.) in order to destroy the cancer (Rittenhouse). I can't really see him as morally gray, but this analogy shows us that it's how he sees himself.

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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).

True, but I don’t know what Lucy expects them to DO, exactly. They’re supposed to be dealing with science, not magic. They can’t just wave a magic wand and bring her sister back. They can’t send her back to the same time where her actions wiped her sister out of existence (no do-overs, remember?). Technically, they’re liable for her sister's disappearance, but I don’t see how in the world she thinks they can make it right. What, does she want to go back and make sure the sister's parents get together? How, by killing the woman the sister's father ended up marrying, or that woman's ancestors? Way too many possible ripple effects. Flynn doesn’t care about that (which is why he saved his brother at the possible expense of his own existence...or even that of his child, but I doubt that even occurred to him), but the government does. No way they’re going for that, and I kind of wish she'd stop bitching about it. Be sad, commiserate with Wyatt and Rufus, sure, but stop whining to the government and demanding that they do something stupid. In those moments, she's as bratty and annoying as Wyatt. I have to think they only made that "deal" with her to keep her on the mission (for super-seekrit Rittenhouse Dad reasons).

The only way I could see it happening is in the series finale: Lucy steals the lifeboat, goes back to a time before her birth and arranges things (SOMEHOW) so that her mother ends up with the sister's father, thus wiping Lucy from existence. Lucy could sacrifice herself to bring her sister back, but only if we don’t have to worry about having Lucy in more episodes.

Edited December 1, 2016 by withanaich

[saber5055]

I agree that Lucy's smack-mouth I Am Woman comeback to the guy in the hallway was NOT the way to stay under the radar. All she had to say was, "Okay, cream and sugar, got it. Be back with it in a sec, just go on to your desk." And then move on. But writers had to put a "You go girl" speech in there for us modern-time gals. But IMO, Lucy was being stupid. Not that so many other things in the show aren't stupid, so there's that. I'd love to find out that Lucy's sister was sired by one of the guys randomly killed in a time back. And the army guy's wife never existed for the same reason ... because he killed her grandfather in Nazi Germany. Karma, dudes.

[Clanstarling]

20 hours 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.

If we grant that leaving Pine alive impacts what they might encounter in 2016, then when they kill him in 1969, he wouldn't be around to tell them about the badge, right?

If they'd locked up the plumber along with Pine, so they couldn't be found until after the events, it wouldn't matter if they could be identified. They would be in the future at that point and no one from 1969 was going to find them.

46 minutes ago, withanaich said:

True, but I don’t know what Lucy expects them to DO, exactly. They’re supposed to be dealing with science, not magic. They can’t just wave a magic wand and bring her sister back. They can’t send her back to the same time where her actions wiped her sister out of existence (no do-overs, remember?). Technically, they’re liable for her sister's disappearance, but I don’t see how in the world she thinks they can make it right. What, does she want to go back and make sure the sister's parents get together? How, by killing the woman the sister's father ended up marrying, or that woman's ancestors? Way too many possible ripple effects. Flynn doesn’t care about that (which is why he saved his brother at the possible expense of his own existence...or even that of his child, but I doubt that even occurred to him), but the government does. No way they’re going for that, and I kind of wish she'd stop bitching about it. Be sad, commiserate with Wyatt and Rufus, sure, but stop whining to the government and demanding that they do something stupid. In those moments, she's as bratty and annoying as Wyatt. I have to think they only made that "deal" with her to keep her on the mission (for super-seekrit Rittenhouse Dad reasons).

This. Lucy's demand is ludicrous given there's no simple fix. As for Wyatt's wife, on the other hand - there is a pretty simple fix. Have Lucy and Rufus go back and save her. They were no where near the locale, so they wouldn't have the fear of encountering themselves.

[LoneHaranguer]

9 hours ago, bros402 said:

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

Technically, they just started running a program on the computer that hogged the system resources, having the same effect. No doubt it was designed to block the usual methods for killing runaway programs, and may have overwritten the boot routines to keep reasserting itself until somebody fetched a new boot disk/tape.

