It was a different part of China, according to the caption (it's a very big country), even though they probably used the same Vancouver location for both scenes. I think the caption said Yunnan Province, and Jiaju is in Hainan Province, which is a large island off the southernmost coast of China.
They still looked cool, though.
Well, by this point, the time-loop genre is so tireworn they couldn't really avoid acknowledging the precedents. I liked it that Ray acknowledged TNG: "Cause and Effect," which is the obvious referent for a "ship blows up at the end of the loop" plot.
Having it all be a simulation was a bit of a fakeout, but it did make it a bit of a fresh take on the trope (although it's not the only show in the past couple of years whose time-loop episode turned out to be a computer simulation). The fact that it was done to serve a character-based goal made it feel more worthwhile, although it was really rather meta, with Gideon basically standing in for the writers -- deliberately putting a character in a situation designed to generate character development, as well as humiliating Gary just because she thought it would be funny.
The events that transpired weren't real, but they were based on truth. For a moment there, I thought they were going to lose another cast member. I'm glad that wasn't case.
