Kevin Falls spills some secrets from Journeyman

I was hesitant to even post this article because I know the pain that Journeyman talk brings to the surface for some of you, but I figured some revelations about what was going on in Dan Vasser’s time-traveling existence might be fun and…healing?

Aint it Cool News has been sitting on an interview with show creator Kevin Falls since last December. At that time, the writer’s strike was in full effect and the fate of the show unknown. Falls told them a ton of information based on the agreement that nothing would be revealed until the show was absolutely not coming back.

Sadly, that interview has now been published.

It’s a long discussion, and I’m just going to post some of the highlights. But you should definitely read the entire thing over at AICN.

The one answer we’d all have liked to have heard, but still wont get, is WHAT was making Dan travel through time:

Let’s just say it was too specific and grand to be science or government.

Would we ever learn?

We would have led you to the water’s edge and let you figure it out. The later conflict of the show was going to lie with those people who were trying to find the cadre of travelers. Would they try to manipulate them for their own self interests? [Recurring FBI agent] Richard Garrity was coming back for sure.

We also were aiming for a series ending where the key people Dan helped through the course of the season would figure in a Rube Goldberg-inspired climax. Not quite on the level of save-the-world like “Heroes,” but something with some scope.

What about Livia?

Did Livia [Dan’s ex-fiancée, who turned out to be a time-traveler herself, from 1948] stay so long in her future and romance Dan because The Powers That Be meant for her to act as his mentor?
Initially. And her mission was to get Katie and Dan together. At first we were going to do it because we wanted [Dan’s son] Zack to have some traveling power (to the immediate future) but felt that was too genetic like in [the novel] “The Time Traveler’s Wife.” We really ran away from anything derivative. Anything that harkened back to other TV shows was coincidental.

Why could Livia only go forward from her native era? At some point (when Livia dies maybe?), would Dan suddenly start moving into the future as well?
We just thought it would be cool to give them each a specific and separate gift and we liked the tragi-romantic notion of them cursed to never live in their respective presents.

Would Dan have met the elderly 2008 Livia in the first season?
Yes. Absolutely. She was alive. Many of the fans projected that and they were right.

Did we ever learn what did Livia did for a living in 1948?
We were going to have her in law school and her husband being threatened by that. And maybe the husband would try to take advantage of her gift.

The meeting of Livia and Dan in the present would have been awesome.

Looks like the Comet theory wasn’t that important:

Were Dan and Evan born during the same comet pass in 1972?
People shouldn’t get too locked into the comet thing. That was just one theory.

Were the “powers that be” who sent Dan through time good or bad?

Are The Powers That Be necessarily a force for good?
I think the end game was for the good. We wanted to explore some darker themes early on, but our ratings dictated otherwise. I wanted Dan to have to shepherd a hit man through his life to kill someone. It would really fuck Dan up, but there’d be a bigger reason for it. Sort of like life (not the TV show) we would have done it [late in the first season].

Was it not irresponsible of the The Powers That Be to snatch Dan away while his car in was in drive?
What Dan came to learn is that he better adjust his life to fit the TPTB and not the other way around. And he did.

Here is a bit about the season finale and what was in store for the characters that we grew to love:

The season finale would have brought together some if not all of the characters Dan saved — to do what?
Well, it was going to be a plague, but then “Heroes” did that. When we were told “Heroes” was doing it, they suggested we change ours. No way we were going to win that one. We would have come up with something, but remember, I could read the tea leaves in mid-October. I decided then, let’s think in terms of 13 [episodes].

What else was ahead for Dan, Katie, Livia, Jack and Jack’s hot girlfriend? How many of the [never-shot] final nine episode storylines had you worked out before the strike?
Katie and Dan were going to split up for a while. [Dan’s brother] Jack and Dan were going to live together and then Dan and Katie would get back together. Livia was going to die in episode 20. Dan was going to save her in 21. And in 22, Dan would come back to his house in the present like he did in the pilot and someone else would be living there. Katie and Zack would be gone and this time Dan would have no idea how to get his family back.

And then we’d start season two. I’m getting depressed thinking about it. This staff was so fucking smart. We would have just gotten better. You know, I’m not bitter toward NBC as much as I am the mainstream critics who collectively dismissed us without giving us a second look. I think when we went out we were doing some of the best TV out there. And I’m so grateful that the on-line community embraced this show, actually got the show and ended up being the wind in our sails for the second half of the season.

So there you have it. I’m sort of depressed myself in reading all this, because the potential for a fantastic ongoing series was there. The characters reminded me of Firefly a bit, because they weren’t well-known actors or anything, but they did suck us all into their world and made us care.

As I said above, you can read the whole interview over at AICN.

What do you guys think? Anything noteworthy here? Did I rip open old wounds?