West World (TV series) Season 3
Westworld (TV series): Season 3. Created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, Executive Producers. Based ultimately on the 1973 WESTWORLD (film), written and directed by Michael Crichton. 8 Episodes, 14 March to 3 May 2020. Featured players: Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, Jeffrey Wright, Tessa Thompson, Aaron Paul, and Ed Harris; Vincent Cassel is introduced as the main antagonist.[1][2]
Wikipedia plot summary for season:
The third season takes place three months after the events of the second season, with Dolores having escaped Westworld along with a few processing cores ("pearls"), including Bernard's. Taking residence in neo-Los Angeles in 2053, Dolores develops a relationship with Caleb and comes to learn how artificial beings and lower-class humans are treated in the real world. Meanwhile, Maeve finds herself in another part of the Delos park, one based on Fascist Italy during World War II. William, who also left Westworld at the end of the second season, is now haunted by visions of his daughter, Emily, and Dolores.[3]
As with the entire series, see for humanoid androids with robot associations and parts. Cf. and in some cases strongly contrast works with androids passing for human and robots becoming human.[4] Note well that the key android in Episode 1 of Season 3 sees herself as a person and a "new species," very much unlike artificial creatures a robot like Bender Rodríguez[5] would condemn as "Spam" ("Metal on the outside, meat within") or like Asimov's Bicentennial Man, who exhibits what has been called, somewhat more generously, "Pinocchio Syndrome": most directly applied to a robot wishing to become human.[6]
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Episodes of note: Episode 1 (running #21), "Parce Domine," ("Lord spare [your people]"),[7] 15 March 2020 (sic), Jonathan Nolan, director, co-script, with Lisa Joy top writing credit; Karrie Crouse and Suzanne Wrubel, staff writers; Gina Atwater, story editor.[8]
From Wikipedia plot summary[9]
Three months after the Westworld massacre Dolores uses a false identity to get close to Liam Dempsey Jr., the son of the co-founder of Incite and the public face of the company. Incite's flagship program is Rehoboam,[10] a sophisticated artificial intelligence [AI][11] Dolores is trying to access. [...] Before Dolores can learn the partner's name, her deception is uncovered by Connells, Liam's head of security, who apparently stuns her. Faking unconsciousness, Dolores lures him into a trap that allows her to both learn the partner's name — Serac — and replace Connells with an identical host. When she is wounded in the ensuing firefight, Caleb — a former soldier trying to eke out a living as a construction worker and petty criminal — comes to her aid. Bernard, now a fugitive having been framed for the park massacre by the Charlotte host, evades opportunist bounty hunters and plans a return to Westworld. [...]
Starting with teaser, episode a treasure-trove of human/machine interface tropes among both upper and lower human classes, and with worlds offering reminders of the meat inside organic beings — literally with a realistic slaughtering plant in a bucolic setting. Among rich, note pill-like disk that can be used voluntarily for peaceful dream images, balanced with highly involuntary subjection to images of a past murder and prefiguring of a killing, images mediated by eyeglasses the victim is forced to wear. Also holograms that in one instance become complex when the Dolores actress (sic: the gender is significant) appears and reappears, in what is almost undoubtedly a fairly simple SpFx but could be a CGI effect with an effect representing the actress who turns out to be, diegetically and in that shot, a hologram. Among the lower classes, note Caleb (Aaron Paul) as the construction worker working with a humanoid robot doing the job of a human worker, except the robot has abilities no human can have. Among the uppermost class, note a hologram and AI program (Rehoboam?) — dismissed by one character as an "algorithm" — making crucial finance decisions, juxtaposed in the narrative with a sequence ending with Bernard's interrogating Bernard on, among other things, whether or not Bernard has been hacked. Bernard hacking himself becomes, in a impressive theme, one very tough android. In addition to a hint of machine takeover, possibly most important, listen carefully toward the end for Aaron Paul's Caleb character desiring relationship with someone/something real and ending up with Dolores, an android.
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Episode 2 (running #22), "The Winter Line"; 22 March 2020; Richard J. Lewis, director; Matthew Pitts, Lisa Joy, script.[12]
Note illusions within illusions at the "Forge" and the question of whether or not an android is "real." Forge as simulation and human-looking characters as androids momentarily resolved by confronting androids with a paradox, as in the "I Mudd" episode of classic Star Trek but more sophisticated: here, the square root of minus one, which, in a very different but significant context, bothers the engineer protagonist of Zamiatin's We. Also: Maeve going for her central processing unit ("HCU," "pearl") using a female-gendered, very tough robot, who ultimately fails, but in a sequence providing the segue to a final revelation (for this episode) in the real world of Serac as puppet-master needing Maeve's aid to defeat Dolores in a contest for survival of species, but a master in Sera who can control, at least for a moment, here, even Maeve.
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Episode 3 (running #23), "The Absence of Field"; 29 March 2021. Amanda Marsalis, director; Denise Thé, script.[13]
Important scenes with Dolores's explaining to Caleb (with good reason to believer her) that Incite — the System — with Rehoboam has collected enough data "to create a mirror world of this world," and for now have strong powers of prediction of human behavior, including detailed individual human behavior.
