Seeing as Netflix suggests all kinds of wacky S-F animation for me, I ended up watching “Exception”. Aside from refreshingly non-cardboard character designs, and ridiculously expository dialogue, what caught my eye were the displays on all kinds of computers, consoles and mobiles the characters are using.
See, they didn’t go for some random blurred nonsense. It SEEMED like nonsense at start, I mean:
But then, in episode 3, something caught my eye.
The letters matched just too well for me to ignore. Hello, rabbit hole.
(Then again, I should’ve been more observant, as I totally missed this screen, a veritable Rosetta stone, which – after a little processing – would’ve saved me a LOT of guesswork. Yes, they’re using QWERTY.)
Numbers? Here, have a convenient keypad screen:
I ended up transcribing the whole blocky alphabet, at this point learning it pretty much by heart, and I went back through the episodes I watched so far, display by display, console by console. Did the creators fill their displays with realistic labels? Or is it all nonsense? Or will I find pancake recipes and Lorem Ipsum in all the wrong places? Let’s dig in!
Before we begin…
So here’s a conundrum.
The language used in “Exception” is obviously English, as I demonstrated above. The font may be a blocky invention, but it’s still all English underneath.
Then, a wounded character writes on walls in plain, good, old Latin alphabet:
So, why design an “alien” font, especially one not really fit for handwriting? Just to make it harder to spot nonsense on computer displays? Tsk, tsk. It’d look so much better if the writings were in a handwritten form of the blocky font. Here’s how I’d imagine the above “WANT LIVE”, in print, and in wall scratches:
Yeah, yeah, I’m expecting consistency in a sci-fi series, sue me. 😛
Anyway, onto the transcripts!
Episode 1
Yes, there are typos, “MEDIACL”! 🙂 (The top 20/0101 may still be loading, it’s correct below.)
Well, not everything is readable. Not for lack of trying! But those “BODYSTATUS” and “CHART” repetitions are getting old.
There’s a pulse in BPM, there’s a joule readout?, there’s pressure… and nonsense.
This was a tough one, at an angle.
How about some star charts. I think they ran out of ideas a little here. What’s EARTH doing among planets in a remote system..?
Just random letters here, I think.
Finally, some sort of Easter Egg! Too bad there’s random crap next to it, but hey, 404.
Nice, nice. A console all right, and they are talking about oxygen.
That would be it for episode 01, but I couldn’t resist peeking into 02. Oh, boy!
The first screen wasn’t giving me high hopes, what with the mirrored text and all. Have the creators gone lazy?
But I dared peek into the tiny, tiny text next to the planet.
Wait, INT, FLOAT, BOOLEAN RECORDING..? What is this..? Oh my, oh my, let me just google a little… Let’s see:
Distortion or smoke effect on parametric curves, and more general loop techniques
A-ha! So I wasn’t far off the mark! What code for a looping distortion is doing in a planet description? What were the artists working on, why THAT particular piece of code? One can only wonder. But hey, that’s what I came here for!
–
Well, that’s it for Exception episode 01. I’m not sure I’ll find the time to transliterate ALL the text in the series, that’d be rather insane. Still, this was a fun little adventure.
(Edit: I did transcribe everything, after all…)
Episode 2
If you say A, you should say B, or so they say. Here’s a breakdown of episode 02!
Some variables, stats, OK, looking good.
Nina analyses Misprint, with some randomness, but “life analysis” makes… well, at least some sense.
Whoops. Nina’s certificate has the alphabet on it, no oxygen, and food storage…
Oscar’s drones make some sense, even if the “apply” command has bad grammar. The “AMP” stats match the planet’s analysis screens from ep.01, but it could make sense to show them here.
Drone details: nonsense. There are some commands visible, but they’ll show up in more detail in future episodes.
Hey, nonsense code!
Nice to have a terminal connected, but Oscar’s mobile still shows the screen from ep.01.
Poor Mack, he lost the advantage point at the very last second.
