S01.E04: Dissonance Theory

[okerry]

Fun theory: Some of us think MiB is Arnold, possibly merged somehow with The Gunslinger from the original movie. Part human, part cyborg, and wanting to solve the mystery of this place once and for all.

Edited October 24, 2016 by okerry

[Netfoot]

It's starting to appear as if TMIB is not the Big-Bad of this show.  The real Big-bad looks like it's Bernard!  If his secretive chats with Delores aren't bad enough, surely he should be very concerned over her recent reactions?  It's like he's deliberately trying to crash the system!

10 hours ago, CofCinci said:

MiB is William's future father-in-law/Logan's father.

Interesting idea!

3 hours ago, ACW said:

I can believe in guns which fire fake bullets, which trigger real wounds in hosts, more easily than I can believe in guns which fire real bullets, with the bullets themselves being smart (and 100% reliable) enough to ALWAYS self-destruct just before hitting a guest.  Though I admit that real bullets would make it easier to shoot up random bits of scenery.

I think it was in a book by Bill Gibson where I first read about smart bullets that couldn't miss.  Not so different to smart bullets that can't hit!

4 hours ago, Avaleigh said:

I can't get past how there's no difference in the quality of the hosts in William's time if his scenes are supposed to take place thirty years earlier.

The supervisor that discusses Delores making a "pretty big deviation from her loop" to be with William, is the same supervisor that approves the "pyrotechnic effect" when TMIB blows up the lock in the jail.  Sorry, but the two encounters must be occurring in the contemporary timeline.  IOW, no flashbacks.  Therefore, William is not TMIB.

[ACW]

43 minutes ago, parandroid said:

I don't know. Many people are on the "Bernard is an android" band-wagon because they like the plot-twist this would entail. But how does one explain his wife away that we saw in the last episode? Is she an android too? Occam's razor says that Bernard is not an android. It would be too difficult to make an android rise to his level of technical sophistication. Not to mention dangerous. Would you really have an android in charge of maintaining the code behind androids? That's pretty much going to lead to a robot revolution that is the stuff of numerous sci-fi nightmares, and I can't see a human choosing to do that.

  Ford has already explicitly deprecated the applicability of Occam's Razor to WestWorld.  ;)  But it's also not that useful a tool for analyzing TV shows that are deliberately trying to be complicated.

  Bernard's wife would be easy to explain away.  We never even saw her in person.  Host, actress, CGI, etc. 

  I agree that it seems like a bad idea to have an android in charge of the android's code.  However, as presented, Ford seems easily capable of having such an idea.

16 minutes ago, blackwing said:

I'm utterly confused about the significance of Snake Tattoo Girl.  When I first saw her, I assumed she was the blonde Annie Oakley type sidekick of Hector.  They look similar enough in colouring and hair colour.

What happened to some of the other guests?  The woman who joined the sherriff's hunt that ended with Teddy getting axed by that crazy mob?

Snake Tattoo Girl *is* Hector's blonde-Annie-Oakley-type sidekick.  That's why she wanted him out of prison.

The black deputy said that he was going to take Lady-Loving Riflewoman Guest back to town while Teddy held off the mob.  We later see the deputy talking to Delores in town, so presumably they made it back okay.

[blackwing]

10 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

So, seemingly, the androids can slip in and out of awareness that they are androids. The host who greeted William, for example, knew she was an android. So what is the implication, really, that Maeve or Eleanor are starting to become "aware" they are androids? They are aware of this whenever they go backstage and have conversations with Bernard and the other programmers. Isn't it as simple as switching their awareness on and off?

I think that is probably the fundamental plot point of this series.  I think the Changing Room host might have some more self-awareness because she is there to greet guests as they arrive.  She works in the "modern world" section of the park, the entry areas etc.  But Maeve and Dolores and others work inside the park and maintain character.  They have a general set loop that they act out, and if they deviate from the loop significantly, it is noted in the control room.  This was shown when Theresa commented to Bernard that one of the hosts (Dolores) was deviating significantly from her loop, and Bernard asked if she was with a guest.  I thought this was interesting because there must have been some kind of auto-sensor triggered that flashed up on the control panel.  There have to be thousands of hosts in the world, and there's no way those people in the control room can be following every single one of them all the time.

I am curious as to why certain hosts, namely Dolores and Maeve, are developing self-awareness.  Abernathy had it as well.  But most of the others, for example, Teddy and Lawrence and Clementine, have no idea that they are host androids.  Lawrence expressed concern to Man in Black that he didn't want to die.  A host who was aware of the inability to truly die would not have said that.

When a host develops aberrations, it seems the programming team shuts it down and sends it into the storage room filled with thousands of naked deactivated hosts standing at attention like the terracotta warriors of Xian.  Abernathy was deactivated.  So it will be interesting to see what they do with Dolores and Maeve.  Bernard is obviously aware of Dolores' developing consciousness.  No one really knows about Maeve yet.  I don't think they will be deactivated, since these two actresses are the leads and among the "names", but the journey will be interesting.

The show creators say they have already plotted out five seasons of story, so we probably won't get resolution as quickly as I would like.

[jbrecken]

14 hours ago, parandroid said:

I've been thinking about this for a few episodes as well. I'm beginning to suspect that there is a copy of each character over in the control center, and these copies are aware of whats happening to the "field copy" but not vice-versa. So the "consciousness" of the field copy can transfer over to the control-center copy and be interacted with / analyzed. While this is happening, the field copy freezes.

I think it might be not quite as complicated a technology and Bernard is just using some kind of VR to wirelessly connect with Dolores while she's in sleep mode.  From the big map in the war room, we know the backstage people have hologram technology.

[ACW]

8 minutes ago, Netfoot said:

The supervisor that discusses Delores making a "pretty big deviation from her loop" to be with William, is the same supervisor that approves the "pyrotechnic effect" when TMIB blows up the lock in the jail.  Sorry, but the two encounters must be occurring in the contemporary timeline.  IOW, no flashbacks.  Therefore, William is not TMIB.

