2018.04.24
Resubscribe to HBO just to watch Westworld.
After the mysterious season one ender, there's a surprising amount of actual new information, but still no visit to the real world. More like the real world comes to us, in the form of soldiers and some salvage mission.
Now more than ever, you don't know who's human and who's a repli^H^H^H^H^H rob^H^H^H host. But now we've seen the hosts brain, and its a plasticy metally structure the size of an orange inside the skull - you'd think this would be trivial to scan for, even at a distance. These soldiers should have equipment that lets them easily do this, but the plot seems to require they don't.
The conversation between the man in black / park owner and the park operator / Anthony Hopkins as a kid felt really cool and pivotal to the story, and utterly undercut by the weird voice affect they decided to shoehorn in. It almost worked, but it was so overproduced I couldn't make out the words.
That was a very nice episode one, looking forward to next Sunday.
2018.05.18
About four or five episodes in. I've been wondering if the real world was going to be exotic or mundane, they went with mundane. I'm a little disappointed, I guess I wanted to see a clean and antiseptic utopia, to contrast the dirty and chaotic theme parks. Or maybe aliens. Well, there's still always time for it to turn out that the human race died long ago, and newer model A.I.s are playing with the old.
Just how real world is the theme park? It seems huge, and yet there's never any air traffic. Now that the park is in a state of emergency, why not send in the air cavalry to take back the park? Why isn't there a backup command center in case the inner one falls? Why isn't there a kill switch that would shut down every bot in the park. I'm still extending credit on suspension of disbelief, but I feel like I'm not going to get my money back.
2018.08
I guess I never wrote anything about the ending of season two? I guess it left that little of an impression on me. I'm not sure if this show is just flailing about, struggling to stretch the narrative to deal with unexpected success, or if they're actually going somewhere with this. I feel like its the second Matrix movie, where they are obviously starting to go off the rails, but we're hoping they can still save it.
Monday, April 23, 2018
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Travelers season 1-2 (2016-2017)
2018.04.12
Three episodes in, it starts out promising.
Reminds me of Sense8 (diverse personalities and roles, becoming a team), Source Code (sending people into the past to change it or learn from it), Dollhouse (downloading new personalities), Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (sending personnel, equipment, and messages into the past to accomplish objectives). It also has a Vancouver kind of early seasons X-Files vibe, which may or may not be intentional.
Let's see where this goes.
2018.04.16
Spoilers, always on, but now especially. I just got to the episode where stuff is really starting to happen. It's been all setup, and now the various travelers are coming together to do something. And we learn a fair bit about what went wrong in their past, and why its so important to stop it.
I really like the engineer, except for the few moments where she needs to carry the idiot ball to create some tension. It's possibly the most important moment in human history, and she dismisses the help so she can stay behind and turn the switch herself. She's so adamant about doing things by the numbers, but she's willing to throw it all away to save a handful of lives who will probably be erased in a few minutes anyway?
Still, as frustratingly poorly written as that was, it was worth it to see one soldier after another get "possessed" until finally the boss bad guy seems to get what's going on, turns the gun on himself, only to be out of bullets, get possessed, and turn the key himself in a moment of triumph. You can almost see the slow mad scramble in the future as they line up people to go back and soak up the bullets and get the job done.
I was starting to get bored of this show as it veered into a procedural, and then it squarely brings it back into sci-fi. The fact that the team, after mission success, doesn't get erased is nice extra moment of awesome, but then you realize its a TV show, we've invested a lot into these actors and characters, and we can't just toss them away. I hope what comes next can live up to this.
2018.04.18
And another nice subversion, as you think a character is going one way, goes another way, and as it turns out the organization is not so dumb and had a contingency plan. Interesting that everyone present gets to vote on the fate of the traitor.
Its also an economical bit of storytelling that the person sent back to be a prisoner for life finds being a prisoner here more satisfying than being free in the future.
2018.04.22
Now that's a season ender. I like how things are getting more and more sci-fi. Of course the director is an AI, makes nothing but sense. Can't wait for season 2.
2018.05.08
Almost done with season two, and I feel a growing sadness that it will end soon. All the things I like about this show just keep on growing. I love how this show looks like it was made on TV show budget, but keeps out sci-fi'ing shows and movies with many times its budget. I like how much of the show is quiet and thoughtful, and doesn't fall into stupid writing and plot holes.
I search for travelers season three renew, and it looks like shooting started in March, so hopefully it will be less than a year from now before there's more.
