Secret histories, hidden figures: Revisionist history and corporate control in Timeless

Abstract

This article examines the way Timeless (2016–18), a series focused on time travel, interacts with history and historical revision as either prescient of or commenting on the current era, particularly in the way it questions, through the stories it tells, accepted history and the consequences of excluded stories, particularly those of women and people of colour. Further, pitting the series’ protagonists against the machinations of a powerful corporate cabal that extends back to the US colonial era, with the goal of controlling citizens through the erasure and revision of history, offers real-world analogues to the control of information that persists to the present day.