AuntieMame

Now that’s an interesting idea. Fits in with my theory that the time jumps are minuscule and cumulative from server to server. We would only have had that kind of infrastructure and volume for a short time. Interesting.

I agree that the Neoprims might be just another version of bad; it happens in our world too. Actually doing good is very difficult and if the do-gooder is blind to their own motives or obsessive by nature it can quickly become the proverbial slippery slope. Aelita does seem like a righteous obsessive, but she does seem genuinely good too. I think the machine bodies are at least partially organic and that knowing the details would solve the conundrum of Lev too. Lev is a trophy wife, with a bit of the flavor of the Dollar Princesses who married into the English aristocracy in the late 19th and early 20th century! Poor Lev. I did hear him say that, but didn’t process the implications. Yes it takes a lot of money to live this way but if everyone else is more or less gone, the economy would form differently. Capitalism is based on volume and growth. With a severely depleted population, neither is possible. I’m not dinging the show badly on this one; we can’t figure out another way to even think about our material life but what we’re seeing doesn’t make sense. I got the feeling that Wolf and Aelita as children were still inside of London proper, just not in the part controlled by wealth and illusion. So some people are left by implication or were when they were children. Whether that remains the case is an open question because if all that’s needed is DNA and living tissue, they clearly have the biotech to keep that going without using resources to feed people and keep them nominally healthy. Frightening what Sapiens hidden hatred of biological life can do. I’m glad that you like talking about this too. Waves and smiles. Because right now I don’t know anyone who would watch this much less discuss it. Are you a refugee from the late, lamented TWOP?

I thought of these things too and they constitute my sub theory. That the future people might be locked in a life support room/building/area because the world doesn’t support life and everyone uses various peripherals to live and interact with the world. It would be a case of mostly dead instead of all dead. I think that Aelita’s implants and by extension everyone’s implants are used in the peripherals. We’ve been told and shown that the peripherals are at least partially organic and it would make sense that even peripherals have difficulty surviving in a ravaged world. Did anyone else flash to the Cylon goo baths when Burton and Conner’s peripherals came to consciousness? Aelita and Wilf being kids that grew up doesn’t necessarily kill either theory. Peripherals could be made to mimic different developmental timelines and with the semi-mechanistic and data driven model of sentience shown, the mind and personality wouldn’t “need” the body in order to grow and mature. That brings up an interesting question though, is our body intimately engaged in how our mind forms not only developmentally but from moment to moment? I personally would vote yes. I think that the strict substance dualism built into all of our thinking is one of the roots where we go wrong. I’ve never liked data driven ideas of uploading consciousness as tropes in science fiction, even though I’ve read tons of them because I like sci fi and generally just ignore my doubts. Lev and his family existing in Flynn’s time is confounding. And doesn’t make sense. I honestly don’t know what to make of it. Tangential to these questions, how did a mafia guy end up one of the elite? It would have made more sense if Lev had been written as a Russian oligarch rather than Russian American mafia. The oligarch would have the power to survive as well as the resources. The continuing quest for obscene amounts of wealth doesn’t quite track for me either. Don’t you think whether everyone is dead and using peripherals or mostly dead on a planet so ravaged and toxic they can’t even enjoy their own bodies in a daily way, teach us that while material safety and comforts are important that there are some things money just doesn’t fix? Or has greed been Ré entrenched because only the wealthy survived? Though in this situation I would think that you would want smart people more than rich people. Think of our own plutocrats and oligarchs, rich but not necessarily geniuses. And a person who can manipulate the financial markets or find loopholes in the tax code is going to be of limited use when nobody can breathe the air. Grace referred to all of the fields of endeavor, but we haven’t met anyone like that. Though it looks like our orphans were trained in STEM. Aelita was in Beans and Legumes. Once the Jackpot started maybe intelligent people and people trained in STEM and the Humanities became a resource. Grace listed fields not considered hard science in her list of studies taking place in the stub. Though where are these people? Maybe only the elite are allowed to be in the real world with any regularity because it damages even the peripheral bodies. Hey, at least it’s a show where we’re trying to figure things out.

Thank you @oldCJ. I intuited from reading the Amazon page and watching the show and reading the trilogy that put Gibson on the map in the eighties and nineties that the show was a stub of the book universe, but I came here to see if it was worth it to read the book. Because I’m liking the show a lot. I’m guessing your vote would be no, don’t bother but I’m double checking.

