As this coming fall season quickly approaches, I can’t help but notice the number of new time travel shows that are set to air. Time travel seems to be a hot trend this year and while time travel shows can be great, they can also be difficult to execute and pull off properly. FOX is bringing their time travel comedy Making History while ABC is introducing their time travel drama Time After Time.
Meanwhile, NBC is bringing us Timeless, centering around a team of unlikely heroes who are forced to chase and stop a criminal who has stolen a time travel device into the past with the intent to change history and destroy America as we know it. While it might sound a tad cheesy at first, the trailer is anything but and showcases gun fights, realistic time travel mechanics, dynamic characters and most importantly accurate historical pieces and real historical events.
Timeless introduces an unlikely trio of heroes made up of Lucy played by Abigail Spencer, Rufus played by Malcolm Barrett, and Wyatt played by Matt Lanter. Goran Visnjic plays the villain who steals the time travel device and begins to wreck havoc through history.
Many of the participants in the roundtable had seen the pilot episode of Timeless so the cast and executive producers discuss moments from the pilot briefly throughout the interview. While we at Nerdophiles have not seen the pilot yet, we have heard great things from other outlets and I for one have high hopes for this show.
Timeless executive producers Shawn Ryan and Eric Kripke share a lot about the creative direction and plans for their show. Kripke believes that the show is a “swashbuckling historical adventure,” rather than a “brain twitching futuristic time travel show.”
Kripke claims that every week we will see our iconic heroes chase this master criminal through different historical periods and not only stop him, but attempt to set right the historical moments he may have changed.
Shawn Ryan talks about maintaining the rules of time travel and how crazy their writing rooms and story boards look like. I’m impressed how attuned Ryan and Kripke are to the time travel world and I look forward to their clean version of time travel.
The executive producers also discuss the diversity of the cast and their desire to acknowledge the reality of history. While they don’t “want to over play it, they do want to highlight certain aspects of racial identity and racism.” It sounds like they aren’t going to sugarcoat the visceral reality of our history. Barret plays Malcolm, an African American character who may find himself in difficult situations because of his race.
Kripke talks about balancing humor with history, claiming so much of history we know is “rich white dude’s history” and that the addition of a woman and African American “gives them a door into aspects of history that aren’t always told.”
We also had the opportunity to sit down with a few actors of the show, including villain Goran Visnjic and heroes Matt Lanter and Malcolm Barrett. Many of them talk about topics covered by Ryan and Kripke. Goran, Barrett and Visnjic talk about how their characters will have to deal with the repercussions of changing the past on the future.
Unfortunately the cast has only shot the first episode and read through a few scripts of the first few episodes, so they couldn’t share much in terms of spoilers. Check out our videos for the full roundtable interviews and for more details regarding each individual character.
Don’t miss the premiere of Timeless this fall on Monday, October 3!
English