*Unless* the supervisor (who's also the head of Security, at least in the present?) is an android, and thus doesn't age.  Others have already suggested he might be an android, based on the previous episode.  Would making an android your chief of security be a terrible idea?  Probably; but as with the similar theory about Bernard, above, I could see Ford doing it.

Is all this pointlessly complex?  Not if temporarily misleading the viewer is, in fact, the point.

[AuntiePam]

I'm a simple person and simple people look for simple explanations.  I think TMIB is simply a wealthy man looking for a way to prolong his life.  Or since we now know that he's a philanthropist, he might be looking for ways to prolong everybody's life. 

One of the simpler things that puzzled me this week was Logan taking that other gun when his ran out of bullets, and saying the other gun was an upgrade.  It also puzzled me when guests were facing down a large group of outlaw hosts and behaving like they were in a difficult situation.  Maybe they're just getting in character but it seemed weird to talk like they were in some actual danger. 

Sooner or later, a guest needs to get hurt.  I hope it's Logan.

There's so much depth and detail in this show, every scene has me riveted, but it hurts my head to try to figure things out. 

[smcallah]

13 hours ago, ACW said:

This is one thing that's still keeping the William-is-young-MIB theory (barely) plausible for me. Yes, Delores-with-William has what seems to be the same gun that we saw her use in the "main" storyline; but it looked shiny and new to me, not like when she dug it up.

I'd have to say that the theory can't be plausible (even barely) because they've stated in the show that the early hosts didn't appear to be human at all and were easily discernible.  William is not with hosts of that type.

[ACW]

7 minutes ago, blackwing said:

I am curious as to why certain hosts, namely Dolores and Maeve, are developing self-awareness.  Abernathy had it as well.  But most of the others, for example, Teddy and Lawrence and Clementine, have no idea that they are host androids.  Lawrence expressed concern to Man in Black that he didn't want to die.  A host who was aware of the inability to truly die would not have said that.

"These violent delights have violent ends".  Abernathy said it to Dolores, who said it to Maeve.  Presumably, some Trojan-horse voice-control meme that Arnold left buried in the programming.  How/why Abernathy accessed it after seeing that photo is, so far, a mystery.

[VCRTracking]

I liked MIB telling Hector he "always seemed to be like a market tested thing".

I've been intrigued by Armistace, the blonde bandit played by Ingrid Bolsø Berdal since the first episode. Glad we're seeing more scenes of her, and her "backstory".

[Tara Ariano]

In case you missed it, here's the Previously.TV post on the episode!

Maeve Is The Biggest Badass In Westworld

A little bit Beyoncé. A little bit Veronica Mars.

[BooBear]

30 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

I find myself less interested in this show with every passing episode. I recognize that it tries to be smarter and deeper than the movie it's based on, but I don't think it really works given its premise. These androids are essentially computers programmed to do very specific things. What sense does it make to have a computer that doesn't know it's a computer? Especially when you need to put it into self-diagnostic mode from time to time?

Ditto. I would also like to remark that I find myself confused during a lot of the story. Sometimes that can add mystery but at the moment it is just making me irritated because it seems like writers not really giving thought to the story and just hoping we won't notice.  In just four episodes my list of questions grows endlessly. And everyone seems "programmed" to say just enough not to make anything plain.  I also noticed last night that why would any human really care about a gun fight - as Logan pointed out - you can just walk in there and shoot everyone blithe as day.  You get a rush from having some chance at being hurt. But I also don't think any human can get hurt (no matter how)  because that would be grossly expensive for the park.  Even a human hurting you or an accident would be a super bad thing.

I suppose I am mostly in it to see the Robots wise up and kill all the humans in the park but you know what... at the moment, even that would be kind of boring. And I would feel like the majority of the humans wouldn't deserve it because they were lead to believe that the robots didn't feel pain or emotion or remember anything. 

Last fall at this time I was watching the "Leftovers" which just blew my socks off.  Can't say that about this show.

[mrspidey]

14 hours ago, ACW said:

This is one thing that's still keeping the William-is-young-MIB theory (barely) plausible for me. Yes, Delores-with-William has what seems to be the same gun that we saw her use in the "main" storyline; but it looked shiny and new to me, not like when she dug it up.

William can't be the MiB. MiB was confirmed to be in the park at the present time by the staff in episode two. William was confirmed to be in the park at the present time in this episode when a staff member tried to put Dolores back on her path and William told him she was with him. 

They're both there during the same time frame so unless MiB can duplicate himself they can't be the same person. He's also aparently not Arnold judging by how he talks about him. 

 

Side note: Loot! We have confirmed ingame Loot!

[ACW]

36 minutes ago, smcallah said:

I'd have to say that the theory can't be plausible (even barely) because they've stated in the show that the early hosts didn't appear to be human at all and were easily discernible.  William is not with hosts of that type.

But they didn't say that the park has only been in operation for 30 years.  In fact, Jonathan Nolan said that "Dolores has been the girl next door with aspirations to travel and see the world and escape her modest little loop for going on 35 years," so Westworld must have been open for at least that long.  Unless that's counting the 3+ years of pre-opening development?  Hmm.  Though Dolores (in an earlier incarnation) isn't necessarily one of the  *first* hosts, just the oldest one still in service.

[ACW]

12 minutes ago, mrspidey said:

William can't be the MiB. MiB was confirmed to be in the park at the present time by the staff in episode two. William was confirmed to be in the park at the present time in this episode when a staff member tried to put Dolores back on her path and William told him she was with him.

That's certainly what we're meant to believe. ;)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we know for sure that Dolores-with-William is away from her usual loop for the same reason that Dolores-whom-Bernard-interviews is.  *Something* went wrong 30 years ago, after all.  And it seems unlikely (though possible) that Bernard is whisking Dolores out of William's camp in the middle of the night to interview her.

[arc]

4 hours ago, ACW said:

Bullets: 

  I can believe in guns which fire fake bullets, which trigger real wounds in hosts, more easily than I can believe in guns which fire real bullets, with the bullets themselves being smart (and 100% reliable) enough to ALWAYS self-destruct just before hitting a guest.  Though I admit that real bullets would make it easier to shoot up random bits of scenery.

I could believe in smart guns that know who they're pointed at and adjust bullet speed to non-lethal when pointed at humans? I dunno, maybe bullets going that slow would drop a lot more though. Maybe a hidden chamber swaps in a rubber bullet?

Someone on another forum said TMIB probably paid for a gold package, which gives you better tools for faster play, such as the exploding cigars. Maybe that's also why bullets sting or even knock down guests like William while to TMIB they're like rubber bands.

2 hours ago, numbnut said:

How did Logan know William uncovered an Easter egg? Why is a new adventure/mission deemed an Easter egg? (Clearly I'm not a gamer.)

Slim (the bounty) said he'd take them to Pariah, a somewhat hidden town.

 

52 minutes ago, ACW said:

Is all this pointlessly complex?  Not if temporarily misleading the viewer is, in fact, the point.

Is misleading the viewer, even temporarily, their point? I guess we were misled in the pilot about Teddy, but other than that, how many tricks have they pulled on us?

52 minutes ago, AuntiePam said:

One of the simpler things that puzzled me this week was Logan taking that other gun when his ran out of bullets, and saying the other gun was an upgrade.  It also puzzled me when guests were facing down a large group of outlaw hosts and behaving like they were in a difficult situation.  Maybe they're just getting in character but it seemed weird to talk like they were in some actual danger. 

He could get more bullets, but maybe this was a nicer, more powerful pistol? As for being in a difficult situation, the guests in Hector and Armistice's gang (I did a bunch of reading last night, and Ms Snake Tattoo is named Armistice) were thrown in jail for the night. It kind of sucks to lose 12-18 hours of your incredibly expensive vacation. 

Edited October 24, 2016 by arc

[Uncle Benzene]

That was "A Forest" by The Cure on the player piano this week, right? Because if so... noice.

[mrspidey]

25 minutes ago, ACW said:

T And it seems unlikely (though possible) that Bernard is whisking Dolores out of William's camp in the middle of the night to interview her.

Of course he didn't. The interview stuff was probably leftover memories from the last interview with Bernard. Didn't you wonder why those always seem so short? He barely talks to her and then leaves again. Feels like a lot from those conversations is being left out, possibly for later use.  

I think this is still from the interview that set her on her path away from her loop and into William's arms. 

[DarkRaichu]

I am choosing to take Ford on his words, that he knows everything that is going on in the park.  

Here is my theory: Ford scripted the whole self awareness thing.  Ford allowed the robots to think they were becoming self aware for the narration purposes.  ie.  the robot did not discover the truth little by little on their own, Ford programmed the whole self awareness chain of events.  He is the god that rules the whole Westworld facility, not just the wild west part

I predict there is a huge memory wipe at the end of the season.  Remember, Ford is not the nostalgic kind

[feverfew]

The board ate my massive post. And I'm too lazy to type it all out again, so this will have to do:

For me this slow trickling of answers is exactly how I want it to be - I like that the story at this point is vague. I guess the mysterious board and it's secret purpose for the Westworld park will be the main storylines in the show; Dolores and her quest for freedom is only the first step. But for now I like to indulge in the fantasy world the show's build and go on wild goose chases in regards to the theories of what's really going on. As of right now the show itself gives me plenty food for thoughts, especially in regards to what makes humanity, so I'm along for the ride.

I don't think William is The Man in Black, but I'll put my money on Logan being the representative from the board that Teresa Cullen didn't know about. He's too obviously a gamer stand-in (an the actor too famous) to not have a hidden storyline.

[JohnyQuid]

1 hour ago, iMonrey said:

So, seemingly, the androids can slip in and out of awareness that they are androids. The host who greeted William, for example, knew she was an android. So what is the implication, really, that Maeve or Eleanor are starting to become "aware" they are androids? They are aware of this whenever they go backstage and have conversations with Bernard and the other programmers. Isn't it as simple as switching their awareness on and off?

And what purpose does it serve, really, to make the computers unaware that they are computers while they're role playing? Other than making the moral implications of AI "deep" and "thought provoking," that is? None that I can think of. It's a plot point that's driving this show but doesn't make much sense.

As I see it, it's not so simply as either knowing you are a robot or not.

The hot host that greeted William is scripted for exactly this, so she will have an answer ready for questions like "are you real?" without "having to think about it". Presumably she would have some set of predefined answers for most questions (ie. if you ask if she likes her job or if she ever wanted to do something different  she would say that meeting newcomers is the thing that makes her more happy). She will also never get angry with a newcomer for instance, because her "core programming" is all about making the guests feel good.

... that's if things go well, according to the programming/scripts. The case of Dolores or Maeve is totally different..... they were not supposed to have these thoughts at all. Dolores is supposed to "choose to see only the beauty in the world", not to be able to even trigger a gun.... but now she is starting to question everything.

 

What you think?

[JohnyQuid]

2 hours ago, Uncle JUICE said:

The wife is explained, in that scenario, as a fictional memory implanted to support Bernard's backstory, in my view, until we see her interacting with someone who isn't Bernard, without Bernard present. And I'd be hesitant to say any technical sophistication would be "too advanced" on this show, given the technology we're looking at. And it's not necessarily dangerous, at least we could see a path to where the designer, in some level of arrogance, would consider it LESS dangerous, because the supposed limits of an android's creativity can be artificially limited, its emotions can be expressly programmed, and code can be written to eliminate the idea that the robot would then start a revolution. I don't think it'd be lazy, it might be an obvious idea, but lazy we'd have to see how it was executed.

