12 Monkeys 1.10 concludes with Jones telling Cole he has just one more jump - the one he's about to make to Tokyo in 1987 - before the ravages of time travel take their ultimate toll on him. That makes this last jump especially important - though, as is the case with all of time travel, something could happen in the past which will not make Cole's jump his last.He'll have a lot of to contend with, a lot more than usual, with Ramse, now a deadly sworn enemy to Cole and what he wants to accomplish, back in 1987, too. This is a good move for our story - the two friends facing off as enemies in an attempt to change or not change the past - and the story of how Ramse got there, which was told in 1.10, was pretty good, too,
The episode starts with Ramse attempting to burn the time travel facility, with the machine now back up to speed due to Jones's ruthless heroics in prior episodes. He gets the blaze going, but it burns the bulletin board on the wall, not the time machine. Again, a good move for the larger narrative - the machine not being burned - but the resistance of the machine to scorching flames should have been a little more clear before Ramse lit the match - after all, it's not the machine that is invulnerable to the heat or whatever that energy of time travel, it's the human being who is time traveling, and that's not a very complete immunity at that, with Cole worn down to his last jump.
Ramse does come back, near the end of the episode, to finish the job - that is, destroy the time travel machine - but that doesn't happen, either. And, indeed, Ramse instead uses the device to go back to 1987 to make sure Cole is stopped back then. In one of the best parts of the episode, Ramse earlier has run into Jennifer Goines, much older, having lived into 2043, not time traveled to it, and she gives Ramse crucial information about what he must do. This scene was important, not only because we get to see Jennifer in a more interesting role that just a raving lunatic, but because it gives Ramse enough knowledge to make him a worthy adversary of Cole and Jones.
So the action moves to Tokyo, with Ramse already there and Cole, I assume, to arrive imminently, and the Witness also on hand, with Ramse at least primed to look for him, having been alerted to his presence and his role in the plague by Jennifer.
A fine kettle of time traveled fish for next week and the concluding episodes to follow this season.
See also this Italian review, w/reference to Hawking and my story, "The Chronology Protection Case"
And see also 12 Monkeys series on SyFy: Paradox Prominent and Excellent ...12 Monkeys 1.2: Your Future, His Past ... 12 Monkeys 1.3: Paradoxes, Lies, and Near Intersections ... 12 Monkeys 1.4: "Uneasy Math" ... 12 Monkeys 1.5: The Heart of the Matter ... 12 Monkeys 1.6: Can I Get a Witness? ... 12 Monkeys 1.7: Snowden, the Virus, and the Irresistible ... 12 Monkeys 1.8: Intelligent Vaccine vs. Time Travel ... 12 Monkeys 1.9: Shelley, Keats, and Time Travel
podcast review of Predestination and 12 Monkeys
three time travel novels: the Sierra Waters trilogy
What if the Soviet Union survived into the 21st century,
and Eddie and the Cruisers were a real band?
The Chronology Protection Case movie
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#SFWApro
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