Tag: science fiction

The Passage Season 1 Episode 8: You Are Not That Girl Anymore Recap

~ Metacrone

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After watching episode 8 of The Passage, I don’t think any of us are that girl anymore. The suspense is ratcheting up for the season finale and the emotional lines have been drawn in the sand. Well-meaning people and people motivated by the darker sides of their nature have all made mistakes in the run up to the end of this episode. We’re going into the finale with an orange-eyed Amy, almost all of the important characters trapped on level 4B, and the virals’ cell doors wide open.

Most of the regular and featured characters will either become familiars or resistance fighters, so the blood bath among the main cast shouldn’t be too bad. But there are still many questions about how the cast will be divided between familiars and fighters.

There have been clues floating around all season, and more were given tonight.

Recap

The episode begins in Amy’s psychic apartment, where she’s reading a Wrinkle in Time and ignoring Tim Fanning. Fanning is trying to get her attention by flattering the detailed construction of the apartment. She gives in and talks to him, telling him that Carter helped build her new psychic home. From there, Fanning tries to manipulate Amy into becoming one of his followers, but it’s not that easy to draw her in. She asks him for honesty, but he talks in circles.

Out in the real world, Amy has developed the high fever and other flu-like symptoms that precede the turn into a viral. Guilder orders her moved to Level 4B. Sykes argues that she’s close to a treatment, now that she’s decided to treat the virus like it’s HIV, but Guilder basically tells her she’s delusional. She’s thought she was close to a cure with every single patient.

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The Women of The Passage: Character Analysis

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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One of the main themes of The Passage, both the TV series and the book trilogy, could be summed up in the title of S1 Ep8 of the series: You Are Not That Girl Anymore. The major female characters of The Passage have all grown this season and had an impact on the main arc of the story.

The future relies on Amy Bellafonte and how she weathers the virus and her relationship with the other virals. It’s Dr Nichole Sykes’ commitment to Jonas Lear’s vision that made Project NOAH what it is, and she is still an important part of the evolving nature of the virus and virals. Dr Lila Wolgast has provided emotional, medical and logistical support for Brad, Amy, Richards, Sykes and Lacey at key moments. Shauna Babcock is Fanning’s second in command. Lacey Antoine rescued Brad and Amy and gave them a hideout from Richards’ pursuit. Elizabeth Lear was the catalyst for the entire endeavor. She was both Jonas’ excuse for pursuing the Bolivian rumors until the end of the world and the voice of reason in his head telling him he was going too far.

Shauna Babcock

Though there are a few female inmates who have become virals, Shauna Babcock is the only one we’ve seen communicate with humans and whose backstory we’ve been given in detail. Shauna has lived a complicated life, and has created a complicated web of relationships within Project NOAH. Manipulation is her specialty, making it difficult to tell when she’s being sincere and when she’s using someone.

In the story she told Clark, she’s a victim with a tragic backstory who finally snapped. Shauna was regularly raped by her stepfather from the ages of 8-16, until she was old enough to stand up to him and make him stop.

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Roswell, New Mexico Season 1 Episode 6: Smells Like Teen Spirit Recap

~ Metacrone

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In episode 6, Roswell, New Mexico goes back to the characters’ senior year to relive the events surrounding Rosa’s death. Along the way, we also find out the truth about Michael and Alex, Liz and Kyle, Max and Liz, Isobel and everyone, and which dress Liz ultimately wore to the prom. We also discover that Rosa and Liz’s very best friend Maria didn’t figure into their high school lives enough to be featured in this episode.

This is not okay. We were shown in a previous episode that on the night she died, Rosa stopped by the Wild Pony, the bar run by Maria’s mother at the time, to pick up a bottle of booze and avoid Isobel. Is that all Maria is to the rest of the gang? Someone to use when they need something?

I appreciate the reboot making Michael bi and having that form of representation. But Maria doesn’t need to disappear. The original character of Alex was still in the show when Michael was in a relationship with Maria. He was only written out because Colin Hanks had other offers and wanted to leave, not because the showrunners were ignoring him.

WHERE’S MARIA?

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The Passage Season 1 Episode 7: You Are Like the Sun Recap

~ Metacrone

The Passage 107 Jonas Holds Liz' Hand

The title of The Passage, season 1, episode 7 is a deceptive one. In the universe of The Passage, the metaphor You Are Like the Sun can mean that you are the life-giving center of my universe or that you are like a deadly poison. Since the sun itself is both life-giving and deadly, so it is also a metaphorical stand-in for the virus.

The focus in this episode is on the main characters’ important relationships and tragic backstories. Amy, in particular, needs to face her past so that Fanning can’t use it against her, the way he’s used their past against so many others. It’s also time for Brad, Lila and Clark to unravel their complicated history in regard to Eva’s death.

Fanning is focused on Elizabeth as the potential replacement 12th viral and someone he can win from Jonas, while Jonas is fighting the loss of his beloved wife with everything he’s got. Elizabeth needs to make the same choice we saw Carter make, between life as a viral in Fanning’s “family” or death as the person she’s always been. Though presented quietly, with dignity, her scenes in this episode are among the most powerful and moving of the series.

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Season 2 Cast Announced for Altered Carbon

~ Metacrone

AC S2 Kovacs Psychasec Screen

While Altered Carbon still has no official release date, Netflix has released a teaser video to announce the main season 2 cast. As previously announced, Anthony Mackie replaces Joel Kinnaman as the main character, mercenary for hire Takeshi Kovacs. As expected, most of the season 1 cast is missing from the list, but 2 fan favorites are returning. And Simone Missick, a fan favorite from the now defunct Netflix Marvel universe, joins the cast.

