First a gripe. This week Amazon Prime announced that they were canceling The Wheel of Time. Amazon is in business to make money, and it makes sense to cancel shows that don’t get viewership. But it seems like a lot of people didn’t even know the third season was out. Those who did felt like it was finally starting to grow into its own. Which in my mind indicates a failure of marketing, and reflects poorly on Amazon.
The new season of Love Death & Robots is out. As before, it doesn’t take long to go through the whole lot. There were a few that were pretty good, but a lot of silly ones this time. I like the occasional silly pieces mixed in, but too many start to spoil the appeal. One was a concert, which I found boring. Another was an apocalypse story told in miniature, similar to one from last season; the original was cute, but this time it felt repetitive. And one had a message that just didn’t resonate with me. So worth checking out, but I’m wondering if this show is starting to run out of steam.
I was slow to watch the first season of Andor when it came out. I initially bounced off of it. It seemed a bit too noirish for my tastes. Eventually all the accolades convinced me to revisit it, and I was surprised by how good it ended up being. The second season is even better. This is Star Wars mostly without all the force magic, just regular people forced into circumstances where the only option is to fight, one where the dystopian nature of the Star Wars universe is much more prevalent.
The first season showed the early stages of the rebellion. The second shows it forming into an organized alliance. But real rebellions are often messy and ugly, and the show gives us a taste of that. The high point of the season for me was Mon Mothma making a dramatic speech denouncing a genocidal act of the empire, and finally having to flee into hiding. Along the way, the show manages to evoke imagery from the French resistance in World War II, albeit with a tragic spiral.
Like a lot of the material in Star Wars TV, it also gives us insights into the bad guys, why they do what they do. So we see things from the perspective of the ISB, the empire’s secret security arm. There are comic book villains, but we follow Dedra and Syril, lovers who work for the empire, convinced that they’re doing the right thing.
For some reason, Disney decided to wrap the show up with this second season. Which means what looked like a four year arc was thrown into fast forward. It ended up working pretty well, but there’s a sense that a lot got skipped over. Still, if you want a Star Wars for grownups, this is definitely worth checking out.
The new season of Doctor Who was much better than the last. There were a couple of episodes I’d characterize as silly, but the rest were fairly serious. We get the answer to one of the mysteries left dangling from the previous season, which involved bringing back another villain from the original series. I’ve only seen a few episodes from the late 1980s, so the Rani was mostly new to me.
(SPOILER ALERT) I have to admit to being completely caught off guard by Ncuti Gatwa’s departure. I had seen rumors that he might be leaving, but that type of rumor seems constant with the recent Doctors, so I didn’t pay much attention. Billie Piper famously played Rose in the first couple seasons of the revived show. Her playing the next Doctor is an interesting choice. There’s speculation out there that she might be too expensive to be the Doctor on a sustained basis, and that it might only be for a few specials, similar to David Tennant’s return. I hope we don’t have to wait too long to find out.
The new Murderbot show is based on a series of books, which I reviewed several years ago. It’s about a manufactured cyborg SecUnit (security unit) who manages to hack his governor, which he accomplishes in the opening moments of the show. However, he then realizes that he doesn’t really know what to do besides continuing his duties. Despite naming himself “Murderbot”, he mainly uses his new freedom to download entertainment shows to relieve his boredom.
The universe portrayed is a fairly dystopian one, with just about everything run by corporations, who in these stories manage to live up to many of the worst tropes about corporations. But Murderbot finds himself assigned to protect a group of researchers who come from outside that culture.
The show has excellent production values and manages to capture the spirit of the books, at least as far as I can remember. (It’s been several years since I read the first ones.) My only beef is that the episodes seem pretty short. But it looks like there will be ten of them, so still a lot to go.
Mickey 17 is based on a book, Mickey 7, by Edward Ashton. I haven’t read the book, but after watching this movie, which turns out to be intelligent science fiction, I’ll probably give it a try.
Mickey finds himself late on his debt to a sadistic loan shark and decides he has to get off planet any way he can. So he signs up to be an “expendable”, someone whose brain state can be saved and loaded into a new “printed” body after he dies. As an expendable, he is given high risk assignments, such as being a lab rat, or attempting very dangerous tasks.
