Exclusive: Patrick Gilmore Talks Moral Complexities of ‘Travelers’

Being trapped on a spaceship light years from Earth has been all in a decade’s work for Patrick Gilmore, one of the few actors to appear in the three Stargate TV series.

Now Gilmore stars in the Netflix original series Travelers. He portrays David Mailer, a social worker who inexplicably finds himself in a group of time travelers on a mission to save the world.

“Typically when you hear of a sci-fi show, you expect a certain amount of visual effects and blow-up action, but the show at its heart is really about relationships and character development,” Gilmore told PopCulture.com.

His character is a prime example. Described as a loner with a lost soul, David finds solace in Marcy, a former client of his but now, unbeknownst to him, a time traveler.

“He lives in a place by himself,” Gilmore said. “I don’t think he’s got a lot of friends. He likes to drink his tea and come home, and everything is in its right place. I always say that he’s built this house of cards around him. You almost hope that someone would come and help him … and I think Marcy might be that person. I think he hopes that Marcy is that person.”

The series, which debuted on the streaming platform in 2016, just released its highly-anticipated second season. It saw David’s relationship with Marcy hit a roadblock in the season finale and David’s trust falter in the one person he believes may help him. Gilmore doesn’t want that to be overlooked.

“I always liken him to Job from the Bible. He believes so much in something, and in this case, it’s not God. It’s humanity. And humanity is just testing him, and throwing everything at him,” he said. “I think it’d be interesting to see just that dark side of David. We know that he has a good heart. We know that he trusts and believes in people so much, but people and humanity have not been as kind to him.”

With its premise of the world’s last surviving humans sending their consciousness back in time to inhabit host bodies, the show delves into moral ambiguities.

“The beauty of this type of time travel show is it’s not just a physical object that’s going from one time to another, end of story,” Gilmore said. “There’s moral complications to the idea of putting someone else’s mind in the body of someone else.

When he isn’t dabbling in the world of science-fiction, Gilmore likes to channel his talents into music, which has helped his acting.

“When I’m acting,” he said, “in those moments that call for that confidence of trust your instincts of where this is going, I always call back to those moments in band rehearsal when after 15 minutes we would look up from each other and go, ‘Oh, my God! Did we just create that? How much fun was that?’ And knowing that if you trust yourself, you’ll have a moment like that in the end.”

Season 2 of Travelers is currently available for streaming on Netflix.