1899 (from the makers of Dark) [Netflix]

22-11-2022 11:44pm

Eh, to be honest I thought it was a load of guff. The final 5 mins doesn't make any sense as to why the whole thing would be set in 1899.

Dial Hard · 23-11-2022 1:55am

I'm only (almost) at the end of E1 and haven't read the entire thread for obvious reasons, so forgive me if the comparison has already been made, but this is basically Victorian shipboard Event Horizon so far.

cdgalwegian · 23-11-2022 10:14am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119909374#Comment_119909374

Actually (before I go to watch episode 5 later today), that got me to thinking about the technology. The year relates to

analogue form, of what I'm convinced is a simulation relating the boy being resurrected, infinitely, like an infinite escape room scenario; is it a sick game for the boy, set up by the parents due to his death? The year then is like an analogue code, like the lock on a briefcase that Daniel sets; it is set to start the 'game' in the year - so another version would be 1989, or 1998. The characters would be pre-loaded with a backstory, with which they would 'wake up!".

GLaDOS · 23-11-2022 10:20am

Finished last night. I enjoyed it overall, but it's not at the level of Dark. I'd watch another season if it came out, but wouldn't be devastated if that was it.

Drumpot · 23-11-2022 10:23am

I have seen dark and loved the first two series anyways. I don’t want to see any spoilers so was just wondering if anybody who has watched it thinks it was a solid entry to the makers of Dark? (Like if you enjoyed Dark will you enjoy this?)

cdgalwegian · 23-11-2022 10:33pm

Episode 5.

So Maura's story was the more intriguing - what with the boy not being the ship owner's son, as I speculated.

Cool curve-ball that not just Daniel has technological control of not just the ship, and not just that, but of individuals. Both Daniel and the boy a tag-team to escape from the simulation.

i'd imagine what Maura's father is looking for from her is

the pyramid the boy has - which allowed him to resurrect, whereas the other fallers 'perished' (for this iteration of the simulation). The big question I suppose, is what the owner is after, with his ship-based experimental manipulations., which I assume he transferred from a real mental hospital to the sim world. This manipulative experimentation doesn't look Westworld-like (particularly from a meta pov, in that it's already been done).

What is really interesting though is that the first mate is

communicating with the owner in real-time.

Slydice · 23-11-2022 10:47pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119910071#Comment_119910071

In terms of world building, it goes a different direction than Dark. Also maybe kept their world a bit tighter than the open-world feeling of Dark. Though a ship setting might just come with that anyway.

What was very familiar feeling was them keeping me interested to know what happens next and just not being able to guess where it would end up.

pixelburp · 26-11-2022 9:47pm

Episode 2 and the deep hmmmmm... continues. Still no clue where the overall story is going but do have to laugh at all the BIG SECRETS all the passengers are carrying. If it wasn't all carried off with such style and competence, the tortured dramatic tone would quickly fly away at the seams.

cdgalwegian · 27-11-2022 6:10pm

Episode 6, and from the last episode we find the creators have created a creator; which this episode expands upon. In one sense, the revelations about the ship make it more 'concrete', yet on the other, the psychological manipulation that is occurring has moved from

all-encompassing simulations, to a mixture of simulation and 'mere' mind-control, with the infinite permutations and combinations of thought.

Motifs of eternity in relation to simulations

are now apparently time-bound to the real world, but which are now swapped out for the eternity of trapped dreams. In 'reality' it seems the creator, Singleton, is manipulating the dreams of the protagonists in real-time.

But to what end? The motivations have now become the backbone of the story, but there are huge gaps here:

It seemed 'obvious' at this point that Daniel was Maura's brother - but her husband? Is he lying? I mean, he apparently killed little Ada (for an as unknown reason, as yet), so who knows what he is about? The psychiatric illness of Singleton's wife that he is trying to fix is reminiscent of The Fountain, but where Singleton as single-minded in the search for the cure, looks like he will sacrifice the minds of his offspring for the mind of his wife. Of all the backgrounds, though, we only got a tiny glimpse of Maura's background story, but nothing beyond that. Could she be Singleton's wife?

I'm as hooked on this as I was on Dark.

whisky_galore · 29-11-2022 11:36am

Had it pretty much figured out with the tea being sipped in unison early on. Not at all the mindfcuk that Dark was.

cdgalwegian · 29-11-2022 3:07pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119934460#Comment_119934460

Yeah, right. I think most people would have had an inkling that there was some element of either

a) automatons of some description, or b) simulations,

going on with that scene (and especially with the later episode with the clock-ticking scene), but the reasons behind all this were completely indeterminable at that stage. Increasingly the show has become about

psychology/psychiatry, with dream

manipulation to an unknown end, by (at least at that juncture) an unknown force. But you had figured out the reasons for it all with that one scene?

Mike Litoris · 29-11-2022 10:14pm

Just finished it there. Not sure what to think at the end. Nowhere near as slick or clever as Dark but still better than most shite out there imo.

Is the whole spaceship bit real or part of another/the same simulation. WTF is reality?! 😂 Who's real/alive or dead/simulated?

cdgalwegian · 01-12-2022 2:59pm

Episode 7, I think, is revealing that

Singleton isn't the bad guy here.

The motivations originally seemed maligned, but its seems he, as well as the others, are literally and metaphorically

on the same boat i.e. trapped

and Maura holds the key, again, literally and metaphorically. All this then begs the bigger question

Is Singleton manipulating for everyone's benefit, because they are all, including Singleton, in a bigger 'prison simulation'? There seems to be layers to the prison, with Singleton and the first mate pitched against Daniel and the boy. Singleton and the first mate are therefore at an advanced stage in levels of being 'woken up', and hence look like the bad guys from even the perspective of Daniel and the boy. If Singleton can get them to "wake up", they can all get to the next phase together. Maybe each season is then different levels of the prison to be escaped from.

fritzelly · 01-12-2022 6:58pm

Where do they go with a S2 - we know the secret, so does it become a sci-fi show then?