One of the team who invented the body printing technology turned out to be a serial killer, who used the tech to make multiple copies of himself, eluding police in the process. This led to society despising body printing technology, and particularly the idea of using it to make multiple copies of someone. As a result, the technology can only be used in space far away from Earth, and even then “multiples” are seen as an abomination. When multiples are found, the penalty is death for every copy, and erasure of the original mind.
Mickey ends up on a colony ship chartered by Kenneth Marshall, a religious nut and con man. The journey to the colony takes over four years (implying Proxima or Alpha Centauri, although that’s never made explicit). On the journey, Mickey goes through several lives as a guinea pig for several experiments, and again when the colony world is reached to discover and develop a vaccine for the planet’s pathogens.
An alien species is discovered on the planet, initially dubbed “creepers” by Marshall. Mickey, in his 17th incarnation, has an accident and falls down a fissure. Since he is an expendable, he is left to die. However, a mother creeper and her children, who he assumes will eat him, actually help him escape the fissure. But when he makes it back to his quarters, he finds Mickey 18 already there. He is now a multiple and subject to complete erasure.
There’s a lot going on in this movie. It’s actually a pretty dark tale, but with enough absurdity to make it a black comedy, and it does have a happy ending. I enjoyed and highly recommend it.
My only real criticism is the movie ends up portraying the body printing technology as a bad thing. It might be plausible for a highly religious settlement to take that attitude. But if the technology became available, it’s hard to see that it wouldn’t become heavily used, at least once the initial shock wore off.
That’s what I’ve been watching. Have you seen any of them? If so, what did you think? Watching anything else interesting?
SelfAwarePatterns 
You managed to find quite a bit to watch. We haven’t been so lucky, but then again, we don’t try very hard either. We ended up watching The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly the other night. I thought it might not be so bad, given that it’s a classic, but no. Unfortunately my husband generally hates Sci Fi (he doesn’t think he does, but he does), and I don’t watch anything except during our TV time, so I won’t be able to check out your recommendations. I did try looking for Severance at one point, but we don’t get Apple TV.
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I actually don’t watch that much TV. It tends to come in waves, with long stretches of nothing I’m interested in. I do a lot more reading than watching. But it takes longer to get through a book, and I don’t post on everything I read.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is one of those movies I often leave up in the background when it’s on TV. But definitely those old spaghetti westerns aren’t for everyone. And I imagine if I were just seeing them today for the first time, all the macho posturing wouldn’t play well. They’re movies you have to take relative to the time they came out, and all the John Wayne / Gary Cooper type stuff they were reacting to.
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Good point about the times and context. I will say, the soundtrack was a winner. It has since become iconic for westerns.
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Out of those I’ve only seen Mickey 17, which I rate very highly. My only complaint is that it doesn’t have the time to properly explore the full weirdness of the tech and the situation. But that’s the limitations of being a film and not a series. I’d guess the book does better in this regard.
It was interesting how he seemed happy enough to identify with the previous Mickeys and the future Mickeys, but did not identify with Mickey 18 at all. That seems pretty plausible to me. I don’t think I’d like having to deal with a copy (more or less) of myself.
I think it’s pretty plausible that there would be a big resistance to such tech from society in general. We already have special laws about things like cloning humans and doing genetic engineering. If anything, I imagine the more realistic scenario is that body printing would be banned for human use before it was ever used on humans.
There’s a general urge to see humanity as, not exactly sacred, but kind of sacred. There’s a need to see ourselves as something more than machines/objects. I think it’s tied up with the whole idea of human rights, and people as ends not means. We might one day shed these ideas completely, but I don’t think it’s particularly likely. I think I would probably oppose body printing tech myself.
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I wondered if the movie was going to make something of the fact that Mickey 18 had violent tendencies, since the only other multiple had been a serial killer. I’ve read other science fiction that posited that a perfect copy of a mind can only happen if both copies don’t exist at the same time, and if you do it anyway, it leads to differences (how much depending on the particular story). The reason is usually shrouded in quantum entanglement double-talk.
I can definitely see some people rejecting body printing for sacred and other reasons. But I’m skeptical most of the population would, again after some time to get used to the idea. The other things you list don’t dangle immortality (or at least longer life) as a benefit, at least not as an obvious one. Who wouldn’t want to ensure they and their loved ones were backed up, able to be re-printed if an accident happens? Who wouldn’t want to extend their life?
The bigger issue, I think, might be in who gets access to it first.
