Travelers (TV series)
| Travelers | |
|---|---|
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| Genre | Science fiction |
| Created by | Brad Wright |
| Starring |
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| Composer | Adam Lastiwka |
| Country of origin |
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| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 3 |
| No. of episodes | 34 |
| Production | |
| Producer | Eric McCormack |
| Production locations | Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
| Running time | 45 minutes |
| Distributor |
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| Release | |
| Original network |
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| Audio format | Dolby Digital |
| Original release | October 17, 2016 – December 14, 2018 |
| External links | |
| Website | |
Travelers is a science fiction television series created by Brad Wright, starring Eric McCormack, Mackenzie Porter, Jared Abrahamson, Nesta Cooper, Reilly Dolman, and Patrick Gilmore.[1][2] The series was an international co-production between streaming service Netflix and Canadian specialty channel Showcase for its first two seasons, after which Netflix took over as its sole commissioning broadcaster and worldwide distributor. The show premiered in Canada on October 17, 2016, and worldwide on December 23, 2016.[3] A second season followed in 2017, and a third season was released on December 14, 2018.[4][5] In February 2019, McCormack said that the series had been cancelled.[6]
Premise[]
In a post-apocalyptic future, thousands of special operatives are tasked with preventing the collapse of society. These operatives, known as "travelers", have their consciousnesses sent back in time and transferred into the "host" body of present-day individuals who would otherwise be moments from death, to minimize unexpected impact on the time line. The transfer requires the exact location of the target, made possible by 21st century smartphones and GPS, providing time, elevation, latitude, and longitude (TELL) coordinates that are archived for use in the future.
Trained using social media and public records concerning their hosts, each traveler must maintain the host's pre-existing life as cover for the rest of their lives, while carrying out missions in teams of five. These missions are dictated by the Director (an artificial intelligence) in the future who monitors the timeline. Travelers aim to save the world from a series of catastrophic events. One method by which the Director communicates with travelers is via prepubescent children used as messengers; unlike adults, any child can safely be animated for a few minutes by the Director and then released from control without risk of killing them.
Travelers are required to behave according to certain protocols to protect the timeline:
- The mission comes first.
- Leave the future in the past.
- Don't take a life; don't save a life, unless otherwise directed. Do not interfere.
- Do not reproduce.
- In the absence of direction, maintain your host's life.
- Do not communicate with other known travelers outside of your team unless sanctioned by the Director.
The Director can invoke three other protocols in special situations:
- Protocol Alpha temporarily suspends all other protocols when a critical mission must be completed at all costs.
- Protocol Epsilon can be invoked when traveler archives are threatened.
- Protocol Omega permanently suspends all other protocols when the Director abandons the travelers because the future has either been fixed or deemed impossible to fix.
In addition, the Travelers have a regular expression they mention when things take a minor unexpected turn: "No plan survives contact with the past." In one early episode ("Helios 685"), when getting ready to undertake what is (then) expected to be the mission that will positively rewrite the future, the team recites a short Traveler's oath: "We, the last unbroken remnants, vow to undo the errors of our ascendants, to make the Earth whole, the lost unlost, at peril of our own birth."
Cast[]
Main[]
- Eric McCormack as Grant MacLaren (Traveler 3468), the team's leader, who assumes the life of a married FBI special agent[7]
- MacKenzie Porter as Marcy Warton (Traveler 3569), the team's medic, who assumes the life of an intellectually disabled woman
- Nesta Cooper as Carly Shannon (Traveler 3465), the team's tactician, who assumes the life of a stay-at-home single mother
- Jared Abrahamson as Trevor Holden (Traveler 0115), the team's engineer and one of the oldest humans ever, who assumes the life of a high school athlete