The whole story is about the hosts gaining consciousness little by little... if actually there were already some hosts that did that long time ago and are even managing/interviewing/programming other hosts... well, then the whole set up of the show would be pointless.

I am enjoying the show a lot until now but I would be done with it if they go this way...

[AuntiePam]

Did you guys notice Maeve touching her lit cigar to the blade of the knife before she cut herself?  I wondered if she remembered the previous infection and somehow knew that the knife should be sterilized.

[DarkRaichu]

5 hours ago, ACW said:

Bullets: 

  I can believe in guns which fire fake bullets, which trigger real wounds in hosts, more easily than I can believe in guns which fire real bullets, with the bullets themselves being smart (and 100% reliable) enough to ALWAYS self-destruct just before hitting a guest.  Though I admit that real bullets would make it easier to shoot up random bits of scenery.

It may have something to do with the hats that the guests wear.  Maybe the hats emit signal that automatically reduces the velocity of bullets heading to the wearers.  

[JohnyQuid]

Just now, DarkRaichu said:

It may have something to do with the hats that the guests wear.  Maybe the hats emit signal that automatically reduces the velocity of bullets heading to the wearers.  

so if u drop the hat u may die? :)

[DarkRaichu]

2 minutes ago, JohnyQuid said:

so if u drop the hat u may die? :)

One of the things you have to figure out yourselves  :D

[Hanahope]

As for being in a difficult situation, the guests in Hector and Armistice's gang (I did a bunch of reading last night, and Ms Snake Tattoo is named Armistice) were thrown in jail for the night. It kind of sucks to lose 12-18 hours of your incredibly expensive vacation. 

Ya choose to be a black hat, better be prepared for black hat consequences.  Just chalk up that night in jail to part of the experience.

So MIB is not William, nor Arnold.  He may not be related to anyone.  I do like the idea that he's heard something about this final quest, maybe its longer life, immortality or some such, and he's trying to find it.  It could really be a way to put your consciousness into an everlasting android, or freedom/consciousness for the android.  Interesting that while the park knows where he is, they don't specifically know what he's doing/trying to do.

It is curious as to the timeing between Bernard and Delores and Delores with William.  Maybe there was another instance where Delores was able to escape the outlaws who killed her parents (perhaps because a guest was there helping her).  

Add me to the group that really doesn't understand how the bullets work.  they can obviously hit and pierce a host, but just hit a guest without doing any piercing damage?  I'm just wondering how all that works, because what would happen if a guest tried to jump in front of a host that had been shot at.

[arc]

20 minutes ago, DarkRaichu said:

It may have something to do with the hats that the guests wear.  Maybe the hats emit signal that automatically reduces the velocity of bullets heading to the wearers.  

The doofy guy who shot Hector in the pilot wasn't wearing any hat. If anything emits a signal, seems like it would be easier and safer to implant a "shootable target" signal emitter in hosts than putting a "don't shoot me" signal in or on guests.

[locomoco]

13 hours ago, CofCinci said:

MiB is William's future father-in-law/Logan's father.

That's what I think as well... at the very least, Logan is related to someone high up in the Delos organization.

[iMonrey]

Quote

One of the simpler things that puzzled me this week was Logan taking that other gun when his ran out of bullets, and saying the other gun was an upgrade.  It also puzzled me when guests were facing down a large group of outlaw hosts and behaving like they were in a difficult situation.  Maybe they're just getting in character but it seemed weird to talk like they were in some actual danger. 

They really need to nail down the specifics on how the guns work. It's not like in the movie, where the guns had heat sensors and wouldn't fire if aimed at real people. But, it would make the most sense if the hosts simply had blanks and the guests had real bullets. If you're going to pay for the Westworld experience, it's a given that you are going to want to see some mayhem and cause some real damage in a shoot-out. Meaning these guests arrive expecting to waste a bunch of 'bots. It doesn't make a lot of sense that they can just be cleaned up and returned to the streets the next day after being riddled with bullets. I don't think the guests are going to be satisfied to just see them drop. They're going to want to blow their freaking heads off. And what's the point of restoring Maeve or Teddy or Delores or any of them after guests have killed them? Wouldn't that mitigate the whole experience if you saw them alive again the next day?

The way it should work is: guests have real bullets, guests blow the brains out of the hosts, the hosts are decommissioned or if they can be saved, their heads are replaced with different ones and they become new characters.

Quote

... that's if things go well, according to the programming/scripts. The case of Dolores or Maeve is totally different..... they were not supposed to have these thoughts at all. Dolores is supposed to "choose to see only the beauty in the world", not to be able to even trigger a gun.... but now she is starting to question everything.

But, why aren't they supposed to be aware? Wouldn't that actually make it easier for them to follow their programming? I don't see what purpose it serves to make them think they're people. Because then, they have to be programmed to ignore comments from guests about them being robots. And, if you can just command them to "take yourself offline" or "lose the emotion," don't you think the guests would figure that out, and start screwing with them? I would. 

The movie was much simpler. The robots knew they were robots and the only problem was when they malfunctioned and started killing the guests. Not because they suddenly realized they were robots, but simply because they were computers that ran amok, as computers sometimes do. The only reason to make robots think they're people is to generate some kind of moral angst and make the show seems smarter than it really is.

Edited October 24, 2016 by iMonrey

[sjohnson]

1 hour ago, Uncle Benzene said:

That was "A Forest" by The Cure on the player piano this week, right? Because if so... noice.

Must be old, the selection really stood out as deeply awful in an unbelievable way. Who would program a player roll with that? "Noise," not "noice," I think.

51 minutes ago, feverfew said:

I don't think William is The Man in Black, but I'll put my money on Logan being the representative from the board that Teresa Cullen didn't know about. He's too obviously a gamer stand-in (an the actor too famous) to not have a hidden storyline.

