MovieChat Forums > Travelers (2016) Discussion > Mass exodus?

Mass exodus?

posted 8 years ago by wwoods-3
9 replies | jump to latest

Now that Helios has been diverted, isn't life in the 21st century likely to look attractive to the future world? Changing the timeline so their dystopia doesn't happen is all very well, but the cost is wiping themselves out of existence. I can see a lot of people saying, "Screw that -- let's escape, and make new lives in the past!" It's hard to find potential hosts if you're restricted to those who died alone but in well defined circumstances. It's a lot easier if you're willing to aim at an adequately-documented, target-rich location and take pot luck...

"Feb 6; Houston, Tex. -- Authorities are still baffled by what has been tagged 'Superbowl Syndrome'. Partway through yesterday's game, thousands of people were observed by nearby spectators to collapse in a painful fit. Though not physically damaged otherwise, they suffered serious amnesia, apparently losing almost all knowledge of their personal lives. Experts from the CDC put out assurances that whatever the cause, it is not infectious."

[–] gswan 8 years ago

Now that Helios has been diverted, isn't life in the 21st century likely to look attractive to the future world? Changing the timeline so their dystopia doesn't happen is all very well, but the cost is wiping themselves out of existence. I can see a lot of people saying, "Screw that -- let's escape, and make new lives in the past!" It's hard to find potential hosts if you're restricted to those who died alone but in well defined circumstances. It's a lot easier if you're willing to aim at an adequately-documented, target-rich location and take pot luck...

In an early episode one of the other team members asks Marcy why the Director always used prepubescent children to bring them messages from the future.

She explained that children could be taken over, temporarily, and then released, so they shake it off and walk away. There is a second kind of epileptic seizure, from the well-known Grand Mal Seizure. It is called a Petit Mal Seizure, or sometimes an absence seizure. Those having the seizure don't have convulsions. Instead they experience a period of lost time, while to observers they merely seem lost in thought. I imagine that is what the children feel, once they are released.

Marcy explained that a mature brain, can't have its consciousness taken over, either temporarily, or permanently, unless the target is dying, or about to die. Okay, this does not fully make sense, but it is the show's official exposition. It is not consistent with thousands of Travelers taking over all kinds of 21st century bodies in a stadium.

In the episode where the plane is crashing the Director takes over a flight attendant, to admonish our hero he is seriously deviating from his mission. After ten seconds or so the flight attendant then goes into convulsions, froths at the mouth, presumably dying. She is an example of what Marcy warned about. Adults die if a future consciousness is projected into them when they weren't just about to die. The F.A. is going to die, but in a minute or two, which is presumably too far in the future.

Mind you, the faction takes over that post puberty adolescent girl, and turns her into an assassin. She didn't seem to be dying.

[–] wwoods-3 8 years ago

Marcy explained that a mature brain, can't have its consciousness taken over, either temporarily, or permanently, unless the target is dying, or about to die. Okay, this does not fully make sense, but it is the show's official exposition.

Temporarily, sure, but permanently? I don't remember this, and it's certainly not consistent with what we've seen. My understanding was that they (normally) don't, not that they can't.

Original!MacLaren wasn't about to die, because the team made sure he wouldn't fall down the elevator shaft. The congressman wan't going to die once he'd survived the plane crash. Grace wasn't about to die after Trevor kidnapped her. The little girl wasn't about to die -- because her father got taken over before he drove the car off the garage!

[–] gswan 8 years ago

Temporarily, sure, but permanently? I don't remember this...

Trust me, she does say this.

and it's certainly not consistent with what we've seen.

I do like this show, but it is not as consistent as I would like, and makes errors in science, and fact.

My understanding was that they (normally) don't, not that they can't.

If we see adults taken over, in season 2, who weren't dying, or seconds away from dying, I would call that retconning. I call the faction assassin girl an instance of poor script control.

Original!MacLaren wasn't about to die, because the team made sure he wouldn't fall down the elevator shaft.

I agree this is a concept weakness in the series. They didn't have to have his death be from a fall. They could have rewritten that scene. I am sorry they didn't.

Grace wasn't about to die after Trevor kidnapped her.

What I saw happen was: (1) Trevor's kidnapping prevented her being killed, on schedule, by falling construction material; (2) But she slugged Trevor, ran to the car, got it started, and because she was in a panic, she raced away, and drove too fast for her to steer properly, since her wrists were still bound by a zip tie; (3) I saw her die in a crash, because the zip ties caused her to lose control of the car.

She didn't have to race away. She could have retained control of the car is she had gone really slowly. All she had to do was drive away faster than Trevor could run.

The congressman wasn't going to die once he'd survived the plane crash.

This is another aspect of the weakness you noted with McLaren, which I agree is a weakness. How come they can take over 21st Century McLaren, when his team prevented him dying in the fall? Congressman Bishop was taken over by a Traveler at the time he would have died, if McLaren hadn't saved him. (Well actually, for dramatic purposes, the held back his death just long enough for the team to race up to the capsule -- about 20 seconds. I don't think we were supposed to notice...)

It is like someone on the writing team is a mystic, who believes in souls, and that we all have a fated time, when our number is up. It is like they think the Director can project a Traveler to replace any 21st Century person whose number is up.

The little girl wasn't about to die -- because her father got taken over before he drove the car off the garage!

I am not sure who you are talking about? Is this the teenager who has a Faction assassin projected into her, even though she did not seem to be dying?

Some people said that the teen girl was part of a family where all members were supposed to be taken over by Travelers, but one projection failed. If a writer thought that she could be taken over, because her number was up, back when the rest of her family was taken over, that would be disappointing. She didn't die, so she should have gotten a reprieve. But it would explain why she killed her parents, if those were her parents. If they were muggles, she could just run away. But, if they were Travelers, they could have put the word out on the Traveler network.

[–] wwoods-3 8 years ago

Trust me, [Marcy] does say this.

Do you remember which episode? It sounds like the sort of thing she might say to David, to soften the news about Original!Marcy's death.

Grace wasn't about to die after Trevor kidnapped her.
What I saw happen was: (1) Trevor's kidnapping prevented her being killed, on schedule, by falling construction material; (2) But she slugged Trevor, ran to the car, got it started, and because she was in a panic, she raced away, and drove too fast for her to steer properly, since her wrists were still bound by a zip tie; (3) I saw her die in a crash, because the zip ties caused her to lose control of the car.

What I remember: she made a 911 call as she was driving away, which put her on the grid. The car swerved off the road because she lost control from the agony when she got taken. She wasn't going fast; she was barely injured, despite no seat belt, and the airbag didn't pop.
Trevor: Grace!
Grace: 0115, are you out of your mind? You do not get to change history on your own!
Trevor: [stammers] But I saved her. How could you possibly....
Grace: She made a phone call. GPS, voice recognition.
Oh, great, I'm bleeding. Been here less than a minute, and already my body's damaged.
http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=travelers-2016&episode=s01e11

Well actually, for dramatic purposes, the held back [Bishop's] death just long enough for the team to race up to the capsule -- about 20 seconds. I don't think we were supposed to notice...

Whereas I think it was supposed to show that if they choose to, they can take hosts any old time, provided they have a fix. The show set up this big rescue for the congressman ... and then after the Travelers succeed, they kill him themselves.

The little girl wasn't about to die -- because her father got taken over before he drove the car off the garage!
I am not sure who you are talking about? Is this the teenager who has a Faction assassin projected into her, even though she did not seem to be dying?

Some people said that the teen girl was part of a family where all members were supposed to be taken over by Travelers, but one projection failed.

Yasmeene Ball is credited with two episodes as Charlotte, so yeah.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm6236385/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t25

If a writer thought that she could be taken over, because her number was up, back when the rest of her family was taken over, that would be disappointing. She didn't die, so she should have gotten a reprieve. But it would explain why she killed her parents, if those were her parents.

Her grandparents, I think.

[–] gswan 8 years ago

Do you remember which episode?

Not episode 1.1, before episode 1.6 (Helios 685).

She made a phone call. GPS, voice recognition.

Okay. I yield.

Yasmeene Ball is credited with two episodes as Charlotte, so yeah. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm6236385/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t25

She is a spooky looking little thing, isn't she?.

[–] Sluggr-3 8 years ago

What show are some of you watching? Grace was driving 2 mph when she started to scream. The car veering off the road was due to her consciousness being taken over. The car wasn't wrecked, she hurt her head by slumping into the steering wheel.

A candidate is chosen based upon a report of their death in the historical record. Once you are on that list, you are fair game. You don't need to be in a state of dying for this to happen, eg MacClaren or Bloom. They stopped Mac before he fell down the shaft, and Bloom declined to take her overdose of narcos. For an adult, the transfer has to be all or nothing. If an adult is used for a message delivery, it kills them, therefore they only do that in someone scheduled to die anyway (woman on plane). There aren't as many inconsistencies here as some imagine.

Charlotte was listed as dead in the historical record. Therefore, she was a candidate, even though it misfired the first time. They still had her data and Charlotte 1.0 simply became Charlotte 2.0 a couple of weeks later.

My Chimp DNA seems to have lost its password temporarily. Sluggr-2

[–] SrEditor 8 years ago

Now that we know from Marcy that a version 2.0 is possible, this makes more sense.

[–] chrisjdel 8 years ago

There is a grey area, but hosts are not be supposed to be taken outside of a fairly narrow window surrounding their death. Yeah. Everything the Traveler program does is morally questionable. Many of the hosts are saved from their death first. Then, a short time later, they're overwritten and killed. When you come down to it this is a straightforward matter of sacrificing the few to save the many. No one's life is significantly shortened by interference from the future. Call it rationalizing if you will, but that doesn't make it untrue.

Still there are rules they're supposed to follow, even if they get bent on occasion. The Faction broke them outright by putting a Traveler into the misfire girl. She was supposed to be safe at that point. But they don't recognize the Director's rules and feel no obligation to follow them. The woman who took Grace was seriously pushing the boundaries of protocol - perhaps the fact that she hadn't yet interacted with anyone besides a Traveler made it technically within bounds. Trevor clearly felt she had cheated though, and was quite angry. One assumes he knows the ins and outs of the rules pretty well and had good reason to regard that as a cheat. Of course, having committed an even more serious violation he was in no position to be preaching proper procedure.

[–] pauli_gomez 8 years ago

I think you don't understand how the travel works.

Every host is saved before they died because they need the body alive. So teams save the host before their recorded death time and then kill the original counciousness by rewriting it.

Any adult receiving a travel conciousness will die, because they have not children brains. That is why it was not possible to save Trevor teacher. Once she received the traveler conciousness her original mind was gone (except for the very, very hidden things, that is why the traveler inside MacLaren could have some memories of the original MacLaren. But it was not usual). Same with the messages, the adult in the plane could transmit a message but he would have died anyway because he was on a crashing plane.

So, the Director only send messages through people who is supposed to die.

Charlotte was supposed to be dead, only it misfired. But as her real self is supposed to be dead, she could be a host for a traveler at any time, and same with Trevor's teacher, only they actually prefer not to because on the future they don't have the exact location of everyone at even given time. That is why I suppose they took Grace when the GPS located her and Charlotte was at her homw, which was in a place the future would know.