Slydice · 02-12-2022 1:15am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119945636#Comment_119945636

To IRELAND!!! 😁

Ciaran vs Maura! 😀

Brock Turnpike · 04-12-2022 4:38pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119910055#Comment_119910055

Felt exactly the same.

One question from me... did Jerome just appear from one of the coal pits? I looked away from the screen for some reason when Olek was trying to unblock the coal, and it seemed Jerome just appeared at the same time.

Slydice · 04-12-2022 5:41pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119955844#Comment_119955844

Yeah. Olek heard a noise the first time he went up there to fix the coal chute. The audience was given a clue to something was going on there with some strange noises that Olek reacted to but ignored. Then Jerome pops out a few scenes later.

Ultimately I think he was..

just considered a stowaway there. He was chasing after Lucien

cdgalwegian · 06-12-2022 10:18pm

Whoah! Really enjoyed that. The Friese/bo Odar duo have produced another series where each season has a higher layer of mystery. This is bound to be part of another trilogy, and I'd wager a third trilogy is planned involving a different metaphysical mystery. Dark involved time-travel. 1899 involves, it turns out - as a philosophical backdrop - what was referred to in the show as Plato's Cave, however it is really about

the 'brain in a vat' armchair thought experiment, much like in The Matriix, where reality can be completely manipulated by substituting sensory input for computer output.

By the end of the season, I was looking forward to a cool season 1 last line, which for Dark was

"Welcome to the future". For this metaphysical mystery it was "Welcome to reality",

which was proof that these guys are geniuses.

NIMAN · 07-12-2022 10:54pm

Watched it over the last week.

Thought it was rubbish.

I was tempted to stop watching around episode 5, but stuck with it.

Definitely will not be watching a 2nd series if it happens.

pixelburp · 11-12-2022 7:03pm

Episode 3 and maybe it's my TV, though I don't think so, but these episodes have been excessively dark in places. There has obviously been a tonne of period detail put into the design of this fictional ocean liner - but damned if you can see any of it.

The plot continues to baffle, almost to the point of distraction, but I'm still enjoying these weird personal stories of the passengers. They're making good use of the international cast having no linguistic overlap.

Talisman · 12-12-2022 9:27pm

I've avoided this thread and I was intending to save the series for the Christmas break but given the weather I treated myself to the first episode last night. First impression is that it's totally different from what I expected. It's definitely going to fall into the category of intriguing idea as opposed to absolute mind f#ck that Dark was initially.

The Maura character being a doctor who has studied the brain makes me think that that's something of significance. The marks on her arms and her flashbacks give me vibes of the Don't Worry Darling movie and I hope there's more to it than that type of story line.

breezy1985 · 15-12-2022 11:44pm

Really enjoyed the show. I always knew from the start the answers wouldn't live up to the mystery. It never does in these shows.

Still great fun to watch though.

screamer · 15-12-2022 11:52pm

Watched it all in 1.5 speed! Watched dark too, and I preferred this to dark. The ending wasn’t satisfactory to me but I can see the parallels between the last scene and the ship. There’s loads of questions to answer, all these characters stories to finalise, I’d certainly watch another series of it.

NIMAN · 16-12-2022 12:14am

Also watched it at 1.5x speed simply cos they dragged the arse out of it.

8hrs that could easily have been edited down to a 2hr show.

But it's the Netflix way.

peteeeed · 17-12-2022 2:18pm

its was a bit matrix 1-3 , entertaining rubbish , lost it a bit near the end after a great start , like a very long KLF video

cdgalwegian · 27-12-2022 10:31am

This article makes a good point about the audience's psychology of investing in the characters' characters for the next season and beyond. Like I reckoned in #79, this is planned as part of a trilogy: (spoiler alert)

https://screenrant.com/1899-season-2-avoid-ending-simulation-mistake/

Just as the likes of Breaking Bad is misremembered as being fantastic right from the start (in terms of pace etc), this was a bit slow to build up, as was Dark. If handled right, this could be every bit as good - and possibly even better - than Dark, because of the metaphysical scope it has.

pixelburp · 02-01-2023 9:48pm

Well. No point finishing the season then: Netflix has cancelled the show.

It wasn't perfect, and a bit of a slow burn but damned if I'm not miffed about the service doing this. Oh but they'll pay what, 500 million for Knives Out 2, or 200 million for The Grey Man??

pixelburp · 02-01-2023 10:04pm

Also, for those that did finish the season: how much was left unfinished by the end?

I was watching this slowly as its intense, foreboding tone kinda made it a required taste. I won't bother finishing if this thing ends on a cliffhanger.

cdgalwegian · 02-01-2023 10:07pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120057622#Comment_120057622

Yeah, was just about to post about it. Gutted. I had enormous fun trying to figure out what the hell was going on. As I had posted before, I had reckoned this was due to be a trilogy, which a quick search has just shown:

https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/netflix-cancels-1899-after-one-season/

I had even speculated that it would this would have been maneuvered into being the second trilogy series of an overarching trilogy.

I'm really hoping this will be picked by another platform. As I said, there's even greater scope for a trilogy with than their first series, Dark.

02-01-2023 10:10pm

I finished it over the week. It was grand, it ends ok. I'm not too upset that I won't see S2.

BUT...

The title music. Never have I reached for the "skip" button so fast every time. Utterly awful cover of White Rabbit.

1899 (from the makers of Dark) [Netflix]

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