Time Travel discussion

Person of Interest

Why on earth hasnt anyone mentioned this series!?! And how did this evade my radar?

A whole season has finished airing in the US but the pilot has just premiered on UK terrestrial TV last night which I luckily spotted in time on the TV listings.

For starters what a pedigree of a crew: A JJ Abrams production, written by JOnathan Nolan (The Dark Knight saga, Memento), starring Jim Caviezel (Passion of Christ) and Michael Emmerson (Ben Linus in Lost).

That was an excellent pilot. Caviezel is one cool character, delivering a very Clint Eastwood raspy voiced badass suicidal ex militant. Micheal Emmerson, is once again a joy to watch (I really think he is one of the most unique and enjoyable television character actors around)

The main concept is very similar to Minority Report, where a machine created by Michael Emmerson's character can see crimes committed in the near future.

The writing is great (of course it will be if Jonathan Nolan is writing this), the two main protagonist have already earned my investment to learn more about them as the series roll.

It feels great to be looking forward to what promises to be a quality high concept tv series because up until now, all I had to look forward to is Fringe.

So have any of you been watching this series?

Second season starts 27th September in US.

I have been watching since the start here in the USofA. Yes, a really great series. Has a great cliffhanger of an ending to the 1st season too! ;)

Tej, yes I've seen several episodes of this, a sleeper I thought, given that it's not so well known, buzz wise.

I agree about Emmerson, a great actor who can play either extreme, evil mastermind or befuddled good guy & no one can beat his 'deer in the headlights' look.

He once played the perp on a Law & Order, befor Lost I think, ouch, what a deadpan delivery of a stone cold killer, it was great.

It's a well written series & I like the interplay between Caviesal & Emmerson's charactors.

I look forward to the new season.

I have watched the entire first season. I think it is a great show. However, I wouldn't neccessarily classify this as precognition as we saw in "Minority Report." The idea is that Michael Emmerson has created a machine that predicts when people will be involved in some life-threatening event. The person may be either the victim or the perpetrator, but they can only predict events that are premeditated, not heat-of-passion crimes. It is then up to Jim Caviezel to watch the person and try to figure out what is going to happen and then prevent it.

Oh but doesnt the machine still foresee crimes, John? How does it work then? I get when you say it picks up on premeditated crimes but isnt it still looking into the future? From the first episode i understand that the machine can actually predict who the victim and perpertrator is but because its in government or secret service possession, Emmerson can only extract the social security number of either victim or perpertrator without arousing suspicions of security breach or indeed the fact that he is alive.

There was a big explanation by emmerson in the episode, i'll watch that part again!

I'm with John -- I don't see it as time travel at all. Just a machine looking at a lot of data and predicting outcomes. We do it every day ourselves, on a small scale. We just don't have as much data.

For example, if I see someone fly downwards past my 2nd floor window, I feel safe in predicting a sudden stop in the near future. :)

I watched that explanation again by Mr Finch (Emmerson) and yep John and Randy, I understand it now, thanks. As you say the machine picks up premeditated crimes from current large scale eavesdroppings. I thought he built a machine that can see in the future, doh! I think it was the synopsis: "An ex-CIA hitman and a scientist team up to prevent crimes before they happen" which made me jump to my initial thoughts of a Minority Report similarity. But the machine can determine more information such as who is the victim or perpetrator but as I picked up on first viewing, Mr Finch is just extracting the social security number through the back door without being noticed.

Sorry I got this one wrong in its classification, guys, it doesnt really belong here at all, does it, lol.

No problem, Tej. There are some similarities, but one is psychic powers and the other is technology. Both are equally entertaining.

Tej, still a good show & I like that you traveled back in time to get the proper classification.

Strickly speaking though, the show has time juxtaposition, as it's presented in the present but has future technology.

Unless you think it's real, that is & then it would be non-fiction.

Still, who knows what the future will hold?

The show is time-travel in one sense since it keeps jumping back to scenes from Reese and Finch's past. As Tej points out, who know what the future will hold! :)

You referring to flashbacks aren't you? We cant really class that as time travel, I'm afraid. That's just the story shifting to and fro different time periods, otherwise we might as well call Citizen Kane, Pulp Fiction, Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and a thousand more films that use flashbacks, all time travel movies ;)

BTW that's Howard who said "who knows what the future will hold?"

Tej wrote: "You referring to flashbacks aren't you? We cant really class that as time travel, I'm afraid. That's just the story shifting to and fro different time periods, otherwise we might as well call Cit..."

True, flashbacks not time-travel. Also, sorry for the mis-attribution (is that a word?) of the quote! (still true, though :) )

Not Time Travel, but oh yeah big fan of Person of Interest. Premiers tonight, can't wait!

Love Jim Caviezel in Frequency time travel through talking through a ham radio...Love that movie.