Okay, does anyone else think that the issue is that everyone from the future is actually dead from a material perspective? Their bodies and those of everyone else are dead and gone. The earth is destroyed. The elite, at least some of them, cracked consciousness transfer before the end and robotics took a huge leap forward. Man’s hidden agenda of the pursuit of immortality has been partially achieved in that individual sentience is forever and there is something to walk around in that provides at least the simulacrum of sensory experience. Except it turns out that not really being alive and not really having a body isn’t as much fun as people thought. The elites are running around in the stub and generating research in every possible field to fix the massive mess up. Except that they’re using the same tools that created the disaster. The neoprims are attempting to fix the same disaster but from a different ideological perspective and with different tools. Maybe. We don’t know enough about the neoprims yet. And it’s a sad fact that people trying to do good can sometimes do more harm than people trying to do bad. Not always but sometimes. Some of what we’ve seen in the future is the existential struggle and some of it is elite robots playing games to stave off the boredom of eternity. In fact some of that boredom may have generated interest in fixing the Jackpot. It’s essentially a giant video game with consciousness upload (this is the cyberpunk genre after all) and I guess boredom and ennui are still issues. My textual support for this: 1. Cherise talking about the bees and their multiple attempts to climb back out of extinction. That scene wasn’t exactly subtle and almost screamed that it was a very important metaphor. 2. Wilf/Wolf showing Flynn just how empty and devastated London really is. The viewer suspected this but here it was made explicit. 3. Lev murdering his ancestors. I knew watching the scene Lev saw it as mercy but I couldn’t understand why. Lev doesn’t want them to live through either the Jackpot or the existential wasteland that comes after it. 4. The things that are completed and not data generated illusions are about material healing of the planet, e.g. the huge carbon scrubbers. And Cherise’s bees which are important and every failure gets a try, try again. 5. That all that is left of Aelita is her chips. It’s why she can’t be “found” in the digital world. Also Aelita’s dioramas as metaphors of control and longing. 6. The good bad girl/bad good girl dichotomy between Aelita and Grace that was stressed. So, this is my theory, that this is about cyborgian transhumanism and isn’t entirely against it either even though I guess it turns out that messy, mortal material reality is the only game in town. Specific to the episode all of this explains why Wilf/Wolf looks so sad all of the time and why his obvious love for Flynn has an anguished quality of never to be. The actor plays transcendent spiritual longing with a very fine hand. I’m not sure how I felt about Inspector Lowbeer. The name and the character felt like they were refugees from a Dickens parody. I know Lev and Cherise chew the scenery here and there but it’s a different style and both hold back enough to keep things from going entirely over the top. This character was one of the things made me really consider even more that none of this was real in the way we conceive that term. Poor Conner. His character is the other side of the argument. I’ve known/know serious illness; the material and mortal has incomprehensible suffering attached to it. Burton’s surety that of course Conner shouldn’t be suicidal, or be willing to trade some months of seeming life and health in fake, future London for death here made me angry. What the hell would you know about it perfect Burton? What evil genius decided to manipulate people with a wounded dog? I’d get my damn legs blown off too. So, that’s my theory on what we’re watching. Some of the reveal is going to leave us over a cliff. I’m still more than onboard because these are some of the questions we’re facing. I just hope we don’t get facile answers. Final pondering. I’m wondering if 2099 London is a stub and if they needed that stub to reach/create Flynn’s stub because of the limitations on quantum time travel via server. First, it would take a while to get all the way to existential ennui in computer generated transhumanist utopia and because they’re making deathless disembodiment attractive in some ways. I feel sorry for the Deputy. He really should lay low for a minute to recalibrate and see what develops. Oh and I loved the way the assassin Bob got the drop on Pickett’s smug wife. “Is that saltwater?” I guess there’s a reason Bob is the best.

I’m wondering how it did go into her actual self given that she’s in a synthetic body in a future time.

@Peach, yes, me too. I’m enthralled and you bring up interesting possibilities about which bits of meddling from the future have consequences. I hadn’t thought about the electrical grid for example. I was wondering though if the possible time jumps from server to server are minute and cumulative so that it is more like science than magic. An interesting show, no doubt about it.

I wanted to see more of that transformation too. We know Camille has been in a great house before but there are differences between being a servant, even a very high ranking one, and being a lady. As the Marquise herself said: “Privilege cannot be taught.”

Thank you. After I asked the question, I flashed on an article saying this. Wow, we can’t even get a 13 episode season? I hope that they don’t make it long between seasons because I’m really enjoying this.