- Reilly Dolman as Philip Pearson (Traveler 3326), the team's historian, who assumes the life of a college-aged heroin addict
- Patrick Gilmore as David Mailer, Marcy's social worker and later romantic interest
Recurring[]
- J. Alex Brinson as Jeff Conniker, Carly's abusive police officer ex-boyfriend and the father of her son, who later becomes suspicious and is overwritten as Traveler 5416, then captured and overwritten by 001
- Leah Cairns as Kathryn "Kat" MacLaren, Grant's wife who works as an interior designer
- Enrico Colantoni as Vincent Ingram, the first traveler (Traveler 001) whose host was supposed to die on September 11, 2001
- Chad Krowchuk as Simon, Traveler 004, a specialist who set up the travelers' communications system in the 21st, then was deceived into building consciousness transfer technology for Vincent
- Arnold Pinnock as Walt Forbes, MacLaren's partner at the FBI, later a member of the Faction posing as Traveler 4112 and, subsequently, Traveler 4991
- Jennifer Spence as Grace Day, Trevor's high school counselor and later Traveler 0027, a programmer who helped create the Director
- Ian Tracey as Ray Green, Philip's lawyer and later friend, a compulsive gambler
- Kimberley Sustad as Joanne Yates, MacLaren's new FBI partner who is later assigned by the FBI director to act as the liaison between the FBI and the Traveler program
Guest[]
Introduced in season 1[]
- David Lewis as Major Gleason, a hotheaded military officer
- Kyra Zagorsky as Dr. Delaney, a brilliant scientist who developed a method for collecting and storing antimatter
- Kristine Cofsky as Victoria Boyd, Traveler 3185, who assumes the life of a police officer
- Giacomo Baessato as Private Wilson, a soldier who works for Gleason
- Alyssa Lynch as Rene Bellamy, a high school student and Trevor's girlfriend
- Tom McBeath as Ellis, Traveler 0014, a programmer who assumes the life of a farmer
- Eileen Pedde as Mom, a traveler who assumes the role of a mother in a family of four
- Yasmeene Ball as Charlotte, a misfire traveler historian; later a traveler assassin
- Glynis Davies as Jacqueline, a representative of Child Protective Services
- Melanie Papalia as Beth, an FBI analyst working for MacLaren
- Karin Konoval as Bloom, Traveler 0117, a high ranking traveler engineer
- Louis Ferreira as Rick Hall, a jaded traveler team leader
- Douglas Chapman as Luca Shun, Traveler 2587, a member of Hall's team
- Jason Gray-Stanford as Aaron Donner, Traveler 4022 (and later Traveler 4024), a bomber
- William MacDonald as Gary Holden, Trevor's father
- Teryl Rothery as Patricia Holden, Trevor's mother
- Dylan Playfair as Kyle, a friend of Trevor, later historian Traveler 5532
- Gerard Plunkett as Ted Bishop, a congressman
- Matthew Kevin Anderson as Derek, Traveler D13, a traveler doctor assigned to save MacLaren
Introduced in season 2[]
- Stephen Lobo as Agent Wakefield, a faction member posing as a traveler who is later overwritten by the Director
- Paloma Kwiatkowski as Abigail Paris, a young woman that Trevor befriends
- Lee Majdoub as Dr. Barker, a doctor with a romantic interest in Marcy
- Sunita Prasad as Blair, David's girlfriend
- Melissa Roxburgh as Carrie, Travelers 5001–5007, a skydiver assigned to prevent the assassination of MacLaren's team
- Amanda Tapping as Katrina Perrow, Traveler 001's psychologist, who is later taken over by 001 before the Director can overwrite him
- Stephanie Bennett as Jenny, Traveler 4514, a traveler assigned to help Philip with his heroin addiction
- Josh Blacker as Agent Callahan, a Traveler who assumes the life of an FBI agent
Introduced in season 3[]
- Benjamin Ratner as Ivon Teslia, a computer engineer responsible for the creation of the artificial intelligence (AI) Ilsa
- Rebecca Soichet as the voice of Ilsa, the AI hosting the Director in the 21st century
- Magda Apanowicz as Dawn, a Faction traveler loyal to Traveler 001
- Christopher Heyerdahl as Andrew Graeme (Traveler 7189), a mathematician whose host is discovered to be a serial killer
- Veronika Hadrava as Katrina (Traveler A18), an Archivist
- Karen Holness as Samantha Burns, a physicist responsible for designing the singularity engine
Episodes[]
| Season | Episodes | Originally aired | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First aired | Last aired | Network | ||||
| 1 | 12 | October 17, 2016 | January 2, 2017 | Showcase / Netflix | ||
| 2 | 12 | October 16, 2017 | December 18, 2017 | |||
| 3 | 10 | December 14, 2018 | Netflix | |||
Season 1 (2016–17)[]
The first season premiered on Netflix on December 23, 2016, before its final two episodes aired on Showcase.
