The Peripheral, Season 1

by Scott B. Smith, et al., directed by Vincenzo Natali and Alrick Riley

• Release: 21 October 2022
• Format: TV Episode
• Genre: Science Fiction
• Audience: Adults
• Content: Definite Time Travel
• Original Language: English

If it were time travel, as you say, you’d be here physically. This is merely a matter of data transfer: quantum tunneling is the technical term for it. I understand your confusion.

VARIANTS

1 English variant

PRIOR WORKS

loosely based on The Peripheral (2014)

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

• Circa AD 2000 to 2099: Flynne’s home time period is in 2032.
• Circa AD 2100 to 2199: Flynn says she has traveled to 2100, although it might be 2099 London (which was the year identified in the opening scene when Aelita in a child peripheral meets with Wilf).

Timeline Models

• Branching Timelines: When a party from our present made contact with the past, that past immediately branched off and formed its own continuum or parallel timeline if you will . . . or stub.

Time Travel Methods

• Wearable Time Object: the “VR” headset

Themes

• Get Rich Quick through Time Travel: Win the lottery!
• Grandfather Paradox: Lev kills his ancestors in the stub because he can’t bear the existential nihilism that arises from another Lev wandering around at a later point in that stub. This is an example of a nicely resolved grandfather paradox in that killing ancestors in the stub affects only the stub and not the original world.
• Letters, Texts, Phone Calls, Talking, and Other Direct Communications through Time: Wilf’s phone call and various other data streams
• Media from Another Time: Ella Fisher’s newspaper obituary
• Simulation: Although the peripherals’s technology is not a sim, Flynne’s talent at sims instigates the story.
• Synchronized Time: Once the 2032 stub is branched off from 2100’s past, it seems that data streams too and from 2032 are restricted to moments that are in sync with the current moment in 2100.
• Technology and Science from the Future: invisibility cloak, sonic disruptor, medicine, at al.
• Time Cabal: To us, both the Research Institute and the Klepts are more evil cabals than noble time corps, though maybe they are neither.
• Time Mercenary
• Time Travel Sickness, Injuries, and Mixed-Up Body Parts: Flynne’s hand, eye, and seizure

Real-World Tags

• Cyborgs: Burton and his Marine buddies
• Pandemics, Epidemics, and Bio-Disasters: the Blood Plague
• Robots: the peripherals and koids

Fictional Tags

• Dystopian World
• Post-Apocalyptic and Post-Holocaust Worlds: After the “Jackpot”

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY (SPOILERS!)

1. From Burton's trailer and Forever Fab, 2032 ⋙ to London, circa 2100. Multiple round trips. Note: Throughout the season, Flynne’s consciousness takes multiple trips from Burton’s trailer near her house in AD 2032 to London around AD 2100 where she controls a robot, which in the post-apocalyptic future is called a peripheral.
2. From London, circa 2100 ⋙ to in and around Clanton, North Carolina, 2032. Multiple round trips. Note: In addition to a person’s consciousness streaming through time, future technology also allows for other kinds of data—telephone calls, instructions for 3D printing, insturctions to wire money—to stream back and forth between AD 2100 and the AD 2032 time branch where Flynne and her family live. We’re calling this a round trip, but what we really mean is that data flows both ways.
3. From Burton's trailer and Forever Fab, 2032 ⋙ to London, circa 2100. Multiple round trips. Note: In episode 4, Burton’s amputee cohort, Connor, uses the headset to jump into Flynne’s peripheral in the future. Later, he jumps into a new peripheral made in his own likeness with his arms and legs intact.
4. From London, circa 2100 ⋙ to the Fishers’ house, 2032. Multiple round trips. Note: Also in episode 4, Wilf streams himself back to enter a VR sim that Flynne is running.
5. From Forever Fab, 2032 ⋙ to London, circa 2100. Multiple round trips. Note: At the end of episode 6, Burton first streams into a new peripheral built just for him.