Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Episodes: 16
Duration: 45 min per episode
Timeless (DVD) – Series Review
We all know that science has advanced quite a lot over the last few decades. Not only on medical ground, science evolved immensely, but also engineering, for example, accomplished a lot. There is only one thing though that science hasn’t been able to control so far: time. But just imagine one moment: what if it could? One thing is for sure: it’s dangerous as hell, and life as we know it will never be the same again.
Connor Mason (Paterson Joseph) is the founder and owner of a scientific company named Mason Industries. At Mason Industries, a team of the brightest engineers built – believe it or not – a time machine. As if that’s not already enough to grasp, the time machine gets stolen by a thug named Garcia Flynn (Goran Visjic), who managed to somehow get through the high security of Mason Industries. The consequences are beyond imaginable, as being able to go back in time, also means that history can be changed, which can have devastating effects. That’s why Lucy Preston (Abigail Spencer), a professor in American history, and Wyatt Logan (Matt Lander), a soldier who served in Afghanistan, are contacted immediately. With the help of Rufus Carlin (Malcolm Barrett), who works for Mason Industries and the only one left capable of piloting a time machine, they’ll have to go after Flynn, traveling back in time themselves with a prototype of the mothership Flynn has stolen. As said before, Rufus will be the pilot of the lifeboat (that’s how they call this prototype), while Wyatt will have to take Flynn out as soon as possible. In the meantime, Lucy’s job is to make sure history isn’t changed too much, so they can still come home to an America they know.
Every episode more or less follows the same pattern: Flynn takes the mothership to a specific time in (American) history, and the trio go after him in the lifeboat to try and stop him, or at least keep history from being changed completely. This way, they meet Abraham Lincoln, Bonny & Clyde, Al Capone and many more. They are at NASA when Neill Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon, and prevent the Watergate scandal from becoming an even bigger one. Basically, they travel through the entire American history, to specific historically important events, to prevent Flynn from changing them.
The time traveling storyline is quite a fun starting point for a series. History is so vast that the possibilities for new episodes seem endless, without much danger of them getting dull. The story and characters don’t show too much depth though. It is, for example, not very convincing the way Flynn steals the mothership, and also the amount of luck Lucy, Wyatt and Rufus have, and the fact that Lucy recognizes every important historic person they meet, be it in the eighteenth, nineteenth or twentieth century, make it all feel less true. Nonetheless, there is enough adventure throughout the series, making you forget these few flaws.
The acting is pretty decent from all of the lead actors. Abigail Spencer and Matt Lanter show they have great chemistry between them, but we found that it was mostly Malcolm Barrett who stole the show, with his slightly clumsy but very righteous character Rufus.
When it comes to extra features, there isn’t much to say. There are only a few deleted scenes and some bloopers added to this DVD release. Truth be told, we didn’t need much more extra content. Seeing the series isn’t too heavy to watch, the bloopers were a fun extension of our watch. A making of etc. would have been nice of course, but we didn’t really miss it either.
Conclusion
Timeless is a series with quite an interesting starting point, as traveling back to history creates an immense variety of options. Each episode takes you to a different moment in time, and there’s enough adventure to keep things interesting. Most of the episodes follow a fixed format, which becomes a bit predictable after a while, but overall, we really did enjoy watching the series.
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