‘Travelers’ is an American-Canadian Sci-Fi television series which was created by Candian television producer and screenwriter, Brad Wright. The series was initially an international co-production between the OTT streaming giant Netflix and the Canadian channel Showcase for the first two seasons, after which Netflix took over as its sole production company and globally exclusive distributor. The series premiered in Canada on October 17, 2016, & worldwide on December 23, 2016 and ended on December 14th 2018. The lead actor (and series producer), Eric McCormack announced the series cancellation in February 2019.
This refreshing new concept of a story is set in the 21st century. In a post-apocalyptic future, several thousand operatives work as teams to prevent the (eventual) collapse of society. These operatives called “travelers” have their consciousnesses sent back in time and transferred to different host bodies of present day individuals who were moments away from dying, so as to minimize their already potentially heavy impact on the timeline. The transfer requires the exact location of the target, which is made possible by 21st century smartphones and GPS.
Each team of travelers are sent back as teams of five. Each traveler has to learn about their host’s pre-existing lives, so that they can maintain it for the rest of their lives, if necessary, as a cover while they establish contact and carry out missions to change the past which will in turn create a better future. The missions are dictated by “The Director” (An advanced artificial intelligence) in the future, who monitors the timeline. Travelers are expected to behave according to protocols to protect the timelines (which can be changed by the Director during certain circumstances).
Andy Mikita, Amanda Tapping and William Waring directed most of the episodes of ‘Travelers’ while Brad Wright, Ashley Park, Pat Smith, Jason Whiting, Ken Kabatoff and S.B. Edwards wrote most of the action thriller sci-fi series. The television series features Eric McCormack, MacKenzie Porter, Nesta Cooper, Jared Abrahamson, Reilly Dolman and Patrick Gilmore in prominent roles.
This 34-episode, 3-season web series was a critically acclaimed show in North America, but a relative unknown outside of the US and Canada. Still, the series deserves recognition and was one of the better original ideas that came about in the past decade. Stream all three seasons of ‘Travelers’ on Netflix.