[Clanstarling]

5 minutes ago, LoneHaranguer said:

Technically, they just started running a program on the computer that hogged the system resources, having the same effect. No doubt it was designed to block the usual methods for killing runaway programs, and may have overwritten the boot routines to keep reasserting itself until somebody fetched a new boot disk/tape.

That was my take on it. My understanding was that they were just using DDOS attacks as an easy example for what the end effect would be, not that it was an actual DDOS attack.

[iMonrey]

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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.

Neither Wyatt nor Lucy was there when Flynn stole the time machine, so why can't they go back and stop him -  assuming Rufus can avoid running into himself by staying inside the lifeboat? They know when he stole the machine, they can position Wyatt outside the Mason building and take him out before he ever gets inside. (Here again, the show is being deliberately vague about the potential to do just this.)

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The only way I could see it happening is in the series finale: Lucy steals the lifeboat, goes back to a time before her birth and arranges things (SOMEHOW) so that her mother ends up with the sister's father, thus wiping Lucy from existence. Lucy could sacrifice herself to bring her sister back, but only if we don’t have to worry about having Lucy in more episodes.

I'm pretty sure Lucy is older than her sister so going back and making sure she's born wouldn't wipe out her own existence, although it could alter her timeline. I'm guessing that Lucy expects to be allowed to make a special trip into the past outside of their mission to pursue Flynn and somehow arrange for her mother and her sister's father to meet and marry as they were originally supposed to. And Mason is just giving her lip service saying "yeah, yeah, we'll get to that . . . after we deal with Flynn."

[Lugal]

Not one of their better episodes.  I wonder if it was in production with the earlier episodes and aired later, because it could fit in with earlier eps pretty easily. Flynn saving his half-brother was interesting, although it did endanger his whole existence.  Screwing with the moon landing was one thing, but making it look like a Communist plot (which was more the fault of Our Heroes than Flynn) could easily have started WWIII.

Again, Rufus and Lucy are the most important parts of the ep and Wyatt is kind of useless.  Between his slovenly FBI agent, and the sliding card readers, this show still misses the small details.  I do give them points for them using the unread moon speech, but then again, would Nixon and the government be that quick to announce to the world that the moon mission failed?

And you can't say that the Soviets gave up after Apollo 11.  They still sent robotic probes to the Moon, Mars, Venus and had the first space station.  And I think that Korolev's death had more of a devastating impact on the Soviet space program than Apollo 11 did.

[Hanahope]

Considering that the computers at the time of Apollo 11 had a whopping whole 2 megabytes of memory, you really have to wonder why we're not doing more space exploration given we can pack a heck of a lot more memory in a significantly smaller space now.

[Netfoot]

13 hours ago, bros402 said:

it seemed like a DOS attack wasn't viable until the 80s

Denial Of Service attacks work by swamping the network with a deluge of network traffic.  It doesn't really apply to computers that aren't on a network to start with.  There wasn't much networking going on in 1969, so unless the NASA computers were very special...

The machine could have been compromised locally, I suppose.  A process that gobbled up resources and (possibly) spawned copies of itself to do the same, perhaps?  But then, I'm not sure the term DOS would apply.  

Edited December 1, 2016 by Netfoot

[wmdekooning]

On 11/28/2016 at 11:55 PM, ratgirlagogo said:

Excuse me?????? That was Otis Redding, AKA the anti-Gaye.  

Rumors similar to those about Here, My Dear have also always circulated around Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.

I'm actually liking this for the link between "Here, My Dear" and "Metal Machine Music".

[wilnil]

While I thought they screwed the pooch with having Flynn change his family history so drastically that he could've prevented his own birth, not to mention having him constantly presenting himself as the good guy in between casual murders of noncombatants, what's bugging me more in the long term is the whole motivation for his crusade against Rittenhouse.

IIRC, agents of the group decide to kill his whole family in their sleep because he apparently Knows Too Much, and miss him -- you know, their actual target -- instead of taking him out in a less complicated way when he's alone somewhere.

After that, somehow (Lucy's journal? Then how does she find out? Real Dad has loose lips?) Flynn finds out not only that the Rittenhouse members have been the Secret Rulers of the whole country throughout its entire history but that they have their fingers in a time travel project; so he steals the machine.

