The thread is now open for spoilers, rants and raves.
The synopsis from asianwiki:
A time travel story between a genius engineer Han Tae-Sool (Cho Seung-Woo) and his savior from the future Kang Seo-Hae (Park Shin-Hye).
Han Tae-Sool is a genius engineer and the co-founder of Quantum and Time Company. He is handsome and he produces innovative results. Thanks to his efforts, Quantum and Time has become a world-class enterprise. He is known as a miracle worker and a hero in Korea, but reality is a little different. After his older brother’s death 10 years ago, he has exhibited eccentric behavior. The company’s stock price has fluctuated accordingly. One day, Han Tae-Sool learns of an unreliable truth behind his brother’s death. His dangerous journey begins.
Kang Seo-Hae is an elite warrior. She can take down the biggest men with just her bare hands. She is also a sharpshooter and able to make bombs. She learned these skills to survive in a world that is dominated by gangsters and military cliques. One day, after a long and dangerous journey, she comes to Han Tae-Sool to save him.
For those who need to know who this Sisyphus was in Greek mythology, here’s his legend.
For those who want to see PSH in combat fatigues… lol. I guess learning how to camouflage wasn’t part of her military training. She must have been a little ray of sunshine in the battlefield with that fuchsia machine gun and those floral doodads on her uniform. It must be some sort of fashion statement, like “pretty girls bleed flowers” or “Built tough as a tulip” or “Flower power!” Whatever — as long as she isn’t a stupid fighter like GuReum in “L.U.C.A.” I’ll be fine.
credit: shinhye-daily’s tumblr
Let’s enjoy the show.
Thanks @pkml3 and heh! to the soldier’s uniform. Does it not scream out ‘Here I am, shoot me if you can!” It’s Ash Wednesday for me, and therefore I will be a little more quiet now. (｡◝‿◜｡)
She used some real money for buying gun custom skin in Call of duty.
I am waiting for this to start!
Oh my ,…. her doodles are cute!😍
The trailer looks exciting and your post has made me curious, @packmule3. I’m going to check out the first few episodes at least. Hoping it doesn’t turn out like Vagabond.
BTW I also saw another upcoming drama called Vincenzo starring Song
Joong ki which looked quite interesting too. Have you seen that trailer? It seems to be a mafia thriller and also stars Ok Taecyeon. The first episode is set to air on Saturday. It’s a weekend drama. I’ll check out a few episodes if the body count is not too high and there’s no gore or too scary fights.🙈🙈
I’m too stunned by this first episode to make any consistent comment.
Thanks to the enigmatic plot, it’s addictic, and I didn’t stop the episode even one second.
Blockbuster action-movie and cinematography, crazy good quality. I don’t know how to call this, maybe “next-gen drama” ? Refer to LUCA, but with better actors, characters, starting plot.
Just with the first scene, I feel how Park Shin-Hye is a good actress. It was nice to see Actor Jo Seung Woo doing something different than the cold Stranger prosecutor. Add many other good actors than easely carry dramas or help to that, like mighty old one Jeon Gook Hwan. And maybe this character will be an antagonist, a very good one ? I would like. We know nothig about this character for now.
I was so immersed than I hardly be able to take attention about background music.
Here, I noticed a disco track with good slap bass (end ramyon abusive client scene).
Wonderful icy electro track (scene when ML triangluarize position of the suitcase).
Some other good BGM, and some I like less (I prefer synth tracks than tracks with classic orchestra sounds).
And a song I didn’t like (not my kind of voice, and already heard progression).
There is an exceptionnal number of good dramas airing this month. Korean series want to conquest world.
I agree with you, WEnchanteur.
I’m enjoying this so much more than L.U.C.A. Maybe because it’s less brutal and violent?
If viewers expect Park Shin Hye to be Xena the Warrior in the first episode, they’re going to be disappointed, though. She looked cute when she pretended to be dumb.
With L.U.C.A, we knew from the start what the big themes were. The writer was upfront about the ethical issues of scientific research and development. Then, the writer made sure we heard about them in every episode. To me, the moralistic overtone is weighing down the story.
In comparison, the writer in Sisyphus has given nothing away yet. The reason for PSH’s character going back to earth is still unknown. There were a couple of deaths in Ep 2, but we weren’t shown blood and gore (thank you!). And there were a few of unexpected amusing scenes, delivered with Park Shin Hye’s cuteness, to balance out the suspense.
One last thing: the computer-generated images (CGI) reminded me of “Memories of the Alhambra” in particular, the flickering (or static) of Park ShinHye’s character. You’ll see what I mean.
O I am so glad that it’s proving itself a worthwhile watch. I must admit after the spate of sci-fi fails (like Alice) I was tentative. This is what the 2 leads said in their Press Con
Park Shin Hye shared what she hoped the drama would accomplish, saying, “I hope that this drama is one that satisfies your eyes, ears, and all five of your senses as you find out how Han Tae Sool and Kang Seo Hae will alter the future in the midst of their repeated fate. I hope this drama can bring everyone just a little bit of hope or comfort.”
Cho Seung Woo added, “The message and subject of this drama might appear simple, but it can also be the story of you all who watch it. I think this is a drama that presents the results that come out of the choices we make in our lives. If you pay attention to the mindset and hope embedded in those choices you will be able to relate to the drama even more.”
Will catch up when I can find the time.
@Packmule3 ! ah ah ! some blood drops ?
I rather suppose you prefered Sisiphys because script quality was better. 😉
Add that : it look like Park Shin Hye is performing in continuity of MOA. I think she improved greatly with this drama. I already writed so many times how I liked her in this drama.
My head is too hot for making analyze, or compare the 2 dramas.
I wanted to make another big comment about LUCA, as I wanted to answer to your previous article where you writed many thing you didnt like. And I have others weakness to spot about this show. Even I still enjoy it (I made a list why in another of your article). I started to write the comment, it was too long, I gave up for now, I need time to short this. And it’s mostly about episode 1-4. I didn’t watched next episodes yet. I’m stuck on this, and it will be difficult to work on this right now, as my short hollidays end and I will work hard tomorow (in few hours).
I forget : Yeah, I thinked about that, PSH sizzle. And there is like energy cells into the suitcase. Maybe time travel need energy, not only for jumping time, but just to stay here. It could explain why she sizzle. For a very short time (energy problem) she was half in present time and half in the future.
I think this drama for now has some SJJ vibes. As you say, the script don’t give all at once. It preserve mysterys. And me too a like this much than a give-all exhibition of the main theme. Striking enigmatic facts, like a guy in the sky with a suitcase (woooo!), and more, ML brother ! Strange first scene on the railway, weird attitude of the FL. She almost don’t speak, and can’t recognize a client service with a false voice (certainly because there is no more things like that in the future). I can’t spot all details but you have matter to dissect here. Many little things we don’t understand, or we have to guess, with a purpose or a meaning that will unfold next.
Fun Fact : I have to say I thinked about a quick plot of story with time travel. And me too I put a guy in the sky ! The explanation wasn’t the same. It was a quantic intrication experiment earth-moon ray, supposed to transmit information faster than light, thanks to quantic intrication, and a plot device with intricated atoms send to the moon a few week ago, intricated with atoms in a lab on earth. The experience succed ! but as a result, a weird and unknow phenomena happens. The scientist is send back in time. Because earth rotation, he don’t reaper in the lab, but elsewhere on earth, in the sky because labs was at higher altitude. It’s the first scene of the story. As he will die because he’s falling, he send a message with his smartphone. The message arrive before the experiment is done. It was about a convoluted story with a paradoxal situation. I had others ideas I noted in textpad, but I don’t remember now. And I didn’t want to write the story. It’s just when I have ideas, I always note it as a reflex.
Let’s nitpick a little :
Scene when PSH recite loto numbers. Here, I wonder WHY she does that. To show-off ? It would be weird. Or just because the script want to make the spectator understand she come from the future, so a plot device ? It would be too easy, and not a good thing if it’s the only purpose. Also, how/why she now the numbers ? She don’t know what is a client service, so how she could know loto numbers ? Why she learned that ? Does she know other loto numbers ? As it’s a good way for time travelers to get money fast and etablish campment. Why she say that to this young guy ? Because it’s not a random anonymous guy and he have a purpose, so it’s not a random encounter in the street and she was waiting for him ? like, it’s someone important in the future ? Why she open the suitcase and don’t care he see a bit what is inside ? WHy why why ?
Other thing : this idea of loto number was already used in the drama 265 repeat the year, but there you don’t ask why. It’s a direct way to prove to some people reality of time travel.
My over-the-top idea for the first episode.
The scene in the airplane cabin. The ML tries to repair the plane.
He should stay focused on his mission and yet he takes the time to answer the phone. At the beginning, I understood it as comedy, a bit unwelcome. Flashy comedy of the hero able to do all at the same times. (Let’s remember a fun example from action-comedy “Under siege” with Steven Seagal: he’s fighting an army and answer the general call, and have a quiet and funny dialog with him while firing his gun.)
But in the end, it’s not just that, since this call is important to ML: he can describe his last will and testament. At the beginning of the conversation though, he just says that he’s on the plane and that he’ll be there soon (and then he proves that he’s in the middle of a crash, by plugging in the webcam of his smartphone).
To bounce back with his first line, here’s my idea of an ending for this scene.
The plane must be landed urgently. Here, I take advantage that there is a huge lake in front of the building hosting the company meeting.
Adding a comic line by phone.
ML – Finally, I will be able to attend the meeting in time.
MANAGER – What do you mean? Where are you?
(or something similar).
There, the plane is landing on the water! (there has already been a case of an emergency plane landing in a river).
And let’s go to the end: the plane lands and heads towards the building. When it finally stops, the cockpit is just in front of the building’s window. The ML and the people in the room can see each other !
ML – I’m right here (wink).
Okay, this is what I call a really over-the-top American blockbuster scene Roland Emmerich like. Funny but grotesque. It’s better suited to a James Bond movie!
I stop to parasite this thread now, I have to! 🙂
WEnchanteur, I fast-forwarded through the airplane scene fiasco. 😂😂 I know this kdrama is dealing with science fiction, but the Male Lead’s heroics belonged in a fantasy setting. There was little science there.
I’m allowing the writer this improbable scenario bec I think he wanted to establish that the hero is a Korean version of MacGyver who can think creatively and function well in an emergency. Besides, if Park Shin Hye can get a fuchsia weapon, then this guy can have his duct tape and a magical bag full of gadgets. 😂
You know, it’s this kind of thing that make dramas and characters unforgetable. You need something that strike mind or is a particular detail about the character than no other character in the world have. Let’s take Columbo old car, old dog, old cigar and old beige raincoat.
Here, we have a hero with an hightech first kit, just in case he’s involved in a planecrash. I’m not sure but we need to rewatch the episode: I remember a time when he was uncomfortable on the plane. I think he have fear when taking plane. It’s normal for this kind of guy, because it’s a situation where you can’t control parameters. He is a very farsighted and a little paranoid guy who always carry a means of rescue when he takes the plane. And don’t laugh, because I’m also like that sometimes. I always take knife, water and other stuff in my bag when I take train, in case I’m involved in a survival situation.
Anyway, in a blockbuster action scene, you don’t need science, you need magic science. 🙂 Note a thing, the script still provide an explanation, pulled by the hair (about war pilots doing the same). Ok ok, I’m good public one, I buy that, I won’t verify into an encyclopedia if it’s true ! Let’s the magic science going on 🙂
I readed a comment on another site. Someone pointed another little bug : when PSY in on the roof of the train, the chasers should stop to watch the ground, because they have a drone in the sky to inform them ! Or radio technician is a bit slow to relay the info…
Okay I like this drama too. So far PSH’s SeoHae is believable. And I like CSW period so any character he plays is good 🙂. The plot seems to be moving along at a pace that I can digest easily. Nice sizable chunks with enough there to keep you informed and curious but not so much to totally confuse you. The histrionics with the plane crash was a tad overdone for my taste but the rest I don’t mind as much.
Questions
– why did SeoHae tell TaeSul NOT to open the suitcase (presumably his brother TaeSan’s)? She had a similar one? What is the difference between hers and TaeSan’s? Her suitcase combination is not the same as TSan’s. I looked. 🙂
– yes how did she escape those masked people hunting her? 🤔
– I am assuming she used some sort of algorithm and listened to the spins to pick the lotto numbers. So I don’t think she can pull them out of a hat for her rescuer for the next win 😂
– why did they kill the copilot? And TSan Because they want to keep their existence secret?
– SH’s dad told her to avoid TSul at all costs? SH is seeking him out instead? Why?
Guesses
– they are from a post apocalyptic world. They come back from the future to make a life in the present? So they have to hide? And not let others know that they exist?
– the men looking for these “aliens” are like the government arm who know of their existence and want to study/get rid of them? Along with anyone who knows they exist?
I finally got down to watching this 1st Episode (with several enforced breaks) and I agree that there are some things that are illogical, and which I’d normally find fault with, but somehow, something about the execution of the show and how it draws me in, makes me forgive any strange lapses.
I feel that in spite of the improbabilities, this is one of the better science-fi fantasy dramas and I’m hooked already.
Probably this has a lot to do with how vulnerable and relatable the characters are. Once I can care for and root for them, more than half the battle’s won.
@WEnchanteur I like your idea about how Han Tae Seul could attend that first meeting and something similar came to my mind when the telephone conversation hovered over his arriving. I laughed, thinking that the plane would come close to their glass wall.
It’s actually a good idea to bring emergency tools on trips. At least a Swiss Army knife and other handy gadgets.
I too was wondering if the purpose of making Kang Seo Hae’s character predict the lottery numbers was just to prove to the young guy, Sun, that she’s from the future and get him to stick to her to get the next winning numbers.
I’m looking forward to watching tonight’s episode. Which is more than I can say about a lot of other shows. 😉
I caught the 2nd Episode raw. The scene where the dream was so real was unnerving. Where did the reality end and the dream begin or was that a memory? Or are the present and future converging?
From what Tae Sul’s brother said in Ep 1:
TSn : “This is important too. I concerns you as well. We’re not the only ones in this world.” It sounded like they too were from the future.
This episode gives us the connection between Seo Hae and Tae Sul, which seems to be a future connection. In the future Seo Hae was shot/injured on her left side. In the present, the same spot is injured and bleeds, but it is not a bullet wound.
I need the subs to know why both of them were going to the same place but were taking trains on different platforms.
This episode gives us one fight scene where we see PSH in action. Not bad although not all of it required great fighting skills.
More improbabilities: so many guys with so many guns trained on the door, but when Seo Hae emerges from it, in full view, they retreat instead of shoot. Similarly when she’s jumping from roof to roof in full view, they practically let her go. I rolled my eyes and complained loudly. I take it that they don’t want her dead, but they could have disabled her.
Waiting for subs!
There’s another interesting drama on Netflix (BTW, Sisyphus is on Netflix). Let me review the first episode before giving you the title. 🙂
Sisyphus – Episode 2.
This drama is on its way to enter the hall of fame!
Plot, acting, directing or action, at all levels.
I had made a few theories from Episode 1, but I’m going to drop the guessing game because I was probably wrong already. More episodes will be needed to better understand the meaning of some of the early episodes. And it’s still raining! The number of scenes with significant details is very high, everything is tied up everywhere.
— The Vilainess Action Like. —
I had already made a comment about this on LUCA, to mention this incredible fact (refer to the LUCA episode 1-2 article).
I didn’t expect Sisyphus to go in the same direction. It’s just… crazy!
The fight scene in the apartment is a full sequence shot, except for the cut when PSH hits the wall/mirror. No annoying acceleration effect as was the case with the sequence shot at the beginning of episode 3 of My Country the new war.
Same style of action as in The vilainess, dynamic camera that follows all the movements, moves forward, backward, pivots, at high speed. The immersion is complete.
The actress PSH has done a prodigious job of sustaining the rhythm and precision from start to finish, along with her stunt partners. On top of that, she is fully credible, even if her movements don’t have the technique of a great martial arts practitioner such as Lee Jung Ki.
At this point, I even expect Gunfight’s action scenes to resemble those of John Wick!
Let’s add to this the Parkour type stunts, during the chase on the roofs of buildings. Again, the camera follows the action permanently, with almost no cuts. This quality of direction is phenomenal and unprecedented in a drama. One wonders what kind of trickery, if any, was used.
To nitpick, I would say that if there is a way to improve this, it’s not the action sequences themselves, but rather the dead times during an action scene. This gives the impression that the pressure is decreasing, or that the enemies tend to stay “frozen” a little too long, as if to give the heroine time to act.
This flaw could become very problematic, because it flat the suspens and danger feeling.
— Terminator 2 Reference. —
For a time travel drama, this comic scene is welcome!
Like the cyborg, PSH grabs all the young boy’s clothes. She is nevertheless more sympathetic since instead of physically threatening him, she offers him lottery numbers in exchange. What adds to the parody!
In addition, note the funky music, which gives the impression that the boy is stripping.
Excellent comedy scene with several layers of interpretation.
— The cabin under siege. —
Here our hero prepares a trap like those usually prepared by Steven Seagal, or the bad guys who blow up a shack.
The guy enters the shack, and it is the trope: “Oh Shit…”. BOOOM!
Here again, the enemies tend to drag their feet before entering the shack, and the hero almost has time to go shopping at Walmart’s DIY department to look for his utensils.
But it all still turns out well, and very amusing, reinforcing the high-production side, which is still a bit clumsy.
— Debauchery of quality actors. —
The number of known heads of quality support actors keeps increasing!
After Tae In Ho and Jeon Gook Hwan, here comes Choi Jung Woo and Sung Dong Il !
This drama is really one of all superlatives.
— Cult scenes and elements. —
A lot of different sets, and a lot of visuals that stand out by their uniqueness.
Scene in the soundproof white room. The trope of the door that keeps closing endlessly, but with two trains crossing each other, and the mirror effect of the characters on the train.
Then, PSH flashy gun, Suitcases, hightech first aid kit, guy in the sky, etc. I don’t have time to do the whole list.
— Easy attachment to the characters. —
I like the characters and their relationships. The relationship between the ML and his bodyguard overflows with authenticity. I can say this because I’ve already had a relationship like that with one of my former bosses (even though I’m not a bodyguard, lol). The character of the ML is very solid, and the interpretation of quality. We can guess his development axes, all in all classic, and his future path to get rid of his addiction to tranquilizers.
As for PSH, her relationship with the young boy is also warmly.
— A large number of correlations. —
Many scenes and dialogues refer to other scenes and dialogue. I can’t make the list, it would be necessary to analyze each scene of the episodes. While watching, I regularly notice this, I take mental notes of it, but I don’t want to waste time writing it down and lose the immersion. It’s all very structured, synthetic, with the impression of a single solid block for the whole story.
— Immersion and easy concentration. —
Again, I didn’t go out a single second of the episode, and I didn’t make any stops during the viewing. Whatever the complexity of the underlying plot, the script is so well constructed that the action is crystal clear at first degree.
— Exceptional drama. —
For a SF drama, the last one that gave me this degree of satisfaction was Memories of the Alhambra. Park Shin Hye was also in it, but that’s just a coincidence, I’m not chasing the actress, nor am I a crazy fan of her. Only, I’ve always liked her, and she’s getting better and better all the time. The difference between the dramas: MOA is more mysterious and mystical, it’s a “Twilight zone” type story. Here we have a more classic SF story, scientifically explainable, I suppose.
— Difficultys for the other spectators. —
The drama is an action/SF blockbuster. So with blockbuster tropes, scenes sometimes over-the-top, or with a realism similar to that of big action movies. I’m used to watching this kind of movie, and all kinds of action movies. For people who are exclusively attached to the world of drama, it could go wrong. I’ve read some comments about that, pointing that out. To put it in perspective, I would point out that it would be unfair to belittle this drama for that, when all other productions of this genre, with a bigger budget, do the same thing!
Thoughts on the suitcase. It’s obviously important. Otherwise SeoHae would’ve ditched it when she was being hunted. Everyone from the future takes one back on their journey. Could it be similar to the briefcase in Umbrella Academy? It’s the device that allows them to trek through time/space? Waiting for some time to catch up with Ep2 subbed.
Cho Seung Woo is cute. And I am staying. Review Kkeutt!🤣🤣🤣🤣
He seems to be a good actor too. I was thanking the drama gods that Lee Seunggi wasn’t playing this role. Lol. After “Vagabond” stressed me out with his performance-on-steroids, I want an actor who’s less frantic, less frenzied, less hyper.
I’m staying for this one, too.
Will finish first watch of Ep 2 this morning so I can write review. 🙂
Lee Seunggi has a drama coming out this month. I’ll look into it as long as no lawyers and politicians are involved. 😎
Main character is a lawyer, and he fight politicians. 🙂 🙂 🙂
I’m hooked on Sisyphus and I writed a packmule3’s post about the airplane on soompi. 😉
As I rewatch the episode, I even missed more points about why they don’t/can’t contact control tower.
Now, the scene I can’t understand is scene n2 (railway). Can be a flaw, or can be on purpose. I started to think about that.
previously, I writed some errors about slowdown of action scenes ep2, or others things, like PSH know flash info, she don’t, she just know loto numbers.
@WEnchanteur didn’t they experience turbulence before the suitcase hitting the plane window and then the engine incident? I forget but did the controls fail around that time too? Remember how the lights went out in the restaurant when SeoHae mentioned TaeSul after watching the TV? I guess you could say some sort of electrical (electromagnetic) short circuit happens (hence the fizzing of the person) whenever the timeline is interrupted. Which I guess could in theory affect the plane controls as a result. How is it that TaeSan was unfortunate enough to land right in front of the plane though and SeoHae was lucky enough to land in a train terminal? Was he (TSan) guided by TaeSul subconsciously? TaeSul was hallucinating him in the cabin. So the ashes in the urn were not TSan. His brother was still alive then? Was he kidnapped?
I am going to watch this without thinking too hard about the science and the fact that the black suits are so inept. I want to find out how they deal with the whole time travel element. And if the Control Bureau is really one that monitors illegal immigrants (from the future).
@packmule3, Cho Seung Woo is a really good actor. He plays in musical as well. And his musicals are always sold out. Very hard to get ticket🤧🤧🤧 I really hope I can at least watch one of his performances. He is that good! 😁 He is very close with Mido (our Shwa) too. They played in musical few times.😊
I think maybe everyone from future falls from the sky😅. Air traffic hazard for sure😆
And… hmmm I need to rewatch. Will be back!
N.B. finding excuse to look at CSW aka Mr. Korean Macgyver
@nrlee,
I haven’t fully re-watched the first episode yet.
(sleeping and working are such a nuisance when you are drama addict, lol!)
Airplane: Yes, you remember right.
15:05 – There is turbulence at first, but not serious. We see the hero very anxious, and it looks like he doesn’t like airplane travel, because when you fly a lot, turbulence like that is not a big deal.
15:15 – There is a minor alarm on the cockpit control panel. The pilot is wondering what’s going on, and we see a close-up on a dial. But we have no additional information, and it is impossible to understand what is displayed, it would take an expert to tell.
In addition to the normal turbulence (winds, storm), I suppose that there is another anomaly. The pilot does not panic, it should not be serious, but it seems strange to him. Apparently it is abnormal, but that doesn’t mean that it has stopped working completely. Anomaly of the electro-magnetic type or phenomenon of this kind, perhaps triggered by the appearance of the brother and his suitcase in the sky as a result of a temporal shift. I suppose that this anomaly should not occur normally in case of simple turbulence, but I am not sure because … The answer of the pilot has not been translated !! damn-it. I can’t find it on any .srt translation file, but it must be something benign, like “that the passengers buckle their seatbelts”.
Then he moves a cursor to the “seat belts” position, presses a button next to it, then the speaker button and makes an announcement to the public.
The electro-magnetic anomaly also occurs when Seo Tae is watching television.
By the way: when I saw the scene at the end of the crash, I wondered how the plane had landed. And I wonder if there is not something hidden between the white flash at the end of the scene and the hero’s awakening later.
I read a comment from someone who was outraged that you can’t see the landing (I explained why it was useless, as well as a budget consumer). However, you can see how the plane landed in the news flash with an aerial photo. The writers did not forget to show this to the public!
I copy-past my last soompi message:
Looking back at episode 1 (first scene) and relating it to the Control Office dialogues, it gives me the following plot:
– The Bureau of Control really deals with immigration. But not immigration from one place to another, but from one time to another.
– The people we see in the first scene come from a devastated and radioactive future. They themselves are carriers of radioactivity. This is how they are detected by the controllers.
– These people have a suitcase that can withstand time travel, and they are allowed some personal belongings (but no animals).
I had forgotten most of the first scene, before rewatch.
It seems that the drama develops a theme of travel and migration.
And many elements revolve around this theme.
– The importance of showing a suitcase with slightly cubic proportions, easy to remember. And whose utility/functioning still holds some mystery.
– The fact that heroin and perhaps other people appear in places where we travel: railroads, airplanes.
The theme of travel by public means is used at the end of episode 2, when everyone goes to the station to take the train to Busan.
– Some travelers (the heroin) are poor and use a normal train (I can’t remember the name of the train, but it’s a moderate speed train).
– Others are rich (the hero) and take a fast train (TKX, high speed train).
– The scene emphasizes the two characters separated on a different platform (rich/poor). They are about to see or recognize each other, but their view is obstructed by a train passing through the station. It lasts a long time! And they only see their reflection on the train. Normally, in this kind of scene, one of the characters disappears. Until the end, we see the reflections, and we think that they will finally see each other (I was bluffed!), but at the last moment, one of the two has indeed disappeared (bluffed again!). How to surprise by using a trope already used a lot of times…
Maybe this same difference in richness applies to time travel.
– Those who are poor travel/migrate illegally, because populating the past with a lot of people from the future, still, it’s not reasonable!
– Those who are rich travel/migrate legally.
On this fact, I expect to see an antagonist that is:
– A rich man from the future who came to settle legally in the past, at a time before the drama began. Even far before.
– This rich man is part of the hero’s environment (perhaps Kim Han Yong, the character played by the old actor Jeon Gook Hwan).
Your other questions about the brother: like you, I’m in the dark. I’m not very good at predicting things and I’ve been wrong before. In the list of assumptions, there may be some good ones.
I also linked the appearance of the brother to the proximity of Tae Sul. But no luck, he appears in the sky because unfortunately, Tae Sul is in a plane in full flight.
I can’t find an explanation, because it’s still very risky if time travel works that way.
05:30 – When Seo Hae appears, she’s not even in a train station, but next to a poor house on the side of the railroad tracks. Why here?
Seo Hae’s journey is not shown. If we don’t know that the drama is about time travel, it is impossible to say that this was all a time travel. To find out, we would have needed a Terminator-type CGI.
We suspect that this is the continuation of the previous scene, because Seo Hae is wearing the same white shirt, and she grabs a big pink shirt, just to have a look suitable for a photoshop session on a train roof, and to mark the minds of the spectators.
In this scene of Seo Hae walking on the railroad tracks, everything is there to remind us of one thing: POVERTY.
It is the poor immigrant woman with her suitcase, a makeshift shirt too big for her, walking barefoot on a low-traffic (almost abandoned) railway track, in the middle of poor people’s houses suffering from the noise of a railway.
I was thinking first she travel in time for a mission (protect Tae Sul about to be killed by a terminator, lol!), but the more I understand the drama, the more it look she just travel for changing life-style and eat bananas. ^^
@WEnchanteur that rich/poor social status makes sense. Similarly we have illegal boat people (poor refugees) and legal migrants (who can pay their way in). I wonder if Sung DongIl plays a people smuggler. So he helps illegal migrants like TaeSan find their way back? Either way I gather the illegal immigrants are not welcome because of their radioactivity (?) and their propensity to alter the time line of things. So the Control Bureau wants to get rid of them? There are people (they look to be imprisoned in a pod of sorts?) in that facility where TaeSul was taken for questioning. Who were they?
@nrlee,
Yes you are right. Sung Dong Il is probably doing that.
I remember a dialog than sound like that (when on the phone).
But I really have to rewatch this for more accuracy.
It look like Sung Dong Il is also looking for something else : the key.
So let’s say, he’s a people smuggler with side and higher goal on top of that.
About radiactivity : there is still a problem because if people are radioactives they should die of this. So why they don’t ? Is it normal radioactivity ? Something else ? Dangerous for others ?
I thinked about that when I was rewatching scene #2.
Here my draft text about that:
Scene 2, a very strange scene for 4 reasons :
1 – How does the heroine get on the roof of the train?
2 – Why is she not seen by the drone ?
3 – Whatever happens: once on the roof, she will be spotted after the end of the scene.
4 – She acts weird, looks down on both sides, then relaxes (sure she will never be spotted?).
By reflex, we can explain these points as follows:
1 – The climbing of the train is a short elipse, but it’s badly rendered and it’s confusing.
2 – The absence of the drone is an inconsistency.
3 – If the heroin is then apprehended, the incoherence of the drone disappears. One can imagine that it gave the information or that the troops saw the heroin on the roof anyway, because she is easily visible, once you stop looking down. We don’t know what happens next, and how she escapes if she has been called out.
4 – She relaxes because the scene is over, she has managed to hide successfully. The troops don’t think to look at the roof of the train and then leave. This adds to the drone’s bug. An incoherent solution, and one that has the best chance of being the right one given the way it is rendered.
In this case, if I was on the roof of the train, I would be on my stomach without moving, not modeling. And if I were the director, I would show the troops abandoning the search.
All this requires explanations that all point to a flaw or a script error, except solution 3.
Unfortunately, this often happens in dramas, and it has become difficult to trust the writers.
Even the best dramas have some breaking points.
