silverstream

I know it's been some time, but was Alberta being able to communicate with an Alexa ever resolved? It seems like she should be having a lot of impact on the outside world that way. Loled at pretty much everything in the stripper storyline - and did I put the Jurassic Park theme song on while reading the comments? You bet I did.

It continues to annoy me every time Leland does something Kristen could obviously report to the police, but never does. (I still don't get why she didn't have him arrested or at least investigated when he stole her therapy notes. If nothing else, you'd think the therapist would do it - pretty sure having your notes easily stolen out of your practice is a liability issue.) Having a doctor insist you need to have your daugher operated on *right now* (with the implication she could drop dead at any moment), whithout even seemingly wanting to take the time to explain to you what he's doing and why, and then immediately afterwards saying whoops, everything is miraculously ok, better than ever, should definitely be a red flag telling you to get a second opinion (and possibly another doctor).

I wish they hadn't had the vote (and, to a lesser degree, the wedding day) in the previous episodes. So much of this finale fell flat for me because every other time somebody expressed fear or anger about someone dying/being hurt, all I could think of was that they were Team "whelp, guess I'll lie down and die", so why be upset if that's what they wanted anyway? Not really sure what killing Luther accomplished, either - if he hadn't died, am I supposed to think they'd have just sat still and let themselves be disintegrated rather than go through the passage? On a different note, I'm not sure the world we see in the end is actually a real world at all rather than some sort of simulation. I don't think Allison got a bonafide HEA either, considering the 'Ray' and 'Claire' here are highly unlikely to be original flavour Ray and Claire (and if they somehow are, she'll have a whole lot of explanations and childhood trauma to manage since this is not the world either of them are used to). I'm also not sure what the deal Allison made with Reginald actually entailed - she seemed genuine about not being involved in Luther and Klaus' deaths, and I can't remember her doing anything that qualified as particularly helping Reginald. Maybe we'll learn more about it next season?

I realize the scene where Brother Dawn jumps was supposed to be tragic, but I couldn't help imagine a child-aged clone tripping down the stairs and thus discovering they were perfectly safe from falls, then proceeding to yeet themselves down greater and greater heights for funsies. That's definitely a thing a child would do.

Late to the party here, but I find it hard to shake my suspicions of Demerzel. I know they were leaning heavily on her having feelings for the original Cleon and his clones (romantic vs. motherly I'd guess), but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out she was either involved in the terror attack or pulling the Cleons' strings even more than we've seen in some sort of revenge-of-the-robots plot. I also find it a bit weird that, over 3 decades on, the colonists are still living in what amounts to huts. Didn't they plan ahead for better buildings/infrastructure? This place looks like one medium-sized winter storm could blow it away.

Did I miss something, or was Fury's reason for not calling in super-powered help (if you disregard G'iah) really that he'd made this mess himself so he'd also have to clean it up himself? That kind of explanation works if you've accidentally spilled something, not when you've caused an international incident where the bodies are piling up and humanity might be facing extinction! I realise the true reasons are story-telling/actor-availability-related, but they could have thought of something better. As others have pointed out, Fury comes off really horribly here. Considering that that one guy's finger turned Skrull when Sonja cut it off but the guy himself didn't, I'd guess there's a fair even chance getting some fingernail clippings or simply cutting off some hair would do the trick. I had to laugh at the last scene, when Fury calls for his transport up to the S.A.B.E.R. ship and then just stands their chatting with his wife while the transport beam is already on until the poor sap at the controls gets impatient and sends the elevator down to him anyway.

The thing is, once you step through the arches you don't really know it isn't real - right after N. goes through the first arch, her dad asks her why she's holding the poisonous roots in her hand, and she says she doesn't know and doesn't remember how she got there. The way I interpreted it is that it's like when you're in a dream - you know something isn't quite right, but only once you wake up your awake mind kicks in and reminds you that, yes, obviously the six-headed, five-meters-tall dog wasn't real, and even if such a thing existed, they certainly wouldn't be dancing the lead role in The Nutcracker! So the test isn't stepping through the arch and going "well, I know for sure a second ago I was in the tower's arch room and this is a test, logically nothing can really happen to me, guess I'll just hang around here long enough for the exit to appear, yawn", but you're thrust into a situation that doesn't feel quite right with a vague memory that there's *something* you need to do, but you can't quite put your finger on it. The actual test is trusting your gut instinct and abandoning the "fake" world that nevertheless seems 95% real to you and going with that 5% voice in your head that tells you something is wrong and you need to act *now* to fix it. (At least that's what I took from N.'s experience, since we haven't seen anyone else's.) "Air B&B host" ...lolol I'm worried that this is some sort of twisted blackmail plot to get something out of N. - Liandrin is now in a position where she can get Egwene thrown out of the tower pretty easily (Elayne seems to have been an unintended casualty). I'm not sure why she'd think she'd need to do that since N. was pretty friendly with her already (and N. would definitely not take something like that lying down), but that's where my mind went. Though I have to say, if I was absconding from my place of work/training in the middle of the night, I *wouldn't* be wearing my blindingly white work uniform lol (surely they must have the things they came in *somewhere* if there's absolutely nothing else in a darker shade?). Loving Elayne so far. "I urgently have to go... wash my (still full) cup!" lol I was confused at first why Rand and Selene would be sleeping in front of the hut when it's *right there*, but I guess they unintentionally fell asleep at the fire or something. Still, that was a bit of clunky blocking. Lan was distractingly good looking. Could have done with more Matt this episode, the new actor's doing a really good job. Poor Min, I'm guessing the beginning of that dream/vision/thing was part of her past, and it seemed like an awful experience. Really liking this season so far!

I seem to be in the minority here, but I for one really liked the Groundhog device. Though, with all the talk of time travel, I was wondering halfway through if it would turn out that whoever has the monolith book is influencing time to repeat the gala until things go in their favour. In general, I was a bit disappointed how little magic is going on at this mage's gala - would have been a nice opportunity for some fun visuals. I didn't even realise right away what the twist at the end was supposed to be - I knew with the music and cut-to-black that they were going for some kind of shocking reveal there, but Stregebor not being the (only) bad guy was so unsurprising to me I had to watch the scene twice to make sure that there wasn't something else I was missing. And as others have pointed out, unless there's way more we don't know Geralt isn't exactly in danger here. I wish they'd had a scene with Jaskier or Ciri, I've been worried since last week that the prince distracting Jaskier away from the cabin is a ploy to get at Ciri, but otoh, since nothing happpened in that regard I guess not, since if that were the case it would make a good cliffhanger, at least a much better cliffhanger than the one we got.

It seemed to me that they were suggesting Jaskier is the descendant - a bard to sing the last note of the song.

I find a new show I really love and obviously on the day I watch the finale, it gets cancelled, eurgh. Still, at least we got this season, and if they had a plan for two more, maybe we'll get them in book form or something (sure would be nice). I can't remember exactly why, but I've had the impression since a couple of episodes before the finale that good vs. evil Elora is a "two sides of the same coin" thing. We're told repeatedly that "Elora Danan" isn't so much a person as an eternal concept that gets reborn again and again as a person with "Elora Danan" powers to save the world, so it would make sense to me that if there is an eternal evil that wants to destroy the world and just happens to look like Elora Danan (whenever it's not a wyrm), it's her opposite-but-same counterpart, rather than a separate evil that made itself look like Elora Danan to trick Graydon. Poor Graydon, though, now he's never going to get out of there. Not that I had high hopes of him not being one of the big bads in one of the other two volumes, but still. When Boorman went back into the temple, I hoped he was somehow going to end up rescuing Graydon, or at least keeping him company, but alas... And obviously, the most pressing unanswered question of them all - how are they going to get back UP that waterfall? (Elora's magic. It's going to be Elora's magic.)

I feel like I'm in the minority here, but I really liked it. I thought Jade would turn out to be Elora Danan (because of the red hair) and was surprised when it turned out to be Dove, who I'd pegged as the comic relief/heart of gold character.

I think Maura made herself forget her husband and her son on purpose - I can't remember which episode, but I'm almost positive Daniel had a line to that effect (before the son thing was revealed, it was only alluded to as some nebulous "trauma"). At this point, my theory is that the characters' 1899 pasts are a sort of "translation" of their actual memories, that is, for example in Tove's case, that something similar happened to her in the 2090s and the simulation just dressed it up in 1890s surroundings. (That is, of course, unless 2099 timeline isn't "real" either, but we'll have to wait for season 2 to get more evidence of that.) I agree! I like him too. In the forum of one of the early episodes I speculated Daniel's backstory would turn out to have something to do with Maura and it would be sad, and that was mostly due to the actor projecting at Maura so hard lol (and also due to the fact that the only other show I've seen that actor in wants you to very much see him as the "noble sacrificial hero").

