Stranger Things (Netflix) [Spoiler Thread]

[Spockydog]

3 minutes ago, Martini Sigil said:

I would like to know what Mathew Modine was trying to accomplish in the first place.... What practical application did he think opening another dimension would have?

Pretty sure it was just an unexpected side effect of his experiments.

 

[Slurktan]

4 hours ago, Martini Sigil said:

I would like to know what Mathew Modine was trying to accomplish in the first place.... What practical application did he think opening another dimension would have?

I thought it was pretty obvious and they showed/spelled it out with the flashbacks.  Eleven was going to spy on/assassinate Ruskies from the alternate dimension.

[karaddin]

Yeah, my read of the sequence of events is:

• Pushes Eleven to kill the cat, she refuses then flips out and slaughters the guards when they try put her in the cell
• Starts training Eleven to find people and listen to them
• After some time practising this, they start putting her in the sensory deprivation tank
• While continuing with the 'finding people', presumably further and further away, she stumbles across the demogorgon in the upside down (which is why I don't think it can simply be her fears - its already there) and gets really scared - they pull her out
• Having identified an alien life form they decide to make contact, its a big deal and all the big wigs show up etc. When Eleven makes contact, it scares the hell out of her and she trashes the place, setting off the alarms and something in either her freak out, or the demogorgon following her 'essence' (if you will) as she retreats back to her body, tears open the gate.
• Demogorgon comes through said gate in the chaos of the destruction from her freak out, and the opening of the gate.  Eleven escapes the institution and Demogorgon snatches the guy we see trying to run away in the first scene (we don't see him again, right?) -- the gate opening and the escape is T=0 for the show
• They then start sending guys through the gate, trying to figure out what the hell is going on and sending hazmat teams around to decontaminate residue left.

The initial episodes gave the impression they'd been cleaning up this kind of evidence for some time, but we aren't given indications of any other event that would have made Eleven escape or aided her in doing so, and their general lack of knowledge about the upside down, the disappearances having only started that week etc all line up with it only just having blown up.

[Kyoshi]

7 hours ago, Spockydog said:

*slow clap*

ETA: I know it's a spoiler thread and all that, but I'm pretty sure Red Snow's curiosity was rhetorical.

 

Sorry.

[Isis]

We had the Spotify playlist for the show on at our wedding celebration this weekend. It was very popular.

[Theda Baratheon]

On 30/07/2016 at 5:13 AM, drawkcabi said:

I finished this yesterday.

This is MY show!!!

Just the best from beginning to end. Loved the actors, the story, the directing, and most of all 80's nostalgia!

I also thought it was amazing how all the actors (the kids mostly) looked familiar like actors I've seen in other 80's movies or shows. Part of it was how they dressed and talked, wore their hair, but part of it was how they actually looked, they just had the 80's kid look.

I didn't know this show was being made, heard nothing about it, just one day there it was available to stream on Netflix. The most wonderful surprise of the summer!

I thought of you when I watched it with all the 80s throwback I knew you'd love it!!

[Theda Baratheon]

14 hours ago, karaddin said:

Yeah, my read of the sequence of events is:

• Pushes Eleven to kill the cat, she refuses then flips out and slaughters the guards when they try put her in the cell
• Starts training Eleven to find people and listen to them
• After some time practising this, they start putting her in the sensory deprivation tank
• While continuing with the 'finding people', presumably further and further away, she stumbles across the demogorgon in the upside down (which is why I don't think it can simply be her fears - its already there) and gets really scared - they pull her out
• Having identified an alien life form they decide to make contact, its a big deal and all the big wigs show up etc. When Eleven makes contact, it scares the hell out of her and she trashes the place, setting off the alarms and something in either her freak out, or the demogorgon following her 'essence' (if you will) as she retreats back to her body, tears open the gate.
• Demogorgon comes through said gate in the chaos of the destruction from her freak out, and the opening of the gate.  Eleven escapes the institution and Demogorgon snatches the guy we see trying to run away in the first scene (we don't see him again, right?) -- the gate opening and the escape is T=0 for the show
• They then start sending guys through the gate, trying to figure out what the hell is going on and sending hazmat teams around to decontaminate residue left.

The initial episodes gave the impression they'd been cleaning up this kind of evidence for some time, but we aren't given indications of any other event that would have made Eleven escape or aided her in doing so, and their general lack of knowledge about the upside down, the disappearances having only started that week etc all line up with it only just having blown up.