Now, if you trust the accuracy of the writing, and admit that there are no flaws in the scene, there must be a reason for what you see, and even the drone is there to support the scene. Here is a hypothesis:
4 – Something else is going on. She’ s teleporting, time traveling, or anything strange. After all, we can see her going out of phase later, in the restaurant. And she is a carrier of radiation. But people with nuclear radiation die quickly, so maybe it’s strange radiation, not putting her life in peril, and providing abilities.
She looks at the ground, right, then left, giving the impression that she is watching the troops.
But what if She escaped, in time, or by a process of phase shifting?
I think about this because later on, the drama shows us a scene of the hero meeting his brother (episode 2, in the hut), but it is just a hallucination (like in the plane). It is possible that the staging juxtaposes two different realities, when the characters of the heroine and the troops are already separated in different dimensions.
So this explains the heroine’s attitude, she looks down right: she sees nothing. We spectator, we see the troops.
She looks down to the left, she sees nothing. Then she is relieved, relaxes, and does a photoshop session, except that in reality, she is all alone.
A few more ideas about my hypothesis :
It is not by chance that the scene takes place in a marshalling yard.
The time travel would not happen all at once.
Someone rich takes a plane that arrives directly at the destination.
Someone poor who travels illegally takes a longer route.
In this journey there is a connection, “you have to change lanes”.
One has to go through a discreet place to cross the border, making the trip in two stages, instead of going through the official customs post without being interrupted on the way.
At the beginning of the scene, to add to the symbolism, the heroine is so poor that she doesn’t even take a train, she walks on the tracks. The scene could have taken place without any events other than walking on the tracks. Yet the scene chooses to show a train passing over the tracks. This adds to the feeling of poverty. It also induces the sensation of fast travel (rich, on board the train), and the sensation of slow travel (poor and on foot).
It also explains the presence of the control bureau team: they monitor the border, and the places that illegal people are likely to use. The entire scene resembles a patrol around a territorial fence. At night, with surveillance means (drone), projectors. All that is missing are dogs, but instead they have devices to detect radioactivity (or waves of that kind).
Good thoughts @WEnchanteur. Well people smugglers aren’t exactly known for their scruples. They often want payment for their services so I am guessing TaeSan promised Sung DongIl something kept in the safe (hence the key) for safe passage.
I need to rewatch what TaeSan told TaeSul when he interrupted him at the conference. How did he die? I didn’t catch those details. Just that his body was unrecognizable (was he burnt?) and they thought it was TaeSan based on the backpack that was found with him.
Wow, so many comments here already. I’ve deliberately not read comments, so that I can watch with subs/re-watch and see what strikes me without being biased by anything I read.
What I gather is that in the future which has ’25’ in it’s year ie it could be 2025 (too soon?) or 2125 (too long from now?) that people are able to be uploaded like holograms/electronic data files (into where? time or space stations? Futuristic computers engineered for time travel?) and then downloaded into the past, to S. Korea of 2020.
The posters on the ‘Station’ walls are mostly on UPLOADER in several languages about making a trip to the past. I’m guessing the trip is for one to be uploaded. And then to arrive at the destination, one has to be downloaded. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TUFptczZhyFlICdE9f84SIEFlYUpRkyG/view?usp=sharing
Mr Park speaks to Tae Sul, thinking that he’s Tae San :
Park : “Did you arrive okay?”
TSul : “Yes”
Park : “Then you should have called me. Where did you fall, then?”
TSul : “The reed field in Gimpo.”
Park : “That must have been pretty rough. …There have been download errors nowadays. Everyone keeps falling over there.
So we gather that the normal mode of arrival is to fly through air in the sky and fall to the ground? Without even a parachute? The illusion of Tae San warned his brother that without safety equipment, he’d die as the plane tried to land. However TSan himself was seen flying freely outside the plane without any equipment.
Once on the ground, those who arrive are located by the Immigration Control Bureau (as dangerous persons). We gather then, that doing the upload/download thing is considered illegal to some agency.
Numbers and Dates
I’m no mathematician and am hopeless with figures. However I just leave this here for whoever would like to try to make sense of these numbers/dates:
I’m guessing that if the password to Han Tae Sul’s penthouse safe is
10 08 11 (2010 August 11 the date that his company got listed in the Stock Market and the last time he saw his brother.)
Then from the number:
25 08 11 branded into Seo Hae’s arm, the year is 2025. https://drive.google.com/file/d/14-PkQB9jn3kAz2uhUjlH4VjDeftStJKr/view?usp=sharing
The password used by his brother is Tae Sul’s birthdate:
82 07 10 (10th July 1982?)
Mr Park who is trying to meet Han Tae San to get the key has been calling the burner phone 100 times. The date on the phone is: January 22, Tuesday. (I searched the years, and in the 2019 Calendar, 22 Jan is a Tuesday):
19 01 22 So might we guess that for over a year, Mr Park has been trying to reach Han Tae San on the phone?
But the plane crash when we assume Han Tae San ‘was downloaded’ was only the previous month (July? 2000). Do we know the date of the plane accident?
The conference will take place in Busan on 15 August 2020. That means the current time in the show, Tae Sul was on his way to Busan is around 13 or 14 August 2020?
20 14 08
Thought on a Theme
It occurred to me that as Seo Hae’s dad told her to arrive and enjoy food grown naturally, to do whatever she wanted, to enjoy her life … which would include to breathe air that was not poisonous (or rather he told her to wear a mask against the poison in the air wherever they were), that show is subtly saying, although we have to mask up nowadays and things can be depressing, we still have a beautiful world. We can and should appreciate the air when we have it, the natural foods we can still grow, clean water if any, etc.
OTT Control Bureau
What got me scratching my head a few times was the use of PPE and gas masks in this show. The Control Bureau are paranoid about gas and biological attacks? They wanted to storm that tiny apartment with over 50 guys dressed up for major battle in some kind of bio war, but Seo Hae only had a gun. I thought at first that they wanted to gas Seo Hae out of the apartment, but they didn’t. Most inexplicable. Anyway I find show rather OTT when it comes to the C Bureau doing it’s stuff.
There was no reason to drive over 48 KM to bring HTS to the interrogation room. They could have deactivated his phone and interrogated him anywhere.
What’s good though, is that show does not indulge in blood and gore. Much more palatable.
Oh yes, the CGI and PSH too reminds me of Memories of Alhambra. Sisyphus is the second drama with PSH.
Sisyphus is more watchable for me than L.U.CA-which I didn’t go beyond Ep 2, the plot got no momentum and the FL was kinda lame also lol.
Thanks all for the comments n review here. Certainly helped my selection 🙂 Now I got something else to watch after finishing two seasons The Alienist n Tribes of Europa. N looking forward to Lupin new season
@nrllee
More on one of the Themes
Thanks for this which I copied and pasted here:
It’s interesting that PSH speaks of show bringing us hope and comfort. Possibly she refers to the present time with this pandemic. As I mentioned in my post above, I thought one subtle theme was that we can still rejoice in that we have a world that is not yet irreparably ruined. It’s a good warning and reminder that if we do not take care, we can end up in a situation where ‘everything is poison’ as spoken of by Seo Hae and her dad.
The other thing she says is that HTS and KSH have a “repeated fate”. This suggests not parallel universes but the same individuals of the future able to come back to meet again persons in their past. In so doing, they can adjust the future
Jo/Cho Seung Woo’s “pay attention to the mindset and hope embedded in those choices” tells us to be more intentional in noting not just the motives but the hopes of those who make choices. Something he says we can apply to our decision making.
So among other things, we need to hope in making our world better, to heal it where possible and to choose how our future (and the future of generations after us) will be.
Thoughts on Your Question about how she escaped the people hunting her
The thing about Seo Hae flickering like she’s a hologram of some kind, and how the Control Bureau picks up traces of what sounds like radioactivity, where SH has been and touched things. This plus the use of the words ‘upload’ and ‘download’, makes me think that Seo Hae is a computer generated hologram/program with memories and feelings of the real Seo Hae. When she gets over excited, her energy goes out of control to sap the power from her surroundings (the room lights went out) and her visible surface starts flickering and even looks like it phases out.
She didn’t immediately appear on the floor after she fainted. It seemed like Sun looked around the same spot twice before she reappeared and he saw her.
So when she sat on top the train in full view of all those men surrounding her, and looked for all the world relaxed and merely waiting, (it was a very out of place expression for one who was being hunted), I wondered if she was able to make herself invisible at times.
And yet from all her running around, it seems that she still behaves like a 3-D individual who can be seen and caught.
About the Plane Crash
Yes there was turbulence first, then the suitcase broke the glass pane and something killed the pilot. The loss of air pressure etc caused the plane to flail around and the destruction of on engine cause it to not be able to rise. It had to be landed.
Coincidence?
The one mind boggling big coincidence. What was the chance of Tae Sul’s brother being the means by which to bring down the plane on which TSul rode. If not coincidence, then Tae San must have known in advance which flight his brother would take, and aim straight for that plane. Pretty risky since that could have killed everyone.
It seems that Tae Sul just upped and went off to Saiphan without telling anyone. He’s unpredicatable, but his brother from the future might know all his moves.
As for SH landing in a train station, it seems like there are ‘usual’ spots where people land and I guess the Control Bureau folks are out in force to hunt them down in those areas.
Welcome to the blog, TheReverist.
Sisyphus is fun to watch. Of course, there are scenes when I consciously let fantasy rule over science so I can enjoy the scenes.
Example, the shooting scene. I know PSH and the kid were running but come on now, are the shooters blind? Or played laser tag?
Also, the airplane scene. 🤣🤣 That was over-the-top baloney.
Also, the cabin scene when he booby-trapped the door. 🤣🤣🤣 Didnt he have 10 minutes to prepare or just 2 minutes? He had time to saw the bottom of the water jug??
But yes. Like you, I found this more entertaining than LUCA. It’s an easier watch, too, because there’s less blood and gore.
Thank you, packmule3!
Haha, the shooting scenes? I got used to the Dodging Bullet ability in HK cinemagic so much so that I think most shooters are blind too as am I 😀
Yeah right, the airplane n cockpit was rather badly done, esp the cockpit, it’s look so makeshift lol. However, I think these are forgivable since the story flows nicely n have me anticipating Ep 3.