Here is the teaser video, with Netflix’s character descriptions and my comments to follow.

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Dark Season 1 Episode 3: Past and Present Recap

~ Metacrone

Dark 103 Mikkel in 1986 Driveway.

Episode 3 picks up moments after episode 2 left off, with Mikkel having time traveled back from 2019 to 1986. He’s gone back to his family home, where his teenage parents brushed him off the same way his present day siblings do. They left the door to the house ajar, so now he wanders in, looking at the house that is and isn’t his home.

He finds Jana, his grandmother and Ulrich’s mother, lying on the couch. For a moment, they each confuse the other with the family members they’ve lost. Jana hopes he’s Mads, and Mikkel hopes she’s his mother. Jana goes to Mikkel and begs him to give her some kind of news about Mads. She becomes emotional, and scares Mikkel. He runs out of the house.

Nurse Ines Kahnwald works in the community hospital. Since she’s a single woman with no family obligations, the other nurses often ask her to take over their shifts when their schedules become inconvenient. Patient and good-natured, she doesn’t mind the extra work at all.

Young Charlotte Doppler finds a dead bird on the road as she rides her bike to school. She puts it in her bag to examine later.

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The Passage Season 1 Episode 6: I Want to Know What You Taste Like Recap

~ Metacrone

The Passage 106 Brad & Amy Outside

In episode 6 of The Passage, I Want to Know What You Taste Like, Winston escapes and tastes quite a few people. Amy learns to use her telepathy and family connection well enough to track him.

It turns out to be Richards who was bold enough to have Lila kidnapped while she was praying in church. Since he’s having her brought to the compound, she joins the team that’s hunting for Winston. She’s just in time, because Brad is not okay with his replacement little girl growing up so quickly and working with the dark side, meaning Horace Guilder. Lila becomes Brad’s new/old handler, in order to help keep the peace.

Jonas and Elizabeth have a loving reunion, but also face the truth about her condition. Sykes remembers the friendship she and Babcock developed before Babcock turned into a semicomatose vampire without the ability to speak. Babcock resents that Sykes didn’t maintain their friendship after it appeared that Babcock was braindead.

It seems to me that etiquette would require the one with the telepathy to make the first move in that situation.

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Dark Season 1 Episode 2: Lies Recap

~ Metacrone

Dark 102 Young Jonas with Treasure Map

Dark, episode 2, Lies, picks up 9 hours after Mikkel’s disappearance. There’s still no sign of him. Large search parties fan out over the area, methodically covering every inch of the countryside.

The hooded man who exited the cave in episode 1 stands on a hillside and watches one of the search parties. He’s covered in dirt and grime, still wearing his hood, and carries a battered suitcase and a backpack. He looks down and notices a dead bird on the ground at his feet. He doesn’t seem surprised by the bird, but he is interested, and bends down to examine it.

Jonas startles awake in bed. He sits up and realizes that blood is running out of his right ear (or possibly an oily black substance?). When he gets up to look at his ear in the mirror, a man whispers his name. Jonas turns toward the mirror, and sees his father’s reflection. Michael looks the same as he did when Jonas saw him the night before in the woods- covered in blood or something else that’s dripping and black.

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Roswell, New Mexico Season 1 Episode 5: Don’t Speak Recap

~ Metacrone

Roswell, NM 105 Max & Liz

This week’s installment of Roswell, New Mexico, episode 5 of the season, titled Don’t Speak, features some major revelations, the death of a minor character, and Isobel running around the desert in her little black nightgown and knee-high tube socks, without shoes.

I really need to start a regular Isobel fashion watch section. Her clothing just keeps getting more fun, though I don’t know how they can top this week.

For now, let’s move on to the recap, and discuss fashion and all of the other exciting events of the week as they arise. The writers have outdone themselves with giving us juicy, juicy tidbits to chew on.

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The Passage Season 1 Episode 5: How You Gonna Outrun the End of the World? Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

The Passage 105 Brad & Chair

This week on The Passage episode 4, How You Gonna Outrun the End of the World?, the virals begin to show what they’re really capable of; Amy discloses that she’s developed more abilities than she’s been letting on; we learn more about the backstory shared by Jonas, Tim and Elizabeth; Dr Pet finally goes too far; and Lacey returns to her roots. This fast-paced episode moves the show from having the virals under control to watching the lab fall to chaos and violence.

Episode 4 opens with the arrival at Project NOAH of an infamous book character named Horace Guilder. He’s the long time Deputy Director of the Department of Defense, now cross-promoted to be the Deputy Director of Special Weapons. Special Weapons is the kind of department that kills you as soon as you’ve outlived your usefulness, because they don’t want their secrets getting out. It’s clear that the other characters, like Wolgast and Richards, found Guilder deplorable even before this promotion.

Guilder asks Clark what’s been going on this week, because his reports show the place turning into a mess, with Paulson, the med tech that Carter attacked when he flipped, and Simpson, dead. Wolgast tells Amy that Guilder is famous for avoiding blame and taking credit, so they’ll need to be careful what they say near him.

Brad suggests that it’s time to make their escape. They’ve both noticed that the kitchen staff keep the kitchen door propped open so that they can get outside to smoke. The staff must have disabled the alarm on the door. Brad and Amy can use the kitchen door, then run to a nearby drainage tunnel, which they can crawl through to exit the property.

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