Travelers Season 1 Episode 10: Kathryn Recap

The team has loaded Kathryn into the van after last episode’s plane crash and is getting her, and themselves, out of Dodge. They can’t be linked to the crash site in any of the news reports. As they speed away, Philip and Trevor restrain Kathryn while Marcy sedates her. Marcy calls McLaren’s cell phone. One of the EMTs answers it and tells them to deal with the Kathryn situation, then go to headquarters. The team takes Kathryn home, gives her a memory inhibitor, and puts her to bed. She’ll forget most of the last day. Philip and Trevor pour out several bottles of wine to make it look like Kathryn and McLaren got blackout drunk the night before to explain her headache and memory loss. They head off to headquarters.

There’s a medical team at headquarters, with a complete medical suite set up in the garage. The head doctor introduces himself as D13. D for doctor, or, Derek. They are an elite team that usually works on heads of state, but also treats whoever else the director sends them to, world-wide. Told you McLaren was one of the director’s favorites. 😉 Mclaren’s injuries are so extensive that even Future Medicine™ might not be able to save him. He’ll need an organ transplant, so someone will have to volunteer to be the donor who grows the new organ. Medical nanites will do most of the other work. Trevor ends up being the donor to grow the organ. It’s an extremely painful process. McLaren also needs multiple surgeries.

McLaren dreams as he’s unconscious on the operating table. His dreams are the last few memories from original McLaren’s life still in his brain. They are all memories of how much he loved Kat, and about them losing a baby, when Kat almost died. The memories confuse traveler McLaren, because they feel like they’re his. Bet they confuse him after he’s awake, as well.

Kathryn wakes up from her dose of Future Roofies. She texts McLaren about the night before. Philip responds, since McLaren is unconscious. He also texts with Forbes, pretending to be McLaren. Philip goes to the airport to pick up McLaren’s car. The security guards see him and assume he’s stealing it. Philip doesn’t have a license, so he ends up incapacitating the guards and running. They alert the FBI, which puts Forbes on the case. Forbes and Kathryn start texting, and realize neither has seen McLaren all day. They become worried. Forbes tracks the car and identifies Philip from the dashcam. A chase ensues. Carly manages to get to Philip before the police find him.

Kathryn and Forbes compare notes on McLaren. They agree he’s different lately, better at certain things. Forbes notes he’s worse at squash. Kathryn implies he’s better at sex. We see through McLaren’s dreams that there were problems in their marriage before he became a traveler, but they were devoted to each other. Kathryn is concerned that McLaren has disappeared again, but Forbes insists it’s not unusual for him to go off the radar for a few hours.

McLaren is still near death after a day of surgeries and nanites working throughout his body. The artificial heart that Trevor grew for him is transplanted just in time. But Beth and Forbes have also discovered the garage and gotten a warrant. Philip does what he can to stall Forbes to give the nanites time to heal McLaren from the surgery. By the time Forbes gets there, McLaren is sitting up, interrogating Philip, who’s pretending to be a hacker that was trying to teach McLaren a lesson. The medical suite is hidden. Forbes is angry at McLaren for ignoring both him and Kat all day, but he’s fooled. McLaren is sent back to bed to finish healing.

Trevor asks for nanites to help him heal from his surgery to remove the extra heart he grew for McLaren, but Derek tells him the nanites are available by directive only. He tells Marcy he wishes he could help her. The director threw everything they had at saving McLaren, but can’t spare a bit for Marcy, when the medical team and equipment are already there? Cold. Derek and his team are off to save a genocidal dictator, who, he says, is presumably better than the alternative.

McLaren is healed up and arrives home. Kat is pissed off and has turned off her phone. She barely speaks to him before slamming the bathroom door in his face so she can take a bath alone. No back washing required. There’s trouble in paradise, kids.

 

Observations and Conspiracy Theories:

-The travelers don’t seem to know much about alcohol. Trevor asks how much it would take to black out the previous day, and Philip says he doesn’t know, he only uses heroin. They also seemed surprised by the taste of the champagne in Protocol 5. At the time it seemed like it was just cheap champagne, but this makes me wonder. Then again, alcohol is so easy to make. But if they live underground, and don’t have fresh produce, maybe it’s not available in large quantities. They don’t have access to meat, either, after all, and Trevor, old as he is, had never eaten corn.

-Future Medicine™, like Future Tech™, is very advanced, yet the people are very deprived. This, once again, suggests a class system, or a society that’s reached its peak, fallen, and is trying to maintain the last vestiges of its previous greatness. We won’t know for sure until we get more future back story. (You have no idea how much I love writing phrases like that.)

-The memory inhibitor will make Kathryn forget the last day. Does that day include Jeff’s visit? Will he come talk to her again, and she won’t know what he’s talking about?

-I’m pretty disgusted with Kathryn’s treatment as a character. When we met her she was a mature, intelligent, happily married woman. Now, she’s being cheated on, gaslighted by both her husband and the team, drugged without her consent, and has been turned into a stalker. Did it never occur to anyone that she might be willing to protect the husband who’d just risked his life to save hers? I’m willing to believe the travelers grew up in a harsh, abusive environment and don’t have the same standards of right and wrong as we do. But why does every female character on this show end up abused or helpless or both? McLaren’s assistant Beth, Grace the school counselor, and Carly’s case worker are okay so far, but it’s probably only a matter of time before the writers need to use them as victims. Original Trevor was apparently coercing his girlfriend into shoplifting and being a bully. Trevor’s mother is verbally abused and controlled by her husband and clearly wasn’t treated well by original Trevor. Blue was killed before she completed her life’s work. Dr. Delaney was kidnapped and had her work stolen by Gleason. Aside from Philip’s heroin addiction, which he is overcoming using his own inner strength, the male characters are not put in the same positions of victimhood, abuse, and helplessness. Trevor is a minor, who has to listen to his parents, but he can work to be emancipated, or wait the short period of time until he’s 18. It’s a normal teenage situation, not Marcy’s fatal illness, Carly’s inescapable abuse, or the gaslighting Kathryn is being subjected to.

– One last conspiracy theory (for this episode): the security guard that caught Philip at the airport could have been a traveler sent by the director to cause a rift between McLaren and Kat, or a traveler sent by the opposition to expose McLaren (I realize I’ve made the opposition up completely at this point, other than an implication made by Luka, but my version’s more fun, isn’t it?)

 

Travelers Protocols: