The Season Premiere of Timeless was pretty encouraging. They didn’t waste any time jumping right into the action and getting the audience fully invested in the characters and the action. The show started with the explosion of the Hindenburg and then immediately flashed to a college classroom where Lucy (played by Abigail Spencer) was giving an intriguing history lesson. After a fight with the head of her department, she heads home to her mother and sister. Her mother is obviously dying of some disease, most likely cancer, and she and her sister are care-takers. Her mother had once been a brilliant professor and she is trying to follow in her footsteps.

Switch to a laboratory where a group of people diligently work on some top-secret project and have harmless office banter, only to be interrupted by a group of terrorists and gunfire. The terrorists hijack the machine in the lab and in a flash they are gone. Back at Lucy’s house, there is a knock at the door and someone from the NSA, tells her that they need her help. She is rushed to a secret facility and made to wait with Wyatt (played by Matt Lanter), before being briefed on the security issue. At first she is in disbelief that there is such a thing as time travel and even more in disbelief that she is being asked to travel through time after some maniac. But her historical skills, along with the piloting skills of Wyatt, and the engineering/technical skills of Rufus (played by Malcolm Barrett) make them the essential team to find Garcia Flynn–the terrorist in question and figure out what he is doing back in time.

There are some little twists and turns throughout the show, and as with any time travel based show the pressure to not make changes that will alter the future time line is critical. Despite their best efforts the Hindenburg does not blow up as originally record in history, it does explode later with not as many casualties, and a brief confrontation between Lucy and Garcia where he asks her if she truly knows about the organization she is working for, and why it was her they sent specifically. Nothing seems to make sense to Lucy and she is just happy to complete the mission and head home. As she enters her home and calls out to her sister, to her shock and surprise she finds her mother healthy and whole and cooking in the kitchen. At first she is overwhelmed with joy and relief until she calls out for her sister and can’t find her anywhere. Her mom then proceeds to tell her that she has no sister and Lucy starts to sob in despair. Somehow, something that they did altered the timeline so that her sister was never born. Not surprisingly, she is summoned almost immediately again by the same organization who once again needs her help.

This fall seems full of shows that use “time travel” in some capacity for their story plot–DC Legends of Tomorrow, The Flash, Frequency and Timeless. What will set this show apart? How will it be different? For one thing, keeping the true identities and intentions of both our heroes and villains a mystery and only leaving little clues along the way keeps an air of suspense and mystery that looks like it will keep viewers coming back for more.