I’m pretty gutted and disheartened by Sony failing to find Timeless a new home (but fair play to them, they tried as hard as they could in the very limited time they had… and… I suppose you never know entirely what may happen). On the other hand, NBC can choke, given as they cancelled the show and then to all appearances, deliberately sabotaged any other network’s chances of picking it up. I also absolutely agree with everything @extasiswings said in her tweetstorm earlier, about Timeless’s chances of renewal never being about the money or the ratings, but the messages that it sent and the people that it empowered in the current Darkest Timeline (aka, the wrong people for the Powers That Be). And simply put, they don’t want us to have that, and they want us to be tired and to give up on fighting for it (both the show, and more generally).
And since that’s the case, and because a) teaching history is what I do anyway, b) I already said I was going to do it, and c) I love the characters and story not one bit less than I did before this frankly extremely sucky news, I’m still writing season 3. I still have my 13 episodes planned, and I will still write and post them, even if me, two other people, a passing tumbleweed, and the pornbots are the only people who read them (please don’t take this as an invitation, pornbots, nobody likes you). Because obviously, these characters and this story deserve a chance to be continued in a systematic fashion, and maybe they swing the 2-hour movie and maybe they don’t (honestly, I trust NBC for nothing and spit upon their ashes and that of their forefathers). But because of what Timeless stood and stands for, for the tailor-made opportunity it offers to continue its education and its outreach and its community, and because it’s what I do as a historian and a writer anyway, I’m gonna give it a whirl. That kind of content is more important than ever, and so is that awareness and that fight.
I will let you know more about the project as it shapes up over the summer. I’ve had people interested in being staff writers or research assistants or consultants, and I will advertise as needed for help. I will also be looking for graphics gurus or people who want to be publicists (writing recaps and posting on twitter and whatever else) and to find fancasts for guest stars and so forth. Obviously, it will be a fan project and purely for the love of it, but that is what fandom is anyway, and you never know whose bars you might rattle.
Anyway. I am busy this week at a conference, but this does nothing to change my love for everything that Timeless was and is, and my determination to continue producing content for it, whether fics (SSM, Dragons, etc) or a season 3 or whatever else. So I am going to stick around and go as far as that (and raging spite and fury, lbr) will take me.