2018.05.15
Finished season two. Good ending, it makes sense. I was just thinking earlier today that if any travelers were discovered they would seem like a terrorist cell. It only makes sense that their global pattern of activity would generate signals that even current intelligence could detect.
Traveler 001, and his shrink, don't make nearly as much sense, cool reveal aside. And what device is traveler 14 building? A way to re-download himself, like Marcy, but better this time? Or am I missing something like traveler 001 used it to transfer himself into his shrink? I think I missed something there.
You have to wonder how they could possibly reset things for season three, but this show has demonstrated many times how to smooth over temporal incursions. But even if they do, they won't be able to reset their loved ones. I'm really looking forward to season three, but its going to be later this year at soonest.
2018.05.18
I've been using the metric "am I still thinking about it" more and more on everything, and I'm still thinking about this show. There's so much that hasn't been revealed yet, I'm just running scenarios on what the future is like, where the story can go, etc.
Three episodes in, it starts out promising.
Reminds me of Sense8 (diverse personalities and roles, becoming a team), Source Code (sending people into the past to change it or learn from it), Dollhouse (downloading new personalities), Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (sending personnel, equipment, and messages into the past to accomplish objectives). It also has a Vancouver kind of early seasons X-Files vibe, which may or may not be intentional.
Let's see where this goes.
2018.04.16
Spoilers, always on, but now especially. I just got to the episode where stuff is really starting to happen. It's been all setup, and now the various travelers are coming together to do something. And we learn a fair bit about what went wrong in their past, and why its so important to stop it.
I really like the engineer, except for the few moments where she needs to carry the idiot ball to create some tension. It's possibly the most important moment in human history, and she dismisses the help so she can stay behind and turn the switch herself. She's so adamant about doing things by the numbers, but she's willing to throw it all away to save a handful of lives who will probably be erased in a few minutes anyway?
Still, as frustratingly poorly written as that was, it was worth it to see one soldier after another get "possessed" until finally the boss bad guy seems to get what's going on, turns the gun on himself, only to be out of bullets, get possessed, and turn the key himself in a moment of triumph. You can almost see the slow mad scramble in the future as they line up people to go back and soak up the bullets and get the job done.
I was starting to get bored of this show as it veered into a procedural, and then it squarely brings it back into sci-fi. The fact that the team, after mission success, doesn't get erased is nice extra moment of awesome, but then you realize its a TV show, we've invested a lot into these actors and characters, and we can't just toss them away. I hope what comes next can live up to this.
2018.04.18
And another nice subversion, as you think a character is going one way, goes another way, and as it turns out the organization is not so dumb and had a contingency plan. Interesting that everyone present gets to vote on the fate of the traitor.
Its also an economical bit of storytelling that the person sent back to be a prisoner for life finds being a prisoner here more satisfying than being free in the future.
2018.04.22
Now that's a season ender. I like how things are getting more and more sci-fi. Of course the director is an AI, makes nothing but sense. Can't wait for season 2.
2018.05.08
Almost done with season two, and I feel a growing sadness that it will end soon. All the things I like about this show just keep on growing. I love how this show looks like it was made on TV show budget, but keeps out sci-fi'ing shows and movies with many times its budget. I like how much of the show is quiet and thoughtful, and doesn't fall into stupid writing and plot holes.
I search for travelers season three renew, and it looks like shooting started in March, so hopefully it will be less than a year from now before there's more.
2018.05.15
Finished season two. Good ending, it makes sense. I was just thinking earlier today that if any travelers were discovered they would seem like a terrorist cell. It only makes sense that their global pattern of activity would generate signals that even current intelligence could detect.
Traveler 001, and his shrink, don't make nearly as much sense, cool reveal aside. And what device is traveler 14 building? A way to re-download himself, like Marcy, but better this time? Or am I missing something like traveler 001 used it to transfer himself into his shrink? I think I missed something there.
You have to wonder how they could possibly reset things for season three, but this show has demonstrated many times how to smooth over temporal incursions. But even if they do, they won't be able to reset their loved ones. I'm really looking forward to season three, but its going to be later this year at soonest.
2018.05.18
I've been using the metric "am I still thinking about it" more and more on everything, and I'm still thinking about this show. There's so much that hasn't been revealed yet, I'm just running scenarios on what the future is like, where the story can go, etc.
Sunday, April 8, 2018
Black Mirror season 4 (2017)
Just caught up with the last episode of Season 4, because completionism. Black Mirror looks like good modern cyberpunk tv, but it is the opposite. Black Mirror is written by people who don't understand sci-fi, barely understand cyberpunk, and rarely understand even good story-telling. It's Twilight Zone For Dummies.
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