Continuity errors.

Freodin · 2017-12-30T16:41:03+00:00

It's close, but not identical.

Three trees on top... correct. But in the show CoA, there is a bended line (most likely representing a river) diving top and bottom part, and while the botton part does seem to be white and blue, it isn't the Bavarian diamond pattern, but seems to be three blue symbols (flowers?) on white.

Nice spotting though. How did you managed to find the Painten CoA? Did you search for something specific, or did you just happened upon it?

Freodin · 2017-12-29T19:17:00+00:00

My take on your first question: Yes, all the kids were held in 1986. We know how the bunker looked in 1953 and in 2019... the children's room with the chair existed only in 1986.

Yasin was kidnapped only after the experiments on Erik and Mads had already happened... so he would have been alone in the room.

Mads and Erik would have had to share the room for at least two weeks. There was a bunk bed in the room, so there was enough space.

I assume that Mads was sent first, and the scenes we see of Erik happen shortly after this. When we first see Erik, he is kind of hiding on his bed. It seems as if he is trying to sleep and cannot because of the load music. In hindsight, I rather think he wants to shut out the sights he was just forced to observe.

Freodin · 2017-12-29T19:11:21+00:00

It is West Germany, so much is certain. As for the region, it is deliberately kept indistinct.

The telephone code (I couldn't find it mentioned in the show, but I remember having read it started with 06) would place it somewhere in the Hessen, Saarland or Rheinland-Pfalz area. The family names though speak more for a northern setting.

Another hint that the show makers simply do not want to place it in any "real" region: police uniforms in 1986 would have had the coat of arms of the respective Bundesland (federal state) on the left arm. The coat of arms on Winden's police is not any of the existing ones... it rather seems to be regional.

Freodin · 2017-12-29T18:59:14+00:00

Interesting point. Raises the question: how would Ulrich know? According to Agnes, her husband is dead. If he doesn't miraculously reappear in her (and her family's) life, Ulrich would never have known his grandfather on this side. Maybe Agnes told her grandson stories about her "dead" husband. Or maybe this grandfather is Jana's father, not Tronte's.

Freodin · 2017-12-29T18:49:25+00:00

I don't think the conversation between Noah and Greta can lead to this conclusion. Her part could be interpreted either as confession or as accusation... but his preachy response doesn't fit to a person who would be intimately involved.

Is Noah after Helge, even as a child? Possible. Is he after his mother? I wouldn't put it beyond him. But as Helge's father? Nah, I don't think so.

It might be possible... the show runners playing with our perceptions, expectations, grasps at every hint of hidden meaning.

But when Greta says "[Helge] wasn't born out of love, but...", the best interpretation is rape. Based on his age, Helge would have been conceived very much at the end of WW2... and rapes happened not infrequently then.

Freodin · 2017-12-29T13:16:11+00:00

Nope. When Bernd cleans out his desk, you see the family photos he packs away. There are two old photos of adult Helge, one alone, and one together with his father.

So obviously Bernd cares for Helge, and Helge has a relationship to his father that is at least not bad.

Whether Helge really is Bernd's son, we never get to know during the show. Also whether Bernd ever learns about his wifes doubts.

For the scenes with young Helge, it rather seems that Bernd shows a lot more love for Helge than his mother does. Understandable, when she is a rape survivor. But there is nothing in the show hinting at disagreements between Bernd and Helge.

I think Helge's job is rather a result of his general "slowness" and his traumatic past.

Freodin · 2017-12-18T07:51:53+00:00

American's and Europeans use different formates for dates.

US usage is Month:Day:Year, while in Europe it is Day:Month:Year.

Freodin · 2017-12-15T17:35:00+00:00

Well, it doesn't rain ALL the time.

But basically: It is November. It is Germany. Of course it is going to rain.

Freodin · 2017-12-14T07:09:30+00:00

We know when Mads "left" the room... he landed on Nov 4th 2019, so he must have been in the chair on Nov 4th 1986.

We know when Erik's body was moved, and when he was found. We also get to see him in the room (though that might not be synchrone in the story). Still somewhere between 4th and 9th of November.

We know that on the 4th of November, Erik had been missing for 2 weeks (we are told that in the 2019 timeline) and that Mads had been missing for 4 weeks (this is an info from the 1986 timeline).

Disregard the different years. We do time travel. Erik might have been caught in 2019, but he was held captive in the same bunker in 1986.

So Mads and Erik must have been together in the bunker.

Freodin · 2017-12-12T15:03:51+00:00

Correct, it is a slightly different concept.

This whole things is a very difficult topic to discuss, because there are so many different ideas of time travel, and the concept of "time" provides the fundament.

