Apple TV+ Constellation (2 Viewers)

[Adam Lenhardt]

Trailer:


While up on the space station, there is a terrible accident that nearly kills astronaut Jo. She seems to make it safely back to Earth, but the Earth she returns to isn't the one she remembers.

Plot-wise, it reminds me a lot of "The Parallel" from the fourth season of "The Twilight Zone".

 

[DaveF]

I watched the trailer tonight. I wanted to be excited for a new scifi show from Apple. But I feel like I’ve already seen this show a hundred times before over the past twenty years. It’s such a common trope as previewed.

Could be great. But the trailer didn’t get me to click the + button.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The first three episodes are available now. The first two are mainly focused on the crisis aboard the international space station and the central protagonist Jo's harrowing journey back to Earth. Very reminiscent of the Alfonso Cuarón movie Gravity.

The only hints at the weirdness to come are the bookending scenes with Jo and her daughter at a remote cabin in northern Sweden, and a strange device with swirling energy inside that was sent up to the space station by Jonathan Banks's character, which may in fact have triggered the crisis up there.

But when Jo returns to Earth both her and her daughter seem to have weird moments when reality momentarily shifts. Small details seem to have shifted: The family has a blue vehicle instead of a red car, her marriage is rocky instead of rock solid, her daughter doesn't speak Swedish, the name of her late comrade's wife is different.

There are also two versions of Jonathan Banks's character. In one, he is Henry Caldera, a lead scientist on a major project for NASA. In the other, he is Bud Caldera, a washed up drunk giving belligerent TV interviews and attending a science fiction convention aboard a cruise ship. There is no explanation thus far how the two Calderases are connected, though both evidently went to the moon.

We do know that at least one of the realities is not our own: Instead of ending due to a lack of interest and funding after Apollo 17, the Apollo program ended in tragedy with Bud as the sole survivor of an Apollo 18 mission that went catastrophically wrong.

 

[DaveF]

On my watch list. The trailer looks overly trope-y to me, but AppleTV has high standards so I'm going to try it.

And I said that a month ago But anyhow, it's on the watch list. Hope it's good.

 

[NeilO]

I don't get Apple TV, but I thought folk who do and are interested in the show might want to listen to an interview with show's creator. The interview with Peter Harness starts about 50 minutes into the podcast. The rest of the podcast is Doctor Who fun from Gallifrey One.

Radio Free Skaro #948 – Cosmic Joyride

Download MP3 That’s a wrap from Gallifrey One this year, but what a weekend it was! Disney+ chose Gallifrey One as the time and the place to launch their promo campaign for Doctor Who, includ…

radiofreeskaro.com

 

[TonyD]

I haven’t watched the most recent ep yet. Liking this show show far very interesting.
Didn't actually pick up on the 2 diffeerent versions of Caldera now I’m more interested.
Also wondering what the pills are that everyone is gulping down.

 

[TonyD]

Ok just a thought.
i have no idea and this is a guess.

Something happened with that device and it caused a switch and Jo was switched with another version of herself and she ended up in the wrong earth.
The two different Buds we see are the two buds on two different “earths”
On the other hand what if the experiment split the people who were part of it. The CAT device sometimes shows its self as two identical sides looking like eyes. Maybe thats what the device did. Created two similar groups.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

This week's episode explained what the pills are and provided proof that Jo and Henry/Bud are far from the only astronauts to return to Earth experiencing hallucinations and having incomplete/incorrect memories. We also got a clue as to the Russian cosmonaut whose corpse Jo believes caused the disaster aboard the ISS.

It also explained why Magnus wasn't with Jo and Alice at the cabin in Sweden, and where the cassette tape from the cold open of the premiere came from.

The weirdness on the surveillance footage from the cruise ship might be the first objective proof we've seen that all of the weirdness isn't just some sort of space-induced psychiatric condition.

 

[TonyD]

isn't just some sort of space-induced psychiatric condition.

That and the person Bud was talking to on his monitor.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

That and the person Bud was talking to on his monitor.

But that person didn't believe him. Unless you're talking about the conversation with the other version of himself that Jo overheard, in which case neither vantage point could be considered objective...

 

[DaveF]

Two episodes in, and I’m thinking this might be the first bad AppleTV show (and especially bad scifi show) I’ve watched.

It’s just random and weird and inchoate. And when everything is strange, then nothing is strange. At this point, I have no idea what’s going on, all questions, no answers, but none of the questions or oddities are interesting, the characters aren’t interesting.

It feels like a college student effort at scifi metaphysics storytelling.

So: does it get better?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

inchoate

On the plus side, how often do you get to use that in a sentence?