I'd have to check, but I think they were tied to that hay wagon.

The biggest mystery to me right now is the brother. Assuming that the spaceship is actual reality, I think they were all in virtual reality for the space journey (that spaceship looked really cool, but it didn't look like it had a lot of creature comforts for passengers) and Maura's family is the heads of the shipping company in real life too. Maura and her husband seem to have been in charge of the VR; the simulation must originally have been some comfortable 1899 ship journey to go with their real-life 2099 ship journey. Then there was some kind of shism between Maura and her father (not sure what, or where the brother comes in here) and at the same time Elliot died (maybe a pod malfunction, or a meteor hit the capsule with his pod, or he fell ill, there's plenty of possibilities), and Maura went of the rails and decided to change the VR so she could forget her son was dead, trapping them all. Now the dad wants out - he doesn't care about anyone else getting out - and Daniel wants Maura out because he thinks she's the only one who can fix whatever's wrong in reality (the whole thing with her brother). And the reason the journey stopped being pleasant and started being a looping journey from hell is either because Maura was careless programming in her grief or (and I tend towards this explanation) was done on purpose as part of her father's attempt to get at the key and get out. Or I could be completely wrong about all of this lol. I think the hatches under the beds might be because their real memories and experiences are bleeding through to the VR environment and being translated to equivalent 19th century memories. There has to be some kind of translation mechanism for existing memories, otherwise the real, 2099 passengers would be way more unfamiliar and uncomfortable with 1899 culture and tech - for example, I certainly wouldn't know how to properly put on elaborate 1899-style rich people clothing, at least not without it feeling weird. (Though maybe they gave all of the 2099-era passengers a crash course on manners and customs of the late 19th century?) I think this is already explained - it's what actually happened in the simulation. The eight (or was it seven?) days on the ship play out, then her father captures her, drags her back to the room in the sanatorium (this is the "I'm not crazy"-scene), injects her with the thing that makes her forget whatever she's learned during this iteration of the time loop, and the ship simulation starts all over again, ending with her being dragged to the sanantorium again, and so on and so forth. When we see this at the beginning of the first episode, it's what's actually happening in the simulation at that time - the end of one loop and the beginning of the next one. I hope we're going to have some plot in the ship simulation going forward where some of the characters that survived to the end remember and have to do some sort of quest to find pieces of code (/objects in the simulation I guess?) that got scattered when Daniel reprogrammed stuff. Ideally, plotwise it would link up with the real-life stuff - so, they'd need some information in the real (spaceship) world to save everyone / solve the real world issue, but this information is hidden in the simulation so everybody needs to work together there. I don't think they'd have called it "1899" if that time period will never matter again.

I'm in the Daniel camp, but that's probably because the only other show I've seen him in (that I know of) went hard on him being the heroic love interest lol The deaths in this episode didn't hit home for me as much as they could have, probably because this episode also placed so much emphasis on this not being real, and the fact that I know it's still real for the characters couldn't overcome that. I wonder if the other survivors are going to remember what happened too? I hope so, I love those kind of time loops! Or, since they're in the ship graveyard (/archives), does this mean they'll have to cross over the way Daniel did at the start of the season? I did have a chuckle at the end of the episode when I realised Eyk had been sitting around there the entire time the storm played out. I wonder what the thing is that was so awful it made Maura want to forget the truth. For a moment I thought Elliot might have died (awful + his hideout is in a grave, and the grave features prominently in Maura's memoryscape) and then possibly been replaced by a construct or some kind of cyborg (he did have the company logo tatooed onto his neck), but he clearly can leave the simulation and none of the people from the outside treat him like there was something substantially wrong with him. Of course, this is supposing this whole thing doesn't have another layer of illusion and the "outside" with the TV screens is a simulation too. Just had an idea as I typed this - what if the TV room is part of the simulation? And the key stops the simulation, giving whoever was the person who stopped it control over what happens next in the "real" world. If Elliot did die, maybe Maura hid the key because she doesn't want to go back to the real world where he's dead and prefers to live in the fake one where she either doesn't know of him or there's a fake version. Still, that doesn't explain why Daniel thinks it would be bad if TV room guy got the key...