Discuss the Current Episode

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Originally posted by Zopwx2 The circled part of rogers photos are roger as a child and most likley his rich adoptive parents he mentions in ep 14.

Is that Roger as a child or is that Roger's wife and child? Is that the best shot of it? Because it looks like his hair, what little you can see of the man on the other side of the child.

lol I believe when act 1 was created season 2 wasnt being thought of. I honestly believe season 1 was the following:

An event happened 40 years ago, memories lost, reminants of certain parts (subways, archetype "showcase", buildings). But no stage, no loops none of that. The creators went nuts or were smoking something.

Whatever they were smoking, I want some.

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Originally posted by Zola quote: Originally posted by Zopwx2 The circled part of rogers photos are roger as a child and most likley his rich adoptive parents he mentions in ep 14. Is that Roger as a child or is that Roger's wife and child? Is that the best shot of it? Because it looks like his hair, what little you can see of the man on the other side of the child.

Roger having a wife and kids! he is 25 and that kid is pretty old, roger must have been at it quite early.

I'm pretty sure if it had to be anything, its roger as a child.

Showtime: Yes it seems quite possibly alot of the ideas for season 2 were not realized until somtime after the completion of season 1.

EDIT: holy crap! Just thought of somthing! maybe both the child and the father are roger smith! HE was adopted by his older "shaking hands with gordon" self! .......nah thats a stupid theory.

Hold it, Big0-SHOWTIME. It has been proven that marijuana doesn't improve creativity!

2 other things I noticed...(I think they warrant another post anyway).

1. The "Glass Eye" people mention Schwarzwald as having. I dont think its a glass eye in the typical sense of the word at all, its shown broken, revealing his loopy, spiral looking pupils.

2. "I dont know who you are, or where you came from, but your no god". Now while Roger said that when he was fighting the Archetype, I cant help but think he meant Schwarzwald as well. This just further plays into the "they didnt know what they wanted to do with season 2 during season 1" theory even more. As if you look at Schwarzwald in season 1, he isnt this benevolent ghost of season 2 (ok, yes, he isnt DEAD yet, which would kind of negate that..but...still). He acts differently. While his "get to and expose the truth at all costs" mentality, altruistic as it may be, is there. If you notice when he's on the Archetype, he's almost caressing it at one point, mentioning something about how he could have its power if he had memories. He seems ALOT more malevolent in season 1. (Not to rile up the Schwarzwald fans, as he's one of my favorite characters also).

....Also the norman looking between the roast and his communication dealie when roger asks how much longer was amusing.

In closing, sorry if Im misusing this thread. I assume its the surrogate for the old threads where we'd kind of pick apart the episode as we saw it. Since...its easier to have one lengthy repeat thread than numerous ones for episodes. If Im wrong, I apologize, and wont clog this up with my erronious conclusions and obvious observations that have probably been stated before, and to better effect.

P.S. No shock, but we have erronious credits once more, this time from "Bring back my ghost", as I saw "bonnie frazier" listed....they probably did this for the first three also, but they zoomed past too speedily for me to notice.

Watching this ep again (twice in four days, as I saw it on DVD a few days ago), I've come to the conclusion that the Archetype is a geniune Megadeus prototype -- specifically a concept test bed, not a machine designed for active combat or a skeletal Megadeus.

1) The skull has four eye-lights and appears to use all four of them to view with, whereas the Megadei we know only have two, covered by the faceplate.

2) That electrical skull attack is clearly something the known Megadei can't do; it's also incredibly ineffective, little more than a minor annoyance to a Big O that isn't even trying to shield against it.

3) The claw on its left hand is also incongruous with any known Megadeus weapon; it also appears to be totally nonfunctional during the Big O/Archetype fight, a deadweight club at best.

4) Try dropping the engine of a Dodge Viper into a Mack truck and see how far you get, or vice versa. Archetype = Viper, Big O = Mack Truck. Simply relieving a Big of the weight of its armor wouldn't turn it into a mechanical orangutan like the Archetype, or the reverse.

4a) Corollary: the Archetype has prehensile feet, something a Big couldn't make any use of even if it was just an Archetype overlaid with armor and weapons.

All taken together, it seems clear to me that the Archetype isn't just an incomplete Big, nor was it intended to engage in battle. I think it's more like a conceptual testbed, designed to explore the plausibility of several potential Megadeus features, possibly even the ancestor to a line of production that was completely cut out during the creation process; one that would have been much more agile but much less heavy-hitting than the ones we know in the series.