Now, instead of sending back a couple guys to grab his family and get them to safety -- or, if that would still violate the rules of who can go where/when in time, just go back shortly before his own birth and start assassinating every Rittenhouse member he can uncover until the organization is too decimated to do the all-seeing killers thing -- he decides he'll just start randomly mucking up U.S. history in hopes that this will sap Rittenhouse's strength in some abstract way. Remember, from Flynn's perspective, the whole point of all this is to save his family, yet what he's doing is a lot more likely to keep them from ever being born.

And while he and Anthony keep implying that Rittenhouse is the ultimate evil, we haven't gotten anything other than the implication that they've made themselves quietly powerful as the leeches clinging to the national leg. Are we at least going to find out that all the world's genocides were caused by them just for shits 'n' giggles, or that they're plotting to bring about the nuclear apocalypse, or something worse than being the hidden Top 0.001 Percent? (Maybe the point of the time machine for Rittenhouse is to achieve world domination, not just U.S.?)

TL;DR: I think this show is now officially in the Deactivate Brain Before Watching category.

[KaveDweller]

10 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Neither Wyatt nor Lucy was there when Flynn stole the time machine, so why can't they go back and stop him -  assuming Rufus can avoid running into himself by staying inside the lifeboat? They know when he stole the machine, they can position Wyatt outside the Mason building and take him out before he ever gets inside. (Here again, the show is being deliberately vague about the potential to do just this.)

I'm pretty sure Lucy is older than her sister so going back and making sure she's born wouldn't wipe out her own existence, although it could alter her timeline. I'm guessing that Lucy expects to be allowed to make a special trip into the past outside of their mission to pursue Flynn and somehow arrange for her mother and her sister's father to meet and marry as they were originally supposed to. And Mason is just giving her lip service saying "yeah, yeah, we'll get to that . . . after we deal with Flynn."

If the issue is running into yourself, I wonder if it is literally seeing yourself, or if it is okay for future you to see your past self, but not vice-versa because the past self would freak out (like Back to the Future II). Or is being in the same room a problem? I guess we'll find out when the writers decide.

I guess Lucy could go back and make sure her sister's father never marries the other girl he married. It would still be pretty hard to guarantee her sister would still be her sister, and not some random other sibling with slightly different DNA. But maybe that's good enough.

[methodwriter85]

I would honestly be for an episode where Lucy's mother mentions that Amy is downstairs in the basement or something, and Lucy rushes downstairs...only to see a completely different girl who just happens to have Amy's name and birthdate.

Caitlyn Carver leans towards playing teen/young girl parts, so it was kind of weird to see her playing a mother.

And yeah, there is no amount of mental gymnastics that would allow me to accept Anthony as someone who didn't exist until 1970 (for the record, the actor was born in 1957), so either Anthony was actually born in the future or the show really needs to clarify what the "rule" is.

Edited December 2, 2016 by methodwriter85

[ketose]

9 hours ago, Netfoot said:

Denial Of Service attacks work by swamping the network with a deluge of network traffic.  It doesn't really apply to computers that aren't on a network to start with.  There wasn't much networking going on in 1969, so unless the NASA computers were very special...

The machine could have been compromised locally, I suppose.  A process that gobbled up resources and (possibly) spawned copies of itself to do the same, perhaps?  But then, I'm not sure the term DOS would apply.  

Plus, the service is usually the internet. The real culprit would be more like what happened on "Halt and Catch Fire" when a subroutine designed to map a network got so big it started wiping all the floppy disks of the users. But yeah, NASA had a big ass calculator / slide rule. Shut it off and turn it back on.

I was thinking while they showed Anthony grimacing at the murders, like killing a janitor so Flynn to talk to his mom, was that every time they go into the past (Colonial days) it would probably erase some of those murders as lives would change significantly over 200 years.

[bros402]

10 hours ago, Netfoot said:

Denial Of Service attacks work by swamping the network with a deluge of network traffic.  It doesn't really apply to computers that aren't on a network to start with.  There wasn't much networking going on in 1969, so unless the NASA computers were very special...

