OK I just finished episode 8. Spoilers follow. This was trippy! I knew there was something going on, but in the earlier episodes I leaned more toward time travel because out of everyone on the ship, Daniel seemed like he knew what was going on and his clothing was...not period. They were so generic that they could be contemporary clothes. And of course when he pulled out a flashlight that was fairly modern looking that seemed to clinch it. Also I thought the backstories for everyone were...true and had some meaning, and apparently everyone's backstory and identity was fake. So that threw me off. Since it turned out to be a simulation, all of the passenger conflict was based on a fake backstory that the passengers believed. I assume the purpose of the majority of the ship jumping overboard was simply because they were NPC's and the simulation was simply clearing the ship of non real people and crew. Although there seem to be two exceptions to that, Ling Yi's mom jumped but was in the Matrix pods at the end, and Olek. He died before the end of the simulation, so was he also in the pods or was he an NPC that made it towards the end? All in all, well down with the depth of characterization, that ultimately means nothing since we don't know who these people are in the real world.
Thanks for your feedback! I was first intrigued by the "bits" taken from 2001 Apace Oddyesy and stories like the Marie Celeste and the idea that the principal characters all had something to forget. Which tied me into the idea of forgetting that they had done this before. But I never understood why Daniel was outside the events on the simulation since it was never explained how he lived both inside and outside it at the same time. Nor was it explained how the word "simulation" used by the controller was understood in 1899. Which begs the question...was HE a part of larger simulation ? And I never understood his motive...was it just playing with science and why he would use his own family for such an amusement. And then I watched the "how it was made" thing and it blew my mind. The use of technology that eventually appears as a movie was to me amazing. The cameras and sound and stages were a new reality for me. IMO it was fun but the story didn't hang together as a solid believable thing. Except for the actuality of its accessibility on my own device in my own home. We don't need to rerun make-believe. We need to use technology to move out of loops of history and into real new worlds.
I have been dipping in and out of the one called Dark by the same director. It seems as if someone rented a wood and had actors running around near the mouth of a cave in it plus short episodes all edited in the wrong order. The main idea is the same as 1899. It is in three series but could have been done in one. Moving on.