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Do you remember how at one point in the mind upload some of the wires weren’t in? I think that was for Mickey 18, and think that’s why he was so violent.
Fair point about it offering a kind of immortality… Although how convinced would people be that the copy would be “them”? Some certainly would, but I think a lot wouldn’t, especially among those who aren’t given access to the tech.
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I do remember that point with the wires, but not until now. Good catch!
On being convinced that the copy is them, probably not enough to die on purpose, but enough to have the backup ready, just in case. I think confidence would increase as they knew more people who had been restored via printing.
That reminds me of one thing the movie doesn’t seem consistent on, although I’m wondering if it’s something else I missed. Each time Mickey is printed, his brain state is printed from the point of his last brain scan. That means he should actually never have a memory of dying, even though everyone asks him what it’s like. But in conversation with Kai, he seems to imply that he does.
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Good point about seeing it as a “backup”. That does make it more plausible.
Yeah I wondered about how he can remember dying too. I don’t think we actually see him having a brain scan after the initial upload either, so maybe that’s not how it works? Very odd though, if those memories are somehow transmitted to the new body/memory brick anyway. Little supernatural even.
In which case we might expect multiples to be affected in strange ways, perhaps having some kind of psychic link, or something failing to be transmitted to Mickey 18 because the “soul” is still in Mickey 17.
Or maybe there’s some brain implant that’s constantly transmitting back to the brick? That would work, I think. But I don’t think they mentioned anything like that.
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At some point in the movie it’s stated that there will be periodic brain scans, and his brain is printed in that last scanned state. It’s said early on and pretty quick. Although I agree the rest of the movie seems more compatible with some kind of implant constantly recording his state, but that seems like something a lot more invasive than what they show.
This movie might benefit from a rewatch. I may have to do that one night this week, if I have time. Although the book might be more clear.
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PokerFace S2 is lackluster; the trope has worn thin. LDR flashed by in a flurry, a few were OK, Scalzi wrote two of them, apparently. Murderbot: watching that, we’ll see if it lives up to the story. No Dr. Whom?, or Mickey 17, yet.
Digging Ted Lasso, watching Shrinking for the 2nd time, Black Mirror, off and on, and as a blast from the past, watching Northern Exposure having never seen it. It’s eclectic and goofy, but Janine Turner makes it easy on the eyes. I was the actors’ same age at the time, early 90s, so their references ring true.
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I’ve heard good things about Ted Lasso. Don’t think I’ve heard of PokerFace or Shrinking. I’ve always struggled with Black Mirror. It definitely covers topics I’m interested in, but it’s usually too dark for my tastes. I remember Northern Exposure when it was on, but never got much into it.
BTW, I managed to continue reading Asher’s Cormac books. The level of description is still exasperating, but the stories are too good to pass on.
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I finally got prime and was impressed with rings of power. It was fun. Galadriel was decently deep and at times a morally ambivalent character. George R.R. Martin looks unlikely to finish 2 more novels and finish the Game of Thrones books.
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I enjoy Rings of Power. It’s fashionable to hate on it, but as a long time Tolkien fan, it’s finding ways to surface stories that no one sees unless they delve into the appendices at the back of Lord of the Rings, or the Silmarillion.
I’ve largely given up on Martin ever finishing that series. If he does, it will be a pleasant surprise. The Wheel of Time had to be finished by another author after Jordan died. At this point, I’m wondering if that’s what we’ll see for A Song of Ice and Fire.
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@selfawarepatterns.com Wow. This is a dissertation. Thank you.
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I also bounced off Andor the first time I tried to watch it. Basically, I was burned out on Star Wars content, and I didn’t have enough interest in it. I’m now feeling like I really missed out, so I guess I’ll give it another try.
With Ncuti Gatwa, it sounds like the BBC was dragging their feet about deciding if there would be another season of Doctor Who after this one. Gatwa has a lot of opportunities right now as an actor, and he couldn’t sit around waiting for the BBC to make up their minds. I’m sad to see him go, but I totally understand why he’d bow out now if that’s what was happening behind the scenes.
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I had to power through the first few episodes of Andor before it finally starting working for me. But it definitely paid off.
After I wrote this post, I read similar stuff about Gatwa. It sounds like Disney has been undecided about renewing the contract after the first season numbers were bad. I think this season was significantly better, but I noticed that Disney+ didn’t call attention to it, which feels like they want out. It’s sounding like there could be another extended break.
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