I still want to know more about Victoire. I love her costume, still 18th century but not one of the styles we usually see, but the costume codes her as a servant, even though the writing doesn’t. Now we’ve seen a tantalizing glimpse of Victoire rescuing a near dead Camille from the street. Did Victoire work for Jericho already? And if she did, in what capacity because we’ve gotten no hint that she worked as a prostitute in the brothel. If Victoire was a procurer of half dead girls for Jericho, why was she allowed to be Camille’s boon companion? Poor business at the very least. And if Victoire was high enough in the organization not to be forced to work on her back, why is she the seeming best friend in the duo? The writers haven’t thought things through very clearly so far it seems. And they killed Genevieve so one of the two people that were fascinating is gone.

Those are both amazing points! The mind control aspects especially. Burton seems to think he understands the ways the link to his unit affects him because of the military training, but it’s very possible that he’s been lulled into a false sense of security so that he can be manipulated more effectively. I’d noticed on the emotional level but not processed the way Burton looks at Flynn and does always seem on the verge of saying more. If your theory is right, this is probably not just why Burton and his merry band were chosen but why Flynn was chosen. Burton did convince her to try the headset the first time. Burton’s upset about the physical effects data transfer to the future has had on her has more than a tinge of guilt. Data transfer is a misnomer I think. There has to be time travel involved somehow because data travels from server to server and via WiFi, but it travels in the material universe which is bounded by time. There must be some point at which the “data” i.e. Flynn is jumping the time barrier. Maybe those jumps happen in a lot of small jumps that cracked the probabilities of all of those strange subatomic particles that mirror each other and can be more than one place at once. These future people are making me more and more nervous. The people in the past are expendable and they’ll feel morally justified because they’re saving the Earth and the species as a whole (we hope) and they can shift responsibility to the past as people have always done. Which is interesting because in spite of the luxe trappings of that future, the people seem pragmatic to the point of heartlessness. They’re ruthless. Yes, we’re getting hints that they’ve survived terrible times, but with a population reduced by almost ninety percent and the planet at least a bit on the mend, what exactly are they fighting for? Survival is the obvious answer. Is the Jackpot not over? Are they all peripherals? Are people, like the bees having to constantly climb the long climb from nothingness? The writers must be having an amazing time with this because this is already far more sophisticated than anything I’ve ever read by Gibson. I loved the balanced dichotomy of Aelita being a bad good girl and Grace being a good bad girl. Even though it was a bit mean, I laughed when Aelita took some potshots at Grace’s seeming hypocrisy. “Were the children stipulated?” Ouch. Why do some of the peripherals have those silver and white masks? It denotes lower status but is it also showing us when there is nobody “real” driving the peripheral ala the guy who seems to be Cherise’s fixer and pet depending on the day? It seems that everyone has several bodies they can use as needs arise. Why? And who and where is “real”? Normally I hate questions like that but this show has enchanted me. I think I might go through all five episodes again to see if I can suss out some of the paradoxical details. Does anyone know how many episodes we’re getting?

It’s official. I’m loving this show! The time travel is different and interesting, the characters are realistic and whole in what is considered an unrealistic genre. The acting is good and the look of the show is gorgeous in both the present and the future. Don’t take candy from strangers (or funny uncles) seems to be a motif what with the uncle and Jasper’s wife lecturing him on asking what the quid pro quo is before taking money and now Flynn and Burton’s mother suggesting that there are hidden costs and unintended consequences to everything they’re doing not just in the future but in the stub they’ve created. Unintended consequences might be an even bigger theme for the entire show. For example, did anyone else think it’s going to be Burton and his band of haptic brothers that cause the nuclear piece of the Jackpot and that it will either be purposeful for the very best of reasons or an unintended consequence of things they’re doing now? Or that the Burton of the non-stub timeline might have done it and changing that is one of the many goals of the power elite of the future? With every known area of human endeavor involved in the stub they’re up to something big. Or that even though the neoprimitive Luddite faction was named and dismissed, that when the world has been nearly destroyed by various technologies that more technology as the fix, especially when creating stub or pocket universes and timelines as a known effect might have even More unintended consequences? The Jackpot is right in line with my own musings on the nature of our next historical conflagration. It won’t be one thing or all at once and our ability to meet the challenge is going to be overwhelmed by events. I liked seeing Aelita and Grace together. It was fun and gave weight to Grace’s death. Grace told Aelita a lot more than she admitted to Cherise. Interesting.

