Science Fiction – a term invented by Luxemburgish born Hugo Gernsback in the 1920s, by the way – is not only about aliens or space travel. The best fiction about science speculates about the impact of scientific advances on human society by asking: what if?
Time Travel: Travelers – Netflix
In 2018, four strangers on the brink of death are suddenly revived, their personalities completely changed. Marcy, a young, previously disabled woman, Trevor, formerly a bully, heroin-addict Philipp, and young, abused Carly are tracked down by FBI agent MacLaren who believes them to be a terrorist cell.
As they all meet, MacLaren learns that their bodies have been overtaken by the minds of time travelers from the future before he dies in turn, taken over by the team’s leader.
Relying on information from their past, put together from social media and public records, the travelers take over their hosts lives in a mission to change and save the future they come from, where a series of wars and catatstrophic climate events have put humanity on the brink of extinction.
“Travelers” is one of the few original time-travelling shows, where the characters are aware that they can never go back, as it is only their minds that are able to travel, where every change they make impacts their future, sometimes in ways even the Director, the AI directing the thousands of travelers from the future, hasn’t been able to foresee.
For once, the travelers are not people from our time going back to historic events in order to “better” history, but people desperate enough to sacrifice their life, going back to a better time in order to save everyone’s future.
“Travelers” is available on Netflix.
