Great episode, with a tour de force by EH. I've been very much enjoying Shield this season but I'm already bummed that the next episode won't focus again on Simmons story.
Agents of SHIELD: Season 3 - Discussion (SPOILERS LIKELY)
- Thread starter Trekker4747
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This episode was almost like their "Intersections in Real Time". 
Babylon 5 fans should get that.
Babylon 5 fans should get that.
Something struck me about the episode. Last week, Turner Classic Movies debuted a restored version of the lost Sherlock Holmes silent film from 1916, and it recreated the original tinting of the film prints, in which outdoor scenes were tinted blue and indoor scenes were tinted orange. This episode used the exact same color convention.
Jemma had a weird sort of out of body experience a few episodes back, so I wonder if "it" or a piece of "it" went through the portal to Earth.
So far all the praise for I've seen has been directed at Henstridge. She was excellent, no doubt. But what really stood out for me was the direction: the tone, the ambiance, even the subtlety of the camera work was outstanding.
I didn't recognize the guys name and had to IMDB. (It didn't even occur to me that he could be Steve Bochco's kid.) He's done a few Shield episodes already, but nothing stood out to me. But he definitely hit the mark here.
The episode seemed like a one hour one shot to me with no movement in the season's arc going up against the World Series opener. One MCU backstory point I caught was Will asking if SHIELD was a real thing from his 2001 reference date. So SHIELD may have been seen like UNCLE or the MIB, just an acronym from a movie by the general public and USAF officers going on secret NASA missions through the Stargate.
Any theories on what that thing was? An ancient Inhuman? Could they be standing on Ego the Living Planet? Is it something along the same lines as the Morbius/Krell Id Monster from 'Forbidden Planet'? A *really* powerful Skrull perhaps? Or is it really Thanos's squeeze like they've been saying?
For me the most curious thing is how do people know the monolith is a portal to another world and why keep sending people through? At some point someone must have made it back, right? Perhaps back when it was a paradise? If so then why were the Afterlife Inhumans convinced it was a death machine made especially for them?
Small point: but if that guy has been there 14 years and he was already a qualified USAF pilot when NASA recruited him, how old is he exactly? He looks like he's in his early 30's, but that would make him a teen in 2001.
I'll do you one better than that: they were shooting day-for-night in what looked like an old quarry, to make it look like an alien world. Very Doctor Who. They even had the TARDIS do a cameo.
For me the most curious thing is how do people know the monolith is a portal to another world and why keep sending people through? At some point someone must have made it back, right? Perhaps back when it was a paradise? If so then why were the Afterlife Inhumans convinced it was a death machine made especially for them?
Small point: but if that guy has been there 14 years and he was already a qualified USAF pilot when NASA recruited him, how old is he exactly? He looks like he's in his early 30's, but that would make him a teen in 2001.
I'll do you one better than that: they were shooting day-for-night in what looked like an old quarry, to make it look like an alien world. Very Doctor Who. They even had the TARDIS do a cameo.
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No, more like a covert agency that people had heard rumors about, not something they thought was fictional. Why would anyone have made movies about SHIELD?
(And really, at least in the first season of the show, UNCLE was pretty open about its existence; most civilians seemed to have heard of it and been aware that it was a global security agency. It was just their specific operations, methods, and operatives that were kept secret. Although later in the series, the organization itself was treated as more of a secret.)
Marshall. Will Marshall.
I loved Land of the Lost and this really made me think of what a good reboot of that would be like. Especially when she mapped the portals and said the alignment of the moons is what opened them.
A very good episode, despite not actually moving anything else forward or showing anyone else through the whole run time.
Eh, I thought this was the worst episode of AoS since early season 1. A 45 minute episode with 15 minutes of plot stretched along the entire runtime, and fairly mediocre plot at that. The introduction of the astronaut seems to have been done mostly to drag out the "Will Fitz and Simmons get together or not" thing and to give some lame reason for Simmons to want to go back. They could have cut 30 minutes from this episode and streamlined it a lot, and I think it would have worked better. As it is, Simmons sub plot has basically been ruined by bad writing. Hopefully the inhumans and HYDRA plots can pick up the slack by the show ruining one of its more interesting subplots this season.
You're entirely correct. Shame on me for not thinking of that.
Really, really good episode, with outstanding acting from Elizabeth Henstridge. And that phone... it lasted more than 4 months AND powered a NASA computer for hours.
I'm very interedted to find out how this whole thing plays into the main plot. I think the Kree used the portal to get rid of the unstable or dangerous Inhumans during their experiments. So either that tale got distorted over the generations and Jiaying only knew it was dangerous OR she knew what is on the other side and it freaked the hell out of her.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4464857/?ref_=tt_cl_t5
I'm very interedted to find out how this whole thing plays into the main plot. I think the Kree used the portal to get rid of the unstable or dangerous Inhumans during their experiments. So either that tale got distorted over the generations and Jiaying only knew it was dangerous OR she knew what is on the other side and it freaked the hell out of her.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4464857/?ref_=tt_cl_t5
Why in the world does every episode have to "move the season's arc"? Some of the best TV I've seen has been single standalone episodes. Like, ya know, Star Trek.
Indeed. Plus I'd rather see the narrative serve the ongoing character arcs (this is an ensemble show after all) than have everything slaved to a narrow season long plot.
I'd go so far as to say that this show doesn't have *an* arc, not even a central one. It has multiple, of which many are intertwined.
Are we saying we'd rather skip Simmons and go back to Ward's support group for Nazi wannabes? Didn't think so.
She did say that Fitz had modified the battery to run super-long. Even so, I figure she was mostly leaving it off (it's not like she had to check her e-mail or anything) and only turning it on for a few minutes per day to record her journal or stare at Fitz's picture or whatever.
Yep. Fitz had made the battery super.
I was a bit disappointed that the credits didn't just read "Starring Elizabeth Henstridge and Iain De Caestecker, Guest Starring Dillon Casey." Of course I get why the other actors were contractually entitled to credit even when they didn't appear (outside of the video clip on Simmons's phone), but it would've fit the uniqueness of the episode better if they'd been left out.
I got the impression that things would have really sucked if the sun had risen.
