I just rewatched Time Squad and I got a new theory. About who they work for, and for what reason deviations in history actually occur.
So, they say that in the future there has been universal harmony and all nations have merged into one super nation, so diplomacy is no longer needed, but it’s necessary to monitor the distorted past so that the future remains ideal. However, this future was never shown. And judging by those people of the future who were shown, it can’t be said that such people are capable of existing as a harmonious society. The human half of the three Time Squads featured – Buck Tuddrussel, Sheila Sternville and JT Laser – are simply a full range of problematic american army behavior. And to imagine that they were banished to time travel because they were disturbing the harmony is simply ridiculous. For why should such people be trusted to preserve their future if it’s almost the same as putting the future at risk? And in general, they couldn’t have grown up like this if they had been surrounded by a truly harmonious society. Rather, the ideality of the future was greatly exaggerated, if not a complete lie.
One of the possible reasons why the future wasn’t shown, other than that nightmare version with the evolved giant intelligent flies from the episode “Planet of the flies”, is the instability of the future. When the animated series confirmed the existence of the “butterfly effect”, it turns out that their constant change of the past leads to the fact that the future changes chaotically worse than the past shown. The Time Squad don't cease to exist because of all the drastic changes just because they're in space, and history changes only affect Earth (WordGirl had an episode that showed this cartoonish law). In fact, being on a satellite makes them the only ones protected from history deviations. But where do they come from?
The explanation Larry 3000 gives is that time is like a rope, the further it winds, the more it begins to unravel at the far end. But it’s just a convenient lie to hide the real reason for the anomalies. Obviously, all these time anomalies are too absurd and anachronistic to arise spontaneously. Many things that people of old times wouldn’t have thought of were clearly brought in from the future. And who else if not by the Time Squads themselves! They say that in order for the perfect future to come, everything in history must remain unchanged, but as can be seen in most episodes, it’s they who change past at random.
Moreover, sometimes they do it better, sometimes worse. But how would a Trojan horse full of candy damage the utopian future? How will the utopian future be helped by turning numerous reformed criminals back onto the path of evil? Of course, it will be better if there is no Nobel Evil Prize and an invasion of cannibal robots in history. But isn’t making society more peaceful exactly what should lead to a utopian future? Some things can harm the situation, like instilling hippie culture on american revolutionaries when british enemies are coming at them, but some things can be absolutely harmless, like Blackbeard’s nature activism. And they don’t fix some problems at all, like Ivan the Terrible, who thinks he’s a dog – this is also a plus for the utopian future, because in such a state of mind he won’t be able to commit all the atrocities he was supposed to commit according to history. But most likely, these cases will then have to be corrected by other Time Squads.
Now we must remember that the superiors of the Time Squad were also never revealed. In fact, so little is known about the organization that you can doubt they have them at all, and it's not just artificial intelligence picking up on time deviations. True, Time Squad write reports for someone, and someone makes sure that they don’t completely neglect missions. So, I believe they have faceless superiors, and there’s no such harmony between them as in their notorious future. They never contact the Time Squad directly, only giving them missions through the computer. Since it’s impossible to know who is hiding behind the screen, there’s no guarantee that they are even the same people every time. Different superiors can send them on missions to make things better, or worse, or to fix nothing but get roughly the required result. Why? Because they are secretly feuding with each other.
I guess it all started when time travel was invented. The inventors traveled back in time and became the first Time Squad. They changed all the horrors of the past into something good, bringing them a bunch of future stuff from those times when society had already evolved enough. Thus their utopian future was created.
However, not everyone in the future liked the resulting supernation and the united governments of all countries. Those who desired for power based on inequality also got a time machine. They created their Time Squad to return everything as it was, and somewhere even change the best for the worst. They wanted to destroy utopia in order to turn it into their own dystopia. Then the first ones needed more people to fight them, and those, in turn, needed them too. The rest of the future people were unhappy, so the dystopia supporters had to pretend that they were protecting a better future by invading the past. They still secretly tailor missions to fit their ideas and undo the work of other Time Squads, manipulating them as pawns. Perhaps they recruit only those people into the squads who won't reveal the conspiracy because they're stupid like Tuddrussel, hopelessly self-centered like JT Laser, or blindly loyal to their work like Sheila. And robots can simply be programmed not to ask questions about their superiors.
So this is the reason why the main characters are not fired, despite their many failures and sometimes even criminal incompetence. Someone needs exactly those who will create even more problems in the past. But they aren’t their only superiors, since in the future, apparently, there will still be a united government, and they can be given orders by both supporters of utopia and its secret opponents. The implicit confrontation between Time Squads is the cause of deviations in history. Otto could realize all this when he grows up, but unfortunately, in the episode “Old Timers Squad”, he was shown 50 years later with everyone else, and they never came to anything. Unless that future is changed too.
