The show started with no one. In Episode 2, Dan's wife Katie had to accept that his stories about his absences were more than psychotic illusions when he disappeared from a plane in which both were passengers. Last week in Episode 3, Dan's boss Hugh may have begun to get a clue, when Dan came up with a nickname for Hugh that he hadn't heard in years.
And tonight, in Episode 4, Dan's brother Jack (winningly played by Reed Diamond), is in a men's room with Dan, when Dan goes missing. The window is closed, Dan didn't fall in, so ...
Part of the set-up of the show is that no one sees Dan vanish - he disappears when cohorts step out of the room, or turn their backs - which results in his wife and brother taking longer to realize that Dan is really disappearing.
But now the menage-a-quatre of Dan, Livia, Kate, and Jack is finally beginning to crystalize into awareness of what Dan is doing, and Livia has apparently been doing for a while. I predict that before the season is over, all four will be players in time, working together and at cross-purposes in some kind of plot that is central to the series. (I'd like to say that I traveled a little forward in time, and saw the end of this season, but ... you wouldn't believe me, would you....)
In the meantime, the missions that Dan is sucked into each week are ok, but I find the impact on Dan's life in 2007, and his relationship with Livia, far more interesting. The plot construct of Dan missing in 2007 for the amount of time he is in the past can't help but have interesting, provocative consequences for the 2007 action.
Most time travel stories don't go this route, and instead have the time traveler returning exactly to the time - and place - from which he or she left. That's what I did in my Loose Ends short story series, and in The Plot to Save Socrates. Of course, in those and like stories, the traveler initiates the travel, and can to some extent specify arrival times. This is unlike Dan, who gets yanked into the past with no warning, other than a headache.
One other touch I very much enjoyed in tonight's show. Dan contacts a scientist in 2007 who is an expert in tachyons - hypothetical faster-than-light particles which could play a role in building a time-travel machine, were such a device possible. Dan speaks to the scientist in 2007 ... and the scientist unexpectedly calls Dan back ... in the past, in 1998 ....
Such touches are the spice of time travel tales - and this one is likely the beginning of an important new thread - bring 'em on!
More details on "Loose Ends" and The Plot to Save Socrates
Reviews of other Journeyman episodes: 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8 ... 9. Dan Unravels His Present ... 10. Jack's In! ... 11. Livia's Beau//Save the Newspaper, Save the World ... 12. The Perfect Time Travel Story ... Lucky 13
8-minute podcast analysis of Journeyman
The Plot to Save Socrates
"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book
5 comments:
oh my god. i loved the show tonight. same as you, i am intrigued , and more drawn to the enigmatic livia, and dan's relationship. but that scientist calling dan in the past....its driving me crazy. how did he know about dan in the past when dan only spoke to him for the first time in the present?
I am guessing because he knew his father...
There is one thing that is really bothering me though. There doesn't seem to be a butterfly effect in all this when you would suspect there would be.
Where are the ripples? I want to see the wider net of these changed events in his modern life.
"i'm guessing because he knew his father..."
i don't see the connection. think about this... let's consider 2007 as the past ok? and let's say you have Dan's abilities...Let's say in 2014 YOU are going to talk to a person named JOHN DOE, and definitely, it is your first time talking to him. THEN, you transport back in the past... secs later... JOHN DOE calls you.
We do know that JOHN DOE does not know you in 2007 because you only met him (or are supposed to meet him) in 2014. It does not follow our law of CAUSALITY...but the keypoint is what Dan was asking...Tachyons, w/c i dunno nothing about but somewhat explains how the scientist was able to call him in the past
Good comments, folks.
To second anonymous: you may be on to something. Greg Benford - a physicist and science fiction writer (and friend) - has a good novel, Timescape, in which scientists communicate to the past via tachyons. So our scientist in Journeyman could indeed have been using such a device to contact Dan in the past.
I'm also thinking that this scientist may know a lot more about the "project" that Dan (and Livia) are unintentionally a part of (though we don't know how much Livia knows about what is really going on).
Matt: Yeah, so far we've seen few ripples. The lawyer surviving last week had some good effects - but nothing major.
What is a majorana neutrino?
Six years ago, a few thought an electron neutrino might be a tachyon. Can anything be a tachyon or take on the qualities of a tachyon?
Can either tachyon condensation or a coupling capture an electron or obtain a charge?
Is it possible that any of the above create a charge tipped vortex? Only unstable from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?
If tachyon coupling can occur with ie a neutrino, may it also with Higgs or any other particle pertaining to the 4 fund. forces?
If so, can the chroniton-like tendencies capture a muon in decay (releasing an electron neutrino, with a coupling phenonemon?
Is it possible that any of the above create a charge tipped vortex?
May one charge-tipped vortex "space displace" with an opposite charge vortex?
Could vortices be selected or manipulated by EM specra or a tachyon impeded < planke constant black hole?
Could instantaneous, spectral, tachyon-coupled extension vortices take travelers or probes by space-displacement through magnetic anomalies like Oregon’s ‘Mystery Spot”, through sunspots, other stars, black holes, galaxies and planets with corresponding fields and spectra?
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