Hello, easter egg! Couldn’t resist the Bowie vibe, eh, graphics designer? 🙂
Drones again, again making sense. Too bad it’s not very readable.
Here’s a good one! The whole screen may be misnamed as “pendant”, but there’s a description!
So much for descriptions.
And here’s the final scene, venting the hangar. It’s the pressure that should be dropping, or oxygen content, but it’s really temperature (and it’s actually rising).
That’s all folks – see you in Episode 03!
Episode 3
I just can’t stop now, can I. Especially when there’s so much curious goodness to find!
Nina ponders reprinting Lewis. Good, good.
Misprint tapping at the keypad, the first image that made me jump into this rabbit hole. Too bad there’s nonsense on the bottom panel.
Oscar’s phone initially contains nonsense. Also, why anonymous?
“Seenina”, and Mislewis is typing from the past.
Oscar catches the phone with the new message already on it, nice.
Mislewis, please learn to type. “Whith”?
Bah, they both need typing lessons… Or wait, Oscar is using speech-to-text, so why are there typos in HIS messages? And, sadly, timestamps never change. And I missed a typo; it says „THES DEVICE” in the first line.
Oh, this is a good one. Cryo pod inspection, although it’s flipped in the actual footage. Never mind the typos, it tried to make sense, so why the nonsense in the middle?
More messages, more bad voice recognition.
“Jave”, and Mislewis is typing from even deeper past. The hour on the phone hasn’t changed from 12:34, of course.
Mislewis is consistently in 12:30, and “needs” two authorizations, make a note here, please!
Mislewis is holding onto Nina’s phone here, still stuck on that message.
A-ha, “need” two authorizations here. Why not copy and paste? And now the timestamps don’t match.
Polar cap analysis, sadly, nonsense.
Or is it? We have Iceland here!
This one is a treasure trove of typos and errors. Never mind the “sattelite” and “unabble” – I’m more fascinated by “caeck”, with “a” being nowhere near “h” on a keyboard, but very similar in this font.
More nonsense, sorry.
There’s a lot of “scaning” going on here, but it’s a surprisingly good display, minus the nonsense in the corner. There’s even RAM, swap and pages shown, for some reason!
Phew. Three down, five to go!
Episode 4
Off to a bad start.
Mack’s phone still has Oscar’s printing notification on it.
Okay, the phone’s giving Mack a notification, but about what? He just picked up the phone and left..?
The atmospheric converter’s floor plan, all right.
Lewis makes typos, and types “her” despite saying “Nina”, and his timestamps are still 12:30, but the messages are otherwise fine.
Oh, so Mislewis’ phone is not anonymous anymore, now that he’s conspiring with his well-printed self. Also, “yout”, “dinnt”, “vomb”, and “devic”.
Correct.
Soil analysis. Was that supposed to be “X PLANET”, just the person hired for these texts was barely literate..?
We’re anonymous again. And… “someelse else”? Come on…
Who makes a typo in “to”, having just typed “go”..? Then “tatake”..?
I thought it was X planet. That’s no X.
Wait, so Lewis gave Patty a phone with the whole message history?
Everybody wants to be… my “emeny” 🎶︎
… Also, “gegging”. Eww.
Episode 5
Labeled cameras, good.
Gobbledygook galore, bad.
Cameras labeled differently, very good.
What’s APLANT? They ARE in the greenhouse, so I guess it has plants…
Drone panel stays consistent.
Sadly, the drones themselves don’t have much to say.
And no clever assembly hidden in the “halt code”, sorry.
Oh dear. Oscar doesn’t have a last name, he’s just an “enigeer”, or he’s “Oscer”. And Mack’s profession is… spacewalking. But hey, ages and heights!
Welp, more nonsense, and still Oscer. And that CONTINUE? window has overstayed its welcome by now.
This is the gold of the episode! The “planetary agency authorization” is… a blurb from sound effects on SoundCloud, probably used in the series!
