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I don't think the AI is allowed to kill people that aren't already going to die in the past (unless they have already been "killed" by a previous time traveler entering them), that's why it has to wait until the truck driver dies by being killed by the bodyguard before it can start using him, and why the bodyguard is not an option for the AI. I'm sure there is some episode in the series that contradicts this, because it's a trash show, but I think that's supposed to be the way it works. The AI has hard-coded protocols it can't break, and is stuck with working around them creatively.
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Jan 11, 2018 07:25
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I thought the whole point of Protocol Alpha is so the rules are broken. Unless this is a strict hard coded rule that you can't break or the host ends up being important for something later in the timeline, I don't see why you couldn't overwrite the bodyguard. Hell I reckon he was probably a Faction member anyway. The butterfly effect of travelers causing deaths ruling them viable for consciousness transfer made this groundhog day episode interesting by itself but you gotta wonder what other options there were if the skydivers weren't enough for the mission to succeed. I read one option could be to hard reset MacLaren's team (they had one of the skydivers there with a gopro to create a T.E.L.L.) which was a pretty cool idea, but at that point you might as well overwrite the faction members coming out of the water.
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Jan 11, 2018 07:47
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Lady Galaga posted:I thought the whole point of Protocol Alpha is so the rules are broken. Unless this is a strict hard coded rule that you can't break or the host ends up being important for something later in the timeline, I don't see why you couldn't overwrite the bodyguard. Hell I reckon he was probably a Faction member anyway. The Director is Asimov compliant, it literally can't kill a human.
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Jan 11, 2018 08:27
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Flatscan posted:The Director is Asimov compliant, it literally can't kill a human. It was pretty lucky an incredibly rare fatal skydiving accident happened just as it needed one.
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Jan 11, 2018 08:50
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I just started watching this show this week and made it trough to episode 7 in season 1, I think. I stopped at the episode after they deflected the astroid and the next episode really just turned me off because it feels like the show turned from “discover things about these mysterious travelers” to “watch people live average daily lives, but mopey because they are from the future.” So I’m gonna ask: going forward is this show going to focus on the lives of travelers in the 21st century or is it going to be a mystery type thing where we find out more about the future? Because I don’t give a poo poo about these characters lives or how babies are so hard to take care of. I do wanna know more about the future and this technology and such though. But I really really really don’t want to watch a fake teenage couple make amends with each these or daddy issues or about babies or jealous wives. Another question is the whole taking over lives thing. Is there ever a thing about how loving brutal it appears to look for people living their last seconds on earth? Every single traveler’s host has shown it’s very painful and I find it hard to believe nobody has considered the ethical ramifications of this since they’ve considered other things like “don’t disturb the past as much as possible.”
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Jan 11, 2018 09:01
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Boris Galerkin posted:I just started watching this show this week and made it trough to episode 7 in season 1, I think. It's a middling secret agent action showed dressed up as sci-fi. If you don't like that episode then there are going to be lots of other ones you hate. The show bends itself over backwards to make the main characters try and stick to the lives of their hosts, when most of their problems would be solved by not giving a poo poo about the immediate families of the dead people they inhabit. EDIT: The show even gives a protocol excuse for why they never talk about the future.
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Jan 11, 2018 09:43
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CeeJee posted:It was pretty lucky an incredibly rare fatal skydiving accident happened just as it needed one. Not really though. You're begging the question; it only needed anyone to die in any way in a pretty flexible location and timeframe. If anything, it was incredibly unlucky that the skydiver was the only traveler candidate in the area and time. If anything, that was almost the point of the episode, to showcase the limitations of the system, and that while usually things go relatively smoothly like we normally see, something like this could also happen.
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Jan 11, 2018 10:59
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XboxPants posted:Not really though. You're begging the question; it only needed anyone to die in any way in a pretty flexible location and timeframe. If anything, it was incredibly unlucky that the skydiver was the only traveler candidate in the area and time. If anything, that was almost the point of the episode, to showcase the limitations of the system, and that while usually things go relatively smoothly like we normally see, something like this could also happen. Statistically there would be one death in a random 17 minute period for the whole of British Columbia. And they will be mostly old people in the cities. I believe the show is not quite clear (understandably) how exactly things work when history is changed. The commandos kill the team, steal the meteorite and the Director does not get built. Yet somehow the Director is able to react with its milliseconds response time and send a traveler back, not to a week before the event to warn the team with a child messenger going 'hey, there are guys with guns in the lake, make sure you are ready for them' but uses poor Kerry falling to her death close by but also very close in time. The first attempt fails and the Director gets enough info from that attempt to send a new Traveler into Kerry who knows (or learned) sign language. Wouldn't the Faction also know about the skydiving accident from historical records and simply stop the jump from happening, denying the Director from using them ? Overthinking time travel is such fun.
