So, Vincent Ingram [spoiler]overwrote the psychologist's mind with his own and let his empty shell be overwritten by the Director.
Can anyone clarify what happened to Simon?
I thought he was just building a mind transfer machine for Ingram, but now I'm not sure if he built the Director AI ahead of schedule as well...[/spoiler]
For a moment i thought Ingram was going to transfer himself into his sons body.I was a little surprised when it turned out to be the psychologist.not sure why Simon was taken.
shareVincent loves his son, that's about the only thing he's been honest about. Protecting him from getting killed or overwritten by the Director to correct his father's violation of Protocol 4 (Do Not Reproduce) is a big part of what's motivating Vincent to do the things he's doing. He's killed a lot of people, including Amanda Tapping's character. His son is probably the only one he'd never harm.
As for Simon, they mentioned that he was the one who built the very first consciousness transfer machine in the future. Which means that, like Trevor, he's probably quite old. But that's why Vincent needed him. Despite his fragile mental state, if anybody could build another one without access to future tech it would be him. See my other reply below.
Nothing happened to Simon. Vincent's promise to restore his mind was a lie. He took Simon to finish the consciousness transfer device and then just left him there in the room all alone after using it. The guy served his purpose, right? Who cares?
Holy crap, they've been revealed to the whole world! Vincent is one crazy guy. How much you want to bet he's the founder of the Faction? So many questions. Why did the Director not intervene? Does it want the present day authorities to know about the Travelers? Is it going to undo all or part of what happened through some clever time loop in season 3? Or did Vincent actually outmaneuver the Director?
I don't understand why everyone was angry at the reveal. Katherine, okay. This man who isn't really her husband was pretending to be him, sleeping with her and everything. That I get. But Jeffrey? He's the one who killed the real Carly, the fact that she was replaced saved him from going to prison - where ex cops tend to have shorter than average lifespans. Where does he get off acting like the good guy? It should've occurred to David that his whole relationship was with the mysterious woman from the future, not the original Marcy (who was severely brain damaged). And you'd think the public would realize hey, these people stopped an asteroid from hitting the Earth, maybe they're not so bad ... and not refer to them as "terrorists". Unless of course Vincent tampered with the videos to remove that kind of stuff.
All I can say is, they better renew this show. That would officially be the worst series finale ever - but a fantastic jumping off point for season 3!
Totally agree, it would be a shame if they don't renew it for a third season, since I would really like to know how the writers resolve this.
sharei agree that they need a season 3. we have to know how it ends for the travelers.
share> How much you want to bet he's the founder of the Faction?
I thought this was a strange anomaly in the S2 narrative. Vincent and the Faction were never linked. How is that there were essentially two simultaneous rebel groups in operation that were unlinked? And why wasn't Vincent as much of a opponent of the Faction as the Travelers? What happened to Vincent during the viral pandemic? Why didn't Vincent become aware of the Faction and its quantum frame and try to steal it?
I kind of feel like the Vincent character/subplot was sort of invented to diverge the narrative into two unrelated parts in S2, when in S1 they were more likely to have been a single entity. I thought the end of the Faction part of the narrative was pretty obtuse and clumsy.
And do we see Vincent in future episodes, or does he basically take his money and his new identity and go to ground, withdrawing from conflict with the Travelers?
Vincent seems to have become "radicalized" because of the Director's constant pursuit. Maybe he's the Faction leader in the future. Using his consciousness transfer tech to take new bodies as the old ones age. In other words he is, and always has been, behind the Faction (even if his present day self doesn't know that yet). Hey, for all we know maybe there's also a 500 year old version of Vincent out there who sent himself back with the other Faction agents. The two versions, younger and older, could even meet at some point.
I don't personally understand why the Director didn't just give him other assignments after he survived the 9/11 attacks. What's the point of insisting on his death? And there aren't really two rebel groups. Some of those other goons were hired muscle, mercenaries working for Vincent - who if you remember made a fortune cashing in on his future knowledge.
You always have to keep in mind how complicated temporal war scenarios can get. We already know the future is in a constant state of flux. The Director may retain memories of every changed timeline through the entanglement aspects of quantum computing, but human beings don't have that ability. The Faction seems to have appeared after the Helios mission. Maybe the seismic shock caused by the asteroid impact produced weaknesses in the rock that eventually led to Shelter 41 collapsing. Without the impact, it survived and the Faction was able to get started there.