My exact thoughts. This alternate world always existed, government did experiments with LSD and such to figure out how to get there. They find an alien life form which exists in this alternate world and then get El to make contact, thinking she'll be fine as its not ''real'' in this world, totally underestimating her powers and then shes so disturbed and frightened she creates a gate between the worlds and the monster gets in. 

 LOVED THIS SHOW 

[Leofric]

51 minutes ago, Theda Baratheon said:

My exact thoughts. This alternate world always existed, government did experiments with LSD and such to figure out how to get there. They find an alien life form which exists in this alternate world and then get El to make contact, thinking she'll be fine as its not ''real'' in this world, totally underestimating her powers and then shes so disturbed and frightened she creates a gate between the worlds and the monster gets in. 

 LOVED THIS SHOW 

I don't think the government had any idea the alternate world existed.   I think they were stumbling around the whole time.  They were using drug cocktails and other experiments on volunteers to try and come up with some way to make people into weapons and were failing until they accidently did the experiments on a pregnant woman and realized the baby had been born with gifts of telekinesis, telepathy and maybe more, so they stole her from her mother.  

They tried to make Eleven a weapon by having her use her telekinesis.  But when they tried to have her kill a cat, they only succeeded in teaching her how to defend herself against them when they tried to punish her for refusing.

Then they tried to turn her into a tool for spying on conversations.  But while trying to expand Eleven's telepathic abilities, she stumbled upon the Upside Down.   Then without listening to El's fears and no understanding of what was going on, they forced her to try to make contact with the inhabitants of the the alternate world, leading to the opening of the Gate and the release of the demigorgon and all that followed.

[Theda Baratheon]

1 hour ago, Leofric said:

I don't think the government had any idea the alternate world existed.   I think they were stumbling around the whole time.  They were using drug cocktails and other experiments on volunteers to try and come up with some way to make people into weapons and were failing until they accidently did the experiments on a pregnant woman and realized the baby had been born with gifts of telekinesis, telepathy and maybe more, so they stole her from her mother.  

They tried to make Eleven a weapon by having her use her telekinesis.  But when they tried to have her kill a cat, they only succeeded in teaching her how to defend herself against them when they tried to punish her for refusing.

Then they tried to turn her into a tool for spying on conversations.  But while trying to expand Eleven's telepathic abilities, she stumbled upon the Upside Down.   Then without listening to El's fears and no understanding of what was going on, they forced her to try to make contact with the inhabitants of the the alternate world, leading to the opening of the Gate and the release of the demigorgon and all that followed.

Okay thats pretty close to what I thought anyway but it does make sense them not knowing about it until el...

[RumHam]

1 hour ago, Leofric said:

They were using drug cocktails and other experiments on volunteers to try and come up with some way to make people into weapons and were failing until they accidently did the experiments on a pregnant woman and realized the baby had been born with gifts of telekinesis, telepathy and maybe more, so they stole her from her mother.  

That makes me think, once they realized they gave Eleven powers by accident, they must have started doing the MKULTRA stuff on pregnant woman intentionally, right? Though it's kinda weird that Eleven is 11, and not One. I'm really curious who 1-10 were. Maybe the adults involved in the program like Eleven's mother, but ten seems like a really low number of test subjects for MKULTRA. I guess maybe they only had ten subjects at that facility while other MKULTRA experiments were occurring elsewhere. 

[SpaceChampion]

Maybe the numbers are only fixed to project subjects that are successful.  Say she had a different case identifier before, and once they realised she was a potential weapon, was redubbed Eleven.  The other 10 (or however many there are) might be from entirely different projects with hundreds of subjects, but only those 10 advanced to the second stage before Eleven did.

Therefore they could do multiple seasons with entirely different monsters / powers each season.

 

[KiDisaster]

Finished the season last night, really great show all the way through. Super impressed by the kid actors. They were all fantastic. Toothless is the man. 

But what kind of weaksauce end of campaign monster dies from one fireball? Mike needs to step his DM game up. 

[RumHam]

That could be it too. I thought about it a little more after I made my last post and have a question. They took her at birth, all ready with the fake miscarriage story and everything, right? How did they know she'd be special? I kinda doubt she had observable powers in the womb or even as a newborn. Just a hunch? 

