“The General” is episode nine of season two of Timeless.
The episode opens in Beaufort County, South Carolina, on June 1st, 1863 at a Confederate army camp. A colonel is in his tent when one of his men enters and says that there’s a young woman there to see him. The colonel says to send the woman in, and it’s Emma. She tells him that she’s brought him something from home. A cheeseburger. For the colonel is a Rittenhouse sleeper. Emma says that his mission is to stop a Union regiment that is going to carry out a raid, and then gives him a book on the Civil War (it seems odd that he didn’t already have one). Then the colonel will be able to go home to his wife.
In the present, Carol is talking to Keynes about Emma. She says that although Keynes is blaming Lucy for the failed missions, she thinks that Emma is sabotaging them, for Emma has been part of every one of the failed missions, such as the one against the suffragette movement in “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes”. Which, admittedly, Emma did sabotage. Carol says that the fact that Keynes is sleeping with Emma is blinding him, and that Rittenhouse is about family. And that Emma is not part of that family. To rub in the point, Carol has brought Keynes to see the grave of his daughter, Carol’s mother.
Agent Christopher and Connor have called Rufus, Wyatt and Lucy to a meeting. It’s about Jessica; hundreds of photographs of her dating back to her childhood have been found on the material recovered from Rittenhouse’s base that Keynes destroyed in “The King of the Delta Blues”. They still haven’t discovered why Rittenhouse is interested in Jessica. In the previous episode, “The Day Reagan Was Shot”, Wyatt had discovered that Jessica’s brother Kevin, who had died of leukaemia before he was three, had somehow been saved, and that Jessica was pregnant. He still isn’t happy that Christopher knew about Jessica for a week before telling him, nor is Wyatt pleased by her suggestion that Jessica should be removed from the bunker. Wyatt says he will go with her in that case.
They get notification that the mothership has gone back to South Carolina, and its Rufus who knows what happened at that date first. It’s the Combahee River raid, when a mostly black Union regiment set fire to plantations and freed hundreds of slaves. As well as that, Harriet Tubman – who Mason knows was nicknamed ‘The General’ – was in the area as a Union spy, and she is probably a target.
However, when they get back to the past, most of the regiment has already been wiped out. Tubman is still alive – and proves quite impressive – and is still intending to carry out the raid. Even though she is seriously outnumbered now. So they need to stop her from attacking until they can eliminate the Rittenhouse sleeper, and get her reinforcements.
In the present, Jiya confronts Connor. She wants to see Stanley Fisher, the former time machine pilot who went crazy. Connor says that Fisher won’t be much help, but agrees to let her see him. Fisher is, indeed, a bit on the crazy side – but he also seems to be having visions, just like Jiya is. Although they appear to have affected him quite badly.