You could have a storyline where something drastically alters the timeline and suddenly there's no Director, people are coming back from a fascist regime a hundred years further in the future where the end is nearly upon them. So you have bad guys with even more advanced technology than the travelers. They fix their earlier mistake and restore the Director's timeline but the new adversaries who've already come through are still out there. Maybe the travelers and surviving Faction people have to reluctantly team up against them. Of course the Faction would be trying to gather intel to screw you over later on, so you couldn't completely trust them.
[ to be continued ... ]
Part of me wonders if the answers aren't just more mundane -- nobody expected this to be more than a miniseries, and the concepts weren't thought out by the writers.
I think it would have been more sensible to have the faction remain somewhat more mysterious, unitary entity and not go down the Vincent/Faction path the way they did.
Of course you can never be sure as a writer, director, or producer whether your show will continue beyond the season you're currently shooting. Goes with the territory. But Brad Wright (who was also Executive Producer of Stargate SG-1) said he's always wanted to do a time travel based series and the idea has been stewing in the back of his mind for years. I remember at least one two parter from SG-1 where the episodes were two seasons apart in reverse chronological order. Part 2 first, with Part 1 later being the actions that avoided the bad future from Part 2. Took a bit of advance planning.
He also mentioned Babylon 5 in one of his interviews, another show that did the same thing. Time travel and hints dropped in early seasons about the events of the later ones. That's because all the major plot milestones were set down in outline form before they even started filming the show.
From what I understand Brad has done something similar with Travelers. He outlined the beginning and the end, leaving a gap in the middle that can be as big as the show's popularity allows for. He also talked about the concept of a temporal war and how future reality would change (possibly in unforeseen ways) each time something was altered. So I'm not just speculating based on nothing. I have no idea if the show will follow my own ideas but that's the type of stuff I'd expect to see if it has a good long run.
I'd buy most of this, but it's easier to see someone with that kind of connections and that much invested in a project selling his project to a traditional Hollywood production company, and not to Showcase in Canada.
That his outlet was a Canadian premium channel and filled with mostly Canadian talent seems to indicate this was a really low budget affair with little chance of long-term success.
That being said, the whole concept is pretty unique for a science fiction show so it makes some sense that he would have written or at least outlined the concept pretty well.
Remember that they've partnered up with Netflix for this show. The main advantage to avoiding the Hollywood studios can be summed up in two words: creative control. Some of Syfy's programming (not the low rent ripoff of the week, the good stuff) also involves partnerships with one or more other networks, in Canada, Australia, or the UK. If you can get yourself a decent budget without their "help" then by all means ... stay away from the big studios.
Getting Netflix on board not only ensures you a global audience but they're well known for letting the creators of their programming follow their own vision instead of micromanaging the production. Big studios have been known to fire the very people who created a franchise in order to stick someone else in charge. Quality tends to fall sharply after that, as corporate executives start calling the shots and giving us what they think will entice viewers. Travelers doesn't have a huge blockbuster budget. The show isn't really about dazzling us with spectacular visual effects. There's some future tech, yes, and supposedly we're going to get a look at the future world itself next season, but situations and characters have always been more important than the eye candy.
[ ... continuing ]
Another idea would be to have something change and the Director suddenly be a power mad dictator who insists that humans worship it as a god. Newly arriving travelers would be religious fanatics. Among other things they'd want to "purify" the ranks of the travelers by eliminating those from past timelines who refuse to see the light and convert. You might have Philip and Trevor, along with other agents all around the world, using their advance knowledge of host candidates, running around trying to save every one of them so no more crazy travelers could be sent while they sorted things out. You might even have a group called "The Faction" which in the new timeline were the good guys fighting against the Director God's enslavement of humanity. And you'd have to watch out for evil messenger kids. One of them might suddenly push you from behind into traffic, or walk over to a nearby trash can, pull out the grenade that was left there for them, and toss it in front of your car as you drove down the street.
You can do just about anything with time travel. Incredibly convoluted situations can be created where viewers are sitting there wondering what the hell's happening. The best time travel stories eventually tie everything together, with a long sequence of quick flashbacks highlighting details that didn't seem obviously connected at the time, while one character lays the whole thing out. By the time they're done it all fits together and makes perfect sense. Not to mention being mind-blowing and very cool. When it's obvious the whole storyline was planned that way from day one, and not just invented as they went along, I like that a lot.