#philip was originally a 50 year old lesbian. to me. marcy was a 37 year old bi man.

[ronon-dex]

really not sure how I feel about the ending to travelers, or the show as a whole. it has such a fascinating concept and builds an incredibly rich world off of that, but there are so many pitfalls to how it's constructed. I've never seen such a rollercoaster of quality that's SO rapid. i'm talking 10 to 1 in the space of a minute and back again, over three entire seasons. insane. LONG POST INCOMING

good stuff:

the direction is amazing. visually, the show is beautiful, and sets up shots that are consistently creative and designed to depict the emotion the scene is supposed to evoke, which I've never seen done so artistically. we'll see half of marcy's face when she's lying. we'll see kathryn filtered through soft light when maclaren looks at her. blood and sunlight is shown in stark contrast. action scenes have moments of intense stillness in the middle, which make the violence so much more shocking. philip's addictive eye-drop medication is always shown dripping down his face like tears. standout eps for stuff like this are '17 Minutes', and 'Protocol 3'.

fairly anti-copaganda for the most part. it's rare to see.

the acting is wonderful. jared abrahamson (trevor), reilly dolman (philip) and jennifer spence (grace) especially blew me away. trevor's dual energy of sprightly teenager and wise old man had to be very difficult to get right, but it was done perfectly. when he stares down his host's abuser in 'Update' his eyes were nearly black; you could imagine a 400 year old man and the rage he must have accumulated through centuries of hardened existence. philip was a character who wasn't allowed to live up to his potential, and I will be repeating this, but the scenes he had were devoured. he had an addiction to multiple substances, he was mostly ignored by his team despite being the most crucial member, and he had not a single friend outside of his fellow travelers. the agony of all of this was portrayed to perfection. grace fulfilled a role that is normally given to a paunchy white guy, an annoying genius who gets away with inappropriate behaviour because they're clever. [the rodney mckay effect, one of many stargate echoes in this show, thank you brad wright.] she was absolutely hilarious and brought light to a very grim show at times.

the traveler missions were excellent. the pacing in these scenes was great, the plots were generally airtight, and the awareness of the audience's intelligence was thrilling to witness. i figured out mysteries exactly when I was supposed to, a few minutes before the fallout - so you see how the dominoes will fall, and you see how nobody could have caught them. SO on theme for this show. the one moment that did catch me off guard was maclaren's birthday party in s1. oh my god I was so mad at the gotcha jumpscare, it annoyed the hell out of me lmao

bad stuff:

my main gripe. this show is called travelers. this show spends only about 50% of its runtime with solely travelers. the rest of the time is spent with david (marcy's boyfriend who doesn't know she is from the future and possessing the real marcy's body), kathryn (who also doesn't know her husband, maclaren, is not her husband) and jeff (an abusive alcoholic who consistently tries to beat up his ex girlfriend, who is also now a traveler.) these people completely take over the show. they have multi-season arcs and entire episodes revolving around their problems with marcy/maclaren/carly, often domestic. attempts to give philip and trevor stories outside traveler missions are abandoned sometime around s2. when these civilian characters were abducted together in s2 I literally started calling them the Avengers of Being Annoying. I've said it before but imagine how awful the show leverage would've been if 20 minutes out of every episode sophie, nate and eliot left to talk to their individual spouses about their relationship problems.

there wasn't even a serious confrontation about the consent issues surrounding the takeover of someone's life - especially assuming a sexual or emotional relationship with that person's loved ones. like that should have been a huge ethical dilemma removed from simply possessing a previously dying body. like why are you now fucking your host's wife like it's ok??? you're not him and she doesn't know you????

it was grim. it was also very clear that david was a favourite, some writer had a crush on marcy's actress, and some other writer was apologising to his wife through the maclaren/kathryn storyline. or maybe I'm just a hater. idk

this show had an amazingly compelling narrative, but it sacrificed a great deal when it comes to character stories. these characters were established very well, and built up over season 1 to have great depth and rich histories... and then we never explored most of it. we don't know the original genders of philip, maclaren or marcy. we don't know about the families of philip or maclaren. we don't know if the main 5 knew each other well or just trained before coming to the past. the future is almost a complete mystery and that was what made it cool in season 1; by the finale? fucking annoying.

these characters' most emotional moments and deepest relationships happened with the 21st century people they emotionally abducted. idk why. maclaren had no reason to stay with his host's wife. trevor could have freed himself from high school sooner. carly (with philip's help) could have gotten rid of jeff very quickly. I don't know why they insisted on this aspect of the show when the main cast were so underdeveloped and remained so for 3 seasons. this, more than anything, made the finale seem very hollow. the main 5 were coworkers, and apart from philip, and occasionally trevor, marcy and carly, they weren't that invested in each other's wellbeing outside of their efficiency as agents. this was not the found family I signed up for.

basically:

7/10 show for me. very visually gorgeous, as mentioned, and besides the kathryn and david of it all, very tightly written. thanks for saving the world, I suppose. I'm going to go look at the sky.

#travelers netflix #netflix travelers #philip pearson #trevor holden #grant maclaren #marcy warton #carly shannon #traveler 3468 if I ever see you it's on sight. you should have stayed with carly. it's insane that you didn't #philip was originally a 50 year old lesbian. to me. marcy was a 37 year old bi man. #maclaren was originally a straight guy but he was also 25. this explains a lot when you think about it. THINK about it #the fact that they never explored the mess that would come from changing genders or having a sexuality that does not align with your host's #utterly tedious. white man writer's syndrome. they can't imagine the world not catering to them. #the way philip talks about his host 'this young man'............. like........... #i know the number sequence makes it so marcy's the youngest but i need it to be maclaren. he is very much a little shit #imagine exploring the differences between yours and your host's bodies.......... hall could've been an 18 year old girl. #boyd could've been a 45 year old man with a wife and kids. WE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING COOL WITH THAT. #imagine marcy and david's relationship but marcy tells him she's a gay guy from the future. a conversation for the ages. and we missed that #going to travel to the past and tell brad wright to do this or there will be a plague outbreak in 2020. back in a sec #(meant to say this show REEKED of stargate universe. even the close up shots like I WAS THERE. I WAS IN THE TRENCHES)