History Headscratchers / Travelers

* Maybe she's a great surgeon but is useless as a field medic. Never, ever carries a first aid kit and repeatedly tries to stop bleeding from gunshot wounds with her bare hands, waiting until they get to OPs to apply any aid at all. If, for some reason, she was not supposed to carry a kit with her when on a mission, she should at least take her shirt off and cram it into the wound. Yes, that's a thing. It's better to deal with the possible complications later than let the patient die of blood loss. Considering it's Marcy, it'd actually be very much in character.

** The bulk of the characters possessed also had close friends and relatives that would have reported them missing - Marcy's case worker, Trevor's parents and schoolmates, etc. [=MacLaren=] in particular - you'd have to believe the FBI would dedicate a decent amount of resources to an agent that suddenly went missing. The Travelers can't do what they need to do if there is constant danger of somebody calling the police or FBI to report they've seen the missing people. Ideally they'd possess people like Philip that had nobody who would really care if they went missing, but since they identify their targets lives through official records and social media, its presumably rather rare to find somebody that can just drop their lives and disappear without SOMEBODY noticing, so they have to maintain their host life to raise a minimum of suspicion.

** There is time to escape the situation (the main Travellers do so), it's a possibility that the gun-wielding Travellers were trying to deter anyone who wouldn't listen to people in uniform and have them back off with the threat of being shot in order to protect them.

How the hell are the Travelers with straight, male, married hosts supposed to follow both the rule "Keep living the life of your host as if nothing happened." ''and'' the rule "Don't make babies."? The Travelers with female bodies could just have abortions and/or secretly go on the pill, but how are the guys supposed to prevent their wives from consceiving without causing them to become suspicious? (Just like Mac's wife got suspicious when he wouldn't have sex with her, until his one time drugged slip led to her pregancy.) And the other male Travelers could also have a condom accident any time, with a one-night-stand who maybe wouldn't even tell them about the consequences. This problem could be easily avoided, of course, by the team medic simply giving all the guys a vasectomy as soon as they take over the host bodies - but clearly this sensible precaution is not standard operating procedure, because otherwise Mac couldn't have impregnated his host's wife.

Why is Marcy such a negligent fuck up as a doctor, even after she's been "reset" and should therefore be able to do her job properly? Aside from the irrationally missing vasectomies mentioned above, why does she still try to wean Philip off with street heroin? Why not even try Methadone or similarly longer-acting, non-euphoria-enducing opioids that can be taken as pills (thus removing the need for needles and top-up doses in the middle of a mission), are less likely to be accidentally overdosed, and don't lead to such a rapid high-crash cycle? There's a ''reason'' why the stuff is used in heroin addiction therapy when the goal is just to keep the patient from experiencing debilitating withdrawal symptoms! And the option was mentioned by Ray in the first episode, so it's not that the writers are pretending Methadone doesn't exist in the show's setting. Also, why is she apparently not even bothering to get Philip (and Trevor, given the revelations in season 2) tested for HIV and Hepatitis? Statistically, 50% of intravenous drug users in North America have a Hepatitis infection that will cause them to need a new liver a decade or two later. And given that Philip's host was a college drop-out with no contact to his parents and no apparent means to earn an income, it's not unreasonable to assume that he financed his expensive drug addiction with sex work. So why is there not even a single mention of these possible complications on the show, even just with a throw-away line like: "I've got your test results, and you're lucky. But use only the needles I gave you from now on."?

* Maybe she's a great surgeon but is useless as a field medic. Never, ever carries a first aid kit and repeatedly tries to stop bleeding from gunshot wounds with her bare hands, waiting until they get to OPs to apply any aid at all. If, for some reason, she was not supposed to carry a kit with her when on a mission, she should at least take her shirt off and cram it into the wound. Yes, that's a thing. It's better to deal with the possible complications later than let the patient die of blood loss. Considering it's Marcy it'd actually be very much in character.


Why would Philip already have condoms stashed besides his bed in the beginning of season 2, when he took the ManicPixieDreamGirl fellow Traveler the writers threw at him back "home" and had sex with her for the first time? He clearly stated that he wasn't interested in dating in the first season (and he was too busy / depressed / doped-up to have much of a libido in any case), and this happened almost immediately after the end of the first season. And even if he did get laid off-screen, which he doesn't seem the type for (he doesn't even understand the purpose of online porn), he would never take a one-night-stand back into Ops instead of just paying for a hotel room. The only people he ever let into Ops were the team, occasionally other Travelers, and Ray, whom Philip doesn't even like much. And all the other team members were in budding romantic relationships in the first season. Well, except Trevor, who thankfully had too much scruples to have sex with his host's teenage girlfriend. But since the sex with ManicPixieDreamGirl was quite blatantly thrown in to destroy the possible asexual reading of the character that resulted from his statements in season 1 and because the writers weren't comfortable with the fact that most of the fan-made stuff about their new show was slash (just like with their [[Series/StargateAtlantis old show]]), I very much doubt that the condoms were meant to imply that Philip and Trevor took their new bodies for a test drive when Trevor crashed on Philip's couch for a little while in season 1. (Not that this kept the writers from queer-baiting and throwing in hints about an especially attached relationship between these characters in season 2. Again, like in their last major show.)