| No. overall | No. in season | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | "Travelers" | Nick Hurran | Brad Wright | October 17, 2016 | |
| In 2018, four unconnected people suddenly undergo personality changes at what would have been their moments of death: Marcy, a young, intellectually disabled woman, is assaulted but fights off her attackers and is no longer impaired; high-schooler Trevor concedes a mixed martial arts fight after being overmatched; heroin-addicted college student Philip drops his syringe just as his roommate injects a fatal overdose; and young mother Carly stares down her baby's abusive father. FBI agent MacLaren tracks their subsequent communication and confronts them; they reveal that they are among thousands of time travelers sent from the future to avert a global crisis, and that MacLaren was to die that night while pursuing a murderer they have already killed; MacLaren is taken over by a fifth traveler, who happens to be the team's leader. | ||||||
| 2 | 2 | "Protocol 6" | Andy Mikita | Gillian Muller | October 24, 2016 | |
| To prevent an explosion that kills thousands, the team steals antimatter from a military convoy. The material's intended recipient is a new traveler who fails to prevent his host's suicide, forcing the team to improvise. After failing to upgrade their containment device, the team returns the antimatter to its origin facility. They form a tenuous alliance with Dr. Delaney, who produced the antimatter; history records her as complicit in the weaponization of antimatter, but she actually opposes Major Gleason's ambitions. MacLaren informs Delaney that they will return soon. Philip retains his host's heroin addiction. MacLaren meets his wife, Kat, but also resumes a preexisting relationship with Carly. Marcy works to build trust with a confused David. | ||||||
| 3 | 3 | "Aleksander" | Andy Mikita | Tara Armstrong & Mika Collins | October 31, 2016 | |
| Philip obsesses over the lives the team is forbidden to save, writing the names and time, elevation, latitude, and longitude (TELL) coordinates of all potential candidates on the warehouse wall. He secretly tips off the FBI to prevent killings. He leads the team to rescue abducted child Aleksander Andrieko before his murder, falsely claiming it as a mission from the Director. As a messenger, Aleksander exposes the ruse. MacLaren decides to abandon the "mission", but Philip refuses, drawing his weapon. Aleksander is saved, his captors are killed, and Philip survives a gunshot wound; Marcy reveals his heroin addiction to the others, and plans to wean him. Jeff investigates the assault on Marcy, and detects the personality changes. David covers for her. The team adjusts to the 21st-century's contrast with the scarcity of their native era. | ||||||
| 4 | 4 | "Hall" | Martin Wood | Pat Smith | November 7, 2016 | |
| MacLaren and Forbes stake out a criminal transaction that becomes a shootout. MacLaren's team is directed to assist an older traveler team: the incident's survivors, whose leader, Rick Hall, reveals that the deal was the assigned transfer of a device with a Russian traveler team. MacLaren is shocked by the violence between teams and by Hall's jadedness. Hall's teammates, Carter and Luca, are both dying, but Marcy saves Luca by transfusing Carter's blood; Marcy suspects Luca is her brother due to his suffering from night terrors. Hall demands that he become the leader of a merged team, and demands MacLaren kill Forbes to prevent their exposure. MacLaren and Forbes arrest Hall and Luca, and the team transfers the device. Trevor quits football to focus on his grades, but is grounded. Ray demands more gambling information from Philip. Carly rebukes Jeff, who harasses Marcy. Carly and MacLaren sleep together. | ||||||
| 5 | 5 | "Room 101" | Martin Wood | Brad Wright | November 14, 2016 | |
| A family of four are about to die in a car crash when the mother, father, and son become travelers. Charlotte, the daughter, retains her identity when the team's historian's transfer misfires, so MacLaren sends her to stay with her grandparents until her "family" completes their mission. Trevor, Carly, Marcy, and Philip are abducted and interrogated about the future until Carly kills their guard. David alerts MacLaren when Marcy does not come home, who is able to find and rescue the team with Officer Boyd. MacLaren was forced to cancel his team's mission with the family team, and Carly speculates this was their unidentified captor's goal. | ||||||
| 6 | 6 | "Helios 685" | Helen Shaver | Rebecca Hales | November 21, 2016 | |
| Travelers transfer into a cult preparing for mass suicide. MacLaren's team, the cult, and many other travelers, including senior engineer Bloom, meet at the antimatter facility. Bloom reveals that the future has been subtly rewritten and is not as united as it once was. Dosed with antitoxin, they release a toxic cloud to force a local evacuation. Gleason interrogates Delaney until MacLaren returns her to the facility and explains the nature of travelers. Gleason discovers Delaney's escape and prepares to return to her lab. Using the antimatter to power an x-ray laser, the travelers intend to deflect asteroid Helios 685, saving millions of lives and preventing the environmental catastrophes and devastating wars that led to their dark future. Deflecting Helios has been the Director's main goal, even though it could possibly prevent the travelers' own births in the future. Gleason leads an assault, killing most of the cult travelers and Bloom before she can fire the laser. However, travelers transfer into his soldiers and eventually into him, sacrificing themselves to complete the mission. The traveler within Gleason fires the laser while MacLaren and his team save Delaney from the antimatter explosion on Bloom's orders. MacLaren is unsure of the mission's success, as his team remains in the present. | ||||||