[Corvinus85]

Just now, RumHam said:

That could be it too. I thought about it a little more after I made my last post and have a question. They took her at birth, all ready with the fake miscarriage story and everything, right? How did they know she'd be special? I kinda doubt she had observable powers in the womb or even as a newborn. Just a hunch? 

Continuation of the experiment, my guess. They pumped her mom up with those drugs to give her powers. Then they realize she is pregnant, so they decide to observe the child. It's also possible that they even observed something in El's DNA before birth.

[Astromech]

I thought Eleven was just a nice combination of Firestarter and D.A.R.YL. I obviously haven't thought about it as much as other boarders seem to have.

[RumHam]

1 minute ago, Corvinus said:

Continuation of the experiment, my guess. They pumped her mom up with those drugs to give her powers. Then they realize she is pregnant, so they decide to observe the child. It's also possible that they even observed something in El's DNA before birth.

Was that possible in the 70's? I really have no idea. 

[red snow]

23 hours ago, Spockydog said:

*slow clap*

ETA: I know it's a spoiler thread and all that, but I'm pretty sure Red Snow's curiosity was rhetorical.

 

It was - I just didn't want to be stating something that's probably being discussed to death in the thread without spoiling it for myself.

Now I've finished I'm still not ruling out the possibility that Elle is Hopper's daughter. There was something eerie about the flashbacks to his daughter in the final episode eg her freaking out. The (I assume) brain tumour may just have been how she got her powers. And they already established that the government were good at switching out bodies. The catotonic mother may well be the parent of 10 or 12 - it just seemed like a red herring because it was too neat. That and the doll that turned up.

Thought the show was really well done. I loved all the 80s film references and how they were obvious but not remake obvious. eg Eleven was pretty much ET throughout (living in the basement, getting the makeover - all building up to the bike/government chase where you almost expected the bikes to fly). A lot of the other nods were largely visual in nature.

The show deserves points for telling a story from multiple age-points too. It was nice to see the kids, teens and parents all having their own adventures and culminating together. Maybe have some grandparents next season as well?

I'll mention again the quality of the acting. I thought the actor playing Hopper did a great job. Pretty much everything else I've seen him in has him playing a Federal Agent and/or a psychopath (he sometimes looks a bit like a less ginger "Dexter") but in this show we got to see a lot more range.

I know the show has to cut characters somewhere but it struck me as odd how two of the kids never seemed to have parents (or ones that cared). Just seemed a bit odd them not turning up at the hospital at the end vs Mike's parents turning up.

I really enjoyed the show - it was something a bit different and was what I'd hoped "super 8" would be. I like how netflix keep doing different types of show as well. This one more than filled the void of the delayed "sens8" season 2. I hope they keep being diverse in this way.

[RumHam]

13 minutes ago, red snow said:

Now I've finished I'm still not ruling out the possibility that Elle is Hopper's daughter.

Respectfully, you probably should! Apart from the fact that they were played by two different actresses and Hopper would presumably recognize his own daughter (who I believe was blond while what little hair Eleven has is dark.) It's just much more interesting I think if Eleven ends up being a surrogate for the daughter he lost next season, rather than actually being her. If they were going that way I think they'd have revealed it in season one. I don't think they were counting on a second season prior to seeing the positive reaction the show got. 

Another thing I meant to mention but keep forgetting to, apparently Dr. Brenner is still alive. I thought he was dead but read an interview a few days back where one of the Duffer brothers said that if they were going to kill him it would have been more explicit and final. 

[red snow]

5 minutes ago, RumHam said:

 It's just much more interesting I think if Eleven ends up being a surrogate for the daughter he lost next season, rather than actually being her.

Totally agree that's a better way to go.

[A_Cornered_Wolf]

On 7/31/2016 at 6:45 PM, Martini Sigil said:

I would like to know what Mathew Modine was trying to accomplish in the first place.... What practical application did he think opening another dimension would have?

Well, originally Eleven is part of (apparently) and extension of MK-Ultra and she seemed to be astrally projecting which was being used to spy on the Soviets.  It looks like she was astrally projecting through the UpsideDown and drew the attention of something there.

When the scientist found this out, he in typical obsessed scientist fashion, wants to know more without considering the possible consequences which ended up being opening the gate after Eleven's encounter.

And of course once the gate was open, he still needed to know more so...