Travelers (TV Series) Helios 685 (2016) User Reviews

Cinema Quality

[A_Different_Drummer · 8/10 · 2 March 2017]

First a note for IMDb readers of the far future.

When this review was penned in 2017 the expression "cinema quality" was a compliment.

However if the current inverse ratio of quality between TV and cinema continues, by the time you, citizens of the future, read this, cinema quality will be a pejorative.

Speaking of the future, this low-budget little gem is rapidly becoming a guilty pleasure, a perfect blend of story and delivery, keeps you glued.

Eric McCormack deserves a role this good and I am glad he found one.

The only flaw in this sode is that the script "reveals" that, if the mission succeeds, the Travelers are no longer needed. So any viewer above the age of four will immediately conclude that, being a series, something will go wrong.

Watch the performance of Karin Konoval in particular as the cranky cancer patient taken over by a hi-level traveler. Her performance is so memorable for a moment I thought she was channelling the late great Gloria Foster who portrayed Oracle in the Matrix.

Great TV. (gulp) Cinema quality.

Good episode

[gabro1986 · 7/10 · 10 November 2020]

... But unfortunately 233.256.13.1 is NOT an IP Address!

And then, there were none!

[cjonesas · 7/10 · 6 April 2022]

Episode 6: A much better episode with some interesting "science-fiction" stuff. The pacing was better, the vibe and atmosphere were cooler, the acting as nonsense as before, though engaging and the ending, well, as anti-climatic as it gets.

Despite all that, it is becoming more interesting, if they don't ruin it.

Let down by shoddy writing

[danielmjholland-519-797372 · 3/10 · 26 October 2017]

There all too sadly often comes a point at which the writing of an excellent show $h17$ the bed. I'm not talking jumping the shark bad, but still something which is so mind boggling and dumb that it kills all immersion.

These guys are supremely talented and stop at nothing to achieve the mission. It makes sense therefore that they have protocols to prevent them from going too far. We saw in an earlier episode what happens to you when you break these protocols so it is entirely within the character of the crew to keep them.

The problem is when they simultaneously keep and break these same protocols and do it is such an incredibly dumb way that it breaks immersion.

+++++ SPOILERS +++++ stop reading now

When the military show up the crew know that if the laser fires then the military will all be killed because they are so close. This is seen as unfortunate but acceptable. It therefore makes absolutely zero sense that they wouldn't just shoot the military people when they tried to enter the complex.

They basically have a choice: kill the military as best possible to prevent them entering the building and stopping the laser, or don't kill them and hope that they don't make it in time to stop the laser in which case they will be killed by the blast. So they are dead either way.

But in order to create false drama the military are allowed into the building, they kill the only person left to trigger it (more on this in a second), just to create this dumb scene where the soldiers are taken over one by one.

And the crew fleeing as well is a real problem because if it works they know that the future will change in such a way that they almost certainly won't be there (the final line of dialogue confirms this). So if they are going to be dead from never having existed why do they need to escape? Either way on success they will be dead. So by leaving all they do is jeopardise the mission by leaving one person alone against a squad of military people.

It is just such excruciatingly bad writing. And it totally ruins an otherwise great episode with some amazing acting and effects. In fact it gives away the ending that the mission is a failure because the only way that the writing has any purpose is to keep the crew alive and that only happens if it fails. So the whole episode writes itself into a hole.

It won't be remembered as the episode where the rapture gang see a dog and save the world. It won't be remembered as the episode where Karin Konoval steals the show with an incredible performance. It will be remembered as the episode where everyone turned out to be a moron.

A great series that I really love, but boy did they mess up this one.

Possibly the dumbest episode of any TV series, ever.

