“Space Race” is episode eight of season one of Timeless.
In the previous episode, “Stranded”, Lucy, Wyatt and Rufus finally patched up their differences related to the secrets they were keeping from each other. Agent Christopher has also become suspicious of Mason, thinking that he’s keeping something secret. Which he is – his relationship with Rittenhouse.
This episode begins in 1969 in Houston where Mission Control is running the first lunar landing, Apollo 11, which is being guided in to its successful landing on the Moon’s surface. Then, in the present, Flynn and Anthony are taking to Wayne Ellis, who was in the control room as the guidance officer, about the landing, and about how close it came to disaster (there were only seconds of fuel left).
The Mothership is then taken back to 1969, a couple of days before the landing, and Flynn says, to the younger Ellis, ‘We come in peace.’ Probably as a stereotypical joke, especially as Ellis is then shot and killed. In the present, an older Ellis had said that the first ever magnetic badge was needed to get into the secure areas. Unfortunately, he didn’t still have it, which is why they killed him in the past, to steal his badge.
Wyatt, Lucy and Rufus are going in as an FBI agent (guess what his name is!), a secretary and a janitor respectively. Lucy isn’t happy about being a secretary; Rufus points out that janitor is worse. Obviously, Flynn is planning to cause Apollo 11 to fail. According to Rufus, there are many, many ways to do this. Flynn is posing as a plumber and going to a company that helped build the lunar module, in order to steal the programming tape (the real plumber was killed). A woman at that computer is also important – although not the way that might be thought.. Anthony is using Ellis’ badge to get into the actual computer room, where he messes with the existing programming.
Rufus spots Anthony and confronts him, asking him how he could possibly do this to the lunar landing, given his feelings on it. Anthony tells him it’s too late – it’s already done. Apollo 11 may have landed successfully, but when it does, all comms go down. Without contact with Mission Control, Armstrong and Aldrin will be trapped on the Moon and die there. Plus, the Soviets were closer in the race than thought – and if Apollo 11 fails, they won’t quite with their programme. Anthony, and Flynn, are somewhat surprised that the others aren’t stranded in 1754. Rufus is a bit out of his depth with the antiquated computer technology he’s trying to fix (the mainframe holds two whole megabytes of memory!). He’s also distraught about how Anthony could have possibly done this. A woman, Katherine Johnson, seen in the original 1969 is, according to Rufus, someone who can help.