Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

Although he didn't exactly ask for consent first so I don't think that works.

― Simon H., Tuesday, December 10, 2019 6:33 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

"Ten months from now, you'll tell me that feeding you the waffles was the right thing to do"

i have seen it suggested that the tinting of the poster is a hint

https://oipeirates.tv/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/3-1.png

Absolutely loved this episode. The way that the story unfolded seemed pretty true to the way the Watchmen comic book played with story. I guess on some level it relied heavily on the Dr. Manhattan backstory issue, but I didn't mind because it was done so well. Random thoughts below:

My favorite part of the episode was where Angela communicates with her grandfather ten years in the past in real time through Dr. Manhattan's sense of time. I don't think I've ever seen this exact take on time travel. Angela's gasp when she realizes she was the one who gave her grandfather the information that Jed had a hood in his closet was perfect. I was trying to tease out whether this possibly means that the hood may or may not have been in the closet until Angela opened it but couldn't get beyond calling this Schrodinger's Racist.

Veidt is sent to Europa ten years before the present of the main story and has been there for four years. This means there are six years unaccounted for, which could be, as someone pointed out above, how long it takes him to travel back to Tulsa to land on Lady Trieu's newly purchased farm. On the other hand, it has not been explained how the 7th Kavalry learned of Dr. Manhattan's identity. Only a limited number of people knew this: Angela, Will, Veidt, Dr. Manhattan (at certain points), and Lady Trieu (presumably). So either Veidt or Trieu have to be working with the 7th Kavalry and are also the only ones who could build a tachyon cannon. Trieu could be anti-Dr. Manhattan for his intervention in Vietnam, but she appeared to be helping Will and Angela, so that would leave Veidt as the one working with the 7th Kavalry, which means he would have had to get back from Europa a longer time ago.

I am pretty sure that Lady Trieu's giant clock is in essence a time beacon, perhaps to allow the disintegrated Dr. Manhattan to reassemble himself one last time as a powerless Calvin with Dr. Manhattan's powers transferred to someone else.

Veidt is sent to Europa ten years before the present of the main story and has been there for four years.

aren't there 7 candles on the cake in the post-credit sequence?

https://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2019/12/fKw3GJmhfI2y.png

I need to watch the ep again cos i kept dozing off and had to keep rewinding. Shouldn't have watched exhausted.

But I did feel like it made the adjustments I wanted from the previous episode. Plus, Dr Manhattan, finally!

My favorite part of the episode was where Angela communicates with her grandfather ten years in the past in real time through Dr. Manhattan's sense of time. I don't think I've ever seen this exact take on time travel. Angela's gasp when she realizes she was the one who gave her grandfather the information that Jed had a hood in his closet was perfect.

I thought this was clumsily written and acted

Why would she even ask a 10 years in the past version of her grandfather that?

Because she assumed he must have had a vendetta bad enough to want him offed? Also, in the present context, she's been rather urgently wanting to reach/find Will for a couple of days.

Veidt is sent to Europa ten years before the present of the main story and has been there for four years.

aren't there 7 candles on the cake in the post-credit sequence?

― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes), Tuesday, December 10, 2019 11:11 AM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Right, I forgot that Veidt's trial took a year and that he's been getting tomatoes smashed in his face for two years after that.

The story of John Locke in Lost was quite similar. He always thought he was special, because a strange man once showed up and told him he was. It turns out, that strange man got the idea from Locke himself, who had travelled back in time. In this case, the paradox mostly brought pain and depression, as this ordinary and mediocre man kept trying to do things he wasn't able to.

Why would she even ask a 10 years in the past version of her grandfather that?

Because her that's pretty much the moment that sent her on this journey (discovering her grandfather and the hood).

her

i have seen it suggested that the tinting of the poster is a hint

John's moral system is kind of fucked from our perspective due to the fact he's not time traveling, he's experiencing time non-linearly. I was alluding to that with the idea that a future version of Angela or their son tells him he did the right thing. He's making decisions with near-complete knowledge -- or more accurately from our perspective, just doing things that seem predetermined. It's beyond our perception to understand what kind of agency he has. It doesn't look like our idea of agency.