[dubzau · 1/10 · 8 January 2018]

The pilot had a lot of promise. I mean there was the usual "looking the other way" on a few silly details, but that's OK. Then the slide began. By the end of episode 6 it was impossible to look the other way. It had reached peak stupidity. We'd already seen people who had been sent back in time to SAVE THE WORLD! acting like juvenile brats. Like the one who was sent back into a junky's body but couldn't be bothered going on methadone (or some futuristic cure for addiction) even tho the FUTURE OF THE WORLD! was at stake. And if that wasn't bad enough, he became obsessed with saving a few lives, which, due to the butterfly effect, could jeopardise the mission and the FUTURE OF THE WORLD! Being from the future, he knew that some apocalypse had kill billions and brought the human race to the brink of extinction (funnily enough, that's the whole premise of the series). OK, fine you say, junkies don't think too clearly - see above about trying to kick his addiction (and BTW, how is it possible to know the time of someone's death to the exact second, but not that he was a junky? I know, suspend disbelief - sigh). But then came Episode 6. And Oh My God, what an episode! It started well enough. A bunch of travelers took the bodies of some apocalyptic suicide cult members. We learned soon enough that they were expert marksmen. Now, you would think that their marksmanship skills were in some way important - I mean, why go to the bother of sending them back in time if they couldn't hit a bus at point blank range, right? It turns out their skill was in missing targets! You'd think any idiot could miss a target, but no, apparently it takes futuristic skills. But, I hear you say, they had to miss by just a bit so as not to kill anyone (hold that thought) but just to delay them. Two points: 1. the people who were being delayed were going to die anyway if the mission succeeded, along with the shooters from the future, so why not minimise losses by shooting them all, and then getting the hell out of there? 2. Once the targets had worked out that they weren't actually being targeted, which took all of a few seconds, the jig was up and they could proceed with complete impunity. As idiotic plans go, they don't get a lot dumber. I guess it was some government committee of the future that devised the plan, so maybe it's quite plausible. Why, why, WHY do writers think we are all complete idiots and won't notice their stupid, pathetic excuses for a plot? Since this series gets a lot of 10/10 reviews and was renewed for a second season, I guess it just proves that the great H.L. Menken was right when he said that nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the public.

They dropped the ball on this one.

[ChristopherX · 4/10 · 8 October 2018]

Did they have a different production manager on this one? There are some blaring mistakes in this episode.

So far the worst episode of Travelers

[cvlipari · 2/10 · 7 August 2019]

Bad acting. Bad dialogues. Everything just doesn't make sense. Why does the world need such stupid guys to come from the future to save us? The whole episode was a waste of the viewers' time.

If the ending doesn't piss you off...?

[HeIILu · 1/10 · 17 December 2023]

This is marked as the highest rated episode. I just can't believe it. I've decided to ignore most of these thoughtless errors, still giving it a chance. This episode disappoints me so much.

The military is shooting travelers (who are risking their lives for humanity, btw) to the ground. Blondie asks permission to use deadly force, (despite how their team has already shot military personnel...) And she's denied permission. What the??....

They leave one single person to finish their heroic mission... Only to stand alone in front of armed soldiers, while ignoring their orders, so she's ...... shot dead! Who could have prevented that? Nobody, apparently.

......This was the mission so important that everyone was prepared to die for it to work out.

Remember how we've seen travelers taking over an entire cult, at the same exact moment? Well, this time they have so much faith in themselves that they'd rather jump into ONE single soldier at a time. All while ignoring that ONE GUY killing everybody.

.......Just why? Since he was standing a few steps further away?

....I guess their legs were so tired that their brains malfunctioned.

......Eventually a traveller does take his body, which proves that nothing was stopping them from doing that a little earlier.

Worst episode so far

[sahel-sharifi · 1/10 · 17 January 2021]

Directors making the dumbest inconsistent decisions.

Just terrible

[csakben · 3/10 · 10 February 2021]

I watched the prev 5 epispdes in one run and they were pretty good but coming to this mess of an episode like the whole crew forgot to act and the shooting was terrible. I mean they rorgot to make the ejection of the rounds and inconsistemcies in the sound, the muzzle effect are all over the place and looking like a 2010s over edited youtube video.

Terrible, terrible, terrible writing...

[LeatherCajun · 1/10 · 26 April 2021]

I really don't understand how and why writing on a show like this gets this bad. This story would get a failing grade in an 11th grade writing class for illogic and inconsistency. I had been really enjoying the show up to this...but the stupid stand off at the laser as mentioned by other reviewers was just SO SO DUMB.