Timeless Review: Space Race (Season 1 Episode 8)

It’s time to resist making some sort of “one small step for man” joke during this week’s “Space Race” centered episode of Timeless.

And when we say we have to resist, it’s because this episode is neither a small step nor a giant leap for anyone, really.

Unless we want to call Rufus turning into a cold blooded killer a leap, because, well…

That’s certainly a stretch from the Rufus we’ve seen on this show thus far. Was he not the one feeling guilty mere weeks ago about how many people were being killed by nuclear warfare, asking von Braun how he is able to live with himself, knowing how many lives his bombs will take?

Was he not the one struggling to cope with the fact that his invention was allowing Flynn to travel through time and harm people?

And, now, we’re meant to believe that this man is completely okay with killing someone?

Rufus could have killed the man and, then, we could have gotten some sort of beautiful scene where he faces the reality of what he’s done — when he has to come to terms with it.

Instead, he actually seems pretty okay with it, and we move on.

How is that a compelling?

It would have been much more interesting to watch Rufus transition in to a cold hearted killer — if we were given any sort of transitional period at all.

This could have been an extremely interesting (and, potentially, heartbreaking) character development if we, as viewers, were given the time to come to love kind, gentle Rufus and were then forced to watch him make this descent in to becoming comfortable with killing people.

But, instead, we get a couple minutes of dialogue in which Rufus simply states that he’s cool with the fact that he just killed someone.

And it just falls flat.

Something similar happens in these little moments we are given in which Flynn acts like a good man. While this is certainly part of some bigger picture (perhaps Flynn isn’t the villain at all), it just does not matter because we hardly know Flynn as a villain, so, why would we be surprised to see him act kindly toward a woman who could potentially lose her son?

This isn’t shocking. We already know that Flynn lost his family, we know that he has a soft spot for these things. We know that he can be kind and he does not like to kill or harm women and children. We know he is not a monster.

We do not need any more breadcrumbs. We need substance. We need meat to back up the strong cast that this show has. They are what is carrying this thing — they are what makes it watchable because, more often than not, this show gets old real’ fast.

The format is getting repetitive because, in the grand scheme of things, even if the setting changes, it’s not a new adventure every week.

It’s the same quest with a different backdrop.

It goes something like this:

1.  “We have to go back to (insert time period here) and stop Flynn.”
2.  “Wait, what is Flynn doing in (insert time period here)?”
3.  Lucy explains something important that happened and reiterates that they must stop Flynn from ruining said important event.
4.  They go back in time.
5.  Our heroes somehow manage to save history, but they fail to stop Flynn.
6.  Flynn gets away.
7.  They come back to the present and check in on what changed in their history books.
8.  And repeat.

Here is the most frustrating thing about this:

Timeless has the potential to be something great.

Instead, more often than not, it gets so caught up in gimmicks and cameos that it comes off scatterbrained and falls short of the mark.

“Space Race” most definitely falls short of the mark.

What did you think of this week’s episode? Let me know in the comments below!

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Timeless airs Mondays at 10/9c on NBC.