More people should watch this masterful sci-fi series on Netflix

In 2016, Netflix He released three of his best TV series.

was one of them Strange things. there was another OA.

Third? The criminally underrated Canadian sci-fi series Passengers.

From creator Brad Wright, who spent 14 years writing three Stargate shows, Passengers is a departure from traditional science fiction. It’s the kind of modern, grounded sci-fi that spins its ball rolling threads of time travel through the lens of sympathetic and lovable characters.

This team of time-traveling agents called “travelers” live in the bodies of people who are close to death. With the help of GPS coordinates, historical records and social media, the consciousness of future travelers is inserted into the bodies of 21st century civilians. This is the cleanest way for travelers to go back in time and complete their mission and use the lives of those who were going to die anyway.

Their mission: to save the world from a bad future, where things like tea and carrots no longer exist. This core concept can include smaller missions that give the show a procedural format. The look and feel of the passengers is moody and eerie, and occasionally the passengers speak face-to-face with technobabble, following a long list of protocols outlined by the mysterious director.

But the real essence lies in the moral dilemmas they face on a daily basis: lying, deceiving, upending their host’s lives. Sometimes they become interested in their new creatures in a relatively polluted world and are tempted to give up on the great almost holy mission.

You can always feel their pain and frustration. The main team we follow is deployed and cared for by Grant McLaren’s Eric McCormack, a passenger posing as an FBI agent. He is a compassionate and heroic leader who makes the tough decisions and carries the burden of the larger mission and individual well-being of his team.

As travelers take over existing lives, they must blend in, learn quickly, and avoid arousing suspicion. In addition, they must perform missions to save the world, escape from the police and other mysterious forces – absolutely anyone can pose as a traveler and possibly from a rival future faction. They lead Triple Lives; They can never let their guard down. The high-stakes tension is relentless.

But this is not a serious cost of life or death. Secret agents often find themselves in amusingly awkward situations: an engineer, one of the oldest passengers, takes on the body of a high school athlete. His sudden change from jock to genius is confusing to everyone, especially his confused parents.

Then there is the method by which travelers enter their host’s body. These sequences are one of the most exciting parts of the show. The time of death appears on the screen and the countdown begins. It becomes an issue to see how a new character is killed or not. As the traveler painfully enters their new body, their immediate mission is to save themselves from the jaws of death.

Finally, travelers tactfully convey their deeper message about the present and the future. What we do and don’t do now will affect the world for years to come, and we can’t expect the future to save us. Professionals who jump back in time essentially sacrifice themselves to save the future, but that future is secretive, illusory, and ever-changing. We never see it. It is in flux and constantly influenced by the events taking place in the 21st century.

If you’re still not convinced to commit to three seasons of Travelers, at least give the first episode a try. Its inventive first scene, featuring a traveler arriving in the present day, will almost certainly take you along for the full thrill ride.