Tag: science fiction

Travelers Season 1 Episode 6: Helios 685 Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 2 Comments

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The foreshadowed Helios event is upon us. Or, the travelers’ solution to the event is, anyway. It turns out that the helios event that’s been mentioned a couple of times in previous episodes is an asteroid that will hit Earth in 18 months. It causes an apocalyptic level of disruption and natural disasters. 21st century scientists won’t detect the asteroid for 2 more months. By that time it will be too late to stop it, so the travelers have cooked up an elaborate scheme involving a cult of old people literally drinking the poisoned kool aid in Canada, a giant roof top laser, a stoned chief engineer, and a clueless antimatter scientist. What could possibly go wrong?

Almost everything, of course, or that would be the end of the series, as the characters helpfully point out, just in case you thought this might work. Because if this works, the timeline will be drastically altered, and most, if not all, of the travelers will never be born. Might be a reason to sabotage the plan, hmm? Or for warring factions to form amongst the future people, some of whom may have traveled back to our time to try to maintain the timeline as it was meant to be.

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Travelers Season 1 Episode 5: Room 101 Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 14 Comments

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This episode is largely a bottle episode that turns out to be mostly filler. We do learn more about the traveler mythology though, and gain a little insight into the characters.

The episode starts with a family of four careening through a parking garage in the family car. Dad’s driving is out of control, but it wasn’t clear to me if he was attempting a murder-suicide, or if he was having a medical issue of some kind. The daughter in the back seat is screaming and flailing, begging her dad to stop. At the last second before he drives off the roof, he swerves to the side and hits the brakes. Three of the four family members are now travelers. The little girl was a misfire, as McLaren’s team tells the family when they greet the newly arrived travelers. From the sound of it, because she was moving so much, the director couldn’t get a stable lock on her and the transfer failed. The traveler who would have entered her body is dead, if I understood correctly. It’s a one way trip that fails a significant percentage of the time. In the early days, the failure rate was 30% or more. McLaren will take the little girl to stay with a relative, while rest of her team prepares for their mission.

As they drive away, Philip, Carly, Marcy, and Trevor discuss the high rate of misfires. Trevor seems to have firsthand knowledge of the first wave of transfers. This is the second hint we’ve had that Trevor is very old, even though he’s in a young body. In the episode Hall, when Rick Hall questioned letting a kid repair the damaged device, one of the team members told him that the “kid” was older than everyone in the room combined. There were several people in the room at the time.

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Travelers Season 1 Episode 4: Hall Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 2 Comments

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We open on McLaren and his FBI partner, Forbes, on a stake out, watching a deal being made for some kind of tech between two groups of men, out of the trunks of their cars. The deal goes bad, shots are fired, and the FBI moves in. One of the injured men gives McLaren a traveler message as he’s dying. There’s another team in need of support.

When McLaren arrives at the coordinates, he discovers it’s one of the groups who was at the shoot out. Two of them have been seriously wounded. Marcy and Carly are on their way to help. It turns out the deal was between two teams of travelers, but the second team, a group of Russians, had gone rogue, and tried to steal the tech. McLaren questions why travelers would betray the mission that way. The more experienced team replies with a condescending, “You must be new.”

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Travelers Season 1 Episode 3: Aleksander Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 2 Comments

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Marcy and David set off for the doctor visit Marcy agreed to in the last episode, but when Marcy realizes that she’s already had an MRI, she backs out. David is still confused by the changes in her. Later in the episode, Marcy asks Philip to hack into the hospital’s records and retrieve her MRI. We don’t see the results in this episode.

Philip is back to using heroin, ostensibly just enough to keep him functional as he weans himself off the addiction. It ends up being too tempting to also use it to deal with his guilt over the deaths they aren’t allowed to prevent, though, and he increases his use. As the team historian he’s memorized the death dates of hundreds of host candidates, and every death weighs on him. Marcy notices his condition and calls him out on it, but he’s out of control.