He's doing things that should require a new morality, but his very presence disrupts the ability for normal human morals or causality to work. His flat affect isn't necessarily even a lack of emotion, but a result of his sense of perspective. He's resigned to getting sucked up by the tachyon gun because he's experienced it -- is there an alternate world where he's more actively fighting against that possibility? No, because it's perceived that it's already happened.

It's worth noting that tachyon's are the one thing that can hinder his "future sense"; Veidt used them in the comic so he wouldn't know about squid in advance, and tachyons blinding him was mentioned again in this episode by Veidt, which might be another hint that Veidt is actually behind Keene and the Kavalry... He knows about Jon's weakness, and whatever he has planned requires that Jon can't foresee it and tell Angela about it.

Jon did say that he would never transfer his powers to someone without their consent, and can a 10 year old really consent to something like that?

Just working with what we know so far...

Cal only used his Dr. M powers when protective instincts kicked in, as they did on the White Night
That same night Topher heard the attackers and hid his sisters
Topher can apparently levitate things. He built a replica of Dr. M's martian mansion.
He also had that exchange with Angela about hitting the kid "because you wanted to"
Cal wanted his family to see him walking on water. This will be important for some reason in the future.

So either Cal transferred his powers to Topher without knowing he was doing it, or as part of his protective instict or..
Topher has some superpowers of his own.

It's worth noting that tachyon's are the one thing that can hinder his "future sense"; Veidt used them in the comic so he wouldn't know about squid in advance, and tachyons blinding him was mentioned again in this episode by Veidt, which might be another hint that Veidt is actually behind Keene and the Kavalry... He knows about Jon's weakness, and whatever he has planned requires that Jon can't foresee it and tell Angela about it.

This is what I was talking about above. I could see Veidt's progression as: I am the smartest man on the planet, only I can save humanity>>>I saved humanity, why are you so ungrateful>>>Sure, I would love to go to a utopia where I can be worshiped as a god>>>Being worshiped by passive clones with limited agency sucks>>>I need Dr. Manhattan's powers to become a god and be truly worshiped.

Cal wanted his family to see him walking on water. This will be important for some reason in the future.

Maybe Cal-Manhattan was seeding a clone in the pool to come back as nu-Cal.

i seeded a clone in the pool once when i was five and got banned from the leisure centre

couple of random thoughts here...

• Veidt has never sought personal world domination or (obv) the adulation of millions
• Veidt is not a white supremacist -- Rorschach thinks of him as a hippie liberal
• Veidt is crushed to find that, having by all accounts saved the world from assured nuclear destruction, people remain shitty
• Trieu's disappointment with Nostalgia follows the same course
• Makes sense they'd work together, and there's already plenty of evidence for that
• But neither of them seem to be seeking personal glory or "worship"
• Pretty sure Topher ain't levitate shit. I'm not going back and screencapping but iirc the levitation was a feature of the manhattan-tech legos... the more interesting question is why he was building a model of the manor house

so they have manhattan-tech legos but no internet?

Yeah, I agree that scene with the building blocks didn't feel like the kid had any powers, he just had some special toys that are available in this world.

My theory above about Veidt being behind the attempt to steal Jon's power wasn't about him wanting to be worshipped, rather than him wanting to ensure his plan for utopia on Earth wouldn't steer off course. In the latest episode he was notably disappointed that humans are still building bombs, so with Doc Man's powers he could make sure they don't.

couple of random thoughts here...

• Veidt has never sought personal world domination or (obv) the adulation of millions
• Veidt is not a white supremacist -- Rorschach thinks of him as a hippie liberal
• Veidt is crushed to find that, having by all accounts saved the world from assured nuclear destruction, people remain shitty
• Trieu's disappointment with Nostalgia follows the same course
• Makes sense they'd work together, and there's already plenty of evidence for that
• But neither of them seem to be seeking personal glory or "worship"
• Pretty sure Topher ain't levitate shit. I'm not going back and screencapping but iirc the levitation was a feature of the manhattan-tech legos... the more interesting question is why he was building a model of the manor house

― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Tuesday, December 10, 2019 2:11 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I wouldn't argue much with these points, except to say that (a) Veidt has always been incredibly vane/narcissistic (you would have to be to do what he did); and (b) while Veidt might not agree with the 7th Kavalry, he might very well use them to get what he wanted.

