svw

The first season of Travelers was a clear 10/10 for me. Brilliant concept, amazing cast, original and exciting story. Carly's character was flawed by the inexplicable obsession with her host's baby and the whole subplot with her alcoholic husband, but during the first season that was still a relatively minor annoyance.

Unfortunately the later seasons were pushed deeper into soap opera. All the characters' love interests became tedious. I found myself fast forwarding through large sections of episodes in the latter half of season 2.

The essential elements of the show remained well written and fascinating throughout, but the entire show would have been far better without the characters of David, Kat and Jeff. I wish that the writers had not felt obliged to incorporate kitchen sink drama into high concept science fiction. 8/10.

I watched the whole series with a mounting sense of frustration. Well produced, well directed, and a talented and watchable cast, all let down by increasingly absurd plots and characterisation. I lost count of the number of times the lead detectives became near-victims of the killers themselves. The female detective made so many terrible decisions that it was impossible to believe she'd be leading a team. She had very poor judgement, while the male psychologist was magically omniscient. There were at least two members of the police team who were never developed as characters at all. After 12 episodes I still didn't know one of their names.

On top of all that, although I love police dramas, I am only really interested in solving the mysteries. I am totally disinterested in serial killers and don't like gratuitous gore. This show has plenty of that.

Still, I awarded a generous 7/10 because I liked the cast so much. They deserved better scripts.