I may never have seen that transition, when originally shown. I certainly had zero memories of the entire Leviathan storyline when I got hold of DS tapes in 2002 or so. When the hooded characters showed up, I was fascinated. From what little I could gather from what they said, it sounded as if anything were possible at this point, even the launching of events into the far distant future, which is what it actually sounded like to me, watching the tapes... or aliens, anything. It seemed that after the intricate symphony they'd just managed to pull off with 1897, all the interweaved storylines with the innumerable characters, all the elaborate sets and costumes, with the story progressing significantly with every half hour episode (unlike soaps usually--- they certainly knew people were watching at this point, and knew they didn't have to keep running over the same set of recent events to fill people in who'd missed a few)--- it seemed as if they maight be confident enough to try almost anything.
Unfortunately, it seems they were exhausted from all that, and needed to slow the pace down, with a simple storyline that crept along forever with almost nothing taking place in the course of any particular week.