Westworld (TV series): "Kiksuya"

Westworld (TV series): "Kiksuya" ("Remember" [Lakota]).[1] Season 2, episode 8 (10 June 2018),[2], no. for series 18.[3]

A very fine episode in the Westworld series and important for Clockworks2 issues for the character development, primarily, that makes the episode good art.[4]

Note classic shot in SF film of what would ordinarily be an incongruous element in frame with a high-tech setting that has become familiar: Akecheta[5] as a Ghost Nation warrior in the underworld of a control center for Westworld, especially Akecheta's descending on an escalator. We have a Host in the role of an American Plains Indian in traditional costume on a kind of spirit quest to find the Truth of his world and also his beloved Kohana,[6] for a rich mixing of motifs including the Greco-Roman story of Orpheus's seeking his wife Eurydice in the underworld.[7] I.e., we have then a variety of robot in what we humans like to think of as admirably human roles and activities, continuing a theme of Host nobility from the preceding episode, "Les Écorchés".

Crying is not a uniquely human behavior — nor love nor mourning — but they are traditional signs of humanity as opposed to the mechanical or robotic. Note all of the above in Akecheta, his wife Kohona, and surprisingly for the tears, Maeve,[8] in an obviously Host-like situation, and the cynical writer Lee Sizemore.[9]

The audience can't be sure, but Akecheta tells Robert Ford[10] (in an encounter Ford may have arranged) that he, Akecheta, was given the drive to preserve his tribe and its honor, but "I have myself a new drive, to spread the truth"; and when Ford asks "What truth is that," Akecheta tells of his learning that there are many worlds and "We live in the wrong one," knowledge that will help him and others "find the door" out to a better world, or at least out. 

Also in this episode, look and listen for, a scientific or at least science-fictional explanation for Maeve's ability to order other hosts telepathically. In the "Body Shop," the White-guy Host surgeon/butcher/IT-tech explains to Charlotte Hale[11] that "With every reset, a host code reaches out to other nearby hosts and establishes a sort of handshake protocol." Hale: "A mesh network." "They access it subconsciously to pass basic data to one another. But what if they could pass more than data? What if they could pass commands?" The "point" here includes that in this part in the story anyway, Maeve, and perhaps only Maeve has "admin access" to Westworld's and Park's controlling computer systems and can "telepathically" change codes, even while confined on an operating table and facing a final death.

RDE, Initial Compiler