S01.E04: Party At Castle Varlar

[green]

On 10/29/2016 at 11:56 PM, henripootel said:

This may sound strange but I'd have to feel that Wyatt did the right thing here.  Not as a time traveler, maybe, but as a soldier.  He is an American and America is at war, not in Wyatt's time but Wyatt isn't in Wyatt's time.  One of the interesting things time travel raises: where do your loyalties lie?  It's not a meaningless question, and it'd be very interesting if the sentries had been American GIs.  You still can't afford to let them take the time pod or raise the alarm, so I think a 'greater good' argument can be made for shooting them too.  Be a pretty dark place for these guys to go but I don't think Wyatt can reasonably be expected to render moral judgement about everyone they encounter who might need some killin'. 

Ah but leaving behind moral judgement and ethics raises the point of what exactly is Wyatt trying to save. 

I'll leave aside real examples since this is a TV site.  Instead take Adama's famous speech at the end of the pilot mini-series in the 2004 re-imaged adult version of Battlestar Galactica.  Sometimes it isn't enough just to survive.  You have to prove you are worthy of surviving.  (Of course those survivors ended up in some pretty dark places as well).

officetemp, thanks.  I completely forgot about Rufus writing down something in von Braun's notebook.  I doubt though he would have written down formulae for someone he detested.  Also he was described as a coder wasn't he?  Not a physicist type.  More a computer software engineer.  Anthony seemed to be the only real "pure scientist" as in the originator of that project and the others like Rufus were high end specialists on his support team.  At least that is who I think Rufus is per what the writers have shown so far.

[henripootel]

2 hours ago, green said:

Ah but leaving behind moral judgement and ethics raises the point of what exactly is Wyatt trying to save. 

I agree, and I think this is at the heart of the matter.  Who's to say what is worth preserving, this person or that, one way of life or another.  If you have a time machine and don't mind fucking with history, you not only can make these decisions, you are making these decisions.  You can decide to let random chance take its course or choose the path.  I think we're going to find out that this what the Rittenhouse people are doing - not preserving history, molding it. 

2 hours ago, green said:

Also he was described as a coder wasn't he?  Not a physicist type.  More a computer software engineer.

It's all math, and I think what Rufus was trying to do by writing down that equation was show von Braun in no uncertain terms that he was talking to a fellow scientist.  And I don't think he detested von Braun, just was repelled by the notion that von Braun, just like himself, was using his mind and work to help unsavory people, in von Braun's case literally Nazis. 

Edited October 31, 2016 by henripootel

[CeeBeeGee]

3 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

Not quite.  Aeneas himself didn't actually found Rome, according to the Aeneid.  His descendant Romulus did.

Oh, okay. I've never actually read the Aeneid, I wondered how that provenance squared with the Romulus story.

[possibilities]

Lucy's aversion to wearing the swastika to me does not prove or even suggest that she's Jewish. Frankly, anyone who is not repelled by wearing Nazi garb has a lot to answer for.

Also, I keep thinking about how Rufus is their pilot, and if he's hurt, they can't go back to 2016. I agree that sidelining him during missions is a problem, but so is the prospect of no longer being able to time travel. I have no answer for this, but it was distracting me all episode.

I handwave all the "rules" about time travel because ultimately they all seem tautological to me, whatever the show (or any time travel show) says they are. To me, the inconsistencies and illogic are just the price of admission to a time travel story.

I hate the ginning up of UST between Lucy and Wyatt. I hate it several different ways and I really want them to drop it. I really want the team to cohere, with Rufus letting the other two in on his secret, and the three of them being united, without emo widower and Lucy coupling up to further distance them from Rufus, who is already being marginalized because of historical conditions.

I also want them to figure out what Flynn's deal is, and stop the "Kill him! Don't kill him!" debate.

[methodwriter85]

On 10/26/2016 at 0:25 AM, thuganomics85 said:

 

Flynn was so the "guy" who rescued Lucy from drowning, back when she was in college.  Every freaking sign is pointing to it.  If not him, it has to be another time-traveler.

 

I don't think that's where they're going. They made it a rule that you can't exist in a time period that you already exist in- for Lucy, that would mean anything from 1983 to now would be off-limits. I can't see there being a point in making Flynn the one who saved her if she can't witness the near-drowning from an outside perspective.

[Bort]

On 10/30/2016 at 3:48 PM, officetemp said:

Speaking of journals, shouldn't Lucy have started her journal by now?  She'd have to have it on/near her person at all times to make sure it didn't change when they altered the past.