Veidt turning out to be behind the 7th Kavalry seems too cute for what they're trying to accomplish in the is series, but who knows? could be right

the is= this

God I'd like Dr. Manhattan's powers to help with my spelling/typos.

Why change it? in the year 2367 this will be the correct spelling

I wouldn't argue much with these points, except to say that (a) Veidt has always been incredibly vane/narcissistic (you would have to be to do what he did); and (b) while Veidt might not agree with the 7th Kavalry, he might very well use them to get what he wanted.

― Mazzy Tsar (PBKR), Tuesday, December 10, 2019

(a) sure. he's always been clear about that himself lol. just sayin' "being worshipped" doesn't seem like his motivation.

(b) also sure.
• ~somehow~ 7K: learned of doc's location and identity; acquired knowledge of methods to move, confine, and disable him; acquired the knowledge, skills, and materiel to plan and construct extremely specialized tools to achieve those ends, presumably requiring more than a few watch batteries
• ~somehow~ trieu is aware of the 7K plan in advance

7k also had that video of veidt confessing his role in the squiddening to redford AND they had the teleportation technology with which veidt is very familiar.

what if these fuckers just raided one of his places while he's been away? maybe it's a jack ryan-style rogue senator/cia op

Reading some of these comments makes me realize how much I had forgotten already about the early episodes. Likewise, some of the unanswered questions/ theories make me feel like there are a couple of episodes missing in this thing. I get the sense a lot is going to be elided to get to the end.

7k also had that video of veidt confessing his role in the squiddening to redford AND they had the teleportation technology with which veidt is very familiar.

It just dawned on me that it makes a lot more sense that Veidt recorded that video (do they have de-aging CGI?) after he returns from Europa to radicalize potential 7th Kavalry members than that he recorded it in 1985.

I think the video was one of the dumbest ideas in the entire series so this may just be wishful thinking.

Yeah, I had thought of the same thing, because the idea that Veidt would've made a video detailing his masterplan that he gave to Redford and his government is just stupid. What if one of them disagrees with Veidt and decides to reveal it all to the world? We know that Rorschach's journal was eventually published, but only by fringe right-wing media, and it's considered an implausible conspiracy theory. But if someone from the government would confirm the theory, that would be a whole different thing, and it seems very odd that Veidt would take such a risk. So it'd make much more sense if Veidt created that video for the 7th Kavalry to confirm the conspiracy they already believed in, and he controls who gets to see it.

But like you said, this is probably just wishful thinkkng, most likely they just added the video to the series as an easy way of explaining the whole squid thing to those viewers who haven't read the comic.

agree the video is dum. not least bc it seems to both be in Open Secret circulation and completely unverifiable.

Given all the conspiracy stuff Looking Glass has in his bunker it would have been cool if he’d told Keene”yeah, I’ve seen this.”

and making Hooded Justice black in ep 6

lol wtf

do they show him painting beige makeup around his eyes and onto his eyelids, like Michael Keaton as Batman

yes actually

ha ha ha haaaaa

it ends up looking like a domino mask under the hood, good superhero look

truly a nuanced and thoughtful treatment of race relations that honours the original text

alan moore's ideas of american race and class relations are better than most people in the usa but still not amazing!

sic this show is knocking race stuff out of the park surprisingly so I wouldn't diss it until you actually see it.

He's not going to see it.

Just complain about it like a boor.

this series respects the law of what was laid down on the page, but not the spirit as the author perceived it, so it will be shrugged off as litigation is below us

Shaquille O'Neal's turn as Robert Redford is awe inspiring

I was referring to Lindelof's claims of nonpareil respect for the text generally, not to race specifically

p sure I have not lodged any complaints itt

that will be noted in today's minutes

does anyone know how veidt is getting books to read on europa is really my only outstanding question atm

they're catapulted to him