“Pilot” is episode one of season one of Timeless.
Yet another unimaginatively named first episode (do companies not want to waste the effort on coming up with a name for the first episode in case the series isn’t approved?). The episode opens in May 6th 1937 with a zeppelin coming in to land. There’s a leak in one of the gas cells – and the airship is obviously the Hindenburg, as this is the date of the disaster. There’s a spark and then the zeppelin bursts into flames and crashes.
Back in the present day, a professor, Lucy Preston, is talking about the Vietnam War. The department chair tells her afterwards that her tenure meeting has been cancelled – so she won’t get tenure. Her mother (Susanna Thompson) apparently built the department, but her mother is in pretty poor shape. Her sister tells her to make her own future.
Two men arrive at a operated run by Mason Industries, apparently using some sort of book as reference as to what to do. Inside, they start shooting various people. The facility is run by Anthony Bruhl (Matt Frewer, who played Taggart in Eureka). Inside the facility the men inside a device, which powers up and then vanishes. An agent from Homeland Security arrives at Lucy’s house. Apparently, they need her help. She is qualified in anthropology and history. Also present is a Delta force operative, Wyatt Logan.
The machine has been stolen by an ex-NSA agent, Garcia Flynn. Connor Mason, the owner of Mason Industries (British, but seems to have some similarities to Elon Musk), has invented a Closed Timelike Curve. A time machine in other words. Which he didn’t tell the government about until it was stolen. They still have a prototype, which can track the mothership that was stolen. It has gone back to just before the Hindenburg disaster. The machine has room for three; the third is a coder, Rufus Carlin, who will pilot it. Who is black, and not really looking forward to the U.S. of the past. Any U.S. of the past. Hardly surprising. Things are a bit rushed, so they don’t exactly go back with proper period attire – such as fabrics that haven’t been invented in 1937.
What the government wants the three of them to do is go back and stop Flynn from changing the past, which would alter the future. The question is just what does Flynn plan to do with the Hindenburg? Stop the disaster apparently. But why? Wyatt very nearly changes history himself – in fact, he would have done so if the zeppelin crashed as it was supposed to.
So, why did Flynn stop the Hindenburg disaster? What will change with the 36 people who would have been killed in it still being alive? Or is there another reason? Flynn’s motives may not be as clear cut as thought – perhaps the ends justify the means in his minds?
When they get back, things have changed in different ways.