As for the flashback in ep 26:

spoiler (highlight to read):

we don't know the conditions that resulted in that wartime scene. That could be the skull of a functional Big that had its armor stripped in combat against the Leviathans, whose dissolving claws would be particularly apt to cause that sort of damage; perhaps it was Archetype that was discovered by Schwarzwald or someone else in this iteration, taking place in the apocalpytic last-ditch battle for survival that the scene seemed to be showing, or even an entirely different Archetype found elsewhere underneath Paradigm and used for a similar purpose.

You know it just occurred to me that the Dastun remark of "if these are really your own memories" and the Winter Night Phantom" bit about memories of future events being revealed in the past seem to indicate that the show's creators had the loop idea in mind at least midway through Season 1.

I think that might bode well for a Season 3 not sucking.

For me, this is definitely one of the best episodes in the series.
The bandage-wrapped German guy is a very good character to draw me into an episode, with his bombastic, intriguing monologues and enthusiastic arm-waving as he stands high atop the streets of Paradigm, bandages freely ruffling in the night time breeze - not to mention his love for fire that he proudly wears on his charred sleeve.
Combining this with the interesting Sci-Fi elements of a hidden city of the past and a manacing, prototype Big on the loose, and I get all warm and fuzzy inside just reading the title.

For a guy that likes to point-out that he doesn't care much for Paradigm, Roger sure seems on a roll when it comes to considering job offers from their offices.
I imagine a chief motivator in this is the representitive that's been dispatched to personally present the Paradigm Top Negotiator with the offer - twice in a row, now.
A proposition delivered with those eyes has got to stick in your mind and make you contemplate the word, "Yes."
Also, there's another equally influential force that we all must contend with:
Money.
Yeah, I imagine that Ravenous Roger's gotta' eat, too, and he - like anyone else in The City Of Amnesia - needs the dough...even though just one of the doorknobs on his Bank looks like it's roughly equal one month's worth of my income.

Metaphorical moment?
The scene of Dorothy flipping all of those hourglasses has me thinking...that all of those grains of sand can be awfully loud.

Feeling down and neglected?
Nobody wants to listen to you?
Chin up!, my boy: Go start a fire!
Yes, when you're an Arsonist, that always makes you feel all warm inside.
If an image of a man's desk is a reflection of what's inside his mind, then Schwarzwald must have quite the traffic jam inside of that grey matter of his.

Standing upon The Mansion roof high above all that is around you is always a good location to be in when you really need to get deep within yourself - especially so when a moody piano melody is played as a backdrop.
Doubly so when your gorgeous employee with the beautiful voice is fond of launching perplexing little questions aimed at you while she dexterously ballances herself upon the ledge - hair delicately blowing in the evening breeze.
Thought provolking, indeed.
Roger, you're a lucky guy.

"That sound."
There's always something chilling about stumbling upon a secret cavern beneath the city, and walking amongst the remains of a long-past exposition with a prototype Megadeus half-buried in the Earth.
It's an awesome sight - the way Archetype is poised there, seeming like it might reach out and snatch anyone foolish enough to get close enough to disturb his sleep.
Unless, of course, you happen to have those precious memories floating about within you.
Then, it's like being awakened pleasantly from a Megadeus dream, where you need to fetch a midnight snack to help contemplate what you want to do after being dormant and alone for so long.
Archetype seems a bit drunk at first, banging his head against the ceiling like that, but once he looks toward Dorothy and she gets that scared expression upon her face, you just know that the scene is gonna' be a good one.
Chalk another one up to addictions.

Dorothy's not the only one:
Schwarzwald got burned by his - literally.

I wonder what Roger and Dorothy talk about all the times that they spend together upon the top of The Bank, watching the glow of twilight slowly diminish.
Perhaps more interesting, I wonder what it is that they're thinking while standing there together in pondering silence.

To echo YZEtc. -- love me some "Underground Terror." The introduction of Schwarzwald is masterful (as well as the concomitant introduction of "The Name of God," which is my current Saturday Night Thing as TV music goes -- I'm just fixated on it in all its variations).

I continue to be amazed by the amount of character development the creators and art directors work into every nook and cranny. Seebach's apartment, with his old-fashioned typewriter and his towers of papers and the dozens of paper cups stacked neatly into mini-skyscrapers -- what a perfect illustration of his obsessive and methodical nature. It makes it all the more shocking when he torches the entire thing. It's echoed beautifully in the Expo '04 city underground -- all those miniature towers placed so meticulously, all perfect and untouched, all razed by fire and the unreasoning destructiveness of the Archetype.