 

[DaveF]

On the plus side, how often do you get to use that in a sentence?

Oh, I use that like on a weekly basis.

 

[Josh Dial]

Oh, I use that like on a weekly basis.

Same. I use it a fair bit (probably too much) in legal briefs. Basically anytime I need bullshit (Alberta judges please stop reading) I say something like, "well, Justice Smith, this area of the law is rather inchoate in Canada, so...[insert BS]" or "well, Justice Smith, this is a fresh point of law here..." (this was my moot coach's go-to).

Anyway, I quite like Constellation. I'm a sucker for what appears to be "hard" sci-fi, and even more of a sucker for time travel or multiple realities or people losing their sanity (one of my favourite episodes of The Next Generation is "Frame of Mind"). So don't trust my opinion, Dave. I'm self-selected to like this show.

 

[jayembee]

Two episodes in, and I’m thinking this might be the first bad AppleTV show (and especially bad scifi show) I’ve watched.

Oof.

I realize that I haven't watched anything on AppleTV+ that wasn't science fiction (there are, though, some things that I just haven't gotten to yet). And the only SF one that I gave up on (at the end of S1) is Invasion. I've heard that it S2 is a vast improvement, but with so many other things I want to give a shot at, I'm not inclined to go back to it.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

This week's episode finally caught us up to the flash forward at the beginning of the premiere. We know four key things that we didn't before:

Spoiler

1. Magnus survived the fight with Jo. So the Alice of "this" reality isn't orphaned.
2. The Jo we've been following is the Jo from the reality with Bud in it.
3. Bud and Henry are aware of each other, have a means of communicating with one another, and Bud can even briefly possess Henry.
4. Alice has been having visions of the dead female Soviet cosmonaut, despite never having heard Jo's testimony.

And then there's some reliable assumptions we can make:

Spoiler

1. Henry/Bud have the entanglement particularly bad because they both exist.
2. The Jo of "this" reality died in lieu of Paul.
3. The dead female Russian cosmonaut is the other Irena Lysenko.
4. Henry and Irena are from Jo's reality, while Bud is from "this" reality.
5. Henry's device creates an artificial liminal space in its immediate vicinity. It's the reason the ghost tapes can be heard clearly when the tape player is close to it.
6. Jo understood that Henry's device thins the boundary between the two realities, and that's why she stole it. She hopes to use it to get back to "her" Alice.

A couple big questions yet to be answered:

Spoiler

Why is Jo's Alice alone in their remote cabin in Sweden? How did she get there? How did Jo know to look for her there?

Why is "this" Alice entangled with the other reality, given that she's never been up into space?

 

[Josh Dial]

My best guess as to why Alice is entangled, and really why this entire story is occurring, is that it has something to do with a sort of "double observer" problem. This theory was reinforced by the callback in episode five to the line in episode one where Jo tells Alice to "wave to yourself".

Basically, my theory is that Alice and Jo were the only two people to observe the Cal when it went "off" (everyone else is looking away), and they observed it through the iPad such that they saw it and themselves at the same time.

 

[TonyD]

Wild throw it out there guess about the Jo’s…





The dead astronaut that crashed into the ISS is the other Jo

 

[DaveF]

Watched the third episode lost night. I figured out what was driving me crazy about the show, what didn’t make sense: I came at Constellation thinking it’s a scifi show. But it’s a horror fantasy show wrapped in scifi trappings.

The ”science” is terrible. Breaks the show’s reality bad. On top the overal inscrutability, it was just too much and pushing me out.

Realizing that “I’m watching it wrong”, that if I watch Constellation on its own terms — apparently as horror show done by scifi tropes — I can accept the nonsense and let it tell me its story.

And with that, the third episode started getting fun, and gave some more info, and I guess I’m along for the ride.

Spoiler: Episode 3 Science Project

Henry Caldera is at Roscosmos running his science machine and he gets his interference fringes on the science computer screen. He goes to take a picture with his phone to document it, but the phone shows the non-science, no-interference state.

This. Makes. No. Sense.
It is sloppy and inferior visual storytelling, that I nearly flipped the table over and stormed away from the game.

But, ok, this is the the show. It’s not actually about being a good “sci fi” show like Foundation or The Expanse or For All Mankind. It’s a psychological thrill show but a writer read wikipedia about Young’s Double Slit Experiment.

 

[Bartman]

Extremely high production values & great Solaris like story but you have to catch EVERY nuance of the dialog to make sense of it, that is particularly difficult if you're hard of hearing & reading subtitles. This week's episode is a real humdinger!