So… um holy shit has this show dialed things up the last few episodes! I’m enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would (and more than I have been)!
Ive been pleasantly surprised by 12 Monkeys. Its really quite good. You have to accept the time bending premise as time travel is easy to pick apart, but if you just go with the flow its a damn good ride. The recent episode that centered around Ramsey was really good. Its amazing how much they fit into that one episode and how many questions they answered. Im finding myself kind of wishing that the show had a set amount of episodes with a definite end date. Shows like this can easily lose focus when they try to stretch things out with filler episodes.
Well, it kinda breaks internal consistency, because Cole was the only one out of many subjects who survived time travel, and then Ramsey strolls along, shoots up some superjuice, and he’s good to go. But yeah, if you accept the plot holes that are inherent in any time-travel exercise, it is an excellent show.
It’s a lot better than any show on SyFy has a right to be. I do agree that they should have a short plan for a few seasons at most. It can quickly go absurd with time travel.
That bothered me too. I explained it off that it wasn’t the Cole himself was special, it was his immunity to the various mutations of the virus, something Ramsey has as well. It was more about timing and their immunity to a particular strain of the virus than some special individual immunity to the superjuice.
I still haven’t a clue what’s going on anymore, but I’m still enjoying watching it for some reason - I keep hoping for some resolution, and the carrot just keeps getting dangled, then snatched away to dangle over somewhere else in the story, and meanwhile some new gee-whizz element is introduced, and I’m like, okaaay.
Remember that Ramsey only went back in time. They haven’t tried to pull him forward again. I got the impression the former attempts brought the subjects back in pieces, until Cole. So Ramsey would be fine as long as they don’t retrieve him.
If that was the case, why wouldn’t they just send a couple dozen people back to 2004 with a bunch of gold to sell and have them work out how to stop the virus completely in the past? They could communicate one-way via hidden caches, or two-way by just sending another dude back to chat. Doesn’t hold up. But, time-travel show, so that’s par.
You are aware you are judging the show based on your own not paying attention to the explanation (presuming you were watching) and someone else’s speculation.
When the show started I didn’t have much hope for it, it just seemed like another weekly go-nowhere mission of the week show, which eventually gets bland and devolves into a soap opera of sorts.
I’m pleasantly surprised that isn’t the case. Every week, it’s been evolving - after the first eight or so episodes, it’s started becoming intriguing and linking together all the threads from earlier episodes. The real question now, is it all a self-supporting loop, or will something change. As it stands, I’d qualify this as one of the better sci-fi shows on television. Although Ascension last year was surprisingly good, despite looking like a clunker when it started, and it’s disappointing to see that went nowhere.
Thats a plausible explanation as well. It could even be a bit of both, anyway there are valid enough possibilities for accepting Ramsey’s trip to the past.
If that was the case, why wouldn’t they just send a couple dozen people back to 2004 with a bunch of gold to sell and have them work out how to stop the virus completely in the past? They could communicate one-way via hidden caches, or two-way by just sending another dude back to chat. Doesn’t hold up. But, time-travel show, so that’s par.
This is a standard time travel story nit pick, if youre going to fall back on this logic, youre not going to be able to accept the story for much longer. I will point out that in 12 Monkeys sending dozens of people back is not possible as they have extremely limited resources, including a very finite supply of juice and energy. In fact, they were pretty much consigned to Coles most recent trip to the past being his last. Of course one trip to the past to give the Doctor a sample of the juice would likely solve that problem but once again suspending belief for the benefit of the dramatic narrative is an absolute must when time travel is involved. I can nit pick any time travel show to death if I want to. This one is strong enough that I dont.
Also, the Doctor knows that it works for Cole, and likely other details about her future efforts. Perhaps her earlier efforts were more experiments to be ready for Cole. There’s too many unknowns for speculation about problems which aren’t supported by the facts, being valid reasons to discount the show.
I thought the season finale for this was very good. The twists in just who the Witness was and how Ramsey fit in were good, and Cole’s actions finally seem to be disrupting the timelines enough to have impact. It does sort of go against previous canon that all the sudden they can send someone back to the future with just a juice injection, but whatever, it’s cool. I liked how the creepy blue guys showed up and nobody at any point in all the conversation stops to say “uh, no offense, but what is up with you guys and your scaly blue look?”. ;-)
Overall this show was far better than I expected it to be and hopefully it did well enough to merit a full season renewal (I did see that it said the show will return in 2016 at the end). Not sure how that’s going to work given the current state of the project in the future and of Cole/Ramsey in the past, but I’m looking forward to finding out.
Just a heads up for fans of this show, its back on April 18th. Theres a nice season 1 recap here: http://www.syfy.com/12monkeys/videos/12-monkeys-season-1-recap If you want a quick refresher on the rather convoluted plot line.
12 Monkeys was a bit of a surprise for me. I went in expecting a trainwreck but ended up really liking the show.
It was definitely better than I would have ever expected. Looking forward to season 2.
Yeah, that season starter was awesome! I wonder if they got a sackful of extra money or something, because the cinematography (Thank you spelling helper) was way better than season one.
Also, Deacon was awesome, and so was Catherine - Love it, and cant wait for the next episode.
We enjoyed it too; my non-scifi-leaning girlfriend who watched all first season with me. While I liked that they started by quickly summarizing the first season i did feel that they rushed into things at the start in a very ham-fisted way. “Hey, we used to be like brothers until you learned that if we save the world your son will never be born so you gave The Army of the 12 Monkeys all our information and tried to have me killed but now we’re working together against them even though we’re still not sure we’re on the same side.” So anyway, after some of that it really smoothed out and I did appreciate the business going on in 2046 with Jones and Cassie. I had my doubts whether there was really a second season or more worth of stuff but I guess I’m a sucker for time travel stories and the way they inherently can play fast and loose.
I am enjoying this season okay so far, but I wonder whether it can stop becoming a mess.
There’s a simplicity in the first season before all the plot twists become a burden and people are just swapping sides left and right. And then wacky shit is thrown into the mix (like the blue man group), but things can’t change too much, because there’s a generally fixed cast who have to remain in place (the future crew) and they’re not going to ditch them.
The problem with time travel shows is that the deeper down the timey whimey rabbit hole you go, the more paradoxical baggage you pick up. Time travel is easier to handle when you keep the cast tight because once you start introducing more people you can quickly get overwhelmed with maintaining continuity with some degree of logic. That happened to another decent time travel series, Continuum. They did get a final season to wrap up the story but in the end, they had introduced so many elements into the time travel plot that the had to basically let some major stuff just fall away so they could focus on the root characters. This made the wrap up of Continuum somewhat disappointing, though I am glad that they got the opportunity to provide closure for the story line.
Just finished the series finale!
I loved it. Beautiful, satisfying ending. Not all the timey-wimeyness was fully thought through, but it worked for me anyway. Really glad that one of my most favourite scifi movies ever made had a TV show made after it that, while completely different in style, is equally enjoyable.
James Callis as Athan was brilliant. I need to watch more stuff with him, I couldn’t get enough.