1899: Episode 8

8. The Key

Henry tells Elliot the truth about the simulation being a prison made by his mother for him in a drastic attempt not to let him go. Eyk transfers to the Kerberos and Maura informs everyone about what she knows so far but they think she’s just crazy and they all try to get off the ship. Maura and Eyk go to Daniel’s memory and find a way back to the asylum as everything starts to glitch. They are cornered by Sebastian who deactivates Eyk with his device and takes Maura back to her father. They inject her with the serum but instead of the simulation restarting, she ends up in Elliot’s room under the cross where Daniel meets her after he hacks the mainframe and changes the values of the pyramid and the key. He hands over a new pyramid to her. Using their wedding ring as the new key, she finally wakes up in a spaceship called Prometheus. The year is 2099 and she sees the Survivors unconscious and attached to machines. She receives a message from her brother Ciaran on the monitor welcoming her to reality.

1899: Episode 7

7. The Storm

Daniel finds a way out from being locked in the asylum’s Room 1011 while Maura returns to a ship that is facing a storm head-on. Daniel finds The Boy and assures him that they will get it right this time. Maura and Daniel end up seeing each other in his flat in the pocket dimension under his bed. It is revealed that they are married and The Boy’s name is Elliot. He is their son. He also tells Maura that they are in a simulation that is in an endless loop and that she is the only one who can end it if only she gets to remember. She discovers a key in her necklace’s locket. The simulation is nearing shutdown as Elliot is found by Sebastian and delivered to Henry. The herd is thinned further amidst the impending shutdown. Ángel is fatally pinned by a falling column. Olek is thrown overboard by a wave as he tries to save Ling Yi. Lucien succumbs to his last epileptic seizure. Franz, Iben, and Anker all drown as water floods the ship.

1899: Episode 6

6. The Pyramid

The survivors split up to get things done. Tove, Clémence, Iben, and Virginia search the ship for survivors as Tove suffers from flashbacks of her family’s tragic past and Virginia is stabbed by one of the crystal-like black stalagmites now invading the entire ship. Ramiro, Iben’s husband Anker (Alexandre Willaume), and Sebastian are left at the captain’s cabin but Sebastian sneaks out to meet Henry at the wasteland. He is asked once more to find The Boy, whose pyramid is essential to the success of their project. The men and Ying Li head to the engine room to power up the ship once more. Maura takes Eyk with her to the asylum to look for The Boy. They discover that that little corner of pocket reality is bound by the hulls of the ship and appears fully contained therein. Daniel shows up after following them and has an altercation with Eyk. Tinkering with his device sends Eyk to the Prometheus where he sees other floating ghost ships surrounding it. Daniel tells Maura that he is her husband.

1899: Episode 5

5. The Calling

Maura blacks out and wakes up in the same dining hall where the other passengers have locked The Boy inside a cupboard. She tries to rescue him but is threatened by gunshots that miraculously freeze along with everyone as The Boy uses his pyramid to get them out of there. He takes Maura to the tiled shaft under her bed and opens a portal to another world through his beetle. There, Maura finds the asylum and meets her father Henry (Anton Lesser). Daniel follows them and promises The Boy that he won’t be found while hiding there. Tove defects to the other side. A ticking noise puts the ship’s passengers on a trance including Ling Yi’s mother and Krester who are among those who throw themselves overboard. Daniel deactivates the sound through the machine in the engine room. It is revealed that Sebastian has a puzzle-like device similar to Daniel’s. The survivors of the mass suicide all gather on the main deck. In a mansion somewhere, Henry looks out to a barren wasteland with a giant pyramid from his window.

1899: Episode 4

4. The Fight

A literal fight ensues between the upper class passengers and the now armed religious fundamentalists downstairs led by Franz. First mate Sebastian (Timo Mews) confesses at gunpoint the naval company’s order to sink the Prometheus and how the deaths began when The Boy was taken back onboard. Krester’s overtly religious mother Iben (Maria Erwolter) leads the charge to find and kill him, believing him to be the devil incarnate. Jérôme and Olek are tasked to toss the dead bodies to the sea. The former escapes and meets up with Clémence to find Eyk who has escaped with Ramiro. The four are joined by Maura later on as The Boy uses his scarab beetle to unlock their room. The Boy is eventually found, willingly surrenders to the mob, and is thrown overboard as a battle royale ensues on deck. As tensions die down, Eyk’s team gathers at the dinner hall where they are surprised by a blinding light emanating from within a cupboard. The cupboard door opens and The Boy emerges unscathed with his pyramid before giving Maura a hug.

1899: Episode 3

3. The Fog

Ling Yi (Isabella Wei) is not really a geisha. She and her mother Yuk Je (Gabby Wong) worked in a brothel in Hong Kong and Virginia was their pimp. Her next target for her ward is Lucien, whom they eventually get, only for him to have an epileptic seizure before Ling Yi undresses. Before this, she crosses paths with Olek on deck after an argument with her mother. With the compases going haywire and fog now enveloping the ocean, the ship’s speed decreases significantly. Discovering a tiled shaft under his bed, Eyk decides to go back to the Prometheus to search for the captain’s log book for clues. Maura comes along. He finds a page of the passenger list and sees Maura’s name there. Eyk’s right-hand man Franz (Isaak Dentler) leads Tove to her sister’s corpse. As the third class passengers mourn her, he stumbles upon more lifeless bodies on his way out. He then starts an armed mutiny to force the captain to turn the ship around. Daniel tinkers with a device that looks like a puzzle. Moving the pieces, an onboard generator ignites and the Cerberus vanishes into thin air.