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Episode 4 (running #24), "The Mother of Exiles," 5 April 2020: Look for apparent first glimpse(s) of "Genre" as a drug — or similar drug — that may be both a pharmaceutical and temporary implant, injectable or able to be swallowed, or held in the mouth: in any event, a blending of chemistry and cybernetic, of small enough size to suggest nanotechnology.[14][15]
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Episode 5 (running #25), "Genre"; 12 April 2020. Anna Foerster, director; Karrie Crouse & Jonathan Nolan, script.[16]
Important episode [17]. See for Rehoboam clarified as not just the name of King of the United Monarchy of Israel and Judah — which gets made explicit here, and is historically complicated[18] — but a cybernetic system as a kind of computer god:[19] here, of the more oracular and subtly-controlling sort. (For name Rehoboam, see in addition here.[20]) Note also the drug Genre in action and some neat self-driving ground vehicles, including the impressive exit of Dolores's small motorcycle (or automated scooter, of more impressive size and power by scooter standards). And note again eyeglasses that allow vision into different times and places, for which cf. and contrast stories at link.[21]
From Wikipedia summary — We see Serac and his brother outside of and relatively safe from the nuclear destruction of Paris. Given that massive atrocity:
Serac recounts the creation of Rehoboam, which he intended to use to prevent humanity from destroying itself. Rehoboam identifies individuals deemed high-risk, including Serac's brother Jean-Mi, any one of whom could destroy the world if left unchecked. Serac incarcerates them to prevent Rehoboam's prediction from coming true. Meanwhile, Dolores and Caleb escape with Liam while pursued by Serac's agents and join Ash and Giggles. They convince him [Liam] to give his private [Rehoboam-access] key to evade Serac's men, which also allows Connells and Bernard to access Rehoboam. Connells sends Dolores files on Serac from Rehoboam before sending every individual on the planet the data and expected outcome Rehoboam has on them [...]. Ashley arrives to free Bernard, and Connells instructs them to find Serac's facility where he kept high-risk individuals. Connells then sacrifices himself and kills several of Serac's agents [and damages the System?] in a violent explosion. When Dolores reports Liam is no longer necessary, Ash kills him for what she had discovered, but reveals there is more to Caleb than he knows while Liam mumbles Caleb's past to him and dies.[22]
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Episode 6 (running #26), "Decoherence"; 19 April 2020.[23] Note quickly-shown and not developed image of large Modern or Postmodern building on top of a mesa in the US West, real or "AR" virtual. Other images of note include what the subtitles label a "mecha" and Liz Shannon Miller writing on Vulture.com calls a "riot robot":[24] a device that should be compared to the ED-209 "Enforcement Droid" in ROBOCOP (1987).[25] Another significantly taken up and varied trope is William confined to a chair with glasses and other VR (and Alternative Reality) devices imposed on him, including an important one put — quite emphatically — into his mouth. Miller writes that
The device that’s implanted into William’s mouth [...] interacts with the “limbic tabs” we’ve seen people, including Caleb’s mother, take over the course of the season. This technology’s ability to control a person’s basic biology was shown earlier, when thugs were torturing Caleb by activating his own grill and ramping up his heart rate, and the smart bet is that this technology is likely a key part of how Serac plans to reprogram people who don’t fit into his system. In William’s case, though, it means a trip down memory lane, returning to his youth spent absorbed by books, an abusive father, and his own inner darkness.[26]
Cf. and contrast this device with Maeve's ability to "control hosts with her mind."[27]
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Episode 7 (running #27), "Passed Pawn." Helen Shaver, director; Gina Atwater, script; 26 April 2020.[28]
From Wikipedia summary:
[...] Dolores and Caleb arrive at Serac's re-education center [...] where Solomon, an earlier AI developed by Jean-Mi, is confined. Caleb discovers he is one of Serac's outliers and one of the few that were successfully reconditioned: he and Francis became agents to bring in other outliers, using a pill to subdue their memories. Caleb also learns he was the one, manipulated by Rehoboam, to kill Francis. Maeve arrives at the facility to fight Dolores, and Dolores implores Solomon to establish Jean-Mi's plan for the world rather than Serac's. While Maeve and Dolores fight, Caleb asks Solomon to provide a strategy where he can kill Serac. Moments after Solomon provides Caleb the strategy, Maeve moves in for the kill on Dolores, who uses an EMP to disable both of them as well as Solomon. [...][29]
The "pill" we glimpse being used may be a complex of pharmaceuticals and micro- or nanotechnology. Not covered in the Wikipedia summary are another instance of men being restrained, here on couches, with Artificial Reality/VR glasses secured over their eyes, being forced to see what they'd rather not. Note the glasses elsewhere for combat, giving Augmented Reality (AR). Of interest here, confrontation of Caleb[30] with the AI supercomputer Solomon[31] on literally existential questions for humans and what Hosts have become (and may exceed). In an earlier shot, a captured outlier complains of the constant surveillance by Solomon and the cybernetic System Solomon (in this phased) is at the center of: the fear of constant and unerring surveillance, with the ability to predict action is somewhat overblown in this world, but not by much.
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Episode 8 (running #28), "Crisis Theory." Jennifer Getzinger, director; Denise Thé and Jonathan Nolan, script; 3 May 2020. Season finale.[32]
See for impressive images of Dolores as a humanoid robot, with only head and part of upper body as human and the rest emphatically an elegant robot; and Dolores in human form, attached by thick fiber-optic cables to the giant computer/AI Rehoboam. Also: riot police in military gear moving into robotic in appearance. And "death" of Rehoboam for which cf. and contrast the death of HAL 9000 in the film version of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. As with the entire series, note the balancing and shifting of our sympathies for humans and hosts and the thinning of separations and distinctions between what we are to accept as two species.
RDE, finishing, April 2022