History Series / Travelers

* SanDimasTime: Justified. For [[TechnoBabble technobabbly reasons]], people can't be sent further back than the time of the last arrival. That enforces a crude synchronization between the twenty-first century and the BadFuture - the latest Traveler to arrive will always have been sent back from a later time than all the Travelers who arrived before them, creating the illusion that the two time periods are happening in parallel. At the end of the final episode of Season 3, Grant [=MacLaren=] is nonetheless able to "jump" back 17 years into Special Agent MacLaren's body - even before 001 was originally transferred on 9/11 - because he is using a supercomputer / A.I. in his present (the upgraded "Ilsa").

* AmbiguousDisorder: Original Marcy's disability is described as a "congenital underdevelopment of her brain" which, despite being a meaningful diagnosis, could refer to any of dozens of disorders. Even after this, the Traveler who takes over possibly has something as well, since she's very surprised at David's reaction upon finding her performing minor surgery on herself, acting like this is perfectly normal. [[spoiler: Later shown not to be a congenital anything; original Marcy was actually a nurse before Traveler 001 fried her brain with his experiments.]]

''Travelers'' is a SciFi television series co-produced by Creator/{{Netflix}} and Creator/ShowcaseTelevision for its first two seasons, and Netflix exclusively from the third season onward. It focuses on a team of five time travelers from the future, coming back to change history and avert the apocalyptic timeline in which they live. Through MentalTimeTravel, the Travelers jump back and possess people who died in the original timeline, right before the historically recorded time of death; they take over the person's body and identity from that point forward.

* CriticalResearchFailure: In-universe example as the group will often discover that historical events do not line up the way the records say, often forcing them to "wing it" on a mission.
** It's not until she's in Marcy's body that 3569 realizes the future fell for a faulty social media page and had no idea how strange it will be for an intellectually disabled woman to suddenly be speaking and acting normally.
** One Traveler leaps into a person just before he shoots himself. When the team go to meet him, they realize too late that the obituary only mentioned his death by a gunshot wound, not that the guy had also already overdosed on pills, killing him before the Traveler could continue his mission.
** The team is wary of trusting Dr. Delaney as history records her complicit in an attempt to weaponize anti-matter into a bomb. They soon discover she's actually opposing the process and they've foolishly trusted the colonel who is truly involved.

** This is enforced by Protocol Two, which prohibits Travelers from discussing their future. This means that when their time alterations create [[spoiler:an enemy faction of Traveler extremists, the main characters lack of information about the Faction's goals and abilities means two billion people nearly die]].

* RagingStiffie: Implied when the Traveler occupying Trevor, having newly arrived in the body of a teenage boy, wakes up and peers under his bedclothes. Unlike most examples of the trope he seems rather pleased about it, probably because he's actually very old.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: The Traveler leadership isn't exactly cuddly, but nor is it as cold and ruthless as one might expect from an organisation running such an over-elaborate, clockwork-precision master plan. It seems to understand that missions can not always be executed exactly as planned, and has shown a willingness to forgive teams occasionally breaking protocol for messy human reasons (though it certainly doesn't ''approve'' of such disobedience, it just doesn't seem to expect perfection), at one point even applying rare life-saving technology to save a Traveler who got injured going against a direct order to save himself. It also shows a commitment to basic morals by only taking over people who are about to die, even when breaking that rule would be more convenient. Having all that said, it always puts the mission first -- but in fairness, it's perfectly upfront with that, to the point of making it Protocol One.

* ResetButton: Much of the [[NothingIsTheSameAnymore seemingly overwhelming]] changes from the Season 2 finale get rolled back in the first episode of Season 3, allowing the show to continue with the same basic format, though some lingering effects remain. [[spoiler: The videos of Traveler confessions that Vincent spread are purged from the web, the FBI agrees to help continue keeping the Traveler program secret, and the Travelers' loved ones who got exposed to the truth are given LaserGuidedAmnesia. However, Jeff still retains some memories thanks to his alcoholism giving him a high resistance, and he gets increasingly suspicious and paranoid over the course of the season; Kat doesn't remember anything, but she ''does'' recognise the effects of being given a blackout from the time she was given one in Season 1, and she eventually realises that her husband isn't who she thought he was; the people who did have time to see the videos form an underground "truther" movement that provides the Faction with potential recruits; and the FBI starts demanding to have a say in how Traveler operations are conducted.]]