We continue to receive those terrifying hints at all those parts of Dorothy that her creator never properly understood, but this episode also gives us an interesting benchmark in a very young android's social development. In the absence of any work to accomplish, bored, lonely Dorothy simply haunts Roger's office, flipping hourglasses. In other episodes, we see her just idling, as if waiting for some direction or external cue. As we get deeper into the series, Dorothy finds more creative ways to keep herself occupied (her moody piano improvisations in "The Call From The Past," as an example).

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Originally posted by Zopwx2 See look what act 26 has done! Now we must question the validity of every single moment, memory, or picture we see...

Must we?

Certainly, when the validity of certain specific memories is brought into question by major characters, we ought to note that. The show obviously revolves to some extent around they mystery of what happened 40 years ago. That was made clear in Act 1. You can blame it on Act 26 if you want to, but the memory mystery was clearly established in Act 1, at least for me.

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We might as well say that everything that happend yesterday for roger was fabricated too!

If it gives you any pleasure, sure. Some people take pride in disbelieving the reality of the real world, too. Me, I've never seen any point to it.

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WAIT IT IS< BECUASE ANGEL/SOMEONE CREATED A LAME HOLODECK WORLD BASED AROUND A POST APOLYPTIC NEW YORK BUT FORGOT TO WRITE A BACKSTORY/PAST, THERE BY LEAVING ALL THE CHARACTERS TO WONDER WHAT HAPPEND BEFORE THE STORY STARTED/ there is big o in a nutshell.

Is it? That's not the way I saw it at all. I liked the ending. It made sense to me. Your interpretation doesn't make any sense to me at all.

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Originally posted by Pythagoras You know it just occurred to me that the Dastun remark of "if these are really your own memories" and the Winter Night Phantom" bit about memories of future events being revealed in the past seem to indicate that the show's creators had the loop idea in mind at least midway through Season 1. I think that might bode well for a Season 3 not sucking.

I agree, there are hints and signs all over the place that they had a clear idea of what was actually going on.

You don't develop a series concept and bible and leave huge important gaps like that. You may refine, tweak, and adjust your concepts but the central elements remain pretty stable.

Narsham

After reading most of Jung's autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, I have to say there are deep resonances.

Nor does it seem unlikely that our Creators had read some of Jung's work.

There's far too much to even summarize (fanatics, I recommend checking this book out of the library and reading through it), but here are a few suggestive quotes:

Pg 45: "I put 'God' in quotation marks here. For nature seemed, like myself, to have been set aside by God as non-divine, though created by Him as an expression of Himself. Nothing could persuade me that 'in the image of God' applied only to man. In fact it seemed to me that the high mountains, the rivers, lakes, trees, flowers, and animals far better exemplified the essence of God than men with their ridiculous clothes, their meanness, vanity, mendacity, and abhorrent egotism..."

Pg 47: "These were the crucial experiences of my life. It was then that it dawned on me: I must take the responsibility, it is up to me how my fate turns out. I had been confronted with a problem to which I had to find the answer. And who posed the problem? Nobody ever answered me that. I knew that I had to find the answer out of my deepest self, that I was alone before God, and that God alone asked me these terrible things."

Pg 67: "The earthly manifestations of "God's world" began with the realm of plants, as a kind of direct communication from it. It was as though one were peering over the shoulder of the Creator, who, thinking Himself unobserved, was making toys and decorations. Man and the proper animals, on the other hand, were bits of God that had become independent. That was why they could move about on their own and choose their abodes. Plants were bound for good or ill to their places. They expressed not only the beauty but also the thoughts of God's world, with no intent of their own and without deviation. Trees in particular were mysterious and seemed to me direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life."

Remember any really big trees? Perhaps insane Santa knew something? And what of that huge tree in Gordon Rosewater's dome?

Pg 91: "Although we human beings have our own personal life, we are yet in large measure the representatives, the victims and promoters of a collective spirit whose years are counted in centuries. We can well think all our lives long that we are following our own nises, and may never discover that we are, for the most part, supernumeraries on the stage of the world theater. There are factors which, although we do not know them, nevertheless influence our lives, the more so if they are unconscious."

These last two quotes might just be coincidences, but they're at least interesting ones.