Let’s hope this will be good till the end and we’ll enjoy the show ✨
@pkml3, I saw your reply on the other thread. Yes, I find I need a lot of time to do reviews and analysis of dramas. It’s almost a part-time job!!! However, I do not think I have the commitment to wake up at 5.30am to do the ‘work’, fun though it may be.
I read what you wrote about Ha Ni being likable and it occurred to me that I feel the same way about Han Tae Sul’s character. It struck me that he bothers about the people under him or those in positions of service. From our first encounter, we see him stand up for the air stewardess. Of course, being a bit of a player, he also wanted her phone number. He remembered all the employees and his bodyguard in his verbal will. I laughed when he omitted all the executives.
Even when he decides to lie, he does it ‘nicely’. He lied about the paternity test and told his Friend-Secretary Kim and his ex-gf Seo Jin that they made a nice couple. He praises Bong Seon for the idea of the safe. Even when he was pouring out the ashes at the Columbarium, he had a few nice words to say to the family who were weirded out by him.
As for Seo Hae, she’s a woman with a mission and 3 instructions to follow:
1) don’t get caught / if caught say nothing
2) don’t trust anyone
3) avoid Han Tae Sul
Hasn’t she broken 2 of them already? And she was almost caught. If she hadn’t broken rule 2) she’d not have endangered Sun. If she’d not broken instruction 3) bad guy Hwang might not have found out about her connection to Han Tae Sul, and sought him.
Her story with her dad and her love for her family makes her a sympathetic character, and her concern over Han Tae Sul is good, however I wonder if she’s wise in taking on this mission to meet and make contact with HTS. She has yet to reach the level of warmly ‘likable’ yet. I’ll give her until Ep 4.
I have finished rewatching both episodes.
And I had more fun watching them again than the first time.
Especially because of the background music, which is of an extraordinary quality.
I suspect the dream-team is at work (MOA, W, Save Me, Signal).
Indeed, one of the songs has the signature of a signal piece, and another sound-effect has already been used on W, certainly coming from the same sound library.
@GB: I’ve read your comments before, and I used them to stay attentive.
The “download”: I completely missed it the first time, good point!
Thanks to that, I noticed other details.
The control bureau: they’re not really big bad or killers.
However, we see them killing the owner of the restaurant.
Before that, one of the members of the office says why: ” he is contaminated “.
In another dialogue, they say about illegal travellers: “they are dangerous”.
During the pursuit on the rooftops, the heroine says to the young blond man, at the moment he wants to surrender: “now that you have been in contact with me, they will want to kill you”.
In this scene, it is likely that the missed shots or the hesitation of the members of the bureau come from this fact: they have to kill the young boy, but they want to capture the heroin alive.
The illegal travelers are therefore carrying a mysterious radiation, which contaminates people in the immediate vicinity, with unknown results.
About the heroin and the young man, when they escape, a member of the bureau says “they can’t last long without a broker”. So the time of existence is limited?! It is a phenomenon that affects travelers and those who are contaminated? That’s why the heroin flashes, she needs to be “refreshed” by a broker.
One more thing on the bureau: during the interrogation, we learn that it is team n°7. It is likely that the other teams are working in other times.
Why do the members of the bureau make muscular interventions with lots of weapons, when they don’t want to kill people?
They’re just doing what most intervention teams around the world do, in risky operations to arrest someone. They have to be ready for an unforeseen threat, and apply self-defense.
The end of the interrogation of the hero: The bullet in the head. HUH!!!! Nanni?!! ????
So, it doesnt matter they use guns, because… Hhhuuuu? WTF!
40:00, after the result of the DNA test, the psychiatrist and the manager look at each other strangely.
Their expression says “Damn, he’s finding out the truth”.
The trafficker says on the phone: the hero’s brother is his business partner.
I guess the brother goes back and forth in time, and brings objects from the future back to the trafficker.
So many things to unpack with this drama but I’m hooked. Thanks for the interesting comments and theories!!!
I liked the graphics at the start with Sisyphus rolling a stone in a never ending infinity loop. We have seen the posters of ML and FL with the sigma on their necks. Joined together from each side, it becomes like an hourglass also. ⌛️ so maybe that is the Sisyphean task (to save Mother Earth?) in a time loop created by the ML+FL?
We got a MacGyver/Mr Fixit for an ML who duct-tapes out of trouble. And his kit is in a fanny pack (although he does not wear it). Some of his stunts were outrageous, I’m amused right now and if the trend continues, then we will get one MacGyver stunt per episode. On the somber side, he admitted to fixing what he can control since his personal life seems to be unraveling and he’s been escaping that thru meds.
I was trying to figure out what his company’s product is. Something related to energy using the lasers in his lab? Reminded me of the “cold fusion” formula for clean energy in the movie “The Saint”. The scientist in that movie is an electrochemist engineer. With doing the DNA test himself, his field may be the same. Will TSan invention lead to the future dystopia? Or was he sent back from the future to fix the environmental issue with his clean energy invention? From his brother’s comment, I infer they were also time travelers (“it’s not only us”). That probably happened when they were young (no parents shown so far) since he does not have the radioactivity signal. The radioactivity may be only for recent uploads.
Time traveler with suitcase – appropriate, but no shoes? Ouch. Lots of questions on the suitcase contents – FL has 2 containers with blue stuff other than personal belongings. She also has a list that says contact Han Teo Sul in her notebook but in the ep1 first scene with her father, he warned her not to ever talk to the guy. Is that a different upload time? It seems that she had a different mission then (just enjoy life, eat what she wants) vs her actual mission now which is to save HTsul. Maybe the dad is preventing them to meet and get married since their union will set an anomaly in the space-time continuum?
On the theory that FL is a hologram (she glitches and seems like a ghost), that’s very possible. Maybe she can even turn invisible hence the top of the train “photo shoot” pose while agents were circling on her. But then why the nosebleeds? That makes her seem organic vs hologram. one can get hurt or lose a limb while doing the time travel – also as alluded by the guy on the burner phone who asked if Tsan has his arm to check his code.
On the dates, that’s awesome observation @GB!!! ML birthday is 1982, the actor commented this in an interview. it was adjusted vs the original script (1989) and that made him finally decide to accept the role. The brother was “dead” for 10 years so it’s 2010 listing in Nasdaq. The number on SH arm – if that year is 2025 and it’s already dystopia by then, we can destroy the earth in no time (like 4 years!). That’s scary. So maybe it’s 2125 or 2225?
I plan to rewatch the 2 eps this weekend…
I hope that the bodyguard and the perm kid don’t get killed off.
It looks like something is going to happen at the conference in Busan. This event is the time-travel destination of both the brother and the FL.
Carrying from GB😊:
100811 – date of Co. listing.
100812 – date of Tae San’s death (written on Tae San’s urn).
761221 – Tae San’s birth date (written on Tae San’ urn)
250811 – date on SH’s arm = Date of departure? Date of returning to future? Trip/upload/download expiry date? Future wedding date?😅
820710 – Taesul’s birthday
120930 – password of SH’s suitcase.
190722 – missed calls from Mr. Park to Tae San
200715 – Plane crash (news from tablet, from tv news coverage on the day he woke up)
200812 – Tae Sul woke up in the morning, discharged at 12 pm. Met psychiatrist friend. At night on the way home, received msg from Seon Bok (date still 12th), met bruised co-pilot, received thumb drive, subsequently received plane crash report. SH arrived at restaurant at night (date of lottery drawing on lottery ticket). Claim deadline till 210812.
200813 – Tae Sul went ‘bird watching’ 😅. Co-pilot was killed. SH woke up and opened suitcase. Also the same day as the date on SH’s note where it stated ‘Never never ever open the suitcase. Will call HTS’. So she wrote it in her diary to remind herself of the happenings during her previous visit that on 13th, she needs to stop him from opening the suitcase. Shouldn’t she wrote on a prior date to remind him about the 13th so that she can stop him sooner? 🤔
200814 – Tae Sul went to get Tae San’s ashes and ran a DNA test. Tae Sul went to old lab. CB ambushed SH and she ran away. CB ambushed Tae Sul and caught him.
200815 – TS woke up. TS and SH took morning trains to Busan. Conference in Busan at 4 pm.
Ok. Now… 4 ppl ambushed and fought with SH. One got shot. Among them a bigger guy, red faced from all those fightings but the four that appeared with bruises are all slim and good looking🤣🤣🤣🤣 CB really picked the best looking guys as frontliners😅 The chief got taste.🤭🤭🤭
I dislike the assistant chief (AC) and his gun threatening acts. 🙄 Does the gun even has real bullets? One CB guy got shot but still standing and very much alive. But the guns show flickers of fire when shot.🤷♀️ The AC shot TS in his head yet he woke up with no bruise at all. 🤷♀️ And CB guys wear protective gears yet Chief and AS are not really concerned about the radioactive? They don’t even wear mask.😅
So TH comes and goes as he likes. He arrived in the same time period cos he observed TS. The key must be very important cause it is featured in the opening credit. The suitcase is not a transport device. The interior is designed to fit the items carried by its owner. Probably a standard suitcase whereby the material can withstand the trip.
Mr. Park asked TH if his limbs are all intact. So it’s not just a simple upload and download of the traveller. Probably upload and download of the traveller’s memories of specific arrival date, time and destination? Nevertheless, SH going into hologram mode is interesting given that she just devoured that much foods like there’s no tomorrow.😅
Is it like virtual reality? Differences in which anything happened to you while you are in your destination, it will affect the real you lying somewhere in that departure hub? Hence, SH carried that wound. She probably got into same life and death situation during her prior trips. She keeps failing. Hence, her dad asked her not to find TS or she will die and wake up in the future with another wound, again and again.
The lottery number… could it be that she had seen it in another situations during her previous trips, given that she keep choosing the same arrival date? Why the diary? Why did she has to write these notes/ reminders? Why her father made her remember things? Does it means the trips will cause memory lapses. It does seems like she tried to regain memory of the final numbers of the lottery. And she also had to look at her diary to confirm about what she needed to warn TS about.
