Timeless – SciFi for the people who don’t like SciFi

Not watching Timeless because it’s a scifi show and that’s not your scene? I have some good news for you: you won’t even notice the science-fiction elements. I promise.

Timeless is technically a genre known as soft science fiction. By including Lucy, a history professor, who also holds a degree in anthropology, by hauling Rufus through American history, by bringing Wyatt along for the ride, the show takes the edge off the technical side of time travel. In fact, apart from a few small lines by Rufus, and a brief introduction to time travel by Mason in the pilot episode, the hows and whys of the lifeboat and mothership are quietly swept away. Culture, history, sociology, gender, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, ethics, even archaeology, all quickly become more important than the engineering technicalities.

The lifeboat and mothership may be time machines, but it’s the characters who drive the story back to, and through, the past.

What’s interesting is not how they get there, but how changed they are by these travels – and what changes they themselves make to the past and the present.
Nothing is static, and they don’t make the same mistakes. They learn. They grow. They begin to trust and form bonds, and they forgive.
And they do it together.

Timeless is an intelligent, fast-paced, character-driven journey through history, and if you’re not watching it because you don’t like scifi, I challenge you to go to NBC.com or Hulu right now. Your new TV addiction is waiting to be binged.