The Journeyman Brain Trust Experiment

[sinanju]

So my wife and I have been sampling a lot of new tv shows. Currently we've got almost more passes on our Tivo than we can keep up with. That will change soon as shows fail either our standards or their respective networks' standards and get the axe. One of the shows we've watched is Journeyman.

It's the tale of a San Francisco newspaperman who finds himself taking brief (well, relatively--they can last for hours) involuntary trips into the past. We've seen two episodes now and it appears that his trips each episode revolve around the life of someone in the past at various crucial moments in their history. Yeah, kinda like Quantum Leap in that he's supposed to "fix" things, apparently. But he's got even less idea than Sam Beckett how or why this happening to him. snippy and I enjoy the show, but...

But we've been science fiction readers for decades. This is science fiction* for the masses. As is common when watching television sci fi, we're several steps ahead of the nominal hero. We've been there, done that, got the t-shirt and wore it to a con. So it's always slightly frustrating to watch the hero flailing around trying to grasp concepts that strike us as--at best--strikingly obvious, if not terribly cliched. In the second episode our hero is told by another time traveler that he needs to acquire keep on his person at all times some old currency and a couple of other things.

Well...duh! Can't spend 2007 cash in 1985 or 1991 or 1995 or whenever he happens to be this time around. That was one of the first things that occurred to me. I would hope he'd have figured it out himself, but that she mentioned it to him at all seemed like a good sign. Maybe the writers were thinking things through. But no--that was simply set-up for a later scene in which he tried to pay a cabbie for a ride with a twenty from 2007. The cabbie, of course, thought it was counterfeit "and not a good counterfeit at that" and sicced a nearby cop on him. Our hero got away, but it was close.

*sigh*

Our hero has also stolen a set of clothes from his younger self's apartment when he time traveled while asleep in bed in just his underwear. I would have liked to see him pull out that set of clothes and remark, "I always wondered what happened to this shirt and these pants..." as he put them on. But, alas, no such luck. Which is doubly troubling because his time travel has all happened (so far) in the same city where he currently lives. He has repeatedly barely missed running into his younger self and the younger versions of his wife, his brother and his then-now-late girlfriend.

The possibilities for all kinds of Bill and Ted** shenanigans is just begging to be taken advantage of. I'd like to see them start showing that his whole live is full of things that are the result of his time travel adventures: situations resolved because of objects or actions he manipulated so they were just where they needed to be/happen, odd conversations that become clear in retrospect, even friends or family who take his "crazy" notion of time travel a lot more calmly and seriously than one would expect...for reasons that become clear as the series progresses.

But those things will happen only if the writers are sharp--and at this point I don't think they're putting that kind of thought into it.

Enough of that. The challenge:

You are now aware that YOU are given to unpredictable, involuntary and unannounced trips into the past. We'll say you get two or three, maybe even five, seconds of warning--no more. Anything you're wearing or holding appears to travel with you. You never know how long you'll be gone (in at least one incident a few hours in the past kept him away for two DAYS in the present).

You have a wife and child.
You have a brother.
You have a 9-5 (at minimum) job, co-workers and a boss.

How do you deal with the situation? Uncontrollable, explained absences. You can vanish without warning while sleeping--or driving. You have only what you're wearing or carrying with you when you arrive in the past.

In the immortal words of Karl Malden, What will you do, what will you do?

*to the degree that it isn't treated as outright fantasy by the writers, with no rhyme or reason except story convenience.
**A very silly movie, but the way they played with time travel and paradox was wonderful.

Comments

[starborn-scribe.livejournal.com]

If you wrote Journeyman I'd watch it. :)

[sophiedb.livejournal.com]

This show hasn't come across the pond yet, but it sounds like the child of QL and the Time Traveler's Wife.

I would probably survive such a condition by giving up my job, stealing valuable objects in the past and selling them on the black market, mwahahaha! And, uh, using public transport.

[fikgirl.livejournal.com]

but it sounds like the child of QL and the Time Traveler's Wife.


Yes! Yes!

That was pre-zactly what I thought when I first read about it and then watched it!

(And yes, I'm slow with the commentary considering when this was originally posted.)

[fikgirl.livejournal.com]

So it's always slightly frustrating to watch the hero flailing around trying to grasp concepts that strike us as--at best--strikingly obvious, if not terribly cliched.

DH and I always explain these things away with, "Yep. Not a gamer."