Finally, the mole. I watched ep. 1 and started suspecting a mole in TS’s team. Candidate 1 is Seung Bok. Now after what happened with Bong Seon, I am putting him as Candidate 2. That ambush at the old lab. BS was in the car right in front of the CB teams. Don’t tell me they didn’t see that white rover straight up. And how in hell Bong Seon didn’t see them in front of him😅 And how the heck CB chief got into the white rover without BS seeing him coming from the front. Does the chief has teleporting ability? Since he also can reach SH and the boy without so much as running out of breath like his people? 😅 I like BS but unfortunately for now, he is in my mole list😁
There are some jumping of scenes between day and night of same day, between SH and TS i.e. 13th daylight for SH followed by 12th night time for TS and then next day 13th day time for TS.
Oh i forgot, the red paint spray at TS’s house was moved. Clearly the burglar used it to write the message. The voice that read the message could either be the co-pilot or TH or Mr. Park. But I’m thinking to strike out TH because the message 당신 (dangshin) is a formal way of ‘you’. If he was the one writing it, he would not use that word. He would have written (너) ie. Informal of ‘you’. Or he was the one who wrote it but made the msg sounds like it was from others. Cos, I am thinking only TH (or Mr. Park) who could have come and gone with no traces like that. They might have set the alarm after everything is done. However, I am leaning more on TH because he knew TS will notice the anomaly in the interior settings. And the red paint. There were red stains on his old camera in the luggage. He did use it in his trips. Is the police going to do finger prints test? Or this part will he conveniently skipped?🤣🤣🤣
Thanks @GB and @Miracle23 for the big quantity and quality of information.
So, we already have an official calendar!
A follow-up of the internal chronology of the story, which will certainly be useful.
An important work, resulting from the collection of scattered information, congratulations.
All this reminds me of the deciphering of The King Eternal Monarch, a drama that disappointed me a lot by its lack of narrative clarity, its voluntary and counterproductive confusion, and for many other reasons, related to the script and many episodes too soft.
Sysyphus is exactly what I would have liked to have found in The King. If at the time I was a bit annoying with my negative criticisms, or even tantrums, you can now understand what my expectations were.
Sysyphus combines two things that I love about SF drama:
– A mind-blowing plot with a lot of mystery. And it gives a lot of pleasure to wonder about the background of the drama, the plot and the script.
– Perfect clarity with regard to the foreground of the drama. That is to say, simply what you see. You understand everything, the rhythm is steady and you are never bored.
The drama does not try to trap us beyond the limits of reasonableness by using artificially confusing processes, which gives us the free field to appreciate the enigmas and to think intelligently, based on more stable parameters. We feel that the whole is coherent and does not depend on nebulous elements that we will never be able to explain.
I am amazed by the incredible amount of puzzles that the drama was able to produce in only two episodes, while keeping an extremely solid and punchy narrative. The two together was the real challenge!
@Janey,
The images go fast and the drama is very dense. One can easily make a mistake by relying on one’s memory.
The two blue objects in Seo Hae’s suitcase: they had imprinted themselves on my retinas like energy cells, wrongly, and I drew the wrong conclusions. This is not the case at all. I don’t know what it is. It looks like capsules in one and a liquid in the other.
Is Seo Hae invisible on the roof of the train? That won’t be enough. There is either time travel or dimensional shift. If she was just invisible, the Control Bureau’s sensors should be able to detect her.
@Miracle23,
The spray paint can has been moved. This allows a focus on the personality of the hero. His apartment is an organized mess, and he is able, in that mess, to see the one small detail that is wrong. That is how perfectly ordered this mess is, and his mind works differently, like that of a genius.
The script could have shown directly the painting and the inscription behind it. This would not have contravened the coherence of the scene. But scriptwriters have an eye for detail, and the instinct to jump on the right opportunities, to make a scene more interesting.
It’s not sci-fi @WEnchanteur. That was what it was originally but the PD reclassified it. It’s mystery-fantasy. At the Press Con, 2035 was mentioned? A potential nuclear Holocaust was the reason the story was born. Saving TSul would save the world. Which seems to imply that if TSul stays alive, he will prevent the Holocaust from happening?
@nrllee,
Damn! Now I except to see Zeus in the drama, telling Tae Sul “now restart from the beginning, sisyphus” and send him back in time.
🙂
@WEnchanteur
My guesses on the Immigration Control Bureau (Can I call them ICB for short?) If as I see from our other posts we are thinking in terms of immigration across time, then yes, people like Seo Hae who came by Upload/Download without going through immigration are illegal immigrants. So the ICB’s job is to round them up.
In the carrying out of their duties, they seem to be able to tap every phone or something or every call to the police? because they could actually record and interpret the phone call that Sun made to the police that night SH arrived. Their Headquarters even informed them of the call that SH made to Quantum & Time asking for Han Tae Sul.
Once they interrogate innocent informants, they eliminate them. I presume it’s to leave no trace that the ICB are searching for people or that time travel exists.
We hear from Episode 2’s conversation between Hwang and TSul that he could be eliminated once his social status was removed. However both he and Bong Seon’s memories are in tact, so it does not matter that people know ICB exists, but they should not know what ICB is up to?
A bit of logic fail here, but nevermind.
You mentioned:
This is also possible, but to tell the truth, I just think it’s a PD cop out to ensure that Sun gets to accompany SH to the Train Station, ask her those pertinent questions about HTS and get the lottery numbers.
As for the radiation, I don’t see that anyone cares at all about the radiation that’s left after SH was present. It was only a means to confirm if the person was an immigrant or if an immigrant had passed that way.
The broker – I feel that Mr Park is a broker. He brokers the time travel of the illegal travelers in exchange for something he finds valuable. He may give them a means to hide from the ICB once they arrive, whereas without him, they are on their own, on the run.
This is possible. It also makes them so much more dramatic and causes us to fear for our good guys all the more!!
This one I was thinking at first I was being trolled and that it was all a dream. But no. My guess is that those so called guns work to knock a person’s consciousness out without actually leaving any bruise or hole.
I was also intrigued by that expression. They are likely hiding something, but I’m not sure it has anything to do with time travel. The other thought I had was that they were perplexed about whether he was telling them the truth or not, whether he was really as clueless as he appeared.
This one had me puzzled. I’m not sure if it means that they have a long-term understanding, because it sounded like Mr Park does not know Han Tae San at all. He does not know his voice or that he had a brother. It could merely mean that he was brokering that trip that HTSan wanted to make, so it was a business arrangement ie that made them temporary partners.
Question: An obvious one but one I didn’t notice anyone asking yet… Where is HTSan? Is he lying in a coma of some kind, hooked up to a machine that enables him to ‘time travel’ via upload/download? Is he really in the flesh around about somewhere looking for his suitcase? If he’s dead… when did he die and where?
His brother is told that HTSan died in a plane crash, I believe … his body was not recognisable. We now know that that body that was cremated was someone else.
That means that the Broker or some Broker had engineered HTSan’s travels, likely at that time when he ‘died’. He was supposed to return to 2020 and hand over a key. Now he’s missing.
HTSul was warned by the writing on the wall, not to search for his brother, or he’d die. It occurred to me that it might be his own brother TSan, who wrote that on the wall to keep TSul safe. Have to wait to see how many I got right if any at all!!!
@GB, you are right, I didnt crossed with the phone call, he don’t know brother voice. So, it’s a single contract.
I have another question : where is Seo Hae suitcase ? I loose track of it. Maybe she put all that was in the suitcase in her backbag ? I don’t remember a scene showing that. And the episode forget this suitcase after that.
@Janey
Those were great observations! I didn’t go look at the posters so I missed that hour glass of a joined sigma. So apt for a couple caught in time travel. Yes, I believe it’s likely that the Sisyphean task: ie what the boulder might be is to prevent Earth from ending up where it does in whatever century ??25 (2125/2225 etc) that Seo Hae lived.
I’d actually be happy to get one good MacGyver fixit each episode, but I’d like it to be based more on known science than on some fantastic technology. However, this is a sci-fi fantasy show, so …
This is true. What struck me was that he claimed to have no care whether the 261 passengers lived or died, he only did what he did because he wanted to fix what he could. He was thinking only as an engineer. That could explain why he was so cool in the face of so much pressure. However this does not jive with his general concern for people like his bodyguard. Maybe he wants to sound more callous than he is.
Yes to his failing to manage his psychological state when it comes to his brother. He claims that he misses his brother, and there is probably some trauma to ending off badly with TSan just before he died, but I’m wondering if the reason for such debilitating trauma of seeing illusions of TSan lies in something more dark and deep.
The real fixit that he needs to do, is to fix his mind and emotions, ie forgive himself where it comes to his brother.
Good question about what Quantum & Time actually do. Other than, I’m guessing, fiddling with time travel of some sort?
I too was wondering if TSan meant that they were time travelers and there were others like them or whether, he meant as we say: ‘We are not alone’ meaning that there are other Others/Aliens with us that we did not recognise, but not that we belong to the same group as them.
Yeah, those questions on what her dad told her and what she chooses to do in 2020. Does she have a secret mission that her dad does not know about? Is there more than 1 instance of her so that there’s another SH running around with another mission? (Too mind boggling!!)
The logic of whether travelers are real or holograms or become real even as holograms (more than photographic recordings of light) is of course missing. In kdramas, the explanations for logic seldom come along. Whether future technology is able to transform a human being into a hologram that is more than an image: that can take on human sentience, and a human body, remains to be seen. But if possible in this tale, then presumably the holographic body can get hurt as well. 😉
@WEnchanteur and @Janey
I was thinking of an alternative … it might not be HTSan’s first time travel trip … however that might be the first Broker he’s using, so that’s why the Broker does not know him.
What struck me as I posted my reply to @Janey above is that, it’s becoming (in my mind) likely that HTSan and Sul may have come from the future, because Sul was ‘married’ to SH who comes from the future. The photos of the wedding were taken by Sul in his old fashioned camera. When SH was shot and the baddies came for her, we don’t know what happened to Sul, but his film in the camera had maybe to come back to Earth to be developed here. The only problem with this scenario is that then it means there is more than 1 Han Tae Sul. One in the future who got married and one in 2020 who didn’t.
