If you could go back in time to witness an historic event, which one would you chose?
Time travel is a common theme this television season. The idea itself is intriguing, but then adding interesting characters to the story makes it a compelling idea and worthy of viewing.
“Timeless” is NBC’s time travel offering to viewers. The show follows a group of three people – a history professor, a scientist, and a soldier – as they travel back to historic events while chasing a criminal intent on destroying America by changing history.
It seems one of the themes this TV season is time travel. NBC has a new drama, “Timeless,” that follows a team as they travel through time to chase a criminal intent on changing the past and thereby destroying America. The team is a history professor, a scientist, and a soldier. They are brought together for the sole purpose of tracking the criminal through time and stopping him. Recently the cast and executive producers spoke with the media about this new show.
When asked about whether it is a serialized or each episode can stand on its own, Executive Producer Shawn Ryan replied, “We’re going to have some ongoing stuff. But it’s important to Eric and I, and I know to NBC as well, that this not be the kind of show that falls down some serialized rabbit hole and sort of loses itself and turns on itself. This show is much more, I think, like -Back to the Future’ and ‘Quantum Leap’ than it is like ‘12 Monkeys’ in that way. Time travel is something that we use as a device to tell this pretty epic historical adventure show. And, yes, we’re going to have important personal things.” Those who watched TV in the mid 60s will remember “The Time Tunnel” was also an interesting time travel show that used several historic events in its episodes.
“We think one of the things that makes our show unique and different is that we are going back to the assassination of President Lincoln, to 1962 Las Vegas,” Ryan explained. “We’re going to go to the Alamo. We’re going to go to Watergate. We’re going to go to Germany during World War II. We’re going to the space race the day we landed on the moon. So those things, I think, essentially are the heart and core of our show.”
They manage to travel back quite far, yet Ryan acknowledged, “I don’t think we’re going back to Greek mythology. Right now, the farthest we go back at the moment is the 1750s, so that’s pretty far back. That’s during the French-Indian War. We have an episode that we’re planning that takes place then. So we’ll go pretty far back, but I don’t think we want to end up in medieval castles. I don’t think we want to end up in the Colosseum in Rome -yet.”
As viewers see with the pilot, which takes the team to the Hindenburg, once something is changed even slightly in the past, there are ripple effects to the present. The personal lives of the team members are impacted as they travel back and forth between the present and the past. And in the pilot one team member has a rude awakening about how changing the past can change the present.
Malcolm Barrett, Matt Lanter, and Abigail Spencer star in this riveting new drama that will definitely be a must-see this television season. It’s creative, thoughtful, emotional, and intriguing. “Timeless” premiers October 3 on NBC.