* The condom is only so prominently featured as a way to introduce Protocol 4 and show that what McLaren is doing (having a baby) goes against the rules.

* It's even worse in season 2 when she reacts to the drops as if they're poison, when that's exactly what she should have given him in the first place! One can speculate on what else they contained, but brupenorphine + naloxone (suboxone) is a real world medication used to gently wean off of heroin use. So the writers obviously knew of it and instead of being clear that she was reacting negatively to whatever was added to that combination, they made it seem like suboxone is bad in itself.
* Maybe she's a great surgeon but is useless as a field medic. Never, ever carries a first aid kit and repetedly tries to stop bleeding from gunshot wounds with her bare hands, waiting until they get to OPs to apply any aid at all. If, for some reason, she was not supposed to carry a kit with her when on a mission, she should at least take her shirt off and cramm it into the wound. Yes, that's a thing. It's better to deal with the possible complications later than let the patient die of blood loss. Considering it's Marcy it'd actually be very much in character.


Why would Philip already have condoms stashed besides his bed in the beginning of season 2, when he took the ManicPixieDreamGirl fellow Traveler the writers threw at him back "home" and had sex with her for the first time? He clearly stated that he wasn't interested in dating in the first season (and he was too busy / depressed / doped-up to have much of a libido in any case), and this happened almost immediately after the end of the first season. And even if he did get laid off-screen, which he doesn't seem the type for (he doesn't even understand the purpose of online porn), he would never take a one-night-stand back into Ops instead of just paying for a hotel room. The only people he ever let into Ops were the team, occasionally other Travelers, and Ray, whom Philip doesn't even like much. And all the other team members were in budding romantic relationships in the first season. Well, except Trevor, who thankfully had too much scruples to have sex with his host's teenage girlfriend. But since the sex with ManicPixieDreamGirl was quite blatantly thrown in to destroy the possible asexual reading of the character that resulted from his statements in season 1 and because the writers weren't comfortable with the fact that most of the fan-made stuff about their new show was slash (just like with their [[Series/StargateAtlantis old show]]), I very much doubt that the condoms were meant to imply that Philip and Trevor took their new bodies for a test drive when Trevor crashed on Philip's couch for a little while in season 1. (Not that this kept the writers from queer-baiting and throwing in hints about an especially attached relationship between these characters in season 2. Again, like in their last major show.)

Why would Philip already have condoms stashed besides his bed in the beginning of season 2, when he took the ManicPixieDreamGirl fellow Traveler the writers threw at him back "home" and had sex with her for the first time? He clearly stated that he wasn't interested in dating in the first season (and he was too busy / depressed / doped-up to have much of a libido in any case), and this happened almost immediately after the end of the first season. And even if he did get laid off-screen, which he doesn't seem the type for (he doesn't even understand the purpose of online porn), he would never take a one-night-stand back into Ops instead of just paying for a hotel room. The only people he ever let into Ops were the team, occasionally other Travelers, and Ray, whom Philip doesn't even like much. And all the other team members were in budding romantic relationships in the first season. Well, except Trevor, who thankfully had too much scruples to have sex with his host's teenage girlfriend. But since the sex with ManicPixieDreamGirl was quite blatantly thrown in to destroy the possible asexual reading of the character that resulted from his statements in season 1 and because the writers weren't comfortable with the fact that most of the fan-made stuff about their new show was slash (just like with their [[Series/StargateAtlantis old show]]), I very much doubt that the condoms were meant to imply that Philip and Trevor took their new bodies for a test drive when Trevor crashed on Philip's couch for a little while in season 1. (Not that this kept the writers from queer-baiting and throwing in hints about an especially attached relationship between these characters in season 2. Again, like in their last major show.)


Near the end of Season 1, a Traveler is tasked with building a quantum frame -- a supercomputer powerful enough to hold the Director's program if need be, or [[spoiler:the consciousnesses of a few thousand Faction members]]. The trouble is, halfway through Season 2 we learn that quantum frame technology relies on [[{{Unobtanium}} a high-temperature superconductor]] which wouldn't be discovered for another fifty years, and which was retrieved from a meteor that ''hadn't even fallen yet'' when the frame was built. Keep in mind, they can only send ''information'' back to the past, not matter; all their advanced technology has to be constructed in the past using 21st-century tools and materials. So... how the hell did he [[spoiler:or [[BigBad 001]], who turns out to have had one since before the show even began]] ''manage to build the thing?!''

Near the end of Season 1, a Traveler is tasked with building a quantum frame -- a supercomputer powerful enough to hold the Director's program if need be, or [[spoiler:the consciousnesses of a few thousand Faction members]]. The trouble is, halfway through Season 2 we learn that quantum frame technology relies on [[{{Unobtanium}} a high-temperature superconductor]] which wouldn't be discovered for another fifty years, and which was retrieved from a meteor that ''hadn't even fallen yet'' when the frame was built. Keep in mind, they can only send ''information'' back to the past, not matter; all their advanced technology has to be constructed in the past using 21st-century tools and materials. So... ''how the hell did he manage to build the thing?!''