As for Seo Hae’s suitcase, she told poor Sun that she was borrowing his expensive backpack. I assume she has jettisoned the cumbersome suitcase forever.
Thanks @miracle23. I knew that you or one of the Bitches would be able to give us the dates with details.
From Seo Hae’s diary date and what she wrote,
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jB7JZfRdyzjTMYG1NPGwU3LadAi_zpmu/view?usp=sharing
“20200.08.13
Do not open the suitcase!
(Call Han Tae Sul!)
Take it and run?”
… she knew what was going to happen in advance, and it seems that her aim was to come back to carry out what she wrote. You have an interesting theory, that she had come back multiple times but failed. Possible … it may be that we are seeing her after she’s back in the sucky world of ??25 ready to make another trip.
Yes, the thing about memory pops up … was she remembering lottery numbers? Did she have to be reminded of her mission and so she wrote it down? Yes, and when did she get that wound – was it in the fight in the apartment… it was not a point of focus during the fight. I just noted that it was about the same spot as where she had been shot.
Many interesting queries. That’s going to keep us on our toes!!
Thanks @nrllee. OK the press conference clears up matters. So it might be a bit like the Terminator where a person in one moment of history has to be preserved for the future to be fine. If the year 2035 was mentioned, that’s pretty soon. Then we might hazard a guess that when, it was obvious that because TSul was either not alive or too drugged to do much good, and the wipe out of the world was imminent, the people of 2025 started trying to save Tae Sul, from 2020, to prevent the disaster.
@GB, there is maybe some kind of : “rewrite the timeline” trick here.
Timeline 1 : TS marry SH. Brother take photo.
Brother from the future go back in time with photo.
But it means a many complicate things.
So to marry TS, it’s a SH coming from a previous timeline from the future.
And the timeline we see in the drama has been rewrited after they marry.
Or they marry after they meet each other. (lol, I should think about that first, so silly).
So it’s maybe our current timeline, but 3 month later they marry.
But, it the brother is dead, how he take photo of the wedding ? Huh ?
I stop fuzzling my head on that. Let’s see what happens next and how time travel logic work.
One episode = One macGiver trick.
I sign for it!!!
If we are to accept the hologram theory, then bullets don’t work? She can’t be killed? She wouldn’t need to run.
As for TSan…he wasn’t in the urn. So he was alive. Did he fake his own death? To get away from the ICB? But later on he fell out of the sky? And bounced off a plane? With no parachute? Last I looked nobody could survive a fall like that? 😂. If I were him I would want my money back. How is it SeoHae got transported safely and was downloaded/teleported into some back alley near a train line? And he drops out of the sky? 🤔
@miracle23 @WEnchanteur
Heheh! Your guesses are as good as mine and maybe better!!
I have not thought through the permutations of what it means if the Han brothers came from the future. I may tie myself up in knots like I did over TE:EM, Lol.
Before I do that though, here’s a timeline thanks mainly to @miracle23, who gathered the details. I’ve put it into Excel so that we can sort by different columns and add on more data where relevant or when we notice. Feel free to download and update or update on the drive. Probably the latter is easier and everyone can see the most up to date file.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t3WjMtTHKV6cwivAT-VUIyhnnrdrcpf6/view?usp=sharing
If I manage to come up with some guesses that do not tie me up in knots, I’ll come by to post it(them). However, we don’t have enough information to make good guesses yet. I can maybe make harebrained ones, not that they’ll be useful. 😉
LOL @nrllee… at a guess, maybe Tae San used a broker who gave him a freefall download to a place where the ICB wouldn’t normally monitor immigrants, but Seo Hae took a different route to end up teleporting more gently to the railway tracks, but without being assured of escaping ICB surveillance.
WRT to Tae San, what I’m wondering now is, maybe there was problem in the download for the suitcase that ended in the Gimpo reed field, but it was different for Tae San who landed somewhere else. If he’s alive, he should be searching for his suitcase. Without it, he cannot reach the broker.
Hi Ladies! I’ve just watched Ep 1&2 and I’m hooked to this drama. Both CSW and PSH deliver great performances so far. The plot is interesting and the scenes are entertaining. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the numbers, the storyline, plot etc.
Another mystery to me – Tsan’s suitcase hit the windshield of the airplane and then fell in Gimpo. It was not even banged up when Tsul found it. Does this mean that another suitcase hit the engine in the left wing? It went through it and made a big damage on the engine, I would imagine it would have damaged the suitcase badly also.
Thanks @GB and @Miracle for organizing the dates!!! Can’t wait to see what’s going to happen in Busan.
@Janey That’s a good point. I was wondering what hit the engine and caused it to smoke. I was also concerned that Tae San had been the one to hit the engine or get sucked into it and get cut to bits!!!
@Janey @GB I slowed the footage down and the suitcase struck the windshield and then the engine but it didn’t seem to go through it. It ricocheted off it, so goodness knows how it caused so much damage. Then TSan hit the windshield and flew past TSul’s window and TSul saw him fly by. But he didn’t see his face of course. Nevertheless, a suitcase falling from that height would not be intact like that? 🙄😂. But we’ll just suspend belief regarding the science and focus on the mystery.
https://forums.soompi.com/topic/441880-current-drama-2021-sisyphus-the-myth-%EC%8B%9C%EC%A7%80%ED%94%84%EC%8A%A4-the-myth-wed-thu-2100-kst/?do=findComment&comment=22144262
Hey! It’s not the suitcase you use when going to caraibs islands, during hollydays.
It’s a suitcase designed for time travel!
A suitcase designed for 10000m falls in Golpi field!
(usual place where too much people download for some reasons)
You just have to see how this suitcase is weird, cubic, solid, no ergonomy.
Kind of Plaststeel nano-quantum futuristic stuff, maybe. 🙂
@nrllee – thanks for the slowed footage! I can’t make my TV remote slow it down like that. Yup, will take the luggage’s state of (non) damage at face value for now. I would like to know that brand though, if it’s true. Super durable! LOL! 😂
Hey Everyone,
I managed to watch the first two episodes. I need to read your comments first in order to write down my thoughts.
Thanks @nrllee for the Soompi link. And thanks to that, I got to read both you and @WEnchanteur on Soompi as well. Well written and I agree with the review of the airplane fixit scene. It showed us what we needed to know about the ML. It gave us suspense and lots of detail. It would have been nice to know if they landed safely on a surprisingly clear and wide roadway (instead of in the water…) I just assume so since everyone was saved. (ღ✪ｖ✪)｡o○
It’s nice to know that in the future, our suitcases can bear any amount of dropping and impact. (⌐■_■)
Hi @Cleo!! I’ll be back later to read you. (•̀ᴗ•́)൬༉
Hey @GB,
I need to read your comments first. I have some thoughts to share but you have already written some things.
@GB yes I still have a few friends on Soompi and we usually get together with mystery (whodunit) dramas and discuss. Last time it was Stranger2 and before that it was 365 Repeat the Year and The Lies Within. We don’t take things too seriously and just have a blast picking things apart and making guesses. @WEnchanteur joined this time round because he’s obviously enamoured by the whole time travel plot and the luminous Park ShinHye. 😂
So here are some of my thoughts about Sisyphus:
Tae San is Sisyphus. Since he was dead, but then he wasn’t, that means he cheated death and he was alive, until the airplane crash of course.
I am pretty sure that something happened to him back then though. Hence CEO Park was asking Tae San if he has all his limps. On the phone of course was Tae Sul. He didn’t know what to answer, but Park knew that it wasn’t TSan.
There is indeed a post-apocalyptic world. My guess here is that we have a function like: The Travelers + The Matrix.
I mean in “The Travelers” what was sent back was the Conscience, while they were using bodies of people that were dying and taking over their lives.
In the “Matrix” the machines could hijack someone else’s body / consciousness.
Hint #1: The Control Bureau can trace the travelers via radioactivity.
That means the time travelers are radioactive. I believe the reason that they seem to be like holograms at sometimes is that they seem to be a projection of their human bodies.
Most likely, when they are in their timeline and a turbulence is happening to their Time Travel Machine, then as a result they are appear like a ghost / hologram in the existing timeline Tae Sul exists.
Hint #2: The turbulence is happening in both timelines. That means they use Earth’s Electrical Currents to power it up?
It is just a theory, that the Time Travel Machine needs something to power it up. If it is a post-apocalyptic world and they don’t have fuels, they might use something else.
I haven’t done Physics for a long time, but I think it might be plausible. I have to ask one of my friends who knows more about the matter.
There are so many things that are being analyzed in your comments, so I am trying to read it step by step.
Hi @Cleo, a quick reply to you before I run off for a meeting.
That’s interesting that you think Tae San is Sisyphus. Is the requirement for a person to be Sisyphus, to be dead but ‘not dead’? (And not a zombie either? LOL)
Having all his limbs – yes… with a drop from the sky at that height and with aircraft sharing the airspace, I’d be surprised if not more ‘people’ are in bits and pieces!!! I can’t imagine anyone surviving that fall/drop but again, I’m thinking that these future folk are not quite human like we are. Projections, 3-D images, holograms might be possible.
I like the idea of The Travelers and the sending back of Conscience… one other theory (besides the holograms one) … maybe it was like ‘bodies in the shape of real people’ (projections, 3-D images, holograms) were deposited in our time and then the memories, feelings, consciences, personalities etc of the actual individual were downloaded into them. Then they woke up and just had to figure out how to survive and do whatever mission they wanted to do or were sent to do.
I was pegging the glitches to their bodies/projections of their bodies/holograms to be linked to excitement or something similar. It happened first when Seo Hae heard Han Tae Sul’s name and got excited.
Can you remember the other time it happened, after her sleeve got torn … what was said to trigger it?
