Tightrope Walker

In response to some questions:

It's been asked how the aims of the two warring Fates are conveyed to the humans doing their work -- would we have seen these powers, as one did on Buffy, for instance?

Probably not, or at least, not blatantly. Remember that Buffy was a very different kind of show, where green-skinned demons could routinely sit around enjoying very dry martinis and contemplating their Sinatra collections. I hesitate to use the word "realistic" about a show in which dead bodies talk to the heroine, but tonally Tru Calling was much closer to life as we see it daily. Once the tone for a show has been established, it's hard to break without losing the audience.

That being said, one can massage tone from time to time; and one thing I'd hoped to do further down the road in the second season was suggest that for Tru -- perhaps because of her double parentage -- the border between life and death had worn thin. In some time of great emotional distress, when she's questioning everything, she might have a dream in which her mother talks with her directly; or she might sit, exhausted, at a lonely bus stop and get into a conversation with some stranger that ends up touching on what's been troubling her. Only later is it implied that the stranger was dead, and possibly someone with a special interest in her -- perhaps a friend of her mother's, perhaps someone who had the power before her -- who knows. It was just a moment I thought might be interesting to get to, partly because we eventually needed to see Tru question what she’s doing.

So if the Fates aren't going to be giving Tru or Jack specific orders, how do they know what to do? With Tru this question isn't so difficult; even if you have no special knowledge, if you discover you can save people's lives, you're probably going to do it. I know I would, and really, it's what every hero in a "do-over" sort of story does -- look at Gary Hobson of Early Edition, or Sam Beckett of Quantum Leap. It's all very well for the crew of the Enterprise to agonize over "changing the past," but they're already far in the future (from our point of view) and are themselves the direct product of that past timeline. They can say, "We've got a nice little Federation of Planets thing going on here; why mess with it?" In Tru's world, you're changing a future you don't know to another future you don't know; and along the way you save a life, so why not? It's hard to stand by and let someone get killed.

What's more problematic is Jack; if he had no special knowledge, why would he assume that saving lives is a bad thing? The answer is, he does have special knowledge. Not of the future timeline (at least not specifically); but he has access to the knowledge his predecessors have passed down since the first ones got their marching orders. And he had a Near Death Experience with some special moments.

Remember I suggested that there was a qualitative difference between the power that laid out humanity's grand plan, and the rebellious power that wants to change that plan. The former is more authoritarian in the way it deals with humans, while the latter gives individuals the choice to cooperate or not. Just as the latter offers selected people the opportunity to ask for help, it gave Tru her gift as a gift. Jack, on the other hand, was clinically dead. In his NDE, he came face to face with something he can't entirely remember -- but he was told that if he were returned to life, he'd be working for them.

(Which brings us to the question: if Jack was given his life back as payment for services to be rendered, what happens if he ever decides he doesn't want to render those services? And yes, that was going to be an exploration for a later part of the arc.)

Once he revived, he wasn't sure what to make of all this. And then his day started rewinding -- whenever Tru's did, though he didn't realize this yet. He ended up in a psych ward. And that's where Tru's father found him. He'd been waiting for someone like Jack to appear, and mental hospitals were a prime hunting ground. When someone showed up talking about re-living days, he knew he'd found his man. So he went to Jack and said, "I know exactly what you're going through -- " (and he could describe it, exactly) "--and I know what happened when you were clinically dead. And I know a lot of other things you'll need to know, so I suggest you listen to me."

Through Tru's father, Jack has access to the knowledge of generations of his predecessors. Tru's mother should have been her mentor, but she died when Tru was too young, and anything she'd written down was confiscated by her husband.

And in answer to another question: No, I don't think that the champions of both types of Fate routinely married each other. That would be rather giving the game away.

Oh, and as for the power Tru works for -- the fact that they're more oriented toward individual freedom may cause you to think their plan is the one we'd want to have play out. But I wouldn't bet the entire future of the human race on the fact that they seem polite.