Philip goes to Stephen’s funeral. He’s overwhelmed with guilt for not saving original Philip’s best friend. Traveler Philip is a sensitive soul.  He gives his condolences to Stephen’s parents, but they blame him for their son’s death. He has Ray, his lawyer, make more winning bets, then distribute the money to Stephen’s parents, and Gower’s family (the cop he watched die of a heart attack in the pilot). He also begins calling in anonymous tips based on his memorized knowledge, to prevent a few more deaths. The FBI tracks the IP that the tips are coming from, but McLaren intervenes in time to stop the FBI from finding Philip.

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Travelers Season 1 Episode 2: Protocol 6 Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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This episode opens seconds before the pilot ended, just as Mclaren is being taken over by a traveler. Marcy injects him below the left ear with a coms device. She’s already injected the rest of the team. McLaren is impressed that Trevor found the time to build coms as an after school project. Traveler Trevor is a hard worker, unlike original flavor Trevor. The police arrive in response to original McLaren’s call for backup. The lead officer is a traveler who hands off a package to Mclaren, and tells him to “Go save the world!” Carly lets the police know her police officer baby daddy is locked on the roof.

Meanwhile, the military is forcibly removing antimatter from a lab in the city. They’re taking it to an undisclosed location outside of town for undisclosed purposes. Their containment unit begins to fail, which means the antimatter will explode. An explosion this close to the city will destroy it. This is what happened in the travelers timeline. Their first mission is to seize and contain the antimatter, then hand it off safely to another team.

McLaren and Carly are on stake out duty, watching for the convoy with the antimatter. We learn that they are a couple, who are very much in love, but in this time McLaren has been married for 11 years and Carly has a baby. Both will have to keep playing those roles for the time being. Cue the relationship angst.

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The Man in the High Castle: Speculation for Season 3 (That Will Obviously Turn Out to Be Wrong)

~ Metacrone ~ 3 Comments

Here are our predictions for season 3 and beyond of The Man in the High Castle. (Or, probably more accurately, our hopes and dreams.) This is what we would do if we were writing the show:

Childan and Ed will be running their antiques business in the Neutral Zone, which will obviously also be a front for some less legitimate side business, and for the new and improved Resistance as well, once Juliana finds them.

Childan and Ed will be having an affair, both finally having admitted they’re either bi or gay. It’s clear Ed’s been in love with Frank since childhood, but he thinks Frank’s dead, so it’s time to move on. They may have him try to act on his crush on Juliana, but I think he knows she’s out of his league, and she’s emotionally unavailable anyway. Statistically, this show needs some queer characters. I’m going with the idea that same sex relations are forbidden in the Empire and the Reich, so no one is out, but things are looser in the Neutral Zone.

Abendsen will help Juliana and Trudy find Ed and Childan. Juliana will be in mourning for everything she’s lost. Tagomi may make his way to her at some point in this reality to make sure she is okay. She and Trudy might set off to find their parents and get them to the Neutral Zone. Eventually Trudy, Sarah, and Arnold will run the Western Resistance.

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The Man in the High Castle Season 2 Episodes 9 & 10 Recap: Detonation and Fallout

~ Metacrone ~ 4 Comments

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We start episode 10, Fallout, with the only cold open of the season, maybe of the entire series so far. It’s December 11th, 1945. Smith and Helen arrive at a small cottage outside of Washington, DC. Helen is very pregnant with Thomas, who she says is kicking up a storm. As they’re settling in, an atomic bomb goes off in the distance, seen behind them through the cottage’s picture window. They realize the Nazis have bombed Washington. As we know from watching the series so far, this is the event that caused the Americans to surrender to the Nazis.

This little scene is one of my favorite things they’ve done so far. It’s so brief, but it tells us so much, and reminds us of so much. And it’s shot gorgeously. We start out watching the couple from inside the cottage with the camera at a slight distance, framing the room as if it were a family portrait or a painting. There’s even a Christmas song playing in the background. Everything is perfect for them, despite the war. The room is dark, and the sky is graying outside the window as the sun sets. They are in the dark about what is about to happen. Change is coming. John turns on the lights, and they discuss his work at the Pentagon and the baby, with Helen telling Smith that she thinks it’s a boy. They are working to keep their situation happy and normal, despite the war. As they’re talking, a loud rumbling starts, along with a flash of light. For a split second, you think it could be thunder and lightning, but the flashes and crashes continue. Helen and Smith turn toward the window, holding hands. They, and we, realize something is very wrong, but they are in this together. The camera pulls closer and closer to them, then finally between them, up to the window, where we finally see the red sky and mushroom cloud from the atomic bomb in the distance. This is the event that will eventually come between them. This is the episode where that comes to fruition. They walk toward the window, and the camera pulls around in front of them. Now the camera is outside the window, looking in. We’re in the Looking Glass world now, no longer the world that made sense just 5 minutes ago. We see the mushroom cloud reflected in the window while we see Smith and Helen at an angle and shadowed, through the window. Everything in their world and their futures is now off balance, askew, dark.

