- Title: Timeless – Pilot
- IMDb: link
NBC’s new time-traveling sci-fi series stars Abigail Spencer as a world-renown historian, Matt Lanter as a U.S. soldier, and Malcolm Barrett as a computer tech who are thrown together on a makeshift team to track down a villain (Goran Visnjic) who has stolen a time machine and headed into the past to change history. Armed with only their wits, Lucy’s (Spencer) knowledge of history, and their own ship which is linked to the stolen time-sphere, the three begin their journey in 1937 where Flynn (Visnjic) targets the destruction of the Hindenburg for his own purposes.
Despite being a bit goofy, the “Pilot” episode is enjoyable and has some nice twists as our heroes are surprised to see the villain’s plan is more complicated than they initially give him credit for. The first episode makes several allusions to Lucy’s connection to Flynn, suggesting the more she learns about what he’s doing the more she might agree with his plans, and multiple times the show offers a look at what I can only guess is a diary of Lucy’s time-traveling which Flynn is using for his own purposes.
Shantel VanSanten has a memorable role as someone Lucy and Wyatt (Lanter) befriend in the past. While her end makes sense for the story I would have loved to have seen her stick around as a fourth member of the team, throwing a bit of a wild card by adding a woman out of time to the mix (plus I’ve missed her since she left The Flash). And only one episode in the show sets the rules for its views of time travel as Flynn’s changes create ripples that change Lucy’s life in ways she is unwilling to accept. Not only is she now onboard with the mission to preserve history but now our historian also has a personal stake in Flynn’s defeat and stopping him from changing the timeline any further.