1899: Episode 2

2. The Boy

The Boy (Fflyn Edwards) is taken back to the Kerberos and stays with Maura. She tries in vain to squeeze any info out of him and finds a tattoo of an inverted pyramid with an intersecting horizontal line on his nape, similar to the logo on the envelope she received from her lost brother Henry. Eyk has the same envelope and starts having visions of his wife setting their house, along with their three children, on fire. Ángel sets his sights on Krester. One half of miserable French couple Lucien (Jonas Bloquet) takes interest in the geisha and is prodded by British socialite Virginia (Rosalie Craig) while the other half, Clémence (Mathilde Olivier), gets entangled with Jérôme, who is finally caught by the ship’s crew. The mysterious survivor introduces himself as Daniel (Aneurin Barnard) to Maura and later leads Krester and Tove’s young sister to him via his gold and green scarab beetle. Her petrified body, eyes wide open, is later found on deck. Eyk decides to turn the ship around and tow the Prometheus back to Europe against the passengers’ wishes and the company’s order to sink it.

1899: Episode 1

1. The Ship

1899. Four months after the disappearance of the Prometheus, sister ship Kerberos sails the Atlantic with European immigrants en route to New York. Neurologist Maura Franklin (Emily Beecham) is haunted by nightmarish visions. She volunteers to help out a young Dane, Krester (Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen), in the lower deck whose pregnant sister Tove (Clara Rosager) is having contractions. Captain Eyk Larsen (Andreas Pietschmann) receives a coded message, coordinates, presumably from the lost ship and changes course to find it. The first class passengers are not happy, among them Spanish siblings Ángel (Miguel Bernardeau) and his brother Ramiro (José Pimentão) who’s pretending to be a priest. Polish stoker Olek (Maciej Musiał) and French stowaway Jérôme (Yann Gael) are obliged to accompany Eyk, Maura, and Ramiro as they approach the missing ship. They find a survivor, a mute boy who hands over a pyramid to Maura. Unbeknownst to them, another survivor swims towards their ship and enters room 1013.

Disenchanted

♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

Years have passed since Giselle (Amy Adams) and Robert (Patrick Dempsey) decided to tie the knot. Morgan (Gabriella Baldacchino) is now an angsty teenager in a love-hate relationship with her stepmother. The family’s eventual move along with their new baby Sofia to the suburb of Monroeville does not help bridge the widening gap between the two. Enter King Edward (James Marsden) and Queen Nancy (Idina Menzel) of Andalasia who bring with them a housewarming gift, that of a magical wand that only a true daughter of the kingdom can use. Disenchanted with the ever changing dynamics of her life in suburbia, Giselle succumbs to the temptation of making a wish, making their lives less of a midlife crisis and more of a fairytale. Robert is suddenly fighting trolls instead of handling cases. Morgan is not passive-aggressive anymore and trapped in the poor stepdaughter trope, while Giselle gradually turns into the stereotypical wicked stepmother in loggerheads with now queen of Monroelasia Malvina Monroe (Maya Rudolph). This is surely NOT the happily ever after they were aiming for.

Enchanted (2007)

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In the literally animated land of Andalasia, Prince Edward (James Edward) finds his bride and future queen in Giselle (Amy Adams), your stereotypical Disney princess who has a fondness for singing and talking to animals. This does not sit well with reigning Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon), the prince’s wicked stepmother who does not plan on losing her crown anytime soon, which is why she enlists the help of ever-loyal servant Nathaniel (Timothy Spall) to get rid of the princess wannabe. She leads and pushes her down a wishing well where she emerges on the other side of the human world as a human being, in the middle of busy Times Square. Despite not being an animated character anymore, her out-of-this world demeanor eventually leads her to divorce lawyer Robert Philip (Patrick Dempsey), a single dad to daughter Morgan (Rachel Covey) and soon to be married to his fashion designer fiancee Nancy Tremaine (Idina Menzel). Soon, polar opposite beliefs about love collide. Will these two get their happily ever after?

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

King T’Challa’s untimely death sets the world up on a mad scramble for Wakanda’s Vibranium resources. Unable to penetrate the country’s defenses, the CIA leads an underwater expedition to look for the precious element elsewhere in the deep, unwittingly unearthing a lost civilization harboring their own natural trove of Vibranium reserves. Unlike Wakanda, Talokan has no intention of revealing itself to the surface world, a sentiment made perfectly clear by its king Namor (Tenoch Huerta), a centuries-old mutant with winged ankles who pays Wakanda a visit to find out whether they are ally or foe. As the two nations jostle for jurisdiction over Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), the student who invented the Vibranium locator used to find Talokan, Shuri (Letitia Wright) and her mother Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) must play their cards right especially now that their kingdom’s survival is at stake in the absence of a Black Panther.

[KOROR] Budget and Itinerary

FRIDAY: 4 November 2022

United (Manila - Koror - Manila) - 825.00

DW Motel (4 Nights) - 256.00

Belau Tours (RT Airport Transfer) - 35.00

USD1,116.00

[KOROR] How the Heck Did the Germans Get Here

Coming back from Saudi Arabia left me in a mini dilemma of sorts. You see, Saudi Arabia was country number 99 for me in the UN+ counting system and I had no more trips left for the year. But Yayaaaaaaaa, can’t we hit 100 before 2022 ends? Or better yet, before THIS WEEK ends? And so, I looked at my world map. The only country left within a two to three hour flight from Manila that I hadn’t visited yet was Palau. Well, sheesh, Yaya, we both know this is going to be effing expensive. And then Yaya showed me the credit card. Bad Yaya.