Tag: travelers

Travelers Season 1 Episode 2: Protocol 6 Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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This episode opens seconds before the pilot ended, just as Mclaren is being taken over by a traveler. Marcy injects him below the left ear with a coms device. She’s already injected the rest of the team. McLaren is impressed that Trevor found the time to build coms as an after school project. Traveler Trevor is a hard worker, unlike original flavor Trevor. The police arrive in response to original McLaren’s call for backup. The lead officer is a traveler who hands off a package to Mclaren, and tells him to “Go save the world!” Carly lets the police know her police officer baby daddy is locked on the roof.

Meanwhile, the military is forcibly removing antimatter from a lab in the city. They’re taking it to an undisclosed location outside of town for undisclosed purposes. Their containment unit begins to fail, which means the antimatter will explode. An explosion this close to the city will destroy it. This is what happened in the travelers timeline. Their first mission is to seize and contain the antimatter, then hand it off safely to another team.

McLaren and Carly are on stake out duty, watching for the convoy with the antimatter. We learn that they are a couple, who are very much in love, but in this time McLaren has been married for 11 years and Carly has a baby. Both will have to keep playing those roles for the time being. Cue the relationship angst.

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Travelers: New Sci Fi Series from Netflix: Pilot Recap/Review

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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Fair  warning: Stargate SG-1 was a big deal in our house while my kids were growing up. We watched every single one of its 214 episodes, both made-for-TV movies, and the spin-off series Stargate Atlantis. I am predisposed to like anything Brad Wright does. Travelers was created by Brad Wright.

And I really do like the pilot of Travelers, even without knowing Brad Wright was involved. Pilots are tricky things. They often feel forced, since they have to cram character introductions, world building, and a plot line that hooks viewers enough to make them want more, into their 42 minute time frame. Travelers manages to avoid making the viewer feel like piles of exposition are being thrown at us all at once. The action and the characters keep moving, and we find out enough about each character and their lives by being shown their environment and the people around them, not just told. I feel like I understand the basic premise of the story, but there’s still so much I don’t know, which is where you want to be after a pilot.

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The Man in the High Castle Season 2 Episodes 3, 4 & 5 Recap: Nebulous Loyalties in a Tense Game of Chess

~ Metacrone

Travelers, Escalation, & Duck and Cover

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As we move toward the midpoint of the season, it feels like almost everyone is a pawn being moved around the game board by someone. Some players are even being fought over by two or more sides. Frank and Ed (especially Ed) are being watched by the Japanese and the Western Resistance. Juliana is being torn in pieces by the Reich and the Eastern Resistance, by the Smith family, and by George Dixon. Joe’s loyalties are divided by his father and Smith, and a bit by Rita, who may or may not have connections to the resistance. Smith is caught between his loyalty to his family and the Reich. He may also now have a deal with Kido. Tagomi is caught between his desire to save his own reality and the pull to stay with his lost family in the alternate reality. Both Smith and Tagomi are being pressured by Inpector Kido and, ultimately, the General. The General’s motives seem clear, but Kido is too complex to put down to simple motives. His loyalty is to the law, the Empire, and his family, but we’ve seen him exercise his own judgement about what’s best for the Japanese people in the long run before. He appears to be operating on his own again, doing whatever he feels is necessary to accomplish his goal.

The Western Resistance still seems far from benign to me. They manipulated Frank into joining them. Connell withheld Juliana’s letter and made Frank believe she’d betrayed him instead. Lem and Sarah both know Frank’s being lied to, yet they’re going along with it. Sarah’s even sleeping with Frank. Was the seduction part of the plan? Connell is a sociopath who is willing to achieve his goals through any means necessary. A romance with Sarah would further cement Frank’s commitment to them. I hope that’s it’s not true, but Sarah seems to have lost everything and to be just as ruthless as Connell.

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