All three male members of the team are talking to prostitutes online and I am very confused. McLaren, in particular, has both a wife and a girlfriend. The man must be insatiable. Ooooh, it’s a mission. And the sex workers end up dead, because that’s what always happens on TV. Wouldn’t want to appear to condone prostitution. It has nothing to do with misogyny at all.

So, anyway, all three male members of the team are chatting up online prostitutes for purely platonic purposes. Philip is giving the prostitute a hard time about intimacy, but she just asks if he’s hard. Maybe Ray was on the right track when he asked if Philip had a boyfriend. Or maybe Philip isn’t interested in cybersex with a girl who’s about to die. McLaren gets told he’s “dad hot,” just to yank McLaren’s (and Eric MacCormack’s) chain a bit. Trevor gets lost in listening to his assignment’s happiest memory. Once again I wonder just how old a soul Trevor is.

The death countdown clock hits zero and the travelers enter the prostitutes without a hitch, but a minute later their feed is lost. The bomb that killed them wasn’t defused by a fourth traveler, Donner, like it was supposed to be, so the three women are all dead. Once again, I wonder why the director cuts these transitions so close.

Continue reading “Travelers Season 1 Episode 8: Donner Recap” →

Protocol 5: In the absence of a mission, resume your host’s life.

I’ve wondered before if any of what we’ve seen so far has been hallucinations, especially in Room 101. The characters definitely hallucinate in this episode. But, thankfully, no one puts their best sniper in the body of a frail old woman, then tells her to aim at the ground, before letting her and the chief engineer of their crucial mission die before the mission is completed. This is a much better episode than Helios 685, as long as you don’t mind character-driven episodes. I love character development and interaction, so I’m good.

The main characters aren’t so good. Their hosts’ lives feel mundane after working several exciting missions since their arrival. Marley is flat-out bored. Original Marcy didn’t have a very exciting life. Traveler Marcy is a doctor, so the obvious solution to her boredom is to do minor surgery on herself to remove her com, turn it into a Vagus Nerve Stimulator to help her seizure disorder, and then reinsert it under the skin in her chest. While bleeding all over David’s apartment. David is understandably disturbed when he gets home and finds Marcy looking like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. They have a long talk about their relationship and Marcy’s mental health, which somehow ends in David doing a spinal tap on Marcy. That guy is really in love, if an invasive medical procedure felt like a sane compromise in that situation.

Continue reading “Travelers Season 1 Episode 7: Protocol 5 Recap” →

The foreshadowed Helios event is upon us. Or, the travelers’ solution to the event is, anyway. It turns out that the helios event that’s been mentioned a couple of times in previous episodes is an asteroid that will hit Earth in 18 months. It causes an apocalyptic level of disruption and natural disasters. 21st century scientists won’t detect the asteroid for 2 more months. By that time it will be too late to stop it, so the travelers have cooked up an elaborate scheme involving a cult of old people literally drinking the poisoned kool aid in Canada, a giant roof top laser, a stoned chief engineer, and a clueless antimatter scientist. What could possibly go wrong?

Almost everything, of course, or that would be the end of the series, as the characters helpfully point out, just in case you thought this might work. Because if this works, the timeline will be drastically altered, and most, if not all, of the travelers will never be born. Might be a reason to sabotage the plan, hmm? Or for warring factions to form amongst the future people, some of whom may have traveled back to our time to try to maintain the timeline as it was meant to be.

Continue reading “Travelers Season 1 Episode 6: Helios 685 Recap” →