The machine could have been compromised locally, I suppose.  A process that gobbled up resources and (possibly) spawned copies of itself to do the same, perhaps?  But then, I'm not sure the term DOS would apply.  

I think DARPA did start to work on networking in the 60s sometime.

But NASA wouldn't have used that because they wanted things they knew were reliable and tested.

[thuganomics85]

Not sure if it was a coincidence or not, but that's pretty good timing to have an episode with Katherine Johnson playing a part in it, since there's going to be a movie about her (and other African-American women in NASA), coming out soon and is getting a lot of Oscar buzz.  I'm definitely curious to hear/see more about her.  I'm disappointed that she apparently was a big part of the Apollo 13 mission too, and the movie didn't feature her at all.  For shame, Ron Howard!

Since I knew that the mission was likely going to be saved (I just don't seem alternating the moon landing that much), I was more curious about what Flynn was up to.  I figured that the woman was going to end up being his mom, but the kid being his half-brother and he saves him from dying was interesting.  Have to think there is more to do it.  Maybe it really was just to make his mom happy, but I can never fully trust anything Flynn does.

Glad that they are diving a bit into Rufus/Anthony's history and I hope we get more.  Malcolm Barrett and Matt Frewer are selling the material, even if it isn't much yet.

Abigail Spencer looked great in this one, even if Lucy was mainly in the background, until she got to deliver her big speech against the sexist boss.

Felt bad for Wayne Ellis and the janitor.  I guess Flynn didn't want any witnesses.  Or he really despises the new Star Trek series, and thinks preventing Chris Pine from being born will change that!  Either way, even if Flynn might have legit reasons to be against Rittenhouse, he clearly is not a good man anymore.

The "Agent Mulder" bit really made me laugh, because instead of the normal "name themselves after a pop culture character on the spot", this was actually legitimately part of Wyatt's cover.  That means, someone who made that ID has joined in the fun and games.  And even Denise apparently was fine with it.  Hell, maybe she did it!  I would love to find out there is a more humorous side to her.

[Clanstarling]

8 hours ago, methodwriter85 said:

And yeah, there is no amount of mental gymnastics that would allow me to accept Anthony as someone who didn't exist until 1970 (for the record, the actor was born in 1957), so either Anthony was actually born in the future or the show really needs to clarify what the "rule" is.

I've clearly missed something, which isn't unusual. When was it established that Anthony didn't exist until 1970? Or is this just an assumption because he goes back to 1969? It seems to me (mileage clearly varies) that the rule that's been established is that you can't go back to a place (not a time, necessarily) where you might physically run into yourself. 

Although it kind of depends on what "yourself" is - since the egg that became Garcia was in his mother's body when he encountered her.

[Netfoot]

8 hours ago, ketose said:

Plus, the service is usually the internet.

Well, on a TCP/IP network (à la the internet), servers provide services on various network ports.  World Wide Web on port 80.  SMTP mailer on port 25.  File Transfer Protocol (FTP) on ports 20 & 21.  And do on.  So a Denial of Service attack can be aimed at denying access to a particular service, say the web server, by sending it a huge volume of requests for non-existent pages.  But as you say, a DOS attack that targets the network stack itself will have the same effect by essentially blocking any access to the network.

Early work on networking did take place in the 60's, but TCP/IP development didn't begin until the early 70's.  Any networking going on in 1969 would have been rare, and highly experimental.  NASA would very possibly been involved in such experiments, but... on a production server?  Well, they did have a somewhat less jaded approach to security back then...

Don't forget that UNIX development didn't begin until 1969!

51 minutes ago, Clanstarling said:

I've clearly missed something, which isn't unusual. When was it established that Anthony didn't exist until 1970? Or is this just an assumption because he goes back to 1969? It seems to me (mileage clearly varies) that the rule that's been established is that you can't go back to a place (not a time, necessarily) where you might physically run into yourself. 

The argument is that because of the "You can't visit a timeframe you already exist in" rule, then for Anthony to visit 1969, he must not have existed yet, IOW, not been born, which is obviously false.  However I think the problem is that the rule is not properly stated.  It is actually the "You can't visit a timeframe you already exist in, unless the plot demands it" rule.

[withanaich]

Quote

IIRC, agents of the group decide to kill his whole family in their sleep because he apparently Knows Too Much, and miss him -- you know, their actual target -- instead of taking him out in a less complicated way when he's alone somewhere.

I get where you're going with the rest of your criticism of Flynn, but the thinking here (I'm guessing) is that if they wipe the whole family out, it looks too suspicious and the authorities might (eventually) start looking in Rittenhouse's direction, and it's also possible they don't know what kind of safeguards Flynn put in place in the event of his death. The whole ball of yarn might unravel. This way, they punish Flynn for his snooping, set him up as a convenient fall guy for the crime so no one's looking for the real killer, and discredit him, all in one move. Then, if he does decide to start ranting about the covert organization with government ties who killed his wife and kid, no one will ever believe him.

Or maybe Rittenhouse's goons are just as shitty at hitting their main target as Wyatt is. :-)

[iMonrey]

Quote

Now, instead of sending back a couple guys to grab his family and get them to safety -- or, if that would still violate the rules of who can go where/when in time, just go back shortly before his own birth and start assassinating every Rittenhouse member he can uncover until the organization is too decimated to do the all-seeing killers thing -- he decides he'll just start randomly mucking up U.S. history in hopes that this will sap Rittenhouse's strength in some abstract way. Remember, from Flynn's perspective, the whole point of all this is to save his family, yet what he's doing is a lot more likely to keep them from ever being born.

I seriously hope the writers have a game plan in mind because so far their premise seems kind of flimsy, as you have illustrated so well. And that's really my biggest concern as we tackle the questions about the rules of time travel, etc. Do the writers have this figured out? Or did they basically just lay out a simple premise to service a weekly action/adventure formula so the cast could keep going into the past and visiting different historical eras for the fun of it? 

The idea that Flynn might have been Lucy's father has been shut down and now the idea that he's her son has been shut down as well. They really need to establish how he got his hands on this journal and what his connection is to her. And that there's some method to his madness, rather than hopping all over the timeline randomly trying to mess up Rittenhouse over and over again. Because that's what it's starting to feel like and they can't go on like this for multiple seasons. 

[Mrs. DuRona]

45 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

The idea that Flynn might have been Lucy's father has been shut down and now the idea that he's her son has been shut down as well. They really need to establish how he got his hands on this journal and what his connection is to her.

What if she's his wife?  Which is why he appears so much older - his wife and children were killed in the future, this could all be about saving her.  

[phalange]

2 hours ago, Mrs. DuRona said:

What if she's his wife?  Which is why he appears so much older - his wife and children were killed in the future, this could all be about saving her.  

In the Watergate Tape episode, Flynn goes to visit his wife and daughter's gravestone. The names and dates are listed as:

Wife
Lorena Flynn
1976-2014

Daughter
Iris Flynn
2009-2014

I'm really curious how he got the diary, but I think we can rule this possibility out along with Lucy being his mother or him being her father. Of course, they could always end up being related in some other way that we haven't learned about yet (maybe something to do with the half-brother he saved? Who knows).

[shapeshifter]

12 hours ago, Netfoot said:

...The argument is that because of the "You can't visit a timeframe you already exist in" rule, then for Anthony to visit 1969, he must not have existed yet, IOW, not been born, which is obviously false.  However I think the problem is that the rule is not properly stated.  It is actually the "You can't visit a timeframe you already exist in, unless the plot demands it" rule.

My personal excuse for this is that just as the "One small step for man" quote was allegedly supposed to be  "One small step for a man," so was  "You can't visit a timeframe you already exist in" written in the script as  "You can't visit a timeframe and place you already exist in."

[ACW]

On 11/28/2016 at 11:52 PM, ketose said:

I guess my interpretation of people not being able to travel within their own lifetimes is finally toast. No way Anthony was born after the moon landing.

This bugged me the whole show. Though, besides the different interpretations others have mentioned, my wife pointed out that one side-effect of a near-fatal time-travel accident could plausibly be premature aging.

[mythoughtis]

They can go back to a time they exist in, they just can't go to a place that they were in at the time.  Remember the whole two people can't exist in the same time-space from the old Jean Claude van Damme Time travel movie? 