* SanDimasTime: Justified. For [[TechnoBabble technobabbly reasons]], people can't be sent further back than the time of the last arrival. That enforces a crude synchronisation between the twenty-first century and the BadFuture - the latest Traveler to arrive will always have been sent back from a later time than all the Travelers who arrived before them, creating the illusion that the two time periods are happening in parallel. It is later revealed that this is a technical limitation imposed by the long timespan between the BadFuture and the twenty-first century. It can be ignored if you are only sending people a few decades into the past.
* SaveScumming: Coupled with LoopholeAbuse. According to the Travelers they cannot simply go to any time they want, they cannot Travel back any further than the most recent Traveler from the future (explicitly including Messengers), so they can't just find out information then send somebody back before they arrived to change things. Then in '17 Minutes' [[spoiler:the Director exploits the LoopholeAbuse by continuously sending Travelers into the same body JUST AFTER the previous Traveler had arrived, now armed with information about exactly how the previous Traveler had failed. They used the information the previous Traveler had acquired to take different actions in an attempt to accomplish the same mission, and then when other people are killed in the attempts they become Traveler targets as well.]]

** In a lesser sense, the Travelers avoid the deaths (bodily at least) of [=MacLaren=], Marcy, Carly, Philip and Trevor. It's yet to be seen whether this counts as setting things right.
** In some sense the Travelers have had some success "making things right" (or at least getting justice) for their dead hosts. I.e. Trevor getting back[[spoiler: at the sexually abusive football coach, rescuing his host's friend from further abuse, and letting his host's parents finally know why their boy was so disturbed]]; or Marcy figuring out what [[spoiler: really happened to damage poor Original Marcy's brain.]]
** The season 3 finale takes this to the next level as [[spoiler: [=MacLaren=] travels back in time twenty years so he can send a message to the Director that will stop the Traveller program from starting at all since it becomes clear that it made the future even worse than it was before]].

** It's most likely not that they didn't have "normal human sensations", but rather that they spent their entire lives in an extremely resource-poor, overpopulated, hermetically closed bunker, so they haven't seen anything even approximating a natural environment before and their food was tasteless gruel made from vat-grown yeast or similar. They've never eaten any fresh veggies before or spices or real meat, so even what we consider boring, underseasoned, additive-laced fast food is a complete novelty to them.[[note]](Kind of makes you wonder if people going on long-term space exploration / colonization missions would be the same, and if it's worth it to put people through that kind of sensory deprivation torture.)[[/note]]

** Several times, a new Traveler will have their entry into a new body messed up by an unexpected accident or something history didn't record (a suicide victim having already overdosed on pills before killing himself).

* SuicideMission: Some Traveler missions are this, though it seems to be rare and reserved for extremely important missions that justify the sacrifice. On a larger scale, the Grand Plan is this for the entire Traveler organisation, since it's believed that if they successfully avert the future they come from, they may [[RetGone cease to exist.]] Travelers have to officially swear to not let that possibility stop them from carrying out their mission. [[spoiler: Later episodes imply that this is not in fact how it works.]]

** Even beyond this Travelers seem to be extremely averse to killing, presumably because life is so precious in the future. For instance despite knowing that the soldiers attacking [[spoiler:the antimatter powered laser]] will all die in moments anyway none of the Travelers assign to defend the area shoot to kill.
* ThreeLawsCompliant: Vincent is convinced that [[spoiler:The Director]] is this and becomes extremely concerned when [[spoiler:his wife was targeted despite not being about to die, which makes her death murder.]] Season 3 shows that [[spoiler: the Director]] actually has a variant of the Three Laws where the second law supercedes the first rather than vice versa - it can take a life, but only at the urging of a human.

* TimeyWimeyBall: Due to "some pretty complicated reasons having to do with ripples in space-time" they can only send Travelers back in time as far as the most recent arrival. This prevents them from retrying any failed missions.
** Moreover we learn in the final episode that [[spoiler: deflecting Helios ''did'' alter the future but didn't affect the memories of Travelers sent back before the change was made]]. Since communication is so limited no one even noticed.

*** In the episode "17 minutes" there was almost a GroundhogDayLoop, with a limited number of do-overs. [[spoiler: Since more people died because of the new actions taken, they too became targets for Travelers.]]

* VillainousUnderdog: The Faction in Season 3 is definitely on the defensive, having lost all support from the future and having none of the specialised operatives that make up Traveler teams (i.e., no Historians who have memorised past events in detail, no technicians who can construct advanced technology from primitive components, and - judging from how often Travelers seem to beat the Faction in fights where the latter have the former outnumbered - none of the [[OneManArmy superior combat training]] either). Dawn at one point admit that they would be better off going to ground, but then they'd have to give up all hope of affecting the future. They seem to partly bounce back by [[spoiler: forming a VillainTeamup with 001.]]

