time machine broken

hello peeps

On a MacBook Air I ran time machine successfully on 10.1 or 10.2

Then I did a clean install of high Sierra.

Notes didn't sync with the Apple ID (not sure why, could have been my girlfriend's user error)

but now when I plug the time machine drive in, I can't access anything in the past. the timeline on the right shows me options, but when I click on them theres no "moving into the past" and the restore button is greyed out as well as the little arrows to the right of the finder window which are supposed to move us "back into the past"

why do you think time machine is broken?

anything I can do to retrieve notes from this drive?

thanks,

switters