Yes. However, he is in one sense the only innocent character in the bunch, the one who genuinely doesn't think the suffering is real. At least in the meta-literary sense that the show is committing to. Whenever someone like William starts courting Dolores he is starting an adultery. Logan would just be using a sex toy. (Many people would find that objectionable, as sexual purity can be defiled solo.) On the other hand, the show is also committing to the robots/androids being symbolic of slaves, thinking they aren't people is willful delusion, prompted by self interest. Either story might work but I can't see how both can simultaneously. The thing about the morality of what they do to the hosts is kind of swallowed up in the pointlessness of anything they do. The discussions mostly focus on guests abusing hosts. But suppose the guests do something nice or good for the hosts? Especially something very egalitarian, like fall in love? It's really questionable to say the guest was doing good. Despite the aesthetic revulsion we may or may not feel when guests do something bad, it's no more consequential, either moral or immoral. As the show said, there's no point. We may wonder why they're making the series, except, tits and gore.

12 minutes ago, Hanahope said:

 

It is curious as to the timeing between Bernard and Delores and Delores with William.  Maybe there was another instance where Delores was able to escape the outlaws who killed her parents (perhaps because a guest was there helping her).  

Add me to the group that really doesn't understand how the bullets work.  they can obviously hit and pierce a host, but just hit a guest without doing any piercing damage?  I'm just wondering how all that works, because what would happen if a guest tried to jump in front of a host that had been shot at.

Good points all, pretty sure the producers don't really know, nor do they give a rat's ass. This is not fundamentally a well-written TV show, sorry. This is a melodramatic, sensational series with lots of feints at a plot, fleeting allusions to something that might actually matter, tits, gore and production values. Half of its art lies in Ramin Djawadi's opening credits theme. 

My opinion. Now I just have to decide if I'm going to watch this as a trash wallow, because I'm not a high-minded artistic person?

[DarkRaichu]

40 minutes ago, arc said:

The doofy guy who shot Hector in the pilot wasn't wearing any hat. If anything emits a signal, seems like it would be easier and safer to implant a "shootable target" signal emitter in hosts than putting a "don't shoot me" signal in or on guests.

Did that doofy guy get shot? I can't remember :P 

The bullets behave like normal bullets when any object is shot, except for guests.  It would be too impractical to implant "shootable target" signal on every shot glass Meave drinks from, for exanple

Edited October 24, 2016 by DarkRaichu

[jbrecken]

6 minutes ago, DarkRaichu said:

The bullets behave like normal bullets when any object is shot, except for guests.  It would be too impractical to implant "shootable target" signal on every shot glass Meave drinks from, for exanple

Well, we saw when MiB planted his exploding cigars, a request showed up at HQ to give the go ahead for an explosive pyrotechnics display.  And they also had a way to remotely make all the guns jam, even the ones belonging to guests, so we know there's some kind of receiver in each gun.  So it could be something like every gun contains a camera and is constantly asking base, "Can I put a bullet into what I'm pointing at?"

[feverfew]

For some really weird reason this board won't let me quote two post at once, so this is in reply to @iMonrey:

Why the hosts are programmed to think they're 'real': The park doesn't want them to pretend to be human, because that would mean they would be able to break character and therefore break the immersion-thing the guests are paying a whole lot of money for. It's not interactive theater, it's a real world the guests pay to experience. And the hosts are programmed to ignore it every time the guests break out of character or when they question the realness of Westworld, as we saw with Dolores and the little boy who told her she wasn't real. I guess (or can fanwank) that most guest will have left Sweetwater (or whatever loop they're on) after a day or so to go on new adventures, so the repetition won't be an issue most of the time.

I think the commands must be said in a particular way or the engineers must have a button to press beforehand or something like that, because otherwise you're right - it would be too easy for the guests to stumble upon the right words. But perhaps most guest wouldn't be too eager to break the fantasy anyway; I know I wouldn't. (As we see with The Man in Black there is a way to expedite the storylines or loops without breaking his immersion into the world).

 

36 minutes ago, sjohnson said:

However, he is in one sense the only innocent character in the bunch, the one who genuinely doesn't think the suffering is real. At least in the meta-literary sense that the show is committing to. Whenever someone like William starts courting Dolores he is starting an adultery. Logan would just be using a sex toy. (Many people would find that objectionable, as sexual purity can be defiled solo.) On the other hand, the show is also committing to the robots/androids being symbolic of slaves, thinking they aren't people is willful delusion, prompted by self interest. Either story might work but I can't see how both can simultaneously. The thing about the morality of what they do to the hosts is kind of swallowed up in the pointlessness of anything they do. The discussions mostly focus on guests abusing hosts. But suppose the guests do something nice or good for the hosts? Especially something very egalitarian, like fall in love? It's really questionable to say the guest was doing good. Despite the aesthetic revulsion we may or may not feel when guests do something bad, it's no more consequential, either moral or immoral. As the show said, there's no point. We may wonder why they're making the series, except, tits and gore.

Good points all, pretty sure the producers don't really know, nor do they give a rat's ass. This is not fundamentally a well-written TV show, sorry. This is a melodramatic, sensational series with lots of feints at a plot, fleeting allusions to something that might actually matter, tits, gore and production values. Half of its art lies in Ramin Djawadi's opening credits theme. 

My opinion. Now I just have to decide if I'm going to watch this as a trash wallow, because I'm not a high-minded artistic person?

I can see where you're going with this, but I don't think it's badly written. Or sensationalist, tits-and-dragons trash (tm Ian McShane). Doesn't make me particular high brow, either, I know, but I like what I've seen so far, and I think the writing's actually been quite subtle in regards to its sci-fi roots of ideas of humanity.