** In a later example, it sends a Traveler back to overwrite someone as a form of execution... immediately before he is sent to prison. He servers no further purpose in the grand plan. He is immediately approached by another Traveler in the same position, with the implication that they try to rebel.

* TheWorldIsJustAwesome: It becomes common to see Travelers arriving and marveling at how alive, green and beautiful the earth is, looking at roadside trees in amazement, tasting the most normal food ever, and wondering at living animals. Before [[spoiler:what they think is]] the final mission, a critically important [[TheCavalry back up team]] arrives late ''because they stopped to look at a dog'' -- apparently having never seen one before (it was a bear).

** On a broader sense, this is basically how the entire communication works, everything the recorded digitally is known in the future, which will be how the director makes decisions. A lot of missions and teams seem to be simply to gather things that will be needed in the far future, where resources are reduced, such as the fuel for[[spoiler: The Director]].

* YouAreInCommandNow: Not shown on screen, but [[spoiler: Boyd is later revealed that she's not only the leader of her team, but also the medic.]] When [=MacLaren=] asks how could she be given the duties of both roles, she explains the trope. It is implied that this [[WarIsHell happens often]].
* YouAreWorthHell: Having coming to terms to the fact that [[spoiler: she's dying AND she is in love with David, Marcy is then presented with a possible cure for her condition. The catch is that she will forget everything that has happened in the present (basically the events of season 1). While she understands that this is the obvious course of action, she actually chooses to die rather than forgetting about David]].

** At some point in the future (barring extraordinary circumstances, sometime between 2060 and 2104) the election of the 56th US President is held, between Anna Hamilton, a deeply beloved, inspiring leader, and an opponent whom it is implied is much less popular but has strong institutional support. Her narrow loss plunges the country into chaos and eventual civil war, leading the Faction to try to assassinate her as a child to prevent the election from occurring. The Director instructs the team to instead preserve her life, having calculated the changes already made to the timeline make it possible for her to win the election and her presidency goes on to save the country.
** Eventually, complete breakdown of the biosphere, as implied by the fact that newly arrived Travelers are amazed to see living trees and animals. (Though it could also be that there still is plenty of wildlife outside the shelters, but these people have never been able to leave the shelters since they were born, due to nuclear fallout or deadly viruses or a mile of ice above the entrance.)

** Surprisingly the explosion of 10.3 grams of antimatter -- enough to make an explosion [[HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure more than ten times the size of the one that leveled Hiroshima]] -- only caused 11,000 deaths in the original timeline, due to the location being in the middle of a large industrial complex, and detonations at surface level greatly narrowing the spread of damage and [[SquareCubeLaw the damage increase doesn't increase the damage range as much as the volume]]. [[spoiler:In the revised version of history most of the energy is absorbed by the Engineer's X-ray laser using it as a bomb pump, limiting the damage]].
* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler:After spending the entire first season causing problems for Carly and indirectly the rest of the team, domestic abuser Jeff apparently gets his comeuppance through his one decent act, shooting a Traveler who was trying to kill Carly only to have her abandon him to what looks like he just killed an innocent teenager.]]

* CassandraTruth: It's common for one of the team confronted on how they know certain events to flatly say "I'm from the future" and not believed.

* CreateYourOwnVillain: The series BigBad is revealed to be [[spoiler: Traveler 001, who decided that instead of dying in 9/11 like he should have, decides to overthrow the Director and ultimately uploads his consciousness on the Internet and triggers a nuclear war in order to cause the BadFuture to happen sooner so that he would be the one to rule it]].
* CreepyChild: The Messengers, children the Director temporarily takes over to send messages to the Travelers (thanks to the fact that their immature brains can recover from being temporarily possessed but adult brains can't).

** The team is wary of trusting Dr. Delaney as history records her complicit in an attempt to weaponize anti-matter into a bomb. They soon discover she's actually opposing the process and they've trusted the colonel who is truly involved.

* CuttingTheKnot: David is trapped in a locked room with a nuclear bomb that he has to disarm with no tools or training and only three minutes on the clock, with VoiceWithAnInternetConnection Trevor guiding him. They do their best, but when they're only halfway through the procedure time runs out and the bomb makes a whirring sound as it begins to activate — upon which [=MacLaren=] shouts at David to just grab the uranium core and throw it against the ground, shattering it before it can reach critical mass and saving the city. [[spoiler: Why didn't they just do that in the first place?... Because, as everyone besides David knows, doing this has exposed him to a lethal blast of radiation and doomed him to an agonizing death over the next few hours.]]