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Jan 11, 2018 14:52
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The faction were not the ones killing them. It was Traveler 001. That's why his bodyguard was involved.
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Jan 11, 2018 16:37
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CeeJee posted:
Narratively, this is a self-imposed limitation to avoid the temptation to gently caress with past episodes and avoid even more mind-bending time travel fuckery
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Jan 11, 2018 17:14
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Hidden gem moment of 17 minutes: 5008 scarfing the half the sandwich on his way to pickup the dirt bike. Traveler obsession with 21st century food is unstoppable.
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Jan 12, 2018 06:42
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I imagine life in the future isn't much different than the Matrix. Minus the killer robots and VR simulations. Nothing to eat bu Tastee Wheet.
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Jan 12, 2018 07:01
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I know this is mostly my fault but I accidentally read a spoiler here and it made me read the entire thread so I’m all spoilered despite not finishing season 1 yet. I’ll still finish season 1 at least but the whole thing with Darcy doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Marcy: So again I haven’t seen the episode, but I read that the Marcy we’ve known and seen died from whatever her host body was suffering from, and that the Director just sent her consciousness back into the same body to reboot her and “patched” her via “software” to be immune to whatever disease killed her. Her rebooted self is simply Marcy but restored to her last save point, which was right before she was sent back the first time. Ok. So 1) what is stopping them from training a super god genius athlete star who knows literally everything and just sending this same thing back to multiple hosts and 2) are Travelers even “real” people? Loaded question I know but how do we know Travelers aren’t just “software” that the apparent Director AI programmed and that they were real people at some point? I’m also under the impression that there’s a competing group that are trying to gently caress poo poo up. Is this the group of guys the team met in the warehouse? Are they related to the people who kidnapped the team? When I watched that episode honestly I thought this was just an elaborate test from the people running the show to test how loyal and/or (un)breakable the team was.
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Jan 12, 2018 17:02
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1. Historians are sorta what you describe, they do have perfect recall. They’re walking black boxes. Season 2 addresses some of what you’re asking about for Marcy. Short version is that it isn’t as simple as her most recent “save” point. 2. This one gets answered by the end of season 2 as well. The end of season 1 and a chunk of season 2 clarify the S1 kidnapping episode.
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Jan 12, 2018 21:14
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I think the Director only makes sense if they have a 'bubble' surrounding it either in the present (eg the quantum frame) or the future allowing it to determine the changes that prevent it from existing in the first place (eg its outside of time so it can watch things happen without being effected). Otherwise how could alpha protocol events happen to begin with if the director isn't capable of sending stuff back?
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Jan 12, 2018 22:01
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Perhaps the Director is constantly sending backups to itself to some location in the past, which then it can then immediately access in the future - this would let him see all the changes in the timeline without too weird time shenanigans - any copies stored in the past are set in stone after a Traveler has been there, so he'd have access to all his previous copies.
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Jan 12, 2018 22:43
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Pretty sure the Director has disclosed the absolute minimum of how time travel works to the Travelers, sort of a "need to know" thing. There have been several examples where someone goes "Huh, that doesn't make a lot of sense based on what we know" - e.g. lack of changes after the Helios episode. I think that it could be more complicated than what we've been told.
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Jan 13, 2018 01:01
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The limitation of only being able to send back to the last time it interacted with the past might be how the Director is able to keep track of timeline changes.
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Jan 13, 2018 02:03
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e: nothing
Boris Galerkin fucked around with this message at 11:55 on Jan 14, 2018 |
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Jan 13, 2018 14:06
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Just watched the episode with the flu virus thing. David is the best person in the entire world. I’m really rooting for him and I hope Marcy is able to do whatever Mac did during surgery. e: "I'd like to make your day." 
