Article first published as TIMELESS Review on Seat42F.
NBC, which does sometimes do some light
sci-fi drama, has a new genre series this fall called TIMELESS. A gang
of armed men break into a laboratory and steal a fully functioning time
machine, intent to travel into our past and screw things up. Luckily,
the facility still has their more basic prototype and assembles a small
team to go after them and save history. Will they succeed, or is
everything we know about to be changed?
Abigail Spencer (Rectify) stars as Lucy
Preston, a history professor caring for an ailing mother who has just
been denied tenure. She, along with an elite soldier, Wyatt Logan (Matt
Lanter, 90210), are recruited by Agent Denise Christopher (Sakina
Jaffrey, House of Cards) to chase the villain, Garcia Flynn (Goran
Visnjic, ER), across the ages. Scientist Rufus Carlin (Malcolm Barrett,
Better Off Ted) is sent along with them because he knows how to use the
equipment, even though there are some justifiable concerns that his
darker skin color may be a hindrance before civil rights kicked in.
I really want to like TIMELESS. It’s not
like any other show currently airing, especially not on a broadcast
network. (It is admittedly sort of like DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, but
since that is about superheroes, I think they’re different enough.) It
has a cool concept and a decent cast. It definitely has mythology,
backstory, and a serial arc, meaning it won’t just be a case-of-the-week
series. For these reasons, it deserves a little consideration.
The make-up of the group makes sense,
the scientist, the historian, and the soldier. The motivation of the bad
guy is still hazy, but what has been said about it is interesting and
begs further exploration. The rules for time travel as followed in
TIMELESS also seem to be well thought out. I didn’t find any huge,
obvious plot holes.
But there’s a general sense of
shallowness to the whole program. The characters do have families and
personal lives that play into their actions, but in a very superficial
way. We’re told something about that character, and that immediately
influences the plot in a very straight-forward way. There isn’t a lot of
wondering who we can trust, or if there’s something someone isn’t
talking about that might get in the way down the road. It’s kind of what
you see is what you get.
There is also definitely the impression
that while there be an ongoing story, a large portion of each hour will
be devoted to action adventure and fist fights. Not bloody stuff, mind
you; this series seems to take a family-friendly, tame approach. For
example, when one character briefly wields a knife, I didn’t feel for a
second she’d be able to swipe and draw blood with it, and indeed, she
does not. So there’s a sanitized type of violence that feels more at
home on television in the previous century than today.
Even the twists later in the hour, while
interesting, seem easy to screw up. There is one very obvious one and
one less so, but given the lack of depth present at the start, and the
direct way the story unfolds, I don’t have confidence that these things
are going to pan out in a cool way. I know I’m being vague, and part of
that is to protect readers from plot spoilers, but part of it is because
this complaint is more about an overall feeling I get while watching,
rather than details I can point to to back up my judgement.
Overall, I like TIMELESS, but I don’t
love it. My sense is that it will be like Revolution, with a cool
premise that doesn’t live up to what viewers want from it.
TIMELESS premieres Monday, October 3rd at 10/9c on NBC.
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