| 7 | 7 | "Protocol 5" | Helen Shaver | SB Edwards & Ashley Park & Pat Smith & Jason Whiting | November 28, 2016 | |
| Resuming their hosts' lives, the team suffer paranoia and hallucinations of their future pre-Travel lives, side effects of the antitoxin. MacLaren's coworkers hold a surprise party for his 15th anniversary with the FBI. Kat confronts him about lying to Forbes; he seduces her, but she is still certain he is cheating. During their lovemaking, MacLaren hallucinates that Kat is a woman with very short hair, with Carly's number (3465) tattooed on her neck. After Rene attempts to shoplift some clothes with Trevor and another friend, Trevor confronts the two outside, in an alley. During a fight between Trevor and the other guy, Trevor possibly experiences a slippage of time, where his friend is able to connect with a punch. This will later develop into Trevor's diagnosis of temporal aphasia. Their intimacy growing, David reluctantly helps Marcy perform surgery on herself to prevent seizures. Carly rebuffs a representative of Child Protective Services. Trevor reins in his host's delinquency, and he and Renee meditate. Ray takes Philip to a twelve-step meeting for drug addicts and gets him a pet turtle to care for. Trevor and Philip learn the team has a new mission. | ||||||
| 8 | 8 | "Donner" | Will Waring | Ashley Park & Pat Smith | December 5, 2016 | |
| A suicide bomber and his victims are set to become travelers, but the bomb explodes and only Donner, the bomber, survives. Devastated by his failure, Donner tries to betray the traveler program to the authorities, but the entire hearing is populated by travelers who hold a trial and convict Donner of treason. Donner is overwritten by a new traveler, who must serve Donner's prison sentence, and reports that things in the future are getting worse despite the changes enacted by Traveler teams in the 21st. Luca approaches Donner in prison, implying that he has lost faith in the Director. Ken, David's boss, believes David's relationship with Marcy is inappropriate. Upon meeting Marcy, he believes she has defrauded the system. Marcy saves David's job by repaying her benefits. Grace, Trevor's guidance counselor, and Jacqueline, Carly's social worker, genuinely care about them, respectively. Grace tries to help Trevor with his academics, and Jacqueline promises that she will not let the system fail Carly and her child. Philip discovers that gambling outcomes are deviating slightly from the historic record. | ||||||
| 9 | 9 | "Bishop" | Will Waring | Amanda Smith | December 12, 2016 | |
| After asking Marcy to move out, David admits he cannot bear to be without her. She tells him she is dying, and they kiss. Trevor tries to connect with his father. Jeff files assault charges, preventing Carly from finding a job. She asks him to take the baby for an afternoon, unaware he has tipped Kat off to Carly's relationship with MacLaren. Under orders, a traveler murders her host's Cabinet-member husband, and instructs MacLaren to board a flight as Congressman Bishop's seatmate. In flight, MacLaren learns he is to activate a stasis field to save himself and Bishop, while all others aboard will die in a crash. MacLaren discovers Kat followed him on board, believing she would witness his infidelity. He instructs Kat and Bishop to use the stasis device, and attempts to survive impact unaided, using only Philip's knowledge of the crash. At the crash site, the team resuscitate Kat and Bishop, and Bishop is overwritten. To Carly's dismay, MacLaren is taken away by traveler paramedics before the team can reach him. | ||||||
| 10 | 10 | "Kathryn" | Andy Mikita | Jason Whiting & SB Edwards | December 19, 2016 | |
| Marcy erases Kat's memory of the crash and of the preceding day, and stages her home to make it appear as if she had too much to drink the night before. Philip removes MacLaren's car from the airport, but Forbes believes it is theft. Carly extracts Philip, while Forbes and Kat search for MacLaren. An advanced traveler medical team treats MacLaren with nanites to repair his massive internal damage. Trevor undergoes a painful procedure to grow a transplant heart for MacLaren. Unconscious, MacLaren experiences memories of his host's life with Kat. He discovers that they were deeply in love, and that she very much wanted to have children. She did not because MacLaren feared losing Kat after she suffered a life-threatening miscarriage. He also sees that they began to grow apart due to MacLaren's work commitments. MacLaren recovers in time to stage a cover story for Forbes, claiming that Philip is MacLaren's confidential informant and went rogue to prove that MacLaren's life is insecure. MacLaren returns home, and tries to apologize to Kat, but she avoids him. | ||||||
| 11 | 11 | "Marcy" | Andy Mikita | Jason Whiting | December 26, 2016 | |
| Carly loses custody of her son until the trial. Grace is due to die, so Trevor kidnaps her to save her life. She is overwritten despite having avoided the accident that would have killed her. Grace and another newly arrived traveler, Ellis, are computer programmers who have fled an anti-Director faction in the future. Ellis has developed a code that is sought by this faction, and has returned to the 21st century to keep it from them. David and Marcy consummate their relationship. However, her condition worsens and Boyd stabilizes her, but Marcy is near death. Grace, who was in charge of social media research and identifying hosts, regrets missing that the real Marcy had a brain issue. She wants to correct Marcy's condition by reloading Marcy's original transfer into the functional part of her brain, saving her at the cost of her 21st-century memories. MacLaren lets Marcy speak to David first. However, her condition becomes critical shortly before David returns home, and she is overwritten by her earlier self. Her team introduces her to David. | ||||||