Truthfully, this little confusing thing is the least of my laughing at this show.  Lucy appears to be the only person whose personal life has been altered by the time-travel changes that she didn't intentionally cause.  Flynn caused his half-brothers life to continue to exist.  World events have altered, Rufus's life has changed because people are interfering with his family and car, but no other changes. Wyatt doesn't appear to have had any changes, nor the Homeland Security woman, nor Mason, etc.  The time-travel facility and experiment seems unchanged.  Doesn't that seem odd to you?

I know some of you don't like Wyatt, but I do.  Maybe it is because he's eye candy for me - but I find his attitude a lot more believable than joyless Lucy.

[Ltg.jon]

But back then, women could only be secretaries, nurses or wives. There were no other careers for them.

In addition to Katherine Harris, Frances Marion Northcutt (also known as Poppy) was an engineer working in Mission Control from Apollo 8 to Apollo 13. She wrote the code used for landings. She was in Florida for the launch of Apollo 13, but got dragged back to Mission Control after the accident, because nobody was more familiar with the software for emergency landings. (She later left engineering behind and became a lawyer.)

[Hanahope]

Well if not for this show and the movie coming out, I never would have known about Johnson .  I'm really surprised with as much as has been depicted in movies and tv about the space program, I don't recall ever hearing about her or the other women before.  It makes me really disappointed in From Earth to the Moon (which I loved) which had hours of programming about Apollo, yet failed to find a few minutes to mention them. 

Edited December 7, 2016 by Hanahope

[Notwisconsin]

Are there copyright or Trade Mark problems with the name "illuminati?" It seems that Rittenhouse is just them...

[possibilities]

On 12/2/2016 at 2:20 PM, iMonrey said:

I seriously hope the writers have a game plan in mind because so far their premise seems kind of flimsy, as you have illustrated so well. And that's really my biggest concern as we tackle the questions about the rules of time travel, etc. Do the writers have this figured out? Or did they basically just lay out a simple premise to service a weekly action/adventure formula so the cast could keep going into the past and visiting different historical eras for the fun of it?

I honestly think this is a case of "a weekly action/adventure formula so the cast could keep going into the past and visiting different historical eras for the fun of it?" I haven't really seen this show as being super deep and philosophical.

The "no do-overs" rule is entirely for show purposes. If they wanted a do-over they'd just have to send a different team. They don't even seem to be trying to train one. It's ridiculous.

[wilnil]

2 hours ago, possibilities said:

The "no do-overs" rule is entirely for show purposes. If they wanted a do-over they'd just have to send a different team.

Yeah, if they'd thought it through they would've made the rule "no time machine can return to a time it's already been to." It would've made as much sense and would've headed off the argument that (once Rufus has a chance to train backup pilots) Mason & co. should just send new teams until one gets the job done. It'll take them a lot longer to build new machines than train new teams.

[Eneya]

Again, is it just me, who find it perfectly reasonable to want to save a relative?
"It has been two weeks since my sister disappeared. Ah, fuck it, I should move on."??? Really then?
This is TV land, where people hold on to relationships for longer, (unless it is plot convenience) also... she can time-travel, she definitely believes her sister can be saved and as she has said herself, this is why she is doing that. The more her personal life changes (the fiancee, the mother), the more it makes sense for her to cling to "it will restore and make everything better if only I get my sister back".

If she accepts her sister being gone and not pushing for it, what's the point of her being there? It was already stated by somebody that she should not be that in awe by seeing these actual historical individuals... if that was truly the case and she has moved on, there'd be literally no logical reason for her to be on the team.

Somebody has also said that she is having the nerve when Wyatt is there and not saying anything but... why'd she be responsible for his action or inactions?

Also, I have figured... 3 ways that may work to save her sister without having Lucy present and this is me not even trying. I support being critical of flimsy stories but this is somewhat weird for me.

[Netfoot]

31 minutes ago, Eneya said:

 

Again, is it just me, who find it perfectly reasonable to want to save a relative?
"It has been two weeks since my sister disappeared. Ah, fuck it, I should move on."??? Really then?
This is TV land, where people hold on to relationships for longer, (unless it is plot convenience) also... she can time-travel, she definitely believes her sister can be saved and as she has said herself, this is why she is doing that. The more her personal life changes (the fiancee, the mother), the more it makes sense for her to cling to "it will restore and make everything better if only I get my sister back".

