Travelers (TV series)
Travelers is a Canadian-American science fiction television series created by Brad Wright, starring Eric McCormack, Mackenzie Porter, Jared Abrahamson, Nesta Cooper, Reilly Dolman, and Patrick Gilmore. The series was an international co-production between streaming service Netflix and Canadian specialty channel Showcase for its first two seasons, after which Netflix took over as its sole production company and exclusive worldwide distributor. The show premiered in Canada on October 17, 2016, and worldwide on December 23, 2016. A second season followed in 2017, and a third season was released on December 14, 2018. In February 2019, McCormack said that the series had been cancelled.
Premise
In a post-apocalyptic future, thousands of special operatives are tasked with preventing the collapse of society. These operatives, known as "travelers", have their consciousnesses sent back in time and transferred into the "host" body of present-day individuals who would otherwise be moments from death, to minimize unexpected impact on the time line. The transfer requires the exact location of the target, made possible by 21st century smartphones and GPS, providing time, elevation, latitude, and longitude coordinates that are archived for use in the future.Trained using social media and public records concerning their hosts, each traveler must maintain the host's pre-existing life as cover for the rest of their lives, while carrying out missions in teams of five. These missions are dictated by the Director in the future who monitors the timeline. Travelers aim to save the world from a series of catastrophic events. One method by which the Director communicates with travelers is via prepubescent children used as messengers; unlike adults, any child can safely be animated for a few minutes by the Director and then released from control without risk of killing them.
Travelers are required to behave according to certain protocols to protect the timeline:
- The mission comes first.
- Leave the future in the past.
- Don't take a life; don't save a life, unless otherwise directed. Do not interfere.
- Do not reproduce.
- In the absence of direction, maintain your host's life.
- Do not communicate with other known travelers outside of your team unless sanctioned by the Director.
- Protocol Alpha temporarily suspends all other protocols when a critical mission must be completed at all costs.
- Protocol Epsilon can be invoked when traveler archives are threatened.
- Protocol Omega permanently suspends all other protocols when the Director abandons the travelers because the future has either been fixed or deemed impossible to fix.
Cast
Main
- Eric McCormack as Grant MacLaren, the team's leader, who assumes the life of a married FBI special agent
- MacKenzie Porter as Marcy Warton, the team's medic, who assumes the life of an intellectually disabled woman
- Nesta Cooper as Carly Shannon, the team's tactician, who assumes the life of a stay-at-home single mother
- Jared Abrahamson as Trevor Holden, the team's engineer and one of the oldest humans ever, who assumes the life of a high school athlete
- Reilly Dolman as Philip Pearson, the team's historian, who assumes the life of a college-aged heroin addict
- Patrick Gilmore as David Mailer, Marcy's social worker and later romantic interest
Recurring
- J. Alex Brinson as Jeff Conniker, Carly's abusive police officer ex-boyfriend and the father of her son, who later becomes suspicious and is overwritten as Traveler 5416, then captured and overwritten by 001
- Leah Cairns as Kathryn "Kat" MacLaren, Grant's wife who works as an interior designer
- Enrico Colantoni as Vincent Ingram, the first traveler whose host was supposed to die on September 11, 2001
- Chad Krowchuk as Simon, Traveler 0004, a specialist who set up the travelers' communications system in the 21st, then was deceived into building consciousness transfer technology for Vincent
- Arnold Pinnock as Walt Forbes, MacLaren's partner at the FBI, later a member of the Faction posing as Traveler 4112 and, subsequently, Traveler 4991
- Jennifer Spence as Grace Day, Trevor's high school counselor and later Traveler 0027, a programmer who helped create the Director
- Ian Tracey as Ray Green, Philip's lawyer and later friend, a compulsive gambler
- Kimberley Sustad as Joanne Yates, MacLaren's new FBI partner who is later assigned by the FBI director to act as liaison between the FBI and the Traveler program
Guest
Introduced in season 1
- David Lewis as Major Gleason, a hotheaded military officer
- Kyra Zagorsky as Dr. Delaney, a brilliant scientist who developed a method for collecting and storing antimatter