I like what you written about the distinction between the robot-as-slaves storyline and a moralistic fable. But for me those two storylines can exist perfectly well beside, entwined and in opposition to each other. It's like looking at the same question from two different angles: White-hat William and Black-hat Logan represent the human angles while Dolores represent the AI. Hopefully we'll end up with the same answer ;)

Edited October 24, 2016 by feverfew
Missing half my post

[Quilt Fairy]

1 hour ago, iMonrey said:

The way it should work is: guests have real bullets, guests blow the brains out of the hosts, the hosts are decommissioned or if they can be saved, their heads are replaced with different ones and they become new characters.

And in your scenario, what happens when guests with real bullets shoot other guests?

It's a TV sci-fi/fantasy show. I'm perfectly willing to suspend disbelief and accept that the same bullet that can "kill" a host will only hurt a guest.

[blackwing]

1 hour ago, iMonrey said:

They really need to nail down the specifics on how the guns work. It's not like in the movie, where the guns had heat sensors and wouldn't fire if aimed at real people. But, it would make the most sense if the hosts simply had blanks and the guests had real bullets. If you're going to pay for the Westworld experience, it's a given that you are going to want to see some mayhem and cause some real damage in a shoot-out. Meaning these guests arrive expecting to waste a bunch of 'bots. It doesn't make a lot of sense that they can just be cleaned up and returned to the streets the next day after being riddled with bullets. I don't think the guests are going to be satisfied to just see them drop. They're going to want to blow their freaking heads off. And what's the point of restoring Maeve or Teddy or Delores or any of them after guests have killed them? Wouldn't that mitigate the whole experience if you saw them alive again the next day?

The way it should work is: guests have real bullets, guests blow the brains out of the hosts, the hosts are decommissioned or if they can be saved, their heads are replaced with different ones and they become new characters.

I don't think the showrunners are even clear as to how the guns work.  In the first two episodes, it appears that the guns aren't even firing bullets when a host shoots at a guest.  Then there was an article in which one of the showrunners said something along the lines of the hosts are firing bullets, but if a bullet is about to hit a guest, one of the other hosts would be programmed to intercept the bullet and take it in place of the guest.  But then in the third episode, William gets hit with a bullet.  He expresses surprise because it hurts. He says to Logan, "I thought you said we couldn't get shot" and Logan says "I said we can't die".  So the gun fired by a host at him was firing actual physical bullets of some sort.

As to why a guest can't shoot another guest, they haven't fully explained that yet either.  Nor have they fully explained how a guest can tell a host is a host.  What if Logan decided to shoot a guest just because?  Would the bullet somehow also be a "non-lethal" type or would it just not fire?

In the end, it just seems like the answer is "guests can't die from host or other guest actions" and sometimes we just have to handwave.

[numbnut]

Has anyone figured out how Ford can control every robot with a gesture and his mind? Is the only answer that he's also a robot?

[Jack Shaftoe]

I really don't understand the point of paying a fortune to go to Westworld and participate in shootouts which you cannot lose. Any mediocre shooter video game would be more of a challenge and if you just want to torture some robots, shootouts seem like such a pointless way of doing it. Hell, a good old paintball game seems much more fun than shooting a fish in a barrel, i.e. shootouts against androids who can't really hurt you.

Quote

Why the hosts are programmed to think they're 'real': The park doesn't want them to pretend to be human, because that would mean they would be able to break character

How would they be able to break character if they are ordered not to? That is unless they start glitching, of course, but some of them are glitching as it is, so thinking that they are real is not foolproof either.

I don't mind slowly unfolding stories but with Westworld all too often I have the feeling that the showrunners think their show is a lot more profound and deep that it really is. Which is too bad because Nolan's previous show, Person of Interest was far less pretentious, had plenty of depth but it also had plenty of fun moments, something that Westworld is sorely lacking thus far.

[arc]

1 hour ago, iMonrey said:

They really need to nail down the specifics on how the guns work. It's not like in the movie, where the guns had heat sensors and wouldn't fire if aimed at real people. But, it would make the most sense if the hosts simply had blanks and the guests had real bullets. If you're going to pay for the Westworld experience, it's a given that you are going to want to see some mayhem and cause some real damage in a shoot-out. Meaning these guests arrive expecting to waste a bunch of 'bots. It doesn't make a lot of sense that they can just be cleaned up and returned to the streets the next day after being riddled with bullets. I don't think the guests are going to be satisfied to just see them drop. They're going to want to blow their freaking heads off. And what's the point of restoring Maeve or Teddy or Delores or any of them after guests have killed them? Wouldn't that mitigate the whole experience if you saw them alive again the next day?

The way it should work is: guests have real bullets, guests blow the brains out of the hosts, the hosts are decommissioned or if they can be saved, their heads are replaced with different ones and they become new characters.

1) as said multiple times, esp on the show in ep 2, guests can't kill other guests. William asked about the realness of the guns in the changing room, and the answer was "Real enough. But you can't kill anything you're not supposed to."

2) Hosts do get blown apart. Maeve killed one of the bandits in the pilot in a very gory way with a small pistol. It was a huge wound, actually.

3) Honestly, it's not clear to me how often killed hosts are put back into the world. I initially thought they were only replaced at the start of each 28-day cycle, but it seems like some hosts, esp those on short loops, might get replaced more frequently. There's a new post on the Delos Incorporated website that explains the process, but not the schedule.

1 hour ago, DarkRaichu said:

Did that doofy guy get shot? I can't remember :P 

The bullets behave like normal bullets when any object is shot, except for guests.  It would be too impractical to implant "shootable target" signal on every shot glass Meave drinks from, for exanple

Doofy guy didn't get shot at all. He just strolled up to like 12 feet from Hector and shot both him and Armistice. I think Armistice held back both because of shock and hosts being unable to harm live humans. With doofy guy in particular, the control room might have seen he needed easy mode and set the bandits to be more reluctant to shoot him?