Is Pennyworth good? I need a show to watch while fiber arting of various kinds.

Miss Scarlett and the Duke is the Where’s Waldo of mystery shows in terms of who the murderess/er is! I’m always willing to suspend my disbelief while watching and I’m spotting the murderers too. @dargosmydaddy you have great possibilities. I’m hoping for one that vindicates the Duke and Fitzroy. Because: I feel so sorry for Fitzroy! He even wants to try and is trying and his father keeps getting angrier. I wish he could have stayed in admin for a bit longer. In spite of the constant emotional abuse, Fitzroy knew where his strengths were. What exactly is it that his father wants him to be? Oooh, I want that father publicly humiliated in some way. Maybe he can be caught with a Victorian prostitute in a house of ill repute. I’m torn about a Hattie and Fitzroy pairing. I think Hattie deserves better but maybe she could starch Fitzroy’s spine in an emotionally supportive way. Fitzroy’s family might be up to Aunt Parker’s standards too. I loved Moses complaining about having to follow the builders of hospitals and other do gooders for middling reasons. The next thing you know poor Moses will have to follow people to church!

I did my best to just go with this on its own terms for the second episode. Based on the absolute lack of posts here and the fact that my streaming Amazon showed only two and a half stars, it seems I’m not the only one having trouble. In theory this could be a workable idea, the Marquise we came to know in the source material is a ruthless powerhouse because she is driven by the exigencies of survival. The kind of person who even when safe doesn’t feel safe because they were unsafe for so long. I just don’t feel it watching this. I don’t feel the fear of falling or death. I don’t think the things Camille does to maintain her precarious position are believable. The Marquis de Merteuille would have thrown her out of his house. And no references to suicide (though suicide was more scandalous from a religious pov in those days) and quotes from a letter would have stopped him. Nor would he let her just return to her room after asking her to leave the first time. The Ancien Regime had a sense of privilege we would have trouble even contemplating after the effects of the coming revolutions. Though I guess she ends up married to the Marquis at some point. Not certain how that will work. Valmont remains ridiculous in every aspect. I don’t care about the poor man’s Jean Val Jean chasing Pascal but he scares me for Camille or any woman being chased by a man looking to sin but convinced he’s morally superior. Always a frightening combination.

Renewed for a second season after just the pilot? How does that make sense when shows like Britannia, a show like nothing I’ve ever seen before, are months being renewed? In that case I’m really hoping it improves.

Other than the names I didn’t feel a lot of connection to either the novel or the 1988 movie, both of which are favorites. I didn’t think the writers were very creative. The prostitute/courtesan rises to the aristocracy is a worn trope and has been done better, at least so far. I was more taken with Camille’s best friend and wondered about her backstory. The actress has a lot of presence. I honestly didn’t understand why all of these women were sleeping with Pascal, especially the older ones, not because a woman in middle age wouldn’t like a lover but because she’d be more discriminating in her tastes. The current Marquise de Merteuille seemed especially ridiculous trying to feign a raging passion for Valmont especially when she was such a formidable woman. I could see a man making her lose her judgment with desire but it wouldn’t be this still wet behind the ears Valmont as currently constituted. I’ll stick with it for a bit simply because I love the source material but so many things feel off. Camille is a boring trope. I’d rather see a remake of Forever Amber if we’re going here. Valmont doesn’t have the heft to be a serious lover and heartbreaker, the new Merteuille replacing the old Merteuille could be fun but it isn’t believable. I just can’t believe that Genevieve would leave herself open to blackmail for Valmont. Nor do I believe that the step-mother could scoop the title and fortune for her son from a previous marriage. There are rules to hereditary aristocracies and those rules exist in the law of the land too. It isn’t that simple to displace a first born son for a step-son and unbelievable on so many levels. Wow, while writing this I guess I realized there’s a lot to critique. The writing, characterizations and acting range from mediocre to bad and are put together like scenes from a plot wheel. Just turn the knob to discover your next scene! I did love some of the costumes.