- Kristine Cofsky as Victoria Boyd, Traveler 3185, who assumes the life of a police officer
- Giacomo Baessato as Private Wilson, a soldier who works for Gleason
- Alyssa Lynch as Rene Bellamy, a high school student and Trevor's girlfriend
- Tom McBeath as Ellis, Traveler 0014, a programmer who assumes the life of a farmer
- Eileen Pedde as Mom, a traveler who assumes the role of a mother in a family of four
- Yasmeene Ball as Charlotte, a misfire traveler historian; later a traveler assassin
- Glynis Davies as Jacqueline, a representative of Child Protective Services
- Melanie Papalia as Beth, an FBI analyst working for MacLaren
- Karin Konoval as Bloom, Traveler 0117, a high ranking traveler engineer
- Louis Ferreira as Rick Hall, a jaded traveler team leader
- Douglas Chapman as Luca Shun, Traveler 2587, a member of Hall's team
- Jason Gray-Stanford as Aaron Donner, Traveler 4022, a bomber
- William MacDonald as Gary Holden, Trevor's father
- Teryl Rothery as Patricia Holden, Trevor's mother
- Dylan Playfair as Kyle, a friend of Trevor, later historian Traveler 5532
- Gerard Plunkett as Ted Bishop, a congressman
- Matthew Kevin Anderson as Derek, Traveler D13, a traveler doctor assigned to save MacLaren
Introduced in season 2
- Stephen Lobo as Agent Wakefield, a faction member posing as a traveler who is later overwritten by the Director
- Paloma Kwiatkowski as Abigail Paris, a young woman that Trevor befriends
- Lee Majdoub as Dr. Barker, a doctor with a romantic interest in Marcy
- Sunita Prasad as Blair, David's girlfriend
- Melissa Roxburgh as Carrie, Travelers 5001–5007, a skydiver assigned to prevent the assassination of MacLaren's team
- Amanda Tapping as Katrina Perrow, Traveler 001's psychologist, who is later overwritten by 001
- Stephanie Bennett as Jenny, Traveler 4514, a traveler assigned to help Philip with his heroin addiction
- Josh Blacker as Agent Callahan, a Traveler who assumes the life of an FBI agent
Introduced in season 3
- Benjamin Ratner as Ivon Teslia, a computer engineer responsible for the creation of the artificial intelligence Ilsa
- Rebecca Soichet as the voice of Ilsa, the AI hosting the Director in the 21st century
- Magda Apanowicz as Dawn, a Faction traveler loyal to Traveler 001
- Christopher Heyerdahl as Andrew Graeme, a mathematician whose host is discovered to be a serial killer
- Veronika Hadrava as Katrina, an Archivist
- Karen Holness as Samantha Burns, a physicist responsible for designing the singularity engine
Episodes
Season 1 (2016–17)
The first season premiered on Netflix on December 23, 2016, before its final two episodes aired on Showcase.Season 2 (2017)
Season 3 (2018)
Critical reception
The first season of Travelers received a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes based on nine reviews with an average rating of 8.0/10. Neil Genzlinger, writing for The New York Times, described the first season as "tasty", and "enjoyable science fiction", with "some attention-grabbing flourishes and fine acting". Hanh Nguyen, writing for IndieWire, described the series as "fun and freaky", finding the series' appeal "in how the core group of five travelers adjust to life in our present", noting the "human nature in the travelers". Lawrence Devoe, of TheaterByte.com, called the series "tautly paced and suspenseful" with "well-developed characters", declaring that "Brad Wright has a real knack for creating futuristic series". Evan Narcisse, reviewing the first five episodes of the first season for io9, appreciated the moral dilemmas offered by the series premise and the awkwardness presented by the characters' interactions with their hosts' friends, colleagues, lovers, or caretakers: "This is a superhero show in double disguise, offering up clever explorations of the secret identity concept that touch on the guilt and contortions that come with living a double life." Netflix announced that the series was one of its "most devoured" series in 2017.Writing in Forbes, Merrill Barr said of the second season: "There's a lot to love about what Travelers brings to the table this season. The show has truly come into its own." In reviewing the first two episodes of the second season, Nguyen of Indiewire called Travelers "an exploration of the human condition in all of its messy glory, depictions of the most ingenious, yet disturbing means of time travel on screen".
Barr of Forbes said the third season brought "a mixed approach as the show returns to its mission-of-the-week roots of season one, but this time while remixing the format with episodes of different substance from chapter to chapter.... What we get this year from the show is the best example of what a television series should be."