Flashforward 18 and 19 (spoilers)
Episode 18
So, Janis is a double-agent, her loyalty still intact. Good; the idea that she’d genuinely turn traitor seemed alien. (I suppose I’m assuming that Vogel isn’t working for the conspiracy.) Does Benford know? He’s being a bit on the credulous side if he doesn’t, but if he does know then he knows it’s important not to catch Janis out.
Gabriel’s description of the situation as an emergency makes me suspect a scripting emergency, a need to advance the plot more rapidly in the face of a too-good conspiracy covering up whatever’s really going on. Perhaps that’s overly cynical, but they did spend an awful lot of episodes chasing down rather marginal advances.
Frost’s connection to Afghanistan is presumably going to turn out to be related to Tracey Stark being there: Jericho running the conspiracy’s security out there, perhaps. I like the dark, askew portrayal of the Kandahar backstreets, but Stark’s attackers seemed remarkably shy of using their advantage in men and arms (before ?Kemir and his men turn up.
The Antikythera mechanism is real, and was an ancient Greek orrery. Apparently there are references in Cicero to similar devices.
Episode 19
Pretty unforgivable to leave Campos with access to Mosaic (and the ring) once they knew he was compromised. The ease with which Benford sees through him sharply contrasts with how plausible he found (or appeared to find) Janis Hawk’s excuses, adding support to the theory that Marshall Vogel already clued him in on her double-agent status (the alternative being that he sees through flimflam when the scripts needs him to).
Good news for Bryce Varley. But might he yet end up with Arahida? Nicole’s flashforward has her being drowned, and we’ve not seen anything that might head that off (nor for that matter explain it).
Gabriel has a drawing of Mark’s board. Which probably means the conspiracy do too.
”We’re simulating the Big Bang. What could go wrong?”
Fiona Banks is played by Alex Kingston, who also plays River Song. I suspect Dr Who would make pretty short work of the Flashforward setup: unmask and undermine the conspiracy, neutralize Jericho, rescue Anabelle Campos and probably talk Rudolf Geyer all the way back into a German jail.
A thought occurs to me, on seeing the visualization after the NLAP experiment. Was the blackout at exactly the same time across the entire world? The Earth’s diameter is about 12000km, about 0.04 seconds as the photon flies. You’d need time-accurate recordings to use that to identify a starting point, but it woudn’t be impossible in principle.
N: “How much Lloyd/Mark slash is there?”