[phoenyx]

30 minutes ago, numbnut said:

Has anyone figured out how Ford can control every robot with a gesture and his mind? Is the only answer that he's also a robot?

I think voice/facial recognition makes the most sense here. No strong evidence that he can do it with his mind. I'm thinking you're thinking the scene when the waiter (and everything else) freezing when said waiter is pouring wine, but I think he could have easily done a gesture we didn't see to freeze everything, or else he had programmed the freeze to happen when he was pouring the wine or even at a point in time...

Edited October 24, 2016 by phoenyx

[phoenyx]

6 hours ago, parandroid said:

I'm going to take Ford at face value. He says Arnold is dead, and I'm ok with that being reality. To me the really interesting questions are what Arnold's work that has survived him implies for the future of the robots. On re-watching "Stray", I noticed a small tid-bit that seemed really significant. Early on in the episode, Ford described how Arnold wanted to make the robot's programming the voice that they heard in their heads. Their god (so to speak) telling them what to do. Like Jehovah telling Abraham to kill his son. This all comes to a head when Dolores is trying to kill her attacker in the barn and she is unable to. And then right after she sees Ed Harris' character (the man with no name?), she hears a voice saying "Kill him".

And she does.

I don't think it means that Arnold is alive. But his work certainly is. Boy oh boy.......what did he do? I think the the inevitability of the consequences of his design choices are far more interesting than if he were still actively pulling the strings somehow.

I'm ok with Arnold being dead as well. I'm also very curious as to what Arnold left behind. Was he the one that started the maze? Does Ford have any clue about it? Bernard clearly knows about it- when did he first learn about it? For all we know, Bernard -may- have created it, but I currently think it makes much morse sense that Arnold did it, based on the fact that Ford has been filling Bernard in on past events at Westworld (anyone know when Bernard officially got to Westworld?) Good observation on Dolores' hearing a voice saying "kill him", fits right in with what Ford was saying about the bicameral mind/voices in the android's heads. There is one other thing though- I have a strong feeling that Ford is bringing this on himself. Here's my guess- he got bored of having the robots not remembering anything. So he added in this whole 'reverie' thing, or he re-added it (I think Arnold may have been the originator of it) despite the ongoing danger of it, because he has a strong desire to make them better all the time. He's putting himself between a rock and a hard place in my view though. The reason is that he's pushing the androids into essentially becoming aware beings and they're beginning to figure out how things really are. If things were pretty good for them, this wouldn't be a problem, but they aren't, and it looks like we're headed in the direction of a certain line that's been said a few times in the show now, "These violent delights have violent ends."

As an aside, I just found another article that reviews episode 4. He clearly seems to be having more doubts about the show then I'm having at the moment, but I still liked a lot of points he had to say (he even echoed one of the points someone mentioned here to the word)...

Westworld doubles down on the mystery, for better and worse | AV Club

Edited October 24, 2016 by phoenyx

[Netfoot]

2 hours ago, Jack Shaftoe said:

I really don't understand the point of paying a fortune to go to Westworld and participate in shootouts which you cannot lose.

I think they didn't think this through.  Human guests who get shot, should not end up dead, but should feel pain, like a mega-taser, and then pass out.  They wake up back at Reception, and have to pay again to re-enter the game.   Or something.

Because walking single-handed into a saloon full of bad guys, and blasting away at everything and everyone in sight, in the full knowledge that nothing is going to happen to you?  Yawnsville.  Almost as boring as playing Quake in God-Mode.

[phoenyx]

2 hours ago, Jack Shaftoe said:

I really don't understand the point of paying a fortune to go to Westworld and participate in shootouts which you cannot lose. Any mediocre shooter video game would be more of a challenge and if you just want to torture some robots, shootouts seem like such a pointless way of doing it. Hell, a good old paintball game seems much more fun than shooting a fish in a barrel, i.e. shootouts against androids who can't really hurt you.

I'm going to go a bit out on a limb here, but I've seen a lot of Christopher Nolan's work, and I have heard that in more than one of these other movie projects, he worked with his brother Jonathan Nolan. As most probably know, Christopher Nolan did a 3 part Batman series. I certainly liked it, but I'm more of a fan of his somewhat lesser known works, starting with Memento (which, incidentally, was based on a book that Jonathan Nolan wrote), as well as Inception. I heard that Christopher wanted to do Inception -before- the Batman series, but the studio(s) wouldn't give him the funds until after he did the Batman films and had an established reputation. If you've seen inception, the idea may sound just a tad far fetched (being able to enter people's dreams with nothing more than a few cables, some ivs and some sleepy time drugs), but I never focused on that aspect, but rather the concept of dreams, and how society relates to them (The American Dream being one).

Anyway, getting back to what you stated above: what if Westworld is not so much a metaphor for an online game (though it clearly does have -some- elements of this), but rather for the world we actually live in? What if the "guests" are representative of what people are like when they get too much power (you know, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely). I don't think Jonathan Nolan made this series to demonstrate what a souped up online game would be like, but rather to ask people what constitutes humanity. Also, there is a strong possibility that he's also addressing other issues- issues such as the way people of different nations treat each other. Here's a real world statistic that should give anyone pause:

**Sixty-three armed conflicts led to 56,000 fatalities in 2008, whereas 180,000 people – more than three times as many – died in 42 conflicts last year.**

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/20/armed-conflict-deaths-increase-syria-iraq-afghanistan-yemen

Frequently, those conflicts are aided and abetted by nations that care more about the resources in the countries they're fought in then the people themselves.

Edited October 24, 2016 by phoenyx

[phoenyx]

2 hours ago, Jack Shaftoe said:

I don't mind slowly unfolding stories but with Westworld all too often I have the feeling that the showrunners think their show is a lot more profound and deep that it really is. Which is too bad because Nolan's previous show, Person of Interest was far less pretentious, had plenty of depth but it also had plenty of fun moments, something that Westworld is sorely lacking thus far.

