Tag: Time Travel

Always a Witch Season 1 Episode 3: Ouija Recap

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Always a Witch 103 Johnny Ki and Carmen.png

Episode 3 begins with Johnny Ki explaining the threat he made to Carmen at the end of episode 2. He shows her a video his mom made the last time he saw his parents, then explains that his parents were killed in a boating accident. He was learning to drive and lost control of the boat, so he blames himself for the crash. He wants Carmen to help him talk to his dead parents so that he can get their reassurance that they don’t hate him and that they forgive him.

Carmen can’t speak to the dead, so she can’t help him. But she assures him that real love is unconditional, so, wherever his parents are, they still love him and have forgiven him.

Carmen tries to leave, but Johnny questions why she can levitate, but she can’t speak to the dead.

Because those are two really different powers?

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Always a Witch Season 1 Episode 2: A University Witch Recap

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Always A Witch:Siempre Bruja 102 Carmen Takes a Nap and Levitates

In episode 2 of Always a Witch, Carmen settles into the 21st century as she makes an arrangement with Adelaida to stay at the hostel while working there. She also gets acquainted with a new group of friends, while searching for clues about Ninibe’s disappearance and trying to stay one step ahead of Lucien. Carmen audits biology classes as part of her modern cover story, which brings her into contact with many of the people she needs to meet and increases her knowledge about the 21st century and witchcraft.

It’s so refreshing to watch a show about a witch who fends for herself, without an older male handler acting as a father figure to “guide” her actions and education. Carmen has various friends, advisors and mentors in her life, as any normal person does. But there’s no one in her story whose opinion she allows to take precedence over her own, such as a vampire slayer’s watcher, the Charmed witches’ whitelighter, or the male partner of virtually any fictional woman. In both time periods, Carmen listens to the opinions of others, then makes her own decisions. Not even Cristobal can sway her opinions or decisions for long.

Since I hate the trope that a powerful/magical woman always needs a male handler or she’ll become out of control (looking at you right now, Roswell, New Mexico), I’m thrilled to see Carmen able to think for herself at 18. Once Cristobal teaches her to read and write, she adds those skills to her supernatural powers and begins to leave the mindset of a slave behind. During her arrest and trial, it’s clear that existentially, her mind is already free. The Inquisidor even accuses her of seeing herself as equal to her master. It’s not an attitude she develops in the 21st century.

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Always a Witch Season 1 Episode 1: A Leap in Time Recap

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Always a Witch Carmen with Christobal & Esteban

This is a recap. My review of Always a Witch S1 is HERE.

Always a Witch is the story of an enslaved, time-traveling young witch who escapes the danger she faces in Cartagena, Colombia in 1646 by jumping to the Cartagena of 2019. In the present day, Carmen Eguiluz, the young witch, must perform a mission for the wizard who helped her time travel. Then she can go back to her own time to save the man she loves from being shot and killed when he attempts to defend her, and stop her own execution as a witch by burning at the stake. But once she gets to 2019, completing her mission is more complicated than she expected. She makes friends and enemies as she navigates the future, and it takes teamwork to achieve her goal.

Recap

The episode begins with a seaside vista of sailing ships anchored off the Caribbean coast of Cartagena, Columbia, in 1646. On the shore, a young, dark-skinned woman is chained to a cart, pulled by soldiers. She is being brought to her execution in a coastal fort made from local stone. Soon, the woman, Carmen Eguiluz, is tied to a stake, with a pyre beneath her feet, ready to be burned as a witch.

The Inquisidor reads a heavy-handed list of charges against her:

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Always a Witch (Siempre Bruja) Season 1 Review

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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Always a Witch, or Siempre Bruja, is a Netflix Original from Colombia. This Spanish language show (with English subtitles and dubbing) is a time travel fantasy about a young 17th century slave named Carmen who is also a witch. She uses magic to escape execution and travel to the present day. Much like the series Outlander, she travels between the two time periods, fights evil foes in both, tries to save the man she loves, must adjust to her new time period, and works to make life better for the people of the past.