* DeusEstMachina: It turns out that [[spoiler:The Director]] is nearly on this level. With three seconds of power it is able to reroute power to the rest of the system, develop [[spoiler:a cure to a SyntheticPlague]] specifically designed to foil it, provide that to a Traveler, and send that Traveler back to the earliest possible moment.
** The show even lampshades this trope, more or less subtly. In the first season, the team recites an oath about their committment to the mission that almost comes across like a group prayer to the Director. And in season 2, [[spoiler: Grace's trial]] happens in a church, and at the end, her "judgement" is pronounced by the Director personally, by speaking through a succession of old men (and one old woman) who are in a coma and about to die anyway, with the video getting holographically projected above [[spoiler: Grace]] like a divine vision.
* DisposableSexWorker: One man kills a number of cam girls when he bombs their building for revenge when they stop him contacting one he'd been obsessed with, claiming it's God's will. Forbes later gets disgusted when the state cuts a deal to get him life with a chance of parole, rather than life without parole or death, thinking it's because they don't think such victims matter. [[spoiler: It's actually because he's become a Traveler.]]

* DoubleStandardRapeSciFi: Inherent in the mission, as the Travelers are supposed to continue the hosts' lives while keeping the switch [[BedTrick a secret from the hosts' spouses / partners]]. To the main characters' credit, they do try to avoid this. (Original Marcy and David didn't have a romantic relationship, of course, so that romance is legitimate. Carly throws out her host's abusive boyfriend and even later doesn't have sex with him when they try to reconcile for the baby's sake. Trevor refuses to have sex with his host's teenage girlfriend and gladly lets her go when she wants to end the relationship in season 2. Mac tries to avoid having sex with his host's wife for months, until he is drugged and halucinating that she's Carly one evening.) But still, there doesn't seem to be real awareness in the writing that this would be rape by fraud in any case, and not just problematic in some cases for age difference reasons. Mac's growing romantic attraction to Kat is never presented as creepy. It remains to be seen if [[spoiler: Kat will point out that she never consented to sex with a bodysnatcher, now that she finally knows.]]

* FatalFamilyPhoto: An incredibly cruel variant occurs when [[spoiler:Vincent's wife takes a picture of him sleeping with their child in his arms and sends it to a friend.]] The photo itself, along with the attached date and location information, is enough for The Director to get a lethal target lock.

* FlawedPrototype: The very first thing we learn about Vincent is that he was the original Traveler test case and that it went catastrophically wrong up to and including the only known case of a Traveler ''missing'' the target.

* FunctionalAddict: Philip is one although only just barely. Since the team needs constant access to the information he has there is no time for him to try to get clean. The historical record missed this detail.

** In the second season numerous people are overwritten at times and places completely unrelated to their proper deaths. [[spoiler:It turns out that this is done by The Faction rather than by The Director.]]
* GaiasLament: Subverted. While it is implied that Earth in the future is a ''very'' unpleasant and harsh world to live in, environmental destruction was a consequence of several events only some of which are explicitly humanity's responsibility. (I.e. the major reason was an asteroid impact - the wars about resources came after that. On the other hand, one Traveler is seen to kill an oil company CEO, and when that isn't enough to stop the pipeline the company is building, the main characters arrange for another CEO to be taken over by a Traveler. He's later seen campaigning for the environment.) It is heavily implied, however, that Earth is borderline uninhabitable with no wildlife, and no drinkable natural water ''at all''. And the shelters need to have their air endlessly recycled, implying nuclear fallout and/or a deadly airborne virus on the outside. (Though it's mentioned in the second season that the Shelter the team comes from was buried under a very thick glacier that probably wasn't there when they were first constructed (hence the collapse of Shelter 41 under the weight of the ice), so that would also explain why, a few generations after moving into the shelters, they can't pump in fresh air from the outside anymore and can't ever leave to see the wildlife that may still be there. Maybe there just aren't any animals in the shelters, because that would have wasted resources.)

* HeroicBlueScreenOfDeath: After [[spoiler: successfully completing their final mission, and not disappearing due to a temporal paradox]], they come to realize that they must live their host's lives indefinitely. They don't take it too well. [[spoiler: It doesn't help that they're badly hallucinating due to an antitoxin's side effects]].

