Connor Mason is a kind of Elon Musk character – inventor, entrepreneur, he has done the car; now he is thinking bigger. Not space, but time: he has built a time machine that looks a bit like an eye, without telling the (US) government.
Trouble is, it gets stolen, by a terrorist called Garcia Flynn (eastern European, former NSA asset, Nazi sympathies, killed his family, you know the type). Flynn joyrides it back to 6 May 1937 and Manchester, New Jersey – time and place of the Hindenburg crash, of course. The event is recreated – dramatically and not unconvincingly, complete with famous commentary from the radio journalist Herbert Morrison – in the opening sequence of Timeless (E4).
It could be dangerous to travel to a well-known disaster for the first episode of a series the success of which may be influenced by critics and viewers looking around for metaphors to grab hold of. Anyway, what is this Flynn up to? Is he going to save the Hindenburg, and all those lives (actually, only 36 died; most people got out alive, which is amazing, when you look at it)?
Oh, no. He’s going to wait until the big dirigible’s return journey, when there are more important people on board – a UN co-founder, the mastermind of the D-day landings and the inventor of the helicopter – and blow it up then. And, in doing so, he will have a more profound effect on the course of history. Imagine it, an uncooperative world dominated by the far right and racial hatred … Oh, maybe it wouldn’t be that different. But there would be no helicopters. Imagine, life without helicopters!
Anyway, back to the present. As it happens, Mason has an earlier prototype model of his time machine lying around. It looks like an eye that’s not very well, but just about works, if you can stand the bumpy ride. There is room for three on board – academic Lucy Preston, soldier Wyatt Logan and engineer Rufus Carlin, for history, action and driving the time machine, respectively.
Preston is not immediately keen, understandably. But the lady from Homeland Security has a persuasive line. “I think someone who loved history would want to save it,” she says (yes, some of the dialogue is a little clunky). And it turns out that Preston – and the other two, as well – have incentives for a little fiddling with the past to change the present, although more on personal than historical levels: sick mums, dead wives, that kind of thing. Oh, and evil Flynn is doing his bad stuff using what appears to be a notebook of Preston’s, although she hasn’t yet written it, as a kind of manual.
Got it? Follow that time machine, basically. In this time machine. Why can’t they just go back a little way and shoot Flynn, you might ask. Because you can’t go back to a time when you already exist: it’s just one of the rules of time travel here, OK? Plus, it is bad for the fabric of reality.
It is certainly not a new idea: time travel, with a little tampering with the past, perhaps, to preserve or to alter the present. Ask anyone from HG Wells via a whole bunch of doctors (Emmett “Doc” Brown in Back to the Future, Dr Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap, The Doctor) to Bill & Ted. In fact, the makers of Timeless are being sued for copyright infringement by the makers of a Spanish series called El Ministerio del Tiempo, which follows the adventures of a threesome who travel to the past. But hey, it’s called Timeless – what do you expect, something new and original?
What it is, though, is a fun ride. Bumpy maybe, certainly bonkers, but undertaken with good humour. “This is Dr Dre, I’m Nurse Jackie,” Preston tells a security man, in order to get past a barrier to save the Hindenburg. Carlin, being black, suffers all sorts of disgraceful ignominies, such as having to sit in the back of the bus, and being called boy by a policeman. Hahaha, revolting racism, back in the day! How much better is it now, you might ask, if you were looking for hidden depths to Timeless that almost certainly aren’t there.
It’s certainly not a disaster, and there are other questions I want – and might get – answers to. Such as what happened to Preston’s sister, who sadly no longer exists when they return to the present after a not wholly successful first mission. What is “Rittenhouse” that the Homeland lady denies any knowledge of? Will the relationships and dynamics between the three time-travellers develop and deepen as they journey on?
I’m going along, too, for now. Where to next? The assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Cool!