Always a Witch is a fresh take on the time traveling witch concept, with a young cast and storytelling that’s grounded in Latin American culture. This show avoids the graphic nature of Outlander, keeping its content more suited to younger audiences, while still addressing the harshness of Carmen’s life as a slave, and the realities of the modern world.

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Dark Season 1 Episode 3: Past and Present Recap

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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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Dark Season 1 Episode 2: Lies Recap

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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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Dark Season 1 Episode 1: Secrets Recap

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Okay, kids, shall we recap Netflix’s first German-language show, the mysterious Dark? It was released more than a year ago, but there’s still no definite release date for season 2. (Rumors suggest it’ll be in June, 2019.) So, if you haven’t watched, or rewatched, Dark yet, there’s still time.

This is the show that says the question isn’t, where? Instead it’s, when? To which I would add, who???? This show has a giant cast, spending time with the same characters in two or three different time periods as its complex mystery unfolds. The same characters are played by different actors in each time period, so it takes a while to remember who and when everyone is, but the extra work is worth it.

Once you start to get a sense of the characters, setting and time periods, the show gets into your head. It can’t help but be layered, with all of those facets to the characters, some of whom we see in three time periods. We get to know the village of Winden, including three generations of each one of the four main families.

Wiki has a Cast and Characters chart that explains how everyone is related to everyone else, but don’t look too closely yet! There are spoilers there! TV Guide has a useful diagram and description of how everyone is connected. It also contains spoilers, so proceed slowly. Underneath the recap, I’ve taken the photos from the opening of this episode and added brief descriptions of the characters’ identities and relationships. I tried to leave out major spoilers, for now.

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Travelers Cancelled by Netflix: No Season 4 Planned

~ Metacrone ~ 6 Comments

Travelers Cast Plus Brad Wright

Update: Fans have started a petition to save Travelers. Sign it HERE.

We’re all on Protocol 5 for the foreseeable future, fellow Travelers. Eric McCormack announced today, via Twitter, that Netflix has cancelled the Canadian science fiction series after 3 seasons. Travelers creator and showrunner Brad Wright confirmed the cancellation shortly afterward.

Watch Eric McCormack’s video announcement after the cut.

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Travelers Season 3: Grace’s Role in the Director’s Plan

~ Metacrone

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Spoilers Through Season 3 Episode 10.

In Travelers season 3, watching Grace stand, abandoned, alone, and with her hands tied behind her back, after the assault teams vacated the farm in episode 1, then watching her get left behind again in episode 4, reminded me of a question I’ve had since she came to the 21st. Where does she stand with the Director, for real?

When she arrived, we were told she was his favorite, except for possibly Ellis. After Grace and Trevor were shot, the Director chose to kill Ellis by using him as a messenger and to save Grace by sending D-13/Dr. Derek with enough medical nanites that she could spare some for her (boy)friend, Trevor. That seems to show that the Director does indeed care deeply about Grace. The Director doesn’t send nanites around often.

Grace has certain unique skills and attitudes with regard to the Director that I believe it wants to protect. One of Grace’s gifts is the ability to creatively stretch resources by finding ways to have them do double duty, such using the same code to fix Marcy and reset the Director, passing her medical nanites on to Trevor so that they healed two patients instead of one, and repurposing the nuclear material from the military to save the Director from the Faction during the plague.

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Travelers Season 3 Episode 10: Protocol Omega Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 6 Comments
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Another woman, Jo Yates, pulls a gun on MacLaren, echoing Carly in the season 1 finale. At the end of season 2, Kat had to settle for slapping him. 😉

We’ve made it to the final episode of the bloodbath that is season 3 of Travelers. This has been the most exciting season yet, and the finale is no different. It’s full of surprises and fresh overwrites, plus a twist ending that no one saw coming.

The finale begins with a family meal at the big table in ops. Philip sees an alternate timeline version in which David survived the radiation exposure and is regaling everyone with a funny story. Everyone is doubled over in uproarious laughter at his story. Jeff is there, too. Boyd is not.

Probably because in that version, Boyd wasn’t needed to help with his care. Maybe the Director had the clean up crew from the archive send some military grade nanites over for David at the same time as they arrived at the archive. If he’d gotten the nanites within an hour or two of exposure, maybe he would have improved before much permanent damage was done.

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