** Carly manages to convince the CPS worker that Jeff is not a good person to entrust Jeffrey to, earning her sympathy. The CPS worker wants to help her get a job to build a better case for her against Jeff, but Carly ends up having a difficult time applying due to her background check claiming she assaulted a police officer, courtesy of Jeff. Not to mention her Traveler work getting in the way... [[spoiler:forcing her to leave Jeff with Jeffrey temporarily, except "temporarily" accidentally turns into ''two days''. The CPS worker is pissed and points out this clearly means Carly ''does'' trust Jeff as a suitable caretaker while she's off doing anything but that, giving CPS a reason to give permanent custody to Jeff.]]

* InSpiteOfANail: The timeline is ''remarkably'' resilient despite what the Travelers do. The data that Philip brought back is so reliable that when only three of five long-shot bets pays off, he gets concerned,[[spoiler: because he know has proof that the timeline has changed, even if no one from the future told him, and even if he doesn't know how]].
** In fact by the end of the first season they have [[spoiler:averted the impact of Helios and saved an estimated '''''91 million lives''''']] but the changes to the timeline are so subtle that Travelers from before and after the change still know each other and have the same basic relationships.

** The only consistent label that we know Travelers use is "Traveler [number]". Philip, for example, is Traveler 3326. The numbers seem to be simply sequential. Travelers with lower numbers generally have higher status. For example 009, 0017, 0027, and 0029 are all programmers who work with the Director. with being programmers. However Traveler 001 was apparently expendable enough to be sent [[spoiler:into the North Tower of the World Trade Center minutes before its destruction]] in order to test the system.
** The conditioning against ever using a future human's real name (Protocol Two) is apparently so strong that even in the throes of his madness Simon (Traveler 004) only calls the woman from the future he's obsessed with by her Traveler number (0019).

** In "David" it's implied that no, the Travelers really ''don't'' have any other names than their numbers and that that's just [[IndividualityIsIllegal another crappy element]] of their BadFuture. (Possibly because Travelers are recruited at a very young age.)

* NotAgain: In "001", this is Ray's reaction to waking up in a locked room surrounded by people he doesn't know. He seems to think that he's been kidnapped by someone he owes money.

* NotHimself: Travelers are fairly uniformly serious, intelligent, and competent. Meanwhile, to name a few, Original Marcy had a severe learning disability and couldn't live independently, Original Trevor was a high school sports star who liked cage fighting, and Original Philip was a young, directionless heroin addict. Philip didn't have a lot of friends, and Trevor has the excuse of a severe (in the original timeline, lethal) head injury, so they get off with a few odd looks, but Marcy attracts significant notice.

** [[spoiler: Grace Day, the school counselor, is kind, warm, understanding and patient. Always going beyond the call of duty to help her students. Traveler 0027 is exactly the opposite, being a cold, heartless bitch with zero people skill and no intent of faking it, which makes sense as she is not a trained operative on a mission but a rogue agent improvising in order to save the Director]].

** Protocol Two: "Never jeopardize your cover," a.k.a. "Leave the future in the past." (i.e., don't discuss the BadFuture unless necessary, even with other members of your team.)
*** Protocal 2H is a subset of Protocol 2 that applies only to Historians: "Never reveal the existence of Updates to a non-Historian. " Only Historians know that there's a process by which they can download new information from the future after they arrive in the past - information that now includes knowledge of the destiny of their fellow Travelers and themselves.

* ObviouslyEvil: [[spoiler: The man Yates gets to impersonate 001 to the Travelers in "Omega"]] isn't exactly subtle. [=MacLaren=] sees right through the charade and sarcastically asks her why she didn't just give him [[EyepatchOfPower an eyepatch]] and [[RightHandCat a cat to stroke]] while she was at it.

* {{Transhuman}}: In "Room 101", Philip mentions having been "modified" to become a Traveler historian [[spoiler:when he's injected with a drug that only works on historians]], implying he might be this -- although it's not clear how, given that only Travelers' minds are known to travel back.

* VillainousUnderdog: The Faction in Season 3 is definitely on the defensive, having lost all support from the future and having none of the specialised operatives that make up Traveler teams (i.e., no historians who have memorised past events in detail, no technicians who can construct advanced technology from primitive components, and - judging from how often Travelers seem to beat the Faction in fights where the latter have the former outnumbered - none of the [[OneManArmy superior combat training]] either). Dawn at one point admit that they would be better off going to ground, but then they'd have to give up all hope of affecting the future. They seem to partly bounce back by [[spoiler: forming a VillainTeamup with 001.]]

A second season was greenlit in early February 2017 and began filming in March. Season three (to air exclusively on Netflix) was announced in March 2018. Filming commenced later that year. It was announced in February 2019 that Netflix has cancelled the series; all three seasons remain available on the streaming site.