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Travelers: New Sci Fi Series from Netflix: Pilot Recap/Review

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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Fair  warning: Stargate SG-1 was a big deal in our house while my kids were growing up. We watched every single one of its 214 episodes, both made-for-TV movies, and the spin-off series Stargate Atlantis. I am predisposed to like anything Brad Wright does. Travelers was created by Brad Wright.

And I really do like the pilot of Travelers, even without knowing Brad Wright was involved. Pilots are tricky things. They often feel forced, since they have to cram character introductions, world building, and a plot line that hooks viewers enough to make them want more, into their 42 minute time frame. Travelers manages to avoid making the viewer feel like piles of exposition are being thrown at us all at once. The action and the characters keep moving, and we find out enough about each character and their lives by being shown their environment and the people around them, not just told. I feel like I understand the basic premise of the story, but there’s still so much I don’t know, which is where you want to be after a pilot.

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The Man in the High Castle Season 2 Episode 8 Loose Lips: Recap

~ Metacrone

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There were indeed a lot of loose lips this episode, affecting every plot line the show has going. Most importantly, Joe’s father’s agenda was finally revealed, Hitler died, and the Reichsminister was named Acting Chancellor. I knew Sebastian RochĂ© hadn’t given up his evil ways just because he was being nice to Joe.

Joe has finally decided to stay in Germany and work with his father. The Reichsminister was picked by Hitler to be Acting FĂĽrher if Hitler became incapacitated, even though he is “just an engineer” (ha!), and, in a classic play, he now wants Joe to leave for his own safety. This, of course, makes Joe want to stay even more. He’ll be in place as our point of view character to see what happens in the government’s inner circles now that Hitler is dead, and to lead the fight against his father once he realizes how evil his father is.

Juliana continues to grow closer to Helen and Lucy. From them she learns that Dr Adler was cremated against his wife’s wishes (3 guesses which high-ranking Nazi probably made that secret call). Lucy tells her that Hitler is in serious condition, but Helen stops the gossiping immediately. Helen runs a tight ship. Thomas is packed and ready to go on his trip when Juliana arrives at the house, but Helen quickly shoos him upstairs. She doesn’t want Juliana having enough contact with Thomas for her to figure anything out. Later, Smith tells Helen that events are moving too quickly and the trip is in jeopardy.

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Sense8: A Christmas Special Recap: The Cluster Celebrates Together in Their Own Special Way

~ Metacrone

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We start off this return with the cluster in the water, together in spirit, communing (not quite sexually) and enjoying each others’ presence. There’s an awesome version of Feeling Good playing that I need to find immediately. Everything is momentarily perfect, if you don’t look too closely.

 

If you do look closely, you might notice that Riley is preparing a dose of heroin for Will, who doesn’t look so great. Wolfgang is drinking alone, without Felix by his side. Sun is also alone, in an isolation cell in prison. The ghost of Angelica haunts the group, even during good times. Life is still complicated within the cluster, but they still offer each other safety and comfort within the midst of it all.

The show teases us with a coy reveal of the new Capheus, now played by Toby Onwumere, who is replacing Aml Ameen. They kept him backlit while talking about how much everything has changed and how different he looks for a few minutes before the reveal. Toby is cute but HUGE compared to Aml. Capheus must have had the Captain America supersoldier serum over the hiatus since he’s grown about a foot taller and in shoulder width. But, are they trying to hide his height? He walks hunched, with his knees bent, like he’s pretending to be the height of the original actor. Just own the change! He’s Van Damme! He can do anything!

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