My guess is that they will definitely need something to power up whatever time travel gizmo they have. If they have the Sun still, or more nuclear fuels… they could be using those … they’ll need something. 😉
@nrllee LOL you’re half serious and half teasing our @WEnchanteur aren’t you? It was great to read you all anyway. I would like to suggest that when you’ve done a write-up at Soompi or wherever, you could add a link to it here, so we can read it too. I understand not wanting to copy the entire chunk over here at times.
Indeed @GB. Our resident Frenchman knows when I am jesting. We crossed paths on occasion when we were discussing TKEM before it aired. It’s easier to discuss on Soompi when images are required to explain. There’s less clicking involved. And I can’t quote here because I can’t copy and paste someone else’s comment to reply to. Unless I get it from my email notification.
I just commented about the power cells in SH’s suitcase.
https://forums.soompi.com/topic/441880-current-drama-2021-sisyphus-the-myth-%EC%8B%9C%EC%A7%80%ED%94%84%EC%8A%A4-the-myth-wed-thu-2100-kst/?do=findComment&comment=22146665
I like @Cleo’s interpretation of TSan being Sisyphus and the possibility of just the Conscience making that time travel. Most of us would just look at the time looping and look upon it as the Sisyphean metaphor. We’ll see where the writer takes us with it. I need to go back to Goreyo times in the next few days as I leave Sisyphus and gallop back to RWTMR.
Hi ladies!
This month is a feast of drama. As if a lot of good dramas blocked for months or years are coming now!
@nrllee,
– For RWTMR, I have a good feeling. An intuition that this drama is going to rise in strength. Or maybe it’s just that I’m in an optimistic general mood and I like things easier? The battle scene was disappointing (too many cuts), but at the same time it wasn’t supposed to show the battle, just a quick summary, like pictures. If the drama has such good battle scenes as My Country does, I’m going to go crazy about the drama. That’s kind of what I’m anticipating, because the scriptwriter had done Road Number One, and that gives me an idea of how he could treat the war scenes. Hopefully the director will follow.
– There’s LUCA, too, which appeals to me for a number of reasons.
– I’ve just spotted another new drama “TIMES” that looks interesting in the SF/Mystery/Action category.
– Sisyphus, that’s it, I’m completely immersed in it all the way to the bottom! Poor me, I’ve become an addict, I’m screwed. Not just the complex plot, but also the incredible action scenes (at least for a drama). Never seen before in dramaland! At least in this style, Gunfu or other recent Asian-inspired action movies (the Raid, The night come for us, the Vilainess, Tiler Rake and maybe we can dream of gunfights like John Wick’s). Certainly, it’s a step down, less violent and less bloody. Not as much budget, preparation or stars in martial arts. But the style, the immersion and the nervousness are there. With the placement of rotating cameras that follow the characters. I find it strange that this hasn’t been mentioned by other people who post comments on the internet. But after all, watching romantic dramas and violent action movies at the same time may not be common. I’ve even seen comments saying that the action scenes were lame, LOL! I don’t have the desire or time to respond to them.
However, I would like to do a recap on Soompi on this subject with a lot of screenshot, but I’m a bit afraid for the time it would take to do it. I’ve seen the apartment fight scene and the rooftop chase scene several times (nothing extraordinary, I’ve seen the John Wick trilogy x3, and the same for other good action movies, I’m happy to replay certain passages). I can see how it was done (thanks to the BTS, as a bonus). The only incomprehensible thing is when they jump on the next roof, ICB team does nothing and wait, it’s highly unnatural. It is besides the only thing that really spoils the scene. Either it’s very badly done, or there’s a reason behind it. There are also some other clumsinesses. Park Shin-Hye is more comfortable with pure action than stunts with cables. By the way, I wonder if her character doesn’t have slightly superhuman abilities, because she makes an incredible jump.
I would like to do a recap on the background music as well and the sound effects. Like LUCA, it enhances concentration and makes it fun to watch the episode again.
– Plus, I’m catching up on some of the other dramas. Right now I’m addicted to the drama “The Penthouse”, which is crazy and funny. And I have “Psycho it’s Ok” to finish.
– For romantic comedies, I’m not in that kind of period. If something good comes out (like Hello, Me), I’ll have to catch up later.
– Vincenzo : The actor is unspecified to me, and I saw the 3rd trailer : overplayed comedy scenes (slapstick ?). Meh! Of course it can be fixed later, it happens on some dramas, but for now, I’m dropping.
@GB, nrllee likes to tickle me a little bit?
Maybe… 🙂
Ok, let’s talk about it seriously then…
It would be disappointing if Sisyphus really became a fantasy drama (TKEM as a target). For the moment, everything fits correctly in the SF register. Maybe the production made this announcement to attract more people ? Looks like SF is scaring the Korean audience. The other difference between the two dramas is that for TKEM, when I needed to re-watch a scene or episode, it was most of the time a pain. On Sisyphus, I rather enjoy doing it.
@Cleopatra,
Yeah, nice idea. People download their mind into people in the past. But I don’t know why they have same apparence. I feel like we know too much now ! ICB teams could come for us.
@GB,
Oops, I forgot.
Go episode 1, restaurant mukbang scene, after prophetic loto : Flash Info.
We see the airplane landed (aerial view).
Thanks @WEnchanteur for the info on the plane landing… I believe it was mentioned on the threads but I forgot to go back and slow down to catch that clip. It was a cut of the news on the TV, correct?
I’m glad that re-watching Sisyphus is not a pain for you. I enjoy it too. Now I’m bothering to do more screenshots so I have to slow down, pause, try to go forward/backward to get a better angle etc. A lot of time!!! But quite nice to have the screenshot in the end, that I can share and post here.
As for the genre of drama … I would feel that it’s more fantasy than sci-fi now because time travel has not yet reached high scientific probability (as far as I know). However, the Macgyver bits, and other areas where technology is used, may be more grounded in science. It will not however, I feel, become pure fantasy like TE:EM. But it does have enough fantastic, supernatural stuff going on, so that it can correctly be put into the fantasy genre. (๑`･ᴗ･´๑)
LOL, ICB will come to shoot us to sleep and forget everything we know. I think some of those guns are sleep inducing guns!
＼（＠￣∇￣＠）／
@nrllee I commend you for your ability to keep switching from futuristic fantasy sci-fi to Goryeo times. Even within the Vincenzo world where we moved from Italian mafia-style destruction to Korean slapstick, I was already getting some whiplash. LOL. I’ll go read about your power cells now.
@GB, I advice you some tools, for doing all this easy. It’s what I use for making my photo-drama (stagnant for now). So the best free tools I found after many search.
1 – First, you need the raw (video), so find a site where download it, 1080p is best. Dramaday.net for example.
2 – Then use this tool : “Free Video to JPG Converter”.
I suggest to choose “capture every 10 frames”. You get all the pictures of the drama with a rate of 2.4 image/second (something like 8000 pictures). But it’s ok! Don’t be worried about so many pictures.
3 – Because now, you use this tool : “IrfanView 64 Thumbnails”.
For manipulating pictures/thumbs fast and more easy than in windows. You can use shortcut if you want extract part of an image. Or set a directory then send images you choose. You can change size of the thumbmails, etc.
Just for fun, a silly example.
I suppose you know the Lord of the Rings and the magician Gandalf?
Okay, Gandalf is on the battlefield with his big wizard’s staff.
He uses his staff that fires a ray and disintegrates a dozen orcs that were threatening Frodon.
Case 1.
FRODON – Wow, thank you Gandalf. How did you do it?
GANDALF – Thanks to my staff, I channeled the magical energy of the ancient Eldars.
FRODON – So, Lord of the Rings is fantasy?
GANDALF – Yes.
Case 2.
FRODON – Wow, thank you Gandalf. How did you do it?
GANDALF – My staff is a molecular dissociator powered by a cold fusion atomic cell.
FRODON – So, Lord of the Rings is science fiction?
GANDALF – Yes.
SPECTATORS : (⊙_⊙)
Thanks @WEnchanteur! The tools sound familiar, in that I have probably used another version of them for conversion and image editing. I’ll certainly consider using them if I want to go heavy into managing images from shows. Anyway, I’m saving the info you’ve given me. (❍❛‿❛❍❋)
Good one @WEnchanteur! So you’d like show to stay on the side closer to sci-fi rather than veer towards fantasy. I guess I’m one of those viewers who’ll take either or both, as long as the logic does not totally flop. It has to have some internal logic that does not contradict itself, or I’ll complain! ٩(๑˃̌ۿ˂̌๑)۶
Good detail, miracle23. So the intruder wrote the formal way of “you.”
For me, he has to be somebody who knows art because he went through the trouble of correcting it. He has to be an art lover, too because he couldn’t bear destroy the artwork by spraying the message on it. He sprayed the wall instead.
Also, he was somebody close enough to Taesul because he knew that Taesul would notice it. The message was something personal.
This wasn’t done by just any stranger like Mr. Park or the Control Bureau. The chief didn’t even know about his connection to Seohae at that time.
I also considered his co-founder. He too knew how the painting should hang from the wall but the whole time, he visited the place, not once did he reposition it. So that tells me he doesn’t care either way, and attached no importance to it.
On second thoughts…
I’m all in. It’s the brother, Miracle23.
I don’t have the motive yet. But this fits the brother’s personality. He’s always correcting Taesun. On the plane, he told him that the stewardess wasn’t his type, and that he’d die without safety equipment.
So yes, he would correct the painting.
He hid the warning so as not to alert people who were also looking for him (Taesun) that he was back in town. Remember, he sounded paranoid. He would disguise it so it would look like it was a burglary.
Plus, the red paint on the camera. He touched the red spray paint.
The message wasn’t probably a threat but a deterrent. He didn’t want his brother to create trouble by looking for him. This would be similar to Seohae warning him not to open the suitcase.
Both of them — time travelers from the future — seem to think that Taehul’s actions will precipitate a crisis so they’re stopping HIM, not the bad guys.
It’s not future TSul coming back to send cryptic warnings to his past self? The writing is on the wall?
That’s possible…But I don’t think TSul came from the future.
I think, between the two of them, it’s SeoHae, and only SeoHae who came from the future.
This 2020 is the critical year of their encounter. It’s the “top” of the hill if they were Sisyphus. lol.