| 12 | 12 | "Grace" | Amanda Tapping | Ashley Park | January 2, 2017 | |
| Kathryn confronts MacLaren, believing he is having an affair, leading him to end his relationship with Carly. Charlotte, the misfire historian, is overwritten and murders her family. She attempts to assassinate Grace, but Trevor intervenes. Grace reveals that she used Marcy's reload to send a reset code into the Director, an advanced AI, so the anti-Director faction will no longer be able to send its own travelers. Jeff shoots Charlotte when she attempts to kill Carly. Boyd reveals she received a dubious order to kill MacLaren; Carly later reveals she was given the same mission. Ellis reveals he built a quantum frame in his barn, a receptacle to receive the Director's download to escape the faction. David is held at gunpoint by another assassin but is saved by Marcy. The team, having survived assassins at Philip's, arrives at the farm where Trevor has received a text to destroy the frame. Assassins surround the farm as Ellis shoots Trevor to protect the frame, but the shot hits Grace as well. Ellis shuts down the perimeter shield in the hope that the Director will help them, then channels a message (which kills him) to destroy the frame. Forbes and an FBI team, not assassins, burst into the barn. | ||||||
Season 2 (2017)[]
| No. overall | No. in season | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 | 1 | "Ave Machina" | Andy Mikita | Brad Wright | October 16, 2017 | |
| Vincent Ingram (Traveler 001) recounts his arrival in the 21st century to his therapist, Dr. Perrow. Vincent's arrival was meant to be the first test of projecting human consciousness through time and he was intended to confirm his arrival minutes before dying in the fall of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, so as not to affect the timeline – but when he arrives, he occupies an unexpected body (the target had left the room) and the device he must use to message the future fails, so he goes off-mission and into hiding from the Director. Meanwhile, Mac and his team are being interrogated by the FBI about the quantum frame and its purpose, while David deals with the mental aftermath of the assassination attempt on his life. | ||||||
| 14 | 2 | "Protocol 4" | Andy Mikita | Jason Whiting | October 23, 2017 | |
| Mac investigates a mass arrival of Travelers via the quantum frame while also trying to repair his marriage with Kat. Philip is given assistance with his addiction from new Traveler 4514, Jenny. Marcy treats David for PTSD, but is dealing with feelings of detachment and disassociation herself. Carly and Jeff try and clean up their act for Child Protective Services and regain custody of their son. Trevor and Grace bond in the hospital while recovering from their injuries. | ||||||
| 15 | 3 | "Jacob" | Andy Mikita | Pat Smith & Ashley Park | October 30, 2017 | |
| Three months after the events with the quantum frame, Mac and Kat are working through their issues during her first trimester. Marcy has moved out of David's apartment and has taken a job as an X-ray technician at a local hospital. Philip has traded one addiction for another, but is in denial about it. Trevor is growing concerned with the lack of communication from the Director. The discovery of a murdered Traveler team puts Mac on the trail of Vincent; the Director sends messengers to both just as they prepare to slaughter each other. | ||||||
| 16 | 4 | "11:27" | Amanda Tapping | Ashley Park & Pat Smith | November 6, 2017 | |
| The Director assigns two new missions to the team: Mac, Carly and Marcy must assassinate Congressman Bishop in order to make him a martyr while Trevor and Philip must help a radical environmental activist succeed in her plan to bomb a research facility that is working on a genetically modified seed that has disastrous consequences for the future. | ||||||
| 17 | 5 | "Jenny" | Andy Mikita | Jason Whiting & Ken Kabatoff | November 13, 2017 | |
| Philip commits to memory an anti-viral formula sent via messenger. The information is passed on to fellow Traveler Derek via Jenny so it can be synthesized and distributed to other Traveler teams as well as to specific people who would otherwise be super spreaders of a flu like virus that historically killed 70,000 people. However, two weeks after dissemination, people around the world start getting sick with a virus even more dangerous than the original one. With no contact from the Director, and the death toll rising, Marcy and Derek rush to find a solution. Jenny reveals the mass arrivals were all from the Faction, during the period when the Director was offline, and they manipulated the formula to increase the potency of the virus. | ||||||
| 18 | 6 | "U235" | Andy Mikita | Ashley Park & Pat Smith | November 20, 2017 | |
| The Faction's plan to save the future by killing 2 billion people in the present (contradicting the Director’s plan to make multiple small but key changes) is well underway. With medical nanites proving useless as a cure, Grace realizes the only way to solve the problem is to find a way to fix the Director in the future so it can send help back to the 21st century. | ||||||
| 19 | 7 | "17 Minutes" | Amanda Tapping | Brad Wright | November 27, 2017 | |
| The team is given a mission to collect and safeguard the original power source of the Director, as it will likely be the remaining Faction members' next target. The mission is going smoothly, but the team is ambushed and killed by the Faction. With its very existence in danger, the Director initiates Protocol Alpha – and sends back a Traveler to save the team before they are killed, but the remote location, small time window (17 minutes) and only two host candidates within geographic range makes the probability of success low. | ||||||
