An almost perfect time travel story: Dark


(I think) This is by far one of the (almost) perfect time travel story of all time! Dark is a German series that's aired on Netflix. It's a story about people attempting to stop the apocalypse that was triggered by an unstable time space continuum due to people travelling through times causing them to be in wrong places at the wrong time. In Dark, be expected to see family tree loopholes, ie a mother being her daughter's daughter.

Being a fan of time travel stories has gotten me a pretty good logic in spotting time travel mistakes in movies. For example in Somewhere in Time, where did the pocket watch ever come from? Who bought it? Where was it bought? Who owned it first? In Back to the Future, how did Doc and Marty went back in time before the Delorean or any other time machine ever existed? Einstein (the real-deal professor/physicist, not Doc Brown's pet dog) said that the universe, space and time are curved and very closely related to each other. Therefore, time travelling will require an enter and an exit point. In other words, a time traveler cannot travel back to time where his/her time machine won't have a place to exit from the time space continuum tunnel he entered. So there was no way Doc Brown and Marty could travel back to the past unless someone else has already opened a time space tunnel. Let's just hope Steven Spielberg has something (sequel or a spin-off) in mind to fix this one cause I still love the Back to the Future trilogy! 

After watching Dark, I think that Dark almost has it right into becoming an almost perfect time travel story! Unlike The Terminator franchise, Dark chose to go with having multiple parallel worlds to add more diversities to the story. There's a world where Jonas exist, and there's another world where he doesn't. In Jonas's world, there are few more parallel universe with each universe showing the results of different choices of action taken. Take this scenario as an example; you want to have a pet. In universe 1, you got a cat. In universe 2, you got a parrot. In universe 3, you got an iguana. In universe 4, you got a dog. In universe 5, you got a monkey. So, there are a total of 5 stories where each story covers the respective results of each choices of pet you made, and then the stories were all compiled together in a single book entitled "I got a pet". That's how Dark went on throughout all 3 seasons. Plus the crazy family tree which resulted from inbreeding of family related time travellers. Take a look at the family tree below. 

The last generation of the inbreeding family line was a guy who was called The Origin (labelled as  in the family tree above). The Origin is the son of Jonas and Martha who was born with cleft lips, and he was responsible for causing the apocalypse in both Jonas and Martha's world. In the beginning of the series, it was quite clear that the important mission was to stop the apocalypse from happening, but towards the finale, the priority slowly shift to finding the main cause of the madness that started the crazy inbreeding family line in the first place. I'm not sure why Martha decided to name her son "The Origin", cause it made the opening of season 3 a bit misleading. Especially after Claudia informed them that the cause of the time space continuum disturbance isn't "The Origin", but the event happened in the "Origin world" where the time travel portal was opened for the first time. Come to think of it, I don't think Claudia even knows of The Origin's existence at all since they never met (or did they??). 

Anyways, Dark is a must-watch for time travel science fiction fans! It sure will give you a sense of thrill and excitement in discovering people in the crazy family tree. Like, "whaaaaa...???? He's the husband of his uncle's child?! And that mean guy was his later son who married to his grandmother??!!" kind of mind-blowing excitement. Again I'm saying that Dark is a near-perfect time travel series that compliant with most of the time travel scientific and fandom theories. I would've rated it a perfect 10/10 if they didn't left out 2 things; the origin of Boris Niewald and the letter to Clause. Where did Boris come from, what's he running away from, why did he assume the identity of the missing guy Aleksander Kohwald, and what happened to the real Aleksander Kohwald? When Clause came to Winden in search of his long lost brother, Aleksander Kohwald, he did say that he was tipped via an anonymous letter telling him to continue his search in Winden. Who is this anonymous behind the letter to Clause? Though the series seems over after season 3, I still hope Dark will be resumed to answer these two left out mysteries from season 1.

All in all, it's a good one! That's it for my first entry after seven years of silence (sorry)! See ya on the next post! Toodaloo and have a good one!


Comments

Suria Cinta said…
yeah this is a great movie