 

This is a good point.  But consider:

My sister has vanished due to time tampering.  Perhaps I can figure out exactly which butterfly I need to stomp on, to bring her back!  Or, perhaps I'll stomp the wrong butterfly, and then... it's The Man in the High Castle time!

So, perhaps, I can regrettably move on.  (Or in my own case, not all that regrettably.)

[legaleagle53]

11 hours ago, Eneya said:

Again, is it just me, who find it perfectly reasonable to want to save a relative?
"It has been two weeks since my sister disappeared. Ah, fuck it, I should move on."??? Really then?
This is TV land, where people hold on to relationships for longer, (unless it is plot convenience) also... she can time-travel, she definitely believes her sister can be saved and as she has said herself, this is why she is doing that. The more her personal life changes (the fiancee, the mother), the more it makes sense for her to cling to "it will restore and make everything better if only I get my sister back".

If she accepts her sister being gone and not pushing for it, what's the point of her being there? It was already stated by somebody that she should not be that in awe by seeing these actual historical individuals... if that was truly the case and she has moved on, there'd be literally no logical reason for her to be on the team.

Somebody has also said that she is having the nerve when Wyatt is there and not saying anything but... why'd she be responsible for his action or inactions?

Also, I have figured... 3 ways that may work to save her sister without having Lucy present and this is me not even trying. I support being critical of flimsy stories but this is somewhat weird for me.

The problem is that there's no one to "save."  Unlike Wyatt's wife and Flynn's wife and daughter, all three of whom actually did die before Flynn ever took his first trip into the past, Lucy's sister didn't die as a result of the changes to the history of the Hindenburg disaster.  She simply never existed in the first place.

[withanaich]

Exactly. I don't have a problem with Lucy mourning her sister, I have a problem with her being ridiculous enough to think someone can magically get her back and bratty enough to demand that the government make a "deal" to do it. Of course losing her sister like that would freak her out. Of course she would be angry and sad and maybe even feel guilty. Sure. No one's saying she should "move on." But this stamping of feet and screaming at Homeland Security to wave a wand and somehow bring her sister -- that particular sister -- back from the cornfield is just ridiculous.

[possibilities]

Everything about time travel on this show is ridiculous. Who's to say it's any more impossible to recover the sister than it is to do anything else on this show? It's all paradox and duct tape.

[Eneya]

18 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

The problem is that there's no one to "save."  Unlike Wyatt's wife and Flynn's wife and daughter, all three of whom actually did die before Flynn ever took his first trip into the past, Lucy's sister didn't die as a result of the changes to the history of the Hindenburg disaster.  She simply never existed in the first place.

 

Sorry, would you accept that as a reason not to try and restore a relative, if you can save them? I am betting money Lucy feels responsible
for her sister and faults herself. :)

As I said, I am sure this is escapism. All of us can think calmly about that but a person in her position? I mean, come on, actual people are willing to subject themselves to the stupidest of things in order to try and cure themselves if sick... and if you have magic (time-travel)? You can move even beyond the regular "wishful thinking".

[Netfoot]

2 hours ago, Eneya said:

Sorry, would you accept that as a reason not to try and restore a relative, if you can save them?

But I don't see how it would be possible to save them.

Say you travel into the past, and save someone from being run over in the road.  That is the only change you are aware of making (the occasional squashed ant not withstanding).  When you return, you discover that as a result of your actions, your sister has been written out of history.  What possible steps could you take to reverse this situation?

You can't go back and un-save the person you originally saved, because no returns to previously visited eras are allowed.  Can you compute what additional changes you could make to the past, so somehow cause your sister to be written back in?  How are you going to discover which tree in Botswana you need to cut down, to make things right?

[KaveDweller]

1 hour ago, Netfoot said:

But I don't see how it would be possible to save them.

Say you travel into the past, and save someone from being run over in the road.  That is the only change you are aware of making (the occasional squashed ant not withstanding).  When you return, you discover that as a result of your actions, your sister has been written out of history.  What possible steps could you take to reverse this situation?