| 20 | 8 | "Traveler 0027" | Amanda Tapping | Ashley Park | December 4, 2017 | |
| Three high-ranking Travelers are sent back by the Director to put Grace on trial for violating protocols, overwriting a person who was not assigned to be her host, and sabotaging the Grand Plan. Mac and the team must give testimony at the trial that will determine if she should be overwritten or not. Meanwhile, the Faction is trying to replenish its numbers by overwriting people with the stored minds in the quantum frame. It transpires the trial was staged by the Director to flush out a Faction member from within the three Travelers judging Grace, which it successfully does, this leading to Mac's team securing the quantum frame. | ||||||
| 21 | 9 | "Update" | Amanda Tapping | Pat Smith | December 11, 2017 | |
| Philip is ordered by the Director to attend an "update" with various other Historians, which is where the altered timeline's history is imprinted onto their minds, but it comes with physical and emotional consequences. Trevor tries to help a former football teammate with past trauma. Hall returns from prison and has a new mission assigned to him from the Director. Kat has complications with the pregnancy. | ||||||
| 22 | 10 | "21C" | Will Waring | Brad Wright | December 11, 2017 | |
| Marcy puts herself in a near-death state to recover her lost memories from when she was reset. The memories she receives include those of the original host Marcy, showing that the host's intellectual disability was caused by Vincent/001 testing Simon's incomplete consciousness transfer technology on her. While she is out of commission, Mac and the rest of the team are ordered to provide Hall with backup in protecting the future 53rd President of the United States, who is currently a prepubescent girl. | ||||||
| 23 | 11 | "Simon" | Will Waring | Jason Whiting | December 18, 2017 | |
| The team track down Simon (Traveler 0004), a specialist who developed the consciousness transfer technology in the future, who was sent into a host body that developed schizophrenia after arrival. Simon, who set up the Travelers' communications system in the 21st, is haunted by hallucinations of Vincent, who previously convinced an institutionalized Simon that the Director wanted him to next build transfer technology in the 21st. | ||||||
| 24 | 12 | "001" | Eric McCormack | Ken Kabatoff | December 18, 2017 | |
| Vincent asks the team to stand down and let him finish what he has been planning. When the team refuses to comply, Vincent holds the lives of Kat, David, Jeffery, Ray, and Grace over them, and forces them to reveal themselves as Travelers to the world. The team must make the choice between breaking protocol and thus risking being overwritten by the Director, or doing what they must to save the ones they've grown to care about since their arrival in the 21st. 001 transfers his consciousness into Katrina Perrow to escape the Director who later only overwrites Vincent's empty body. | ||||||
Season 3 (2018)[]
| No. overall | No. in season | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original release date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 | 1 | "Ilsa" | Eric McCormack[8] | Brad Wright | December 14, 2018 | |
| MacLaren, his team, and their loved ones regroup at a safe house protected by the FBI, but doubts and betrayals may sabotage the rest of their mission. | ||||||
| 26 | 2 | "Yates" | Andy Mikita | Ken Kabatoff | December 14, 2018 | |
| MacLaren and Yates adjust to their new partnership while protecting a TV show host whose inflammatory rhetoric about Travelers has led to tragedy, and potential exposure of their existence. The TV host is then overwritten by a new Traveler and apologizes on camera. | ||||||
| 27 | 3 | "Protocol 3" | Andy Mikita | Jason Whiting | December 14, 2018 | |
| Certain that his team erased his memory of the previous day, MacLaren retraces his steps in the case of a disturbed youth with a horrific future. The future is changed due to his positive impact on the boy. | ||||||
| 28 | 4 | "Perrow" | Amanda Tapping | Pat Smith | December 14, 2018 | |
| The team learns that Traveler 001 is still alive in the body of his former psychologist, Perrow, when the Faction tries to capture him/her. Perrow dies but they believe 001 had access to a transfer device (since in the future he helped construct one) and as a result they are unsure where his consciousness now resides. Jeff, confronting the Travelers with his knowledge of their existence, is overwritten by a new Traveler. Grace grants a 21st century AI called Ilsa access to the Internet so MacLaren and his team can use it to find Traveler 001. Doubts about their loved ones worsen for Kat (suffering hallucinations and suspicions), Jeff (now, not Jeff and trying to make amends) and David, who is concussed. | ||||||
| 29 | 5 | "Naomi" | Amanda Tapping | Ashley Park | December 14, 2018 | |
| The team attempts to extract a rogue AI from a child messenger named Naomi, but the program expands too rapidly. Trevor starts to exhibit a brain disorder. A new Traveler, Traveler 5416, who is on a solo mission from the Director, adjusts to the body of his host Jeff Conniker. | ||||||
| 30 | 6 | "Philip" | Will Waring | Pat Smith | December 14, 2018 | |
