What the black scientist Rufus Carlin brings to “Timeless”

For those of you who haven’t seen it, ‘Timeless‘ is a prime-time, network action-SF show. The premise is straightforward: English billionaire Connor Mason funds the secret development of a time travel machine, bad guys steal the time travel machine, the authorities get involved and a square-jawed hero soldier Wyatt Logan, somewhat sheltered academic historian Lucy Preston, and Rufus Carlin, one of the science team who’d much rather stay in his lab, have to use the prototype machine to stop the bad guys wrecking history for fell purposes as yet unknown. So far, so formulaic.

Well, no, not entirely. Quite a few things lift this TV show above the mixture as before. It’s very well cast and the actors all deliver solidly committed performances. There are soon questions over how bad the bad guy Flynn’s motives might actually be, and while history’s big picture is pretty much maintained, the butterfly effect means massive changes in Lucy’s personal life when she gets back from their first mission. All enjoyably entertaining.

Then there’s Rufus Carlin being black. Not that he stands out in the present day setting; so is Connor Mason and there are more actors of varied ethnicities among the scientific support staff and government officials, men and women alike. The show has a diverse cast because there’s absolutely no reason there shouldn’t be such people in such roles in this day and age. So far so good, and so unremarkable.

But … the action is by no means limited to this day and age, is it? This is a time travel show. And as Rufus points out to Connor Mason in the first episode, “There is literally no place in American history that will be awesome for me!”

Rufus being black adds whole new levels of complexity and interest to the writing and thus to the viewing. Not that the writers are out to beat viewers over the head with Politically Correct Messages. These things arise naturally from the situations created by the overall plot arc. Put Rufus in early 1960s Las Vegas and all of a sudden, he’s invisible because everyone just assumes he’s a waiter. Put him in 1930’s New Jersey and the overt racial bias is much less amusing. Put historical expert Lucy in 1970s Washington and she knows all about the political scandals – but has no clue about the Black Power movement because that was never something a white girl like her would study. Fortunately Rufus did, even if it was just to impress a girl. You get the idea.

This is precisely what I meant when I asserted “There’s a point to ‘rainbow sprinkles’ for writing and ice-cream”, when that particular sneer about increased diversity in SF&F was circulating a while back.

This sort of thing makes viewing and reading so much more interesting. So let’s see much more of it.

Author: Juliet

Juliet E McKenna is a British fantasy author living in the Cotswolds, UK. Loving history, myth and other worlds since she first learned to read, she has written fifteen epic fantasy novels so far. Her debut, The Thief’s Gamble, began The Tales of Einarinn in 1999, followed by The Aldabreshin Compass sequence, The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution, and The Hadrumal Crisis trilogy. The Green Man’s Heir was her first modern fantasy inspired by British folklore in 2018, and The Green Man’s Quarry in 2023 is the sixth title in this ongoing series. Her 2023 novel The Cleaving is a female-centred retelling of the story of King Arthur, while her shorter stories include forays into dark fantasy, steampunk and science fiction. She promotes SF&Fantasy by reviewing, by blogging on book trade issues, attending conventions and teaching creative writing. She has served as a judge for major genre awards. As J M Alvey, she has written historical murder mysteries set in ancient Greece.

5 thoughts on “What the black scientist Rufus Carlin brings to “Timeless”

  1. Not going to lie, I absolutely loved Rufus – more than either Lucy or Wyatt. And I really appreciated the way they treated him – both when he was treated badly in the past, but also when he was treated positively (thinking also of the NASA related episode as well as the ‘Black Power’ episode)…

    And I loved how racially diverse the cast was – more please.

  2. I’ve been watching this, though I’m a couple of weeks behind at the moment, and having very similar thoughts. It’s interesting to compare this to the old Time Tunnel. Having Rufus adds a very different perspective.

    My main complaint is that the time machine seems to attract surprisingly little attention.

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