I found out about this series (probably from my brother in law since I cannot remember who it was that told me) and watched the first season which I absolutely loved. But waiting for the future seasons that took a while made me forget most of the plot. So I waited for it to be concluded just last month to see the whole 4 seasons continuously. Now let's start with the series.
Brief Story Line
Story was set in the year 2043 where the world had been hit by deadly virus which killed 7 billion people. A team of scientists led by Katarina Jones (Barbara Sukowa - Rosa Luxemburg, M.Butterfly etc) had created a time machine to alter the history. They recruited a scavenger James Cole (Aaron Stanford - X-men: The Last Stand, Nikita TV series etc) to go back in time to the year 2015 and stop the release of the virus by an organization known as the "Army of the 12 Monkeys". Despite the objection from his best friend Jose Ramse (Kirk Acevedo - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Fringe TV series etc), Cole still insisted to go and face the danger.
Meanwhile in the year 2015, Cole would meet and enlist the help of virologist Dr. Cassandra "Cassie" Railly (Amanda Schull - Center Stage, Suits TV series etc) to stop the virus. During this mission, he would also encounter a rather crazy genius named Jennifer Goines (Emily Hampshire - Boy Meets Girl, Schitt's Creek etc) who seemed to have information on the 12 Monkeys. With some help from Cassie's ex-boyfriend Aaron Marker (Noah Bean - Nikita TV series, Damages TV series etc), Cole and Cassie would have to fight so hard against the enemy in the year 2015 as well as the year 2043 against other ruthless scavengers group nicknamed West 7 under the leadership of the dangerous Deacon (Todd Stashwick - The Riches TV series etc).
So could they stop the virus and save the world? Find them all in this amazing time travel series.
End of Brief Story Line
This was probably one of the best time travel story that I have ever seen. The theory and science of it all, with the talk about causality and keeping the timeline intact, somehow seemed logical to me. Although the more the story progressed, the more complex it felt to me which probably made me a little headache if I wanted to truly understand the whole bunch of it. And because of the theory was a bit complex, it might not be too appealing to casual audience who wanted to see just a simple time travel story.
Now what amazed me was the fact that throughout the whole 4 seasons, there were incredibly countless moments where we would be absolutely surprised. I was really in awe of how the story was told and unfolded with many side stories that seemed irrelevant at first would be connected in future episodes (even future seasons). This was really great on the writers & creators part that they really knew what they were doing. In fact from what I read in the internet, they already had in their mind what the ending would be, which explained how well crafted the finale part & how everything have been resolved. However, I personally thought that they opted on the most popular choice for the ending which I personally think would be more satisfying had they stuck to the more tragic ending.
The first and second season consisted of 13 episodes each, while third season only had 10 episodes and the final season had 11 episodes with 2 hour finale. Throughout the whole series, I thought the first season was great with episode 10, 12 & 13 being my favorite. The second season was also amazing with my most favorite episode 8 & 13 that were truly mind blowing. Though the third season felt a little more like drama with various personal struggles that each character had to faced and strangely I felt it was less appealing. And in the first half of the final season I thought it was a bit slow and had different approach with lighter tone as opposed to the very dark tone from first to third season. However the second half was really awesome, especially starting from episode 7 that provided us one surprise after another that culminated in the episode 9 which I thought was really really extraordinary fantastic and beautiful at the same time. As for the series finale, I thought was great but it would be more satisfying for me if it's a little bit different, even if it was probably not the popular choice.
The series had pretty decent special effects and quite a number of additional guest stars, some were really notable such as Demore Barnes as Whitley, Andrew Gillies as Dr. Adler, Tom Noonan as the "tall man", Alisen Down as Olivia and Brooke Williams plus of course James Callis (Gaius in Battlestar Galactica TV series). Having total of 47 episodes with approx 42-43 minutes per episode, I think it would not take a lot of time to complete the series. If you are interested to see this one, my suggestion would be to continuously watch it rather than stopping every once in a while so you could clearly remember the events in prior seasons. One thing I loved was that the series was a SyFy original which was a network that was quite serious in providing sci-fi series and usually give us a proper conclusion. Unlike some other TV networks who could not care less of audience's views and cancel series at any time without considering the fans who had invested their time.
Overall I thought this was a very great time travel series with a dark tone. This series was based on a famous movie titled Twelve Monkeys back in 1995 starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe and Brad Pitt (earning him Golden Globe award). So yeah that one was a tough act to follow, but I thought this one was quite a respectable series adapting a great movie. Since this series had more than 40 hours to show, it certainly had the time necessary to develop all the characters, plus the time travel was shown a lot while the movie although had the same premise but its main plot was completely different, including the character Brad Pitt portrayed was replaced with a female in here (luckily it did not have too much impact for me as the character was roughly similar).
So if you are looking for a great time travel series, look no more and start to watch this one. But if you prefer it to be less complicated and complex, perhaps you could start by something lighter & fun like Timeless.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
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