| During an update for historians, one of them dies from cerebral overload and is taken over by another traveler. The faction then breaks in and kidnaps the historians. A Blackbox is a device used to extract information from an unconscious or dying person and the team uses one to access a critically injured Hall to ascertain the location of historians. Jeff reaches out to his police sergeant to get his job back and is told to get help from a social worker first. Philip is questioned by the faction. Philip is given time with Kyle as a gesture of goodwill, who states that he sympathizes with the faction's goal, especially since he just saw another historian die during the update. Faction saves a TELL that Kyle provided to gain his support. Jeff reaches out to David to sign his therapy form for him to get his job back. David agrees to help as a social worker with Jeff's addiction, which the traveler doesn't actually have. Hall is able to relay information from when he was tracking his team's historian showing he ran into a faction team and was shot climbing a fence. He reveals that it was Kyle and Luca from his own team that shot him. Hall is able to show the team the location of the historians and the team is dispatched. While with David, Jeff receives a message to meet up at the location for tactical support. Philip is able to escape before being cornered by Kyle and Luca. Maclaren's team shows up just in time to save Philip and kills Luca and Kyle. The team saves all the historians while taking out many of the faction. Hall is told he saved them all and is able to pass away in peace knowing that. Jeff and Carly reconnect. Philip is seen throwing out his yellow pills that historians have to take. | ||||||
| 31 | 7 | "Trevor" | Will Waring | Ashley Park | December 14, 2018 | |
| Suffering from a fatal brain disorder known as temporal dysphasia (a disorder that repeatedly leaves the victim frozen for a certain amounts of time without them knowing any time has passed), Trevor makes the choice to allow himself to be overwritten. The Director gives Trevor 36 hours to put his affairs in order. When he explains his predicament to Grace, Trevor reveals that when his wife suffered from temporal dysphasia (the only other person to do so), he drew up plans for a cure. While he never managed to implement the cure, he remembers the plans he created for it and Grace and the rest of his team race to realize the cure, despise Trevor's reluctance. During one of Trevor’s episodes, the team complete the cure and administer it to him, turning off all lights and cameras to prevent the Director from overwriting him. When Trevor wakes up, he expresses anger at his team that they did not respect his wishes to be overwritten. He turns the power back on but the Director does not overwrite him. | ||||||
| 32 | 8 | "Archive" | Amanda Tapping | Ken Kabatoff | December 14, 2018 | |
| MacLaren urges Yates to help him when a Traveler with a mission vital to humanity's survival arrives in the body of a just-captured serial killer. | ||||||
| 33 | 9 | "David" | Bryan C. Knight | Jason Whiting | December 14, 2018 | |
| The Faction sets off nuclear blasts that destroy all of the Travelers' archives outside the US. David left for dead by the Faction in the last surviving archive, is the only person who can disarm the nuclear device. He succeeds but is exposed to lethal radiation. Kat's suspicions about MacLaren, temporarily allayed, surge again and she throws him out – for her the marriage is over as she feels he is no longer the man she first met. Jeff tries to escape from an interrogation by 001; he is eventually found having been walled up. Marcy hopes the Director will send a Traveler medical team to save David but no help arrives. In the moment before he dies, David conveys a message from the Director: "Protocol Omega." | ||||||
| 34 | 10 | "Protocol Omega" | Amanda Tapping | Heath Affolter & Brad Wright | December 14, 2018 | |
| Protocol Omega means the Director is no longer intervening in this timeline as either the Traveler program succeeded in its mission or it has totally failed. When Jeff visits Marcy to offer his condolences, she realizes he has been overwritten by 001 and eventually kills herself to prevent him from obtaining Ellis' backdoor code from her brain. 001 uploads his consciousness to the internet, enabling him to exist in the future and ultimately gain control. He sends the consciousnesses of his followers into world leaders, provoking the Russians and Chinese to launch nuclear warheads against the US. Yates blames MacLaren and his team for hastening, rather than preventing, the end of mankind. MacLaren uses 001’s machine to send his mind back to the August 2001 day when his host first met Kat. He tells her to give her then-boyfriend a second chance, later drops off a warning to Burns about Helios, then on September 11 arrives at the same office high in the World Trade Center a few minutes before 001's expected arrival, meant to kick off the Traveler program. MacLaren sends an email, knowing the Director will find it, stating: "Traveler program will fail. Do not send 001." The original Marcy of the 21st, showing no signs of hydrocephalus and working as a nurse, happens to sit beside David on a bus, and he strikes up a conversation, renewing their seemingly inevitable connection for the third time. The Director decides that Traveler program version one has failed, and begins version two... | ||||||
Critical reception[]
