They really should mention that in the show. As much as I enjoy “The Talking Dead”, it is notorious for having TWD staff explaining things presented in an episode. I would really prefer all the relevant information to be presented within the show. No supplementary reading/watching required. 
Maybe it wouldn’t have changed much, but it would have made the show a lot more interesting.
The first episode played fast and loose with parts of history. They picked random famous names of people that weren’t scheduled to be on the return trip.
My suspension of disbelief is pretty strong and I can’t predict what will take me out of a story. In this it was the black soldier using the term “human trader.” Was the network uncomfortable using the word slave? Would anyone back then use the term human trader?
Very interesting point about “human trader.” I was inspired to check it in Ngram Viewer: NO results during the Civil War period. There’s a spike around 1920 and another around 2000:
If it wasn’t a term that anyone connected with the show would have seen in Civil War-era research (assuming they do research), then perhaps your surmise that it was used to avoid saying “slaver” is correct.
I was amused by their stealing the Back To The Future name schtick.
“This is Dr. Dre and I’m Nurse Jackie, and we’re from General Hospital.”
I was more distracting by them not using the term “nigger”, truth be told.
Or Supernatural who has been doing it for 12 seasons.
That I wouldn’t expect because it would be jarring and only used for effect. But I don’t understand what’s wrong with the term slave trader.
I don’t know; in that context, a former-slave-turned-soldier angrily confronting a man (twice!) who he recognizes as impersonating a soldier? None of the white bystanders in the hotel after the attempt on Johnson is thwarted have any dialog, oddly and conveniently.
Personally, I think it would have been most effectively (and dramatically) used casually, and while the 21st century character alone feels reflexive anger, he has to suppress it to keep his cover. If the show is going to explore time-crossed culture shock (I’m guessing all their adventures will take place in the historical U.S.), it should have some guts about it.
They did some of that in the first episode, in which as I remember, the New Jersey cop called Rufus “boy” and later Rufus made a sarcastic comment about having to sit in the back of the bus.
In general, I would expect the time travelers to get tripped up often when it comes to manners and personal interaction.
It is one of the many shows of which I haven’t seen even a single episode. Timeless will join those that I have seen only twice.
What bothered me was that his managers didn’t provide him with a supressed M1911. Or let him bring his from home.
what gun is it?
Not as horrible a show as I thought it would be. What would be interesting as an experiment is if they took a printout about the historical event they are going to back with them then compare it to the same site when they get back.
Is it bad that when I heard “Rittenhouse” I thought of James Cromwell’s character in Deep Impact?
“Printout”? My idea was two identical flash drives jam packed full of historical data. One taken with, the other left at HQ.
That idea was actually used in a time travel adventure game from the mid 90s. In the game two hard drives were made containing the entire history of earth. One was kept in the present and the other was stored 100 million years ago. Whenever people are through to have altered history, someone is sent back in time to compare the data between the two drives to determine when the changes were made. Your job in the game is to fix the 3-4 points in time that have been altered and restore the proper timeline.
If I wasn’t clear I meant jarring on a silly network TV show. Not jarring in historical context. The show contains some cultural issues but at it’s heart it is an adventure show. I’m not even sure the network sensors would allow it.
Eric Kripke, one of the creators of Timeless, also created Supernatural. To me Supernatural is one of the most entertaining shows ever put on air.
I did not get a good enough look at it. It certainly wasn’t a Glock or a 1911 but other than that it could have been a Sig or Smith or several others that don’t look particularly memorable from a distance.
Heck, just put all the research on a USB stick and toss it into the time-sphere.
The real shocking moment might be when Rufus emerges with the USB stick and the base characters look at it and say “what’s that?”
The problem with identical USB drives (or printouts) to track changes - what prevents those from getting changed with the timeline? The fact that they’re inside the time machine? Wouldn’t the data/writing just change along with the rest of recorded history like the pictures/faxes/newspaper headlines in Back to the Future?
In one of Robert Heinlein’s novels, the characters were traveling among parallel universes in which there were differences in Earth on each. (As I remember, in one, there was no J in the alphabet.) One character came up with the idea of obtaining an almanac in each universe, as it contains a nice summary of historical and other data. Except I don’t know if anyone still publishes paper almanacs any more.
It reminds me of Sliders, what with the reality slightly shifting each week.