Boris Galerkin fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Jan 14, 2018 |
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Jan 14, 2018 11:38
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Finished it. God drat that was good. Halfway through the first season I was worried about the show turning into a mystery of the week type of show but with things like family life! mixed in. Really glad it didn’t go that way though. The Marcy episode was just really sad. It was a great episode but wow. Was Vincent = the Faction or was he a third party that the Faction most likely didn’t even know about? All the FBI agents and all the rave people, and the traitor judge person, they were all Faction for sure right? I’m really impressed with the continuity of the show. Since I just binged through it it felt like it was just one really long 20+ hour movie because it felt like the episodes just bleed into each other. S2E1 felt like it was part 2 of he S1 finale, and I think the only time break we’ve had that I remember was the short jump between S2E1 and S2E2. The scene where Mac’s partner arrives and says “I’m gonna need a lot of help.” Never would have guessed he was a fake traveler but that line makes so much sense now. I’m guessing that in the future clothes don’t exist. Simon was walking around naked and Philip was just okay with it in a surprised way. Marcy’s story pointed out that she was just naked a lot too at the beginning.
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Jan 14, 2018 17:03
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Vincent definitely wasn't working with the Faction seeing as he came from the timeline before they existed.
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Jan 14, 2018 20:11
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Yeah, but he could have created them somehow and gotten them to start sending themselves back to the 21st.
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Jan 15, 2018 08:04
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Isn't it stated in 17 Minutes that the Director was explicitly trying to stop the Faction from getting their hands on the unobtanium, and the would-be assassins are definitely Vincent's as indicated by the mute Oddjob, establishing a clear link between the two? Beyond that, it's kind of obvious that the Faction is the realization of Vincent's ethos/paranoia in the future.
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Jan 15, 2018 08:20
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Boris Galerkin posted:Yeah, but he could have created them somehow and gotten them to start sending themselves back to the 21st. Diverting the asteroid created the faction.
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Jan 15, 2018 09:14
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I don't think I liked the new season, but I watched it. I can't say the same for Wayward Pines or The Strain so I guess that is an endorsement.
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Jan 15, 2018 09:24
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I just finished episode 7 of season 1 and the director took over the bodies of the Marines that stormed the compound? I don't understand why the engineer didn't just throw the switch right away before she was shot if she knew the future. Why don't they just do this body takeover stuff of the Marines earlier? Does it only work if they are going to die shortly? Also this episode felt really cheap in some way. Oh well, still enjoying the show and trying to figure stuff out.
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Jan 15, 2018 09:26
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With 17 minutes Vincent was supposed to have bugged all their communications so I think he knew about the op and was just trying to give the faction a hand by letting them take the meteor. Edit: MOVIE MAJICK posted:I just finished episode 7 of season 1 and the director took over the bodies of the Marines that stormed the compound? I don't understand why the engineer didn't just throw the switch right away before she was shot if she knew the future. Why don't they just do this body takeover stuff of the Marines earlier? Does it only work if they are going to die shortly? One of the rules of the show is that the past (present) isn't set in stone and that the Director can't take people that aren't going to die. When the engineer first went back, the timeline she knew was where she didn't get shot and the Marines presumably all survived so she takes her time and none of the soldiers are candidates for Travelers. However when she dies and the mission fails, the guys in the future instantly get wind of this and so send back another person to rectify the problem and so on. There's another episode in the second season that goes into a bit more detail but the Director can basically bruteforce a solution by throwing a bunch of bodies at a problem, inadvertently/deliberately cause more people to die and then use those deaths to throw a bunch more bodies into the past until it wins. Kegslayer fucked around with this message at 09:42 on Jan 15, 2018 |
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Jan 15, 2018 09:31
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MOVIE MAJICK posted:I just finished episode 7 of season 1 and the director took over the bodies of the Marines that stormed the compound? I don't understand why the engineer didn't just throw the switch right away before she was shot if she knew the future. Why don't they just do this body takeover stuff of the Marines earlier? Does it only work if they are going to die shortly? I think they kind of broke the internal logic with the 17 minutes episode. Best to let it slide.