The first season of Travelers received a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes based on nine reviews with an average rating of 8.0/10.[9] Neil Genzlinger, writing for The New York Times, described the first season as "tasty", and "enjoyable science fiction", with "some attention-grabbing flourishes and fine acting".[10] Hanh Nguyen, writing for IndieWire, described the series as "fun and freaky", finding the series' appeal "in how the core group of five travelers adjust to life in our present", noting the "human nature in the travelers".[11] Lawrence Devoe, of TheaterByte.com, called the series "tautly paced and suspenseful" with "well-developed characters", declaring that "Brad Wright has a real knack for creating futuristic series".[12] Evan Narcisse, reviewing the first five episodes of the first season for io9, appreciated the moral dilemmas offered by the series premise and the awkwardness presented by the characters' interactions with their hosts' friends, colleagues, lovers, or caretakers: "This is a superhero show in double disguise, offering up clever explorations of the secret identity concept that touch on the guilt and contortions that come with living a double life."[13] Netflix announced that the series was one of its "most devoured" series in 2017.[14]
Writing in Forbes, Merrill Barr said of the second season: "There's a lot to love about what Travelers brings to the table this season. The show has truly come into its own."[15] In reviewing the first two episodes of the second season, Nguyen of Indiewire called Travelers "an exploration of the human condition in all of its messy glory, [with] depictions of the most ingenious, yet disturbing means of time travel on screen".[16]
Barr of Forbes said the third season brought "a mixed approach as the show returns to its mission-of-the-week roots of season one, but this time while remixing the format with episodes of different substance from chapter to chapter. ... What we get this year from the show is the best example of what a television series should be."[17]
Netflix was heavily criticized for allegedly using real footage from the Lac-Megantic rail disaster in the film. The use of such footage was considered by many to be inappropriate for fictional content, and many sought to have the footage removed.[18]
References[]
- ^ "Travelers, starring Eric McCormack and created and written by Brad Wright, coming to Netflix" (Press release). Netflix. April 19, 2016.
- ^ Goldberg, Lesley (April 19, 2016). "Netflix nabs Eric McCormack time-travel drama from Stargate creator". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved April 24, 2016.
- ^ Ausiello, Michael (April 19, 2016). "Sci-fi thriller Travelers from Stargate SG-1 co-creator ordered to series at Netflix, Eric McCormack to star". TVLine. Retrieved April 24, 2016.
- ^ "Travelers Renewed For Season 3 At Netflix". The Hollywood Reporter. March 15, 2018.
- ^ @TRVLRSseries (November 13, 2018). "Travelers, Season 3 is coming to Netflix, December 14th. Until then, maintain Protocol 5" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ^ Petski, Denise (February 1, 2019). "'Travelers' Canceled After Three Seasons At Netflix". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved February 1, 2019.
- ^ Andreeva, Nellie (April 19, 2016). "Netflix picks up time travel drama series Travelers starring Eric McCormack". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved April 24, 2016.
- ^ @EricMcCormack (March 15, 2018). "IT'S OFFICIAL, MY FRIENDS" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ^ "Travelers: Season 1 (2016)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved December 5, 2018.
- ^ Genzlinger, Neil (December 28, 2016). "Review: In Travelers, some serious time-sharing". The New York Times. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
- ^ Nguyen, Hanh (December 23, 2016). "'Travelers' Review: Netflix's Fun and Freaky Time-Travel Series Makes Us Appreciate Our Present Time". IndieWire. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
- ^ Devoe, Lawrence D. (January 3, 2017). "Travelers: Season One (TheaterByte TV Series Review)". TheatreByte. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
- ^ Narcisse, Evan. "Netflix's Travelers Has the Most Ethically Messed-Up Time Travel I've Ever Seen". Gizmodo. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
- ^ "2017 on Netflix – A Year in Bingeing" (Press release). Netflix. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
- ^ Barr, Merrill (December 4, 2017). "'Travelers' Season 2 Review: Bigger And Better". Forbes. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
- ^ Nguyen, Hanh (December 26, 2017). "'Travelers' Season 2 Review: Come for the Time Travel Anarchy, but Stay for Enrico Colantoni's Mysterious New Character". IndieWire. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
- ^ Barr, Merrill (December 3, 2018). "'Travelers' Season 3 Review: Netflix's Anti-Prestige Drama Hit Continues To Shine". Forbes. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
- ^ "Netflix accused of using footage from Lac-Mégantic rail disaster in fictional shows". The Washington Post.
External links[]
- Official website
- Travelers at IMDb
Netflix original ended series (2012–2018) | |
|---|---|
| First released 2012–2014 |
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| First released 2015 |
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| First released 2016 |
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| First released 2017 |
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| First released 2018 |
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Categories:
- 2010s American science fiction television series
- 2010s American time travel television series
- 2016 American television series debuts
- 2018 American television series endings
- 2010s Canadian science fiction television series
- 2010s Canadian time travel television series
- 2016 Canadian television series debuts
- 2018 Canadian television series endings
- American time travel television series
- Canadian time travel television series
- English-language television shows
- Showcase (Canadian TV channel) original programming
- English-language Netflix original programming
- Television series by Corus Entertainment
- Television shows filmed in Vancouver
- Temporal war fiction