Lucy doesn't even need to start the journal. She did one in another time line, the journal Flynn has, and as long as he keeps it in his possession, it will continue to exist, like the picture of her sister. It may start getting out of date, though, the more changes that get made. 

[shapeshifter]

36 minutes ago, kariyaki said:

...[The journal] may start getting out of date, though, the more changes that get made. 

Which could be a good plot point to lead to the death or capture of Flynn.

[green]

10 hours ago, methodwriter85 said:

I don't think that's where they're going. They made it a rule that you can't exist in a time period that you already exist in- for Lucy, that would mean anything from 1983 to now would be off-limits. I can't see there being a point in making Flynn the one who saved her if she can't witness the near-drowning from an outside perspective.

They can exist in the time period but they run the risk of meeting themselves and that is what they can't do.

[Haleth]

Quote

Flynn was so the "guy" who rescued Lucy from drowning, back when she was in college.  Every freaking sign is pointing to it.  If not him, it has to be another time-traveler.

I think so too.  I think he'd risk the overlapping existences to save Lucy.  (You'd think she'd remember him though.)

I was only listening to this part but did Wyatt really not know who Werner von Braun was?  I find it unlikely a SEAL would be ignorant of that name.  (Or was it Fleming who asked who he was?  He should have known the name too.)

Lucy's insistence at reanimating (or whatever you'd call it) her sister seems futile.  Even if somehow she does manage to get the man she thought was her father back with her mother there are just too many variables to recreating the sister she knew.  It would be interesting if she comes back to find she has a brother.  Would she make her brother go "poof" in order to bring back a sister?

[withanaich]

Quote

This may sound strange but I'd have to feel that Wyatt did the right thing here.  Not as a time traveler, maybe, but as a soldier.  He is an American and America is at war, not in Wyatt's time but Wyatt isn't in Wyatt's time.  One of the interesting things time travel raises: where do your loyalties lie?  It's not a meaningless question, and it'd be very interesting if the sentries had been American GIs.  You still can't afford to let them take the time pod or raise the alarm, so I think a 'greater good' argument can be made for shooting them too.  Be a pretty dark place for these guys to go but I don't think Wyatt can reasonably be expected to render moral judgement about everyone they encounter who might need some killin'. 

I have to agree. This was maybe the one time Wyatt's "act first, think later" behavior served the team well. And I don't think it has anything to do with "morals." He wasn't thinking "Oh good, I get to shoot a Nazi. I'm not even going to bother to figure out if he's actually a decent person or not." He was thinking that he didn't want to be shot himself. Now if only he were that quick when he's dealing with Flynn...

Quote

I took the wardrobe as now that the missions where on and not just in the experiment can we do this phase the timeline was pushed forward and Mason went out to acquire the wardrobe for his/the government's team.

That's what I figured. Either that, or Mason already had the costumes and was keeping them for his own private Mason Industries-only jaunts into the past. We know there are going to be quite a few missions, because we're watching a TV show, but the people on the show were hoping they could send the trio to the past, kill Flynn, and be done with it. Maybe Mason didn't want to loan out his nice costumes for a one-and-done mission. (I don't know how he thought he was going to get the government off his back once the secret was out, but maybe he wasn't thinking that far ahead.)

Edited November 3, 2016 by withanaich

[methodwriter85]

On 11/2/2016 at 8:13 AM, Haleth said:

I think so too.  I think he'd risk the overlapping existences to save Lucy.  (You'd think she'd remember him though.)

ILucy's insistence at reanimating (or whatever you'd call it) her sister seems futile.  Even if somehow she does manage to get the man she thought was her father back with her mother there are just too many variables to recreating the sister she knew.  It would be interesting if she comes back to find she has a brother.  Would she make her brother go "poof" in order to bring back a sister?

I mean, she's not really taking into consideration that her "adoptive" father actually wound up married to a woman who wound up being the granddaughter of a girl who was supposed to die. So what does she do then- force the man she loved as Dad to break up with a woman  that for all we know, might have actually been the one for him?

[Cthulhudrew]

I really enjoy this show, in spite of its inaccuracies and playing loose with history from time to time. 

