Learning about Indian Vedic literature from a German television series sounds absurd. The western civilization adopted many Hindu ideas and philosophy in their own way, Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence is one such example. The philosophy was adopted from a concept called Kaalchakra (time-cycle) and Samsara (Sansaar or Universe). In the philosophy of Samsara, world exists in the form of cyclic turns (or Karmic cycle) which lasts forever until moksha (soul’s freedom). In Hindu civilization, we consider a successful life of a being after gaining moksha and until then the life is trapped in a circle of time (many rebirths).

The series Dark demonstrates the same theory through a hypothetical wormhole (a cave in Winden, Germany) that lets you pass through three different time-era 1953, 1986, and 2019. Each era consists of 33 year difference with one another. The plot carefully compares the Chernobyl disaster with its own German version of the Winden nuclear reactor. The director, Baran bo Odar, has cleverly set the timelines 1953 and 2019 with a gap of 33 years from the 1986 incident. A similar concept was adopted with a difference of 30 years in the movie, Back to the Future with 1955, 1985, and 2015. Unlike Back to the Future where only Marty McFly along with two more characters travelled through time, the characters in this series travel through time as and when needed. Everyone has the idea of correcting the timeline and still everyone is the victim of it.

The plot is cleverly written and is performed well by the actors. The character Hannah Kahnwald from 1986 played by Ella Lee looked too cute to be a woman with a twisted mind. Other actors have been chosen well for the series. All actors portray their characters with a finesse. The most interesting thing is the cinematography and a spooky background score that keeps the show alive throughout the season. Ben Frost, the music director did well on all fronts. Baran bo Odar is not very well known to me but at least his screenplay and direction in the movie Who am I attracted me to the show. His colleague Jantje Friese was co-writer of the movie and here also they share the screenplay.

The show depicts everything very well until I started thinking that who would have built those timeline gates in the Winden caves. There’s one interesting character of Claudia from the future who looks strange and appeal suspicion. The season one of the series ends with a completely different timeline. Somewhere into the future where the 2019 Jonas Kahnwald meets a crew of rebels. Though I’m not sure if this will circle back to his timeline, the series seems to go around loops and finish somewhere or sometime else. Like in String Theory, the vibration of each string can have its own reality and can trigger to create another, I fear if the entire story is spun as an outcome of a trigger event. We will surely see that in future.