Drones can have their BIOS updated, good. That nonsense mission script needs replacing, too.
Can’t update this one, sadly, we can only fjdsdf or dfjsdio it.
Oh dear. I like error messages, but I suspect English wasn’t someone’s first language here… Also, they’re just inspecting “stopped” drones here, what’s the danger and biological system doing here?
“Communication logs” aren’t much use.
That drone has options, at least, but not much of a schematic.
Hello again, CONTINUE window. But at least the code is correct!
Episode 6
Not a lot happening in this episode, screen-wise, but here’s what there is:
What’s “bloodsu”? Also, Mack’s ID is the same as Nina’s.
I get that Oscar’s supposedly on standby, to fool Mack, but how is Mack still printing, if he’s standing right there? Also, if those are body scans directly from the medical systems, poor Mack lacks some bits.
A better view at Mack’s console from Ep.02, but there’s no reason to show air or food settings now.
Planetary data. Makes some sense, except for that “Earth” in the corner. Also, now it’s just “Planet X”, not “X-10”, as everyone keeps calling it out by full name every single time…
Mack’s phone has the alphabet, and some of it upside down for some reason.
Oh, Oscar finished printing. Again.
Destroyed bio-hologram is erroring out. Fair enough.
Whew. Just 2 episodes to go.
Episode 7
Let’s get on with it!
Seen that one already.
Patty scans eyeballs. Some gibberish, but it’s the scanner interface all right.
Nice.
“Oscer” is back. And the old drone-mission window.
Nina, silly, you might want to scan the patient, not yourself!
Ohh, this is nice. An Easter egg! Someone’s a fan of Nana Mizuki.
Mad kudos to Nina if she can type anything on THAT. (Also, my bad: that’s S1 S2 S3 S3 S4 S5 S5 S6 S6 on top, not zeroes.)
Hacker wars! Nina vs Patty: “acess” granted reflected in eyeballs. Although technically Patty’s getting the “acess” a bit later, but never mind.
The drone doesn’t like being steered right back at the ship.
This is surprisingly good. There’s a “passwor dcracker”, there are (failed) password attempts, and some code pasted from hackertyper.net 😀
I told you.
The ship has better spelling, clearly.
Wait, wait, why are you printing Lewis again??
So very very wrong!
One to go!
Episode 8
Last episode, great plot letdown, but here we go anyway.
Ship is breaking down, screens start showing gibberish, makes sense.
Interestingly overworded (“possibillity”, “ofship”), but gibberish otherwise.
Camera titles.
Planet terrain, seen already.
Mack’s ship storage reused, oh so many times by now…
Wait a minute, what simulation?
Sadly, gibberish except the obvious error. But can you spot an RRO R404 hiding in the nonsense? 🙂
Crew: None0? Whaat? Also, some odd phrases on the side panel, not making much sense in the context.
Storage screen again, but this time with “sight” cameras.
Nina’s pod display is oddly good, especially since it shows for about 1 second only.
A split second later, same pod… “Arwificial” what..?
Broken pod screen: some random code and… medical results, up close for the first time!
Mack’s space robe. Cool indeed.
Camera inside the Beanstalk bio-terraforming device. Wait, it’s actually “beanbag”…
Aaahaha, someone forgot to switch fonts on the gibberish! Very well, I reverse-captioned it.
This one I actually had to piece together from several frames, but it’s quite surprisingly correct, even if overworded and right-aligned from Mack’s POV.
Again the English. 😉
The chemicals I could understand on a lab device, but this is a video redording (sic) of… Oscar, apparently.
And credits roll.
…
Whew. It’s been fun, I can now transcribe this silly, blocky font in real time without a cheat sheet, I didn’t need to flip that Mack’s helmet display to read it. Seeing as I have the knack for learning things surprisingly fast, and forgetting them disappointingly quickly afterwards, I can only wonder how long it takes me to forget these letters entirely.
See you in the next movie or game that has a weird font all over it, I guess? 🙂
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