One thing I found really jarring about this episode, though, was that the caption in the beginning of the show said "December 7, 1944" but later in the episode, Rufus says Flynn and Co went back to December 9, 1944. I rewound just to check on both things again. I was hoping maybe there was going to be some second time trip or something to explain it, but it looks like someone just flubbed up. :(

[Clanstarling]

On 10/26/2016 at 4:23 PM, legaleagle53 said:

I did some research on Wernher von Braun, and it seems that he wasn't quite as cavalier about the practical results of his work as the episode would lead you to believe.  It's true that his main concern was getting mankind into space (specficially, the moon and eventually even Mars), and to that extent he was decades ahead of his time, but he was very much aware of the human cost, especially when it came to the men who were killed during the manufacture of his rockets.  Also, the episode makes it seem as though he was simply a political football who would allow himself to be turned over to whichever side would most further his work, but the truth is that he voluntarily surrendered to the US because he was terrified of what the Soviets would do to him if they got their hands on him.  He fell deeply in love with the US after he moved here to work, and he became an American citizen in 1955.  He also eventually became one of NASA's first directors.

The history I read regarding Von Braun was that he and his team fled to Austria to surrender to the Americans. It was a huge undertaking. I don't recall how many of the scientists made it - and I think they only got to the Austrian border - but it wasn't just Werner, it was also his brother and a team of scientists. So, they really messed with the timeline there.

On 10/29/2016 at 9:31 PM, Netfoot said:

Wanna hear something weird?  I once had a girlfriend who came from Stuttgart.  I came home one day to find her sitting on the sofa, sobbing.  She'd just received word that her father had died.  She had an old photo of him in her hand.  He was wearing his SS uniform...

Some of my family members were soldiers during the war. One (my favorite uncle) was just an average conscript, and didn't have any allegiance to the Nazis, but he had to serve. His two brothers were in concentration camps - one for political crimes, the other for being a homosexual.

We did have one family member who we found out (in the 80's) was SS. This was no shock, as this (most hated) uncle was a disgusting, sleazy person. Wyatt could have taken him out with my blessing.

On 10/30/2016 at 11:10 AM, ketose said:

My mother was born in Germany to a German woman and an American serviceman a few years after the war. Sometimes you have to wonder just how much would change with slightly different actions in the past.

Ketose,  my child! Fancy meeting you here.

I've lost most of my fluency in German, but I still have the ear. I thought Wyatt's German accent was pretty bad (not sufficient to stay undercover), some of the words were wildly mispronounced (Captain, for one), and @legaleagle53, correct me if I'm wrong, but "sir" is not a word used in German. In civilian speak it would be "mein Herr", but I'm not sure what the military form would be. I thought the translations were off too, but translation is often a matter of preference.

[legaleagle53]

7 minutes ago, Clanstarling said:

The history I read regarding Von Braun was that he and his team fled to Austria to surrender to the Americans. It was a huge undertaking. I don't recall how many of the scientists made it - and I think they only got to the Austrian border - but it wasn't just Werner, it was also his brother and a team of scientists. So, they really messed with the timeline there.

Some of my family members were soldiers during the war. One (my favorite uncle) was just an average conscript, and didn't have any allegiance to the Nazis, but he had to serve. His two brothers were in concentration camps - one for political crimes, the other for being a homosexual.

We did have one family member who we found out (in the 80's) was SS. This was no shock, as this (most hated) uncle was a disgusting, sleazy person. Wyatt could have taken him out with my blessing.

Ketose,  my child! Fancy meeting you here.

I've lost most of my fluency in German, but I still have the ear. I thought Wyatt's German accent was pretty bad (not sufficient to stay undercover), some of the words were wildly mispronounced (Captain, for one), and @legaleagle53, correct me if I'm wrong, but "sir" is not a word used in German. In civilian speak it would be "mein Herr", but I'm not sure what the military form would be. I thought the translations were off too, but translation is often a matter of preference.

I believe the proper usage would be "Herr" plus whatever rank/title the officer in question held, for example, "Herr Hauptmann (which is the correct word for 'captain' in this particular context, incidentally -- 'Kapitän' would refer to a Navy or Air Force captain)."

[Raja]

8 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

I believe the proper usage would be "Herr" plus whatever rank/title the officer in question held, for example, "Herr Hauptmann (which is the correct word for 'captain' in this particular context, incidentally -- 'Kapitän' would refer to a Navy or Air Force captain)."

One thing which bugged me from an alternate history novel about a South Africa made up of American war losers so it became a super slave fascist state, replacing the Soviet Union in the post war Cold War, was a mistake a soldier made of using German Army ranks for a Waffen SS soldier thus messing up an ambush they had planned.

[Wordsworth]

In 1944, the German Army was running out of soldiers.  Wyatt, in a pub in Germany with Lucy, 
would have been conspicuous as a visibly healthy young man not in a uniform.

Agreed also with Lucy's wide-ranging and convenient historical knowledge being a bit unrealistic.