I haven't seen Person of Interest, though I've heard it was good. I'm not sure what you mean by "fun moments". Comedy? If I want to see a comedy show, I can see a comedy show. Personally, I have a hard time seeing a show (or a film) that doesn't have a fair amount of -hopeful- moments, and I'm a bit of a sap for some Romance, and I think the show definitely has these things (which for me means Evan Rachel Wood's excellent damsel in distress charm, which has both a host -and- a guest increasingly spellbound to it). 

Edited October 25, 2016 by phoenyx

[phoenyx]

2 hours ago, blackwing said:

I don't think the showrunners are even clear as to how the guns work.  In the first two episodes, it appears that the guns aren't even firing bullets when a host shoots at a guest.  Then there was an article in which one of the showrunners said something along the lines of the hosts are firing bullets, but if a bullet is about to hit a guest, one of the other hosts would be programmed to intercept the bullet and take it in place of the guest.  But then in the third episode, William gets hit with a bullet.  He expresses surprise because it hurts. He says to Logan, "I thought you said we couldn't get shot" and Logan says "I said we can't die".  So the gun fired by a host at him was firing actual physical bullets of some sort.

As to why a guest can't shoot another guest, they haven't fully explained that yet either.  Nor have they fully explained how a guest can tell a host is a host.  What if Logan decided to shoot a guest just because?  Would the bullet somehow also be a "non-lethal" type or would it just not fire?

In the end, it just seems like the answer is "guests can't die from host or other guest actions" and sometimes we just have to handwave.

I agree, I think the gun thing requires us to suspend disbelief a bit and I'm fine with that. Also, I wouldn't be at -all- surprised if at some point, the failsafes regarding the safety of the guests fail. What I'm increasingly focused on is the maze, who designed it, and what its end game is.

2 hours ago, arc said:

1) as said multiple times, esp on the show in ep 2, guests can't kill other guests. William asked about the realness of the guns in the changing room, and the answer was "Real enough. But you can't kill anything you're not supposed to."

2) Hosts do get blown apart. Maeve killed one of the bandits in the pilot in a very gory way with a small pistol. It was a huge wound, actually.

3) Honestly, it's not clear to me how often killed hosts are put back into the world. I initially thought they were only replaced at the start of each 28-day cycle, but it seems like some hosts, esp those on short loops, might get replaced more frequently. There's a new post on the Delos Incorporated website that explains the process, but not the schedule.

Doofy guy didn't get shot at all. He just strolled up to like 12 feet from Hector and shot both him and Armistice. I think Armistice held back both because of shock and hosts being unable to harm live humans. With doofy guy in particular, the control room might have seen he needed easy mode and set the bandits to be more reluctant to shoot him?

Something I find a bit humorous- I wouldn't be surprised if you guys had thought more about the gun dynamics then the showrunners themselves, laugh :-)

Edited October 24, 2016 by phoenyx

[arc]

3 hours ago, blackwing said:

In the end, it just seems like the answer is "guests can't die from host or other guest actions" and sometimes we just have to handwave.

If it wasn't a key issue, though, sure. But given that the original movie was about the robots going nuts and killing people, given that Arnold seems crucial to the plot here and it's very important that he died, in a park ("world") where he and Ford were "as gods"... the whys of how killing humans is and isn't prevented are pretty important.

[phoenyx]

4 minutes ago, arc said:

If it wasn't a key issue, though, sure. But given that the original movie was about the robots going nuts and killing people, given that Arnold seems crucial to the plot here and it's very important that he died, in a park ("world") where he and Ford were "as gods"... the whys of how killing humans is and isn't prevented are pretty important.

I kind of agree, I just don't think the showrunners really thought the whole gun thing through enough. I think it would have been a lot easier if guns simply couldn't be fired at people. Even if that had been the case, there's also the issue of shrapnel. I think what the showrunners are -really- focused on in relation to preventing guests from being killed is the programming. There's already been one incident wherein for a bit, I wasn't sure if Elsie Hughes would be the first known human casualty of an android killing. And ofcourse we have incidents regardings flies- apparently it seems that androids aren't allowed to kill -any- living beings, not even flies, and it seemed to be giving some of them conniptions. Dolores is the first android who killed one. At some point, she couldn't even pull the trigger of a rilfe, but later she managed to kill a fellow android. So clearly things are changing with Dolores, and it looks like things are changing with other Androids. I wouldn't be at all surprised if at some point, the androids manage to break out of their code to kill humans, especially if it's in self defense.

[dgpolo]

When Bernard asked Dolores where she was or what she was doing or something to that effect, she responded 'Dreaming' I'm inclined to believe that. Bernard talks to her in her dreams, or what passes for them. She needn't go to headquarters or whatever.

This was the first time she woke up anywhere but her bed, right? It was odd seeing that.

I had not caught that the little girl mentioned Orion when answering the MiB's questions. And despite the 'extra' star in the belt I think it is Orion in the carving, the extra star is probably a clue. I still want to know why the little girl has not gone back to her programming loop and instead is drawing the maze in the dirt and giving out clues.

I want to know who the 'neighbors' are.

We know the loops we are seeing are not the only loops there are, we have not seen as many loops of Maeve 'remembering' the Techs as there were drawings. I also expected her to say the 'magic' words to Hector but she didn't.

[djsunyc]

was this the last episode they filmed before taking that 1 year hiatus?  i wonder if we see a change in the show going forward.

looks like ford is starting to build a whole new world for next season.

[meep.meep]

The little girl didn't mention Orion, she mentioned the Arroyo.  "Follow the Arroyo of blood."  It's a wash or a dry creek bed.

I want to know why Dolores is always dressed when Bernard talks with her.

I want to know why the host servants all got stuck during Ford's lunch with the security chief.