Aha, so something very bad happened in the other world’s timeline. I loved the way the movie pre-roll ever so slowly drifted from mundane public health announcement to … terror inducing dread.
Sounds like the two worlds are exploring different tech trees, and one of them is (obviously, I guess) equivalent to our current world? And if not for the benefits both worlds derive from that, they’d have closed off the portal long ago?
I was starting to drift from the show but then they dropped plague on one and started exploring trade between between the two worlds and I found that fascinating. It really made clear why they are so fanatical about restricting information.
Then I watched Star Trek Discovery and it further hammered home the dangers such a portal would bring about to the point the Federation is just going to shut it down as hard as possible. Fun parallels between the two.
I like everything about this. Unlike Fringe, it has a feel that it’s going somewhere planned, and it’s just being unfolded gradually for us. I skimmed the complaints above, and to me many have been addressed by the recent expanding view of what is in the show’s world(s). As a fan of crime/political conspiracy dramas, this to me is light on the sci-fi and heavy on the crime/political conspiracy drama side of things. Great stuff.
Was a bit disappointed in the ending of the last episode, what was she a novice or something? She’d been in it longer than him.
You mean a detailed wide-ranging collection of information from a more locked down society, that listed professions, etc… And multiple sets of the information over years? Seems to be something hugely useful, especially for inferring something about a version of their world they only get shown restricted glimpses of.
I’m also curious about the census data. Obviously things like deep oil deposits are valuable. But they treated current census data as incredibly valuable? My guess is that ‘census data’ is a euphemism.
Well, in the context of the health video they showed at the beginning, they might be trying to get a sense of how readily the population on the other side is growing/declining, which would benefit them in negotiations (be getting a handle on how desperate they might be) or in assessing military strength.
Personally, I think that maybe Baldwin’s team is setting up for some kind of takeover, coup, invasion
But he’s covert ops, whereas she’s never even been to the other side, explicitly doesn’t have his level of clearance, and didn’t twig to the rendition order being a hit. So I can believe her not being suspicious enough to catch that. (Though I certainly would have thought twice if my lights suddenly weren’t working, under the circumstances.)
There’s the ongoing mentions from the other side, that the side that represents us, did something to them and we deserve retaliation. What, we haven’t seen yet. I suspect that’s the most likely cause of the action. But then again, there’s some internal problems mentioned on both sides.
There’s no support for that theory in evidence, to convince me to convert. My current assumption is it is more likely to be similar to Fringe. Opening the door, affected the other side, more than it affected us. Perhaps leaving them with a broken shadow fork of reality from the time of opening where less opportunities and hope were present - which encouraged choices like boyish killer Baldwin versus hot violinist.
The theory we’ve been told (as I understand it) is that when the door opened, reality forked. The original spawned two variations. There’s no contention I’ve seen from either side, about it being any other way.
You know, it occurs to me. If disease is such a big deal, they haven’t as far as I can tell made a big deal about sterilization/quarantine/etc of people going back and forth. Makes me wonder if there’s something more to it than a simple disease.
Why do you think disease is such a big deal? The only reference to it, I have seen is that occurrence of events diverged on both sides, some inventions on others progressed in different ways than the other. Hence one side has developed a cure for something the other hasn’t. And the other invented cell phones, and so on.
Um, did you miss the PSA on screen in the Otherside movie theater where Emily was sitting when the other guy from work walked in? I think they take things like colds and flu WAY more seriously over there, just going from that.
They did, though - there’s a scene where Donald Glover is complaining about having to get yet another round of inoculations for transit.
The PSA mentioning heavy legal consequences for not reporting people caught ill, all the folks with surgical masks on, the inoculations, the mention of a catastrophic plague and repopulation during the diplomatic dinner…
Inoculations yeah, but you’re only thinking of it from the POV of their own side. Shouldn’t the OTHER side be concerned you might be bringing something across?