You can't go back and un-save the person you originally saved, because no returns to previously visited eras are allowed.  Can you compute what additional changes you could make to the past, so somehow cause your sister to be written back in?  How are you going to discover which tree in Botswana you need to cut down, to make things right?

I actually think they at least could try with Lucy's sister. She was erased because her father married a descendent from the Hindenburg enforce he could meet her mother. So they just have to go back and stop the father from meeting that other person, it's a different time, so no problem going there.

Of course it could not work, because of a variety of things. But it wasn't a completely random change, they have a shot.

Edited December 14, 2016 by KaveDweller

[legaleagle53]

13 minutes ago, KaveDweller said:

I actually think they at least could try with Lucy's sister. She was erased because her father married a descendent from the Hindenburg enforce he could meet her mother. So they just have to go back and stop the father from meeting that other person, it's a different time, so no problem going there.

Of course it could not work, because of a variety of things. But it wasn't a completely random change, they have a shot.

And assuming that it worked, the trade-off would be that Lucy's mother would be once more dying of Stage 4 lung cancer caused by the smoking habit that Amy's father drove her to.  The reason Lucy's mother is alive and well is the same reason that Amy doesn't exist:  Lucy's mother never met or married Amy's father.

[Netfoot]

13 minutes ago, legaleagle53 said:

The reason Lucy's mother is alive and well is the same reason that Amy doesn't exist:  Lucy's mother never met or married Amy's father.

On the face of it, yes.  But meeting and marrying Amysdad may only be one of the conditions that had to be met for Amy to be born.  Other less obvious chances may play a part as well.  So simply preventing his meeting the other woman might result in Lucy's parents getting together, but the resulting offspring may not be Amy.  

I think it only sensible to assume that the threads of change from rewriting the Hindenburg tragedy are huge in number, and intertwined in vastly complex ways.  To tamper even further with time is most likely to make things even worse, instead of better.

[KaveDweller]

1 hour ago, Netfoot said:

On the face of it, yes.  But meeting and marrying Amysdad may only be one of the conditions that had to be met for Amy to be born.  Other less obvious chances may play a part as well.  So simply preventing his meeting the other woman might result in Lucy's parents getting together, but the resulting offspring may not be Amy.  

Right, it is much more likely that Lucy comes back to find a totally different sibling, even if it was born at a similar time. But that's when you get into an interesting debate about nature vs. nurture. How similar in personality would the new sibling be, and would they still have a strong bond with Lucy? Would Lucy's childhood memories be close to what the new sibling has, just altered slightly? Or would her personality be so different that it still totally disturbs the timeline.

I suppose she could also go back and tell her mother to not starting smoking to help with the lung cancer thing, but I'm not sure that would work.

[legaleagle53]

7 hours ago, KaveDweller said:

Right, it is much more likely that Lucy comes back to find a totally different sibling, even if it was born at a similar time. But that's when you get into an interesting debate about nature vs. nurture. How similar in personality would the new sibling be, and would they still have a strong bond with Lucy? Would Lucy's childhood memories be close to what the new sibling has, just altered slightly? Or would her personality be so different that it still totally disturbs the timeline.

I suppose she could also go back and tell her mother to not starting smoking to help with the lung cancer thing, but I'm not sure that would work.

She'd have to be sure to go back to before 1983, since that's the year she was born.  Otherwise, it's a no-go.

[mahree]

On 11/29/2016 at 4:49 PM, 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 thought they might be indicating Latina heritage of his mom since her first name was Maria.  Who knows with this crew, though...

[Chas411]

I can't see Anthony as anyone other then Big Russ Thompson from Honey I Shrunk The Kids.

[CooperTV]

6 minutes ago, Chas411 said:

I can't see Anthony as anyone other then Big Russ Thompson from Honey I Shrunk The Kids.

White Knight from SyFy's Alice, though!

[Clanstarling]

50 minutes ago, Chas411 said:

I can't see Anthony as anyone other then Big Russ Thompson from Honey I Shrunk The Kids.

He'll always be Max Headroom and Trashcan Man to me.