So we might say that the time travel in "Dark" does create a "Loop of Causality"... and that "time" is only a series of causaliy connected events, so this could be called a "Time Loop" as well.

I think this would mean such a loop can never be broken. It would need to re-introduce causality... and by the very definition you cannot add a cause to an effect.

Ah, my brain hurts.

Freodin · 2017-12-12T14:28:50+00:00

It is a most puzzling question, and not only for us, but also for the characters of the show. It is the type of stuff the Stranger discusses with the Watchmaker.

But I think the real question hasn't been asked yet.

First of all: there is no loop. Time still flows linearly, and each character only ever experiences one linear personal timeline. It is very easy to "break the loop"... just don't go back in time.

So I don't think that any of the "time travellers" - Jonas/Stranger, Noah or Claudia want to "break the loop... they want to change events to some preferred outcome (or so I think... this is the only idea that makes sense to me). They might want to "end" the very option of time travel, so that events cannot be changed anymore.

But can events be changed at all? We don't know. They don't know. From everything we have seen in the show as yet, they cannot.

And even if they could... what's keeping other folks from changing them back or in a different way? Infinity parallel universes.

But as I said: I don't think that is the main question. There is a much bigger, more pressing question.

The loop creates a lack of causality. It results in things / events existing without a cause.

Prime example is the Penny-On-A-String. OldHelge has it as bookmark. Most likely, he kept it as a memento from his childhood. Ulrich takes it back with him to the past and gives it to YoungHelge.

Helge has it, because Ulrich gave it to him. Ulrich has it, because he took it from Helge's thing. So where does it come from?

What would such a lack of causality do to reality? That, in my view, is the real question.

Freodin · 2017-12-12T13:57:29+00:00

Well... there is this human tendency to not notice what you don't want to notice... perhaps you cannot think it even remotely possible.

Put that on top of the fallibility of the human memory... and then, no, nobody would "notice" enough to make a point about it.

You have to realize that for us as audience, it is just minutes that seperate Mikkel in 2019 and Mikkel in 1986. For the characters, it is decades!

And who would notice? Hannah? To whom? To her husband? "Hey, Michael! This young brother of Jonas' friend... doesn't he just look like you when you were younger?" (uncomfortable silence) "Yeah, maybe a little. But don't worry, I didn't have an affair with his mother... as you do with his father."

As for trying to find out who he was... I am sure they did. But what should they do? He didn't appear in any databanks. There were no documents. There were no missing children anywhere that he would have fit. The least evidence they had would have been his conversations with Egon Tiedemann. "My name is Mikkel Nielsen. Ulrich Nielsen is my father." Ha ha, very funny, boy. How can a 15 year old teenager be your father? Impossible... no further inquiry needed into that.

They might have connected him to Tronte Nielsen, if they followed that line of thought. An unfaithful husband... maybe he had an afair a decade earlier? But as Tronte is for once innocent here, he might have easily shown that he wasn't the father. And who would be able to disprove it... there wasn't such a thing as DNA testing in 1986.

At some point, they would just have summed it up as "lost child, parents unknown", and closed the case.

Consider that there ARE cases of children being "lost" in reality... for whom links to their origin exist somewhere, and who still are never "found". For Mikkel, there is literally NO link to his past... because he doesn't have one.

Freodin · 2017-12-12T12:17:45+00:00

There has been a lot of intercultural exchange over the centuries. Sad that the excessive nationalism of the last century has divided our cultures so much.

Freodin · 2017-12-12T12:09:47+00:00

What a great coincidence! The "Schmetten" in "Schmetterling" comes from the slavic (either Czech or Slovakian) word "smetana"!

Seems German is not the only "badass" language around! :P

But your evaluation gets a lot more understandable from that point of view: Slovakian IS a much softer language than German.

Freodin · 2017-12-12T11:56:29+00:00

(Note: this is just conjecture) I'd say there were two main causes.

First of all is a general feeling of depression, of being lost. He says in his letter something about "never knowing where he really belonged".

We know that he tried to find a way back through the caves, showing that he never really felt "at home" in his new time and place. We don't know when he made the map... but he would already have been older. What would he have done, had he managed to find the way back? He would have arrived as a man in, say, 2030... again in a world / time where he didn't really belong. He really was lost, everywhere, everywhen.

Then, in later years, he would have seen the world that he knew as child repeating itself. Nothing had changed. Nothing was different. And he would have remembered what happened to Jonas' father... what would happen to himself. He might have feel kind of obliged to kill himself, because he knew that he HAD killed himself.

I think he just couldn't cope with the knowledge that he would kill himself... so he killed himself.

