I wasn't going to start watching any new television shows this year, but one of them caught my eye:  Journeyman.  I've always been a sucker for time travel plots or shows about people fixing things that have gone wrong (either in this universe (Early Edition) or a parallel one (Sliders)).  You put both of those things together and you have the formula that frequently appears in my list of favorite shows since that king of all shows from my childhood, Voyagers!.  (And yes, the exclamation point is part of the title.)  So I felt that if any show was going to be so complete in its Amyness, it was my duty to at least give it a try.

The plot of Journeyman is simple.  A man (Dan) suddenly finds himself unexpectedly traveling to the past (so far, only within the past 30 or 40 years) for brief periods of time.  He has no control over when this happens or for how long, and at first, the trips seem to be random.  But soon he discovers there's a meaningful pattern to his journeys.  He finds himself following the life of a specific person as he jumps through history.  With a little help from the Internet during his intermittent returns to the present, Dan is able to figure out how he can help/protect/save the one he's following so that person can then go on to fulfill his purpose of helping other people in the present.  When Dan's mission is accomplished, he's on to the next episode where he finds himself tracking a new person in trouble.  ...Okay, maybe that doesn't sound so simple to some of you, but for sci-fi fans, this is a pretty common formula.

So far I've been enjoying the show, but I've found one thing about it to be very odd.  Dan expresses his confusion about what is happening to him and how, but he hasn't yet even once asked the most obvious question to me: who is causing this to happen?  For any thoughtful observer, there's no doubt that a personal being is behind his travels; random forces aren't complex (putting him in just the right time and place over and over in a specific person's life) and meaningful (there's a definite purpose--the person is saved so she can then do a specific act in the future that will save others).  There is intelligence, foreknowledge, goodness, and care involved, and all of these things point to a personal, powerful, compassionate being.  Yet, there's no talk of God or to God, even though it seems that both of these reactions would be most natural in this situation.  There's only a strange, unnatural silence on the whole subject--particularly strange since Dan recognizes the intelligent design involved as he discovers and notes the "reasons why" he was "supposed" to help each person.

So why no talk of who might be behind this?  It may be because we've been conditioned by Darwinian thought to ignore obvious signs of design and purpose.  We want to enjoy their benefits (a meaningful life, or in this case, a meaningful story) without taking them too seriously or following them to their logical conclusion, so we've trained ourselves not to ask the "who" question.

Eventually, though, I think Journeyman will have to have to deal with it.  We may be indoctrinated enough to accept the foolish denial of design and purpose when it comes to evolution, but I don't think anyone will buy the idea for long that--in a play on Dawkins's original quote about biology from The Blind Watchmaker--"Journeyman is the story of random, complicated plot twists that [only] give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose."

But who knows?  We might be capable of ignoring even this.  After all, we've been cultivating this blind spot since the beginning of time:

[T]hat which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.  For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.  For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  (Romans 1:19-21)