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Jan 15, 2018 09:32
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Kegslayer posted:
If the Director can game the system then the team would be able too: Grant: "We need The Director to take over Mr. McGuffin here to we can complete the mission" Philip: "He does not die for another 12 years" Carly: "Actually, he died 60 seconds from now" *pulls out cameraphone and gun* McGuffin: "Aaaaa, my head !" Team: "Welcome to the 21st"
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Jan 15, 2018 12:21
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Kegslayer posted:
17 minutes This is the thing I don’t really understand. From the Director’s point of view, actions in the past should be felt immediately since the Director is, you know, in the future. I mean from our point of view the actions happen in “real time” but everything that we see has already happened from the Director’s point of view. So I’m picturing a scene in the future where the Director sent attempt #1 and within fractions of a second already knew it resulted in failure, so now it sends #2, then #3 and so on. The entirety of the 9 attempts should have been done in like less than 1 second. How does the Director find people and get them trained so fast within the fractions of seconds it needs to “think” about the next attempt? Only possible ways is if Travelers are just AI constructs that the Director can just create on the spot. Or if everyone is already dead and has been uploaded to some searchable database. Boris Galerkin fucked around with this message at 13:30 on Jan 15, 2018 |
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Jan 15, 2018 13:26
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Boris Galerkin posted:17 minutes That’s exactly how it happened. The Director, being in the future, could wait a day or a year between attempts and still send the next volunteer a fraction of a second after the first arrives. Given the whole failure state I kinda think there is only one Director in some weird superposition for all possible timelines.
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Jan 15, 2018 16:56
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CeeJee posted:
From 17 Minutes I think the director can totally game the system and your example is pretty much what happens in that episode. Initially, the girl was the only candidate for a host, instead the girl ends up accidentally killing her brother and the brother causes the truck driver to get killed allowing the Director to use those two as candidates.
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Jan 16, 2018 03:04
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Autism Sneaks posted:Isn't it stated in 17 Minutes that the Director was explicitly trying to stop the Faction from getting their hands on the unobtanium, and the would-be assassins are definitely Vincent's as indicated by the mute Oddjob, establishing a clear link between the two? Beyond that, it's kind of obvious that the Faction is the realization of Vincent's ethos/paranoia in the future. They just knew somebody was trying to get the asteroid, however we later find out Vincent wanted it because it would have made building his mind transfer device easier.
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Jan 16, 2018 03:29
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Boris Galerkin posted:17 minutes This is exactly what 17 minutes looks like from the outside.
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Jan 16, 2018 04:09
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Piell posted:This is exactly what 17 minutes looks like from the outside. Like someone said before, 17 Minutes was an episode from The Director's point of view.
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Jan 16, 2018 05:42
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I seriously love this show. Yeah, the characters don't really go anywhere, they sort of waver back and forth on all of their arcs, and the showdown with the Faction didn't make a great deal of sense. But it's so wonderfully uneasy. Nobody knows if they're doing the right thing. The morality of the Grand Plan is all backwards and contorted. The heroes are a literal suicide cult. The Faction, who argue in favour of human judgement and emotion, attempt genocide. The Travellers work for a cold soulless god-machine, who...might be all warm and cuddly? And also commits genocide. Continuum tried to hit a similar sense of uncertainty, but while Travellers is happy to let you squirm by yourself, Continuum would have characters spouting bland half-baked ideas about politics and corporations (and loving Sonmanto) and instead of actually developing them it would pile on even more convoluted poo poo like a poorly planned D&D campaign. Also the constant jokes about Travellers eating crappy food are amazing. Strom Cuzewon fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Jan 18, 2018 |
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Jan 18, 2018 22:55
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Strom Cuzewon posted:I seriously love this show. Yeah, the characters don't really go anywhere, they sort of waver back and forth on all of their arcs, and the showdown with the Faction didn't make a great deal of sense. I’m not sure I’d go so far as a suicide cult but they are fanatically devoted to an AI. One of Graces moments in the superflu episode, Jenny explains that overpopulation is the greatest threat to the 21st and the virus will wipe out 1/3rd of the population. Grace hears this and just slightly nods. She may not like it, but she also can’t argue with the merits of the plan even though The Director would never do anything like that. The small stuff in this show just sell the hell out of the world and character building.
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Jan 19, 2018 16:27
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Strom Cuzewon posted:
“All you high programmers wanted to do was hang out by the yeast vats talking about how great you were” Ah, the finest of cuisine for society’s elite 
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Jan 19, 2018 19:13
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17 minutes made me depressed as hell. i was sitting there all "oh hey this carrie lady rules! can't wait for her to be a series regular! and then she's just loving left broken and battered in a field, discarded and a failure.
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Jan 19, 2018 19:51
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