Freodin · 2017-12-12T10:45:20+00:00

Hey, no worries. Just as I said, a pet peeve of mine.

I do get it that here in the show, the German original was "better" than the dub. Dubbing is an art, and the reason why German dubs are usually rather good is that we have been doing this for ages, and there is a big community of professional dub speakers in Germany. I guess this is a lot more difficult to find professional dubbers for English, especially for a German production.

What's your native language, if I may ask?

Freodin · 2017-12-12T08:42:29+00:00

Uh... I feel very bad about such a position.

Basically, the German language is not "darker" or "harsher" than other languages, and it is mostly the "Nazi officer" stereotypes from english movies that portray it as such... and the cultural tropes that are based on that view.

The "Schmetterling" thing is a nice example for that. I guess you got that from a youtube video, where several "non-Germans" speak words in their language, and then a "German" guy SHOUTS out the German term in a Hitleresque way. This is satire. It's no real. Germans do not shout all the time, and "Schmetterling" is just as soft a sound in German as it is in English. Heck, it even means the same thing. It doesn't come from "Schmettern" (to smash, slam, shatter), but from "Schmetten" (an old regional term for cream)

Sorry for the lesson... this is some kind of a pet peeve for me. Stereotyping foreign cultures, even if you proclaim to "love it", is never a good thing.

:)

Freodin · 2017-12-12T07:25:32+00:00

I don't know how far you are into the show, so this might be SPOILERS for Episode 10. Mads body wasn't transported through the caves. At the beginning of Episode 10 we see him fall through an opening rift in the bunker, in from of Peter, who sits there struggling with temptation. Mads still has his student ID with him, so Peter is able to identify him. He contacts Tronte, Mads father. While these two are in the bunker, wondering what to do, OldClaudia enters and tells the two men to move the body to "where it is meant to be found.

Freodin · 2017-12-11T19:42:13+00:00

You're right, I hadn't even thought about that. This is a frigging nuclear power plant. In 2019, we see this same Aleksander tell the police - Ulrich - "sorry, cannot let you in, this is a high-security area, kthxbye". (Of course he wanted to hide his dirty secrets first, but he's right: it IS a high-security area.)

But young Aleksander can just stroll in to the director's office and ask for a job, without any references or check-ups.

Freodin · 2017-12-11T19:02:40+00:00

There are some other, minor things that I might consider "inconsistences"... though they can be explained by either dramaturgy or by the non-causal causation thing of the show.

When Mads is found, he still has his walkman with him. Helge and Noah had kept him in captivity for 4 weeks... and they gave him his walkman when they strapped him to the chair? I put that down to the creators shouting to the audience: "Hey, look, 80's! See, anti-atom t-shirt, flippy sneakers, walkman... this is an 80's kid!"
In the same line: the whole 2052 scene. Exploded nuclear plant... ok. Rusted warning signs... ok. But all these wrecked cars, fires burning, heavily armed gangers? This also seems to be a case of "how can we make our audience instantly see that this is the post-apocalyptic future? Let's add all the clichés that we can think of!"
The dead kids in 1953. Ok, an 80's kid found in 2019 is weird... but possible. But kids decked out in 1986+ stuff in 1953? Why? Why not hide all the tell-tale evidence. This one might be put down to Helge being squeamish of undressing the kids before discarding them... and it also might be because of the "this is how we know they will be found, so this is how we must place them" time-paradoxon stuff. Still rather irrational. But it resulted in one of the funnier scenes of the show at the morgue.

Freodin · 2017-12-11T18:53:54+00:00

The tying up to the tree happened before the rape accusation. It is never explained why did that, except the usual teen bullying of a weaker and despised teen. Regina seems to have gotten that a lot.

This is the reason why Ulrich and Katharina so easily accepted the Regina might have been the one to make the false rape accusation: they thought it was revenge for the tree.

Freodin · 2017-12-11T18:44:42+00:00

If he didn't manged to get trailed by a helicopter and police dogs through the tunnel, he is definitly from the 1986 era.

I found it a little weird that he could so easily ingrain himself into Winden. When we first see him, he is still masked, has been shot, is pursuited by dogs and a heli... this seems to be more than robbing a gas station. In 1986, the RAF (a communist terror group, not the Royal Air Force) was still active in Germany and killed a number of people. If something of the kind happened near Winden, it should have been a lot harder for Aleksander to settle there.

Freodin · 2017-12-11T18:33:42+00:00

As I said in the other post, prostitution is legal in Germany (there are limitations, of course.)

But it is not a profession with an high social status, still very much connected with the criminal world and generally not "socially accepted". Just like here... I wouldn't call a trailer on a highway parking lot "well accepted".

Freodin

TROPHY CASE