I’ve decided what I think makes the Netflix Show Travelers so interesting. It’s a time travel story, but really it’s a story about the ethics of human sacrifice.
The fact that the time travelers arrive in the 21st century by taking over other people’s minds, sets the tone right away.
They take the high road by (mostly) taking the minds of people who are about to die, but that’s a rather weak justification.
They area clearly trying to do the right thing, but they are still playing a hardcore game of Trolley Car Problem.
You know, the dilemma where one person is tied to one track, five people to another. You can throw a switch and kill one or do nothing and five will die. Which is the moral choice?
Travelers raises the stakes even higher. Which and how many individuals must be sacrificed in the past to save humanity in the future?
We make similar decisions in the real world. We can’t know the future, so there’s no way to justify the sacrifices of others that our society makes for supposedly greater cause. But we sure try don’t we?
The Director is in a better position than we are. It can know the future, sort of. But because it exists in multiple timelines, it can’t base its decisions on certainty, only probability. It’s very smart and it means well. But it makes mistakes, so do its operatives.
There’s no way to “win” the trolley problem. You have to make a bad choice. But you know the main characters are the good guys – because they’re the main characters.
Just like all of us. The stakes might not be as high as they are in Travelers, but everyone gets into damned if you do, damned if you don’t situations.
We also know when we didn’t really have to make that bad choice… But we know we’re the good guys – because we’re the main characters.
Late Boomer's Den 
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