Pg 110: "I maintained that psychiatry, in the broadest sense, is a dialogue between the sick psyche and the psyche of the doctor, which is presumed to be 'normal.' It is a coming to terms between the sick personality and that of the therapist, both in principle equally subjective. My aim was to show that delusions and hallucinations were not just specific symptoms of mental disease but also had a human meaning."

Pg 139: [Describing a dream he had had.] "A reception was taking place in my house, and behold, this girl was there too. She came up to me and asked, 'Haven't you got an umbrella? It is raining so hard.' I actually found an umbrella, fumbled around with it to open it, and was on the point of giving it to her. But what happened instead? I handed it to her on my knees, as if she were a goddess."

The context of the latter quote, especially, is unrelated to Big O, but the commonality of the symbols (what does rain mean? An umbrella?) seems to carry with it a different sort of truth and meaning.

Narsham

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Originally posted by A Clockwork Tomato quote: WAIT IT IS< BECUASE ANGEL/SOMEONE CREATED A LAME HOLODECK WORLD BASED AROUND A POST APOLYPTIC NEW YORK BUT FORGOT TO WRITE A BACKSTORY/PAST, THERE BY LEAVING ALL THE CHARACTERS TO WONDER WHAT HAPPEND BEFORE THE STORY STARTED/ there is big o in a nutshell. Is it? That's not the way I saw it at all. I liked the ending. It made sense to me. Your interpretation doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Well, yes.

Ignoring any metaphorical / religous subtext thats what happend.
In the literal sense all of paradigm city was a larbe fabrication. Someone created it, but started it without a backstory. Therefore no one had memories of the past. Wether it was angel or someone else who decided 40 years ago was a good place to set things in motion, we know for certain the last 30 seconds showed that angel had started the story again but this time not 40 years ago, but at a more recent time.

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In the literal sense all of paradigm city was a larbe fabrication. Someone created it, but started it without a backstory. Therefore no one had memories of the past. Wether it was angel or someone else who decided 40 years ago was a good place to set things in motion, we know for certain the last 30 seconds showed that angel had started the story again but this time not 40 years ago, but at a more recent time.

I have no problem with that as a kick-off point to a third season. Just tell me who did it and why they did it. Exploring those questions alone could easily occupy the entire third season.

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Originally posted by Zopwx2 Ignoring any metaphorical / religous subtext thats what happend. In the literal sense all of paradigm city was a larbe fabrication. Someone created it, but started it without a backstory. Therefore no one had memories of the past.

What makes you think so? We see a number of instances of people acting on memories from before 40 years ago. We know of one person (Roscoe Fitzgerald) who seems not to have lost his memories at all, and whose memories of the past are immediately put to the test (the satellite reentry in DAY OF THE ADVENT) and demonstrated to be true.

Similarly, Roger has at least one useful memory that seems to be from more than 40 years ago, in HYDRA, where he remembers the weapon (whose name I don't recall off-hand) that he used in similar circumstances.

Throughout the show, people regain memories from the past, or so they believe. On what basis do you disagree with them?

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Originally posted by A Clockwork Tomato quote: Originally posted by Zopwx2 Ignoring any metaphorical / religous subtext thats what happend. In the literal sense all of paradigm city was a larbe fabrication. Someone created it, but started it without a backstory. Therefore no one had memories of the past. What makes you think so? We see a number of instances of people acting on memories from before 40 years ago. We know of one person (Roscoe Fitzgerald) who seems not to have lost his memories at all, and whose memories of the past are immediately put to the test (the satellite reentry in DAY OF THE ADVENT) and demonstrated to be true. Similarly, Roger has at least one useful memory that seems to be from more than 40 years ago, in HYDRA, where he remembers the weapon (whose name I don't recall off-hand) that he used in similar circumstances. Throughout the show, people regain memories from the past, or so they believe. On what basis do you disagree with them?

Its said quite simply in act 25 I believe, that there were no memoriesof 40 years ago becuase there was nothing before 40 years ago. Whoever started the current incarnation of paradigm started right there. But where did they get those flashbacks/past memories?

Possiblities

1) Innconsistensies due to season 1's writers being unclear on direction.

2) memories from previous incarnations of paradigm. Obviusly angel did it at least once in those 30 seconds.