I’m impressed @pezgirl7, then again, I should probably be paying more attention. Television is a place where I multitask and work on knitting and embroidery and jewelry making. Once I watch the first episode or so and get the characters sorted I shift my attention back and forth. Buy me a ticket for the shallow train because boy he is a handsome man, but it isn’t just the looks; it’s the understanding, somber charm of the man too. Definitely a guy with It and the kind of man who could make you literally weak at the knees. One of the things I don’t like about Eliza is that she’s written to have a huge case of Not Like the Other Girls. She wants to be seen for her brains and talents and not treated with contempt but is willing to apply sexism to the women around her without thinking. She does it to Ivy but she also did it to the young woman who knows printing and is so fond of fonts. And that woman is clearly intelligent. I loved it when she called Eliza out on the circumstances that were making it possible for Eliza to pursue a certain degree of freedom. In that moment font girl wasn’t just a quirky flibbertygibbet but pointed and fierce. Ivy also keeps showing her intelligence and her staunch loyalty and Eliza keeps not noticing, intent on her own legend. I hope the writers do something about this because climbing on the backs of other women isn’t feminist in any era. Agreed, but it’s still nice to see some improvement from a cringing mass of self hatred and sabotage. I think William is starting to be a decent boss and mentor to Fitzroy even if the role was thrust upon him.

That’s a really good point about Jemima. It was jarring when she was suddenly gone but I didn’t think that she might be a part of the nefarious activity. I’m really enjoying this series now that I’ve gotten the characters in both stories sorted. I bought the second book in this series but hadn’t read it yet; it’s now moving up fast in my TBR list. Fun!

I loved those too, they were smart, charming and fun. I’m liking Magpie Murders but I’m having to rewatch the second episode to make certain I have the book within a show plot down. Not bowled over so far but I’m enjoying this.

I think it will be more than a minute before we hear anything. It hasn’t even been a year since we got Season 3. I will say that this is one of the most original shows I’ve seen even in the new television Golden Age of the last twenty years. I’ve honestly never seen anything quite like it. I wish that the show had a bit more of a following because it is so interesting. The elements of magical realism as opposed to straight magic when it comes to the religious aspects is a very smart way to go. The viewer is never certain whether it’s real or some combination of faith, spirituality and all of the psychedelics. At the same time you enter into a world that is other. Im also loving the work of the costume designers and artisans. They’re doing really stunning work, not only visually interesting but mostly in line with the techniques that would have been available to people at the time. Among other things the costumes here have made me want to play with some leather seconds I got from a city in Italy that’s been a center for tanning for almost 900 years.

I’m so hoping for a fourth season, especially with Cait in Roman dress and in some sort of thrall to Aulus Plotius. I had a terrible thought this morning: could we be witnessing the secret history of not only the fall of the Druids but the secret takeover of Britannia’s soul by the demon Lokar? Because I thought that the red threads of compulsion were of Lokar no matter their seeming origin. Remember that the general said way back in Season One that when you conquered a land you had to fight their Gods. Did Lokar conquer the Druids and do the ripples spread out to this day? I adore this show if it isn’t clear but boy am I unsettled by my read of the events. We know the Druids didn’t survive and were so thoroughly destroyed we don’t even know what they believed. More Britannia please.

Kudos to the poster who predicted that the Duke was getting affection from “loose” women, though this particular woman seems less a pushover than expected given how irritated she was with even the idea that he had a wife. I loved Ivy during this scene and the entire episode. I called the vicar’s wife as the grave robber, not because I’m particularly clever, but because I’ve been trying to read mysteries with a dissecting eye to see how writers place their clues and misdirection. She just seemed the obvious choice. Poor William. I don’t like that he’s having trouble at work which he doesn’t deserve. I might be a bit prejudiced because the actor is so charming. Nice to see Fitzroy coming along. As for William’s mean boss, at least you can see the man coming like a charging bull and making him look good would be all it would take to pacify him.

I know this forum has gone quiet on an old show, but I’m finally watching Season 3 and I’m a little heartbroken. Why do we create so much science fiction about how we shouldn’t mistreat artificial intelligences and robots of various sorts, that we’ve created no less, but rarely speak about our own violence to each other? (Battlestar Galactica, Asimov’s robots, Westworld, Dollhouse, to name just a few) We also seem to fear that any creation like this will ultimately want to destroy us. Is mentioning the fact that people kill each other for dubious reasons every day just boring and passé from a storytelling point of view or are these stories an obvious metaphor or so we have a blind spot about our own actions? Or some combination of all of these? For the record I found Season 3 brilliant but sad in its realism. Does anyone remember how it was received and reviewed at the time?

I’m counting down the days for this one. I so hope they do justice to the Marquis inventing herself and the original obsessive affair that set so many other stories in motion.