3) those memories are fake, (well even more fake than the city), planted there by the director, either manualy or fed into the city through people like Big ear

spoiler (highlight to read):

who was an android

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Originally posted by Pythagoras quote: In the literal sense all of paradigm city was a larbe fabrication. Someone created it, but started it without a backstory. Therefore no one had memories of the past. Wether it was angel or someone else who decided 40 years ago was a good place to set things in motion, we know for certain the last 30 seconds showed that angel had started the story again but this time not 40 years ago, but at a more recent time. I have no problem with that as a kick-off point to a third season. Just tell me who did it and why they did it. Exploring those questions alone could easily occupy the entire third season.

SERIOUSLY!

Everyone thinks I'm whining becuase I didn't get what happend, I got it, I just want to know why!

WHO OR WHAT would create this fake world called paradigm?

And why? What purpose? Was it once based on a real place?

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Originally posted by Zopwx2 Its said quite simply in act 25 I believe, that there were no memoriesof 40 years ago becuase there was nothing before 40 years ago. Whoever started the current incarnation of paradigm started right there.

If you look at that sequence again, I think you'll find that this isn't what is said at all. I can't look at the sequence myself at the moment (the power's out and all I've got running is my laptop), but I believe the following is close:

GORDON: ...You have the power to contain or release these memories, including the memories from forty years ago.

ANGEL: I don't know what happened forty years ago, and, frankly, I don't care.

GORDON: I understand, and in that case, nothing will have happened forty years ago.

Something like that. The point is that, at the point in which the conversation took place, the events from before forty years ago are real, and Angel can release the memories of them. So I don't believe that your theory about there never having been events from before forty years ago holds any water.

What Gordon meant by his final statement is unclear. Does he mean that the events literally will have never happened at all, or just that Angel has the power of making the memories permanently unrecoverable? If there is no way to learn anything about the past, it might as well not have happened, for practical purposes.

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But where did they get those flashbacks/past memories? Possiblities 1) Innconsistensies due to season 1's writers being unclear on direction.

Past memories are used throughout Season 2 as well, right up into Act 26. Guess again.

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2) memories from previous incarnations of paradigm.

In other words, memories from before 40 years ago.

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3) those memories are fake, (well even more fake than the city), planted there by the director, either manualy or fed into the city through people like Big ear

So, basically, you're suggesting that, because you've decided that the city is fake, all evidence to the contrary is also fake. This is logically consistent (since you've taken a position that, basically, everything is fake), but it still begs the question, "Why do you believe it's fake?"

Maybe the things that make you think it's fake are fake, and the rest is real.

However, if Angel can make these memories of prior to 40 years ago essentially be erased, can she thus also not fabricate or alter them, to trigger at certain parts of the story? She is the Director after all.

If the logic above plays out properly, we can't even rely on the memories prior to 40 years ago, because there is a chance they are fabricated.

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Originally posted by X Prime However, if Angel can make these memories of prior to 40 years ago essentially be erased, can she thus also not fabricate or alter them, to trigger at certain parts of the story? She is the Director after all. If the logic above plays out properly, we can't even rely on the memories prior to 40 years ago, because there is a chance they are fabricated.

But aren't memories unreliable in the real world as well? People misrememer even the most unforgettable events in their own lives. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. People lie, rationalize, romanticize, and eventually believe that the reworked story is true. They misunderstand and remember the misunderstanding more clearly than the actual event. They confuse one event for another.

The question remains, "How does this Event stuff work?" Until she made it into the control room, Angel seemed to be quite genuine about not knowing anything about the task ahead of her. How much more did she understand once she was inside?

Also, we see her setting up a few things in the current cycle of Paradigm in Roger's underwater vision (possibly unreliable), but nothing about the NEXT cycle. Had she set anything up at all?

I wonder what she would have done if Roger hadn't talked to her. She was not in much of a state to make world-shattering decisions on her own.

If we take Roger's visions of the Director as reliable, then setting up androids and filiming false memories is time-consuming. Presumably only a few key events/memories/individuals would be dealt with this way, and the rest would be left free-running.

I'm very partial to the theory that Paradigm has suffered some kind of unimaginable catastrophe that has caused some kind of partial breakdown of reality, which is being held together with duct tape and baling wire (largely in the form of Big Venus). This leads to weird side effects such as we saw in WINTER NIGHT PHANTOM, where the participants are also the audience.

The one time we've seen an audience for the show was near the end of ROGER THE WANDERER, and everyone in the audience was inside the show. The Director is also inside the show. There doesn't seem to be any reason to believe that there IS anyone outside the show -- which means it isn't really a show at all. There doesn't seem to be an audience, besides the people in Paradigm themselves.