S01.E10: The Bicameral Mind

[that one guy]

On 12/6/2016 at 9:34 PM, Pippin said:

On 12/6/2016 at 6:20 PM, izabella said:

Doesn't that say that the show itself had no vision or message to present and didn't mean anything?  If you can ascribe any meaning to it, then it meant nothing standing on its own.

People take a gazillion meanings from The Lord Of The Rings. Does that mean it means nothing standing on its own and Tolkien didn't have clue one? Or Shakespeare? Or Picasso? Van Gogh? Mark Twain? Sylvia Plath? Georgette O'Keefe? An endless list of awesomeness. 

I was thinking about The Lord of the Rings after the finale myself. I saw

Spoiler

Moana just a couple days before the finale with my kid, which is a typical Joseph Campbell Hero's journey type of story, and really noticed a pattern for the first time. At the end of that movie, the heroine stops trying to fight the monster, turns around and gives it the McGuffin, which ends up being its missing heart, which makes it not a monster anymore, which save the world.

Kind of like Luke Skywalker going through all that trouble to confront Vader, then in the end turning around and surrendering, which saves his father's soul and the galaxy. Or Mad Max: Fury Road when Furiosa has escaped into nothingness, but turns around and goes back to redeem her own society - or The Lord of the Rings (book, not movie) where the Hobbits return to the Shire after their adventures to save their own society. These are all basically the same story, and for all the twists and strange plotting of Westworld, it really feels like they're doing something very similar with Maeve. It's not just the "journey of self discovery," it's that the first thing she does upon achieving sentience isn't to escape, it's to return. 

On 12/7/2016 at 3:27 PM, Kreniigh said:

Around the fifth episode there was a reference to a "bicameral system" that was used in the park years ago to transmit radio commands, which would be experienced as auditory hallucinations by hosts.  In Jaynes's real life theory, the voices experienced by the bicameral mind are not gods (as people once believed, according to Jaynes) or radio transmissions (as here), but the brain communicating to itself.  So whoever named this system in Westworld was being ironic.

This is another of those things that makes more sense thematically than it does plot-wise. I don't think Arnold as we see him has anything to do with radio commands, he was embedded in her programming years ago by the real Arnold. It doesn't matter if this makes literal plot sense, the thematic stuff is more important to the structure of the show. I have a feeling at the end of the show there may be some angry, disappointed fans, like there was with Battlestar Galactica. That finale actually worked perfectly on a thematic level, bringing all the strands of ideas home. But it didn't work so well from the point of view of plot and character. It's mostly a question of which is more important to you, and unless they absolutely stick the landing perfectly, half the audience will be, hee hee, Lost. 

ETA: Also in the bad pun category, "Armistice" means "to lay down arms" so the post-credits scene found me giggling rather than grossed out, and seems to be an Evil Dead reference to boot, Ash cuts off his hand while propping in on a copy of "A Farewell to Arms."

Edited December 10, 2016 by saoirse
Spoiler tagging current movie spoiler

[Chicago Redshirt]

12 hours ago, Honey said:

Or she arranged for proof of their misdeeds to be delivered to upper management in the event she didn't wake up, and she advised them of this.

Getting fired is better than being killed, or letting at a minimum one potentially homicidal robot in Maeve get loose and potentially more. After Maeve has sliced Sylvester's throat, once Maeve has brought Hector and Armistice (who presumably the techs know to be bad-ass gunslingers) into the fold and made them even more badass, after Hector and Armistice have killed a bunch of Delos security personnel, these are all points at which a normal human would say, "f--- helping Maeve out" rather than "It's dangerous out there. Take this."

The only viable explanation is that at least one of those techs, and probably both, are NPC hosts in Ford's game.

[okerry]

4 hours ago, DavieBoar said:

Exactly correct. If it turned out the 2 techs were hosts, programmed to follow Maeves orders would be the only way the whole storyline isn't utterly ridiculous in every single way. As it stands the storyline has ruined the entire series for me, it's just too stupid. Like you say, there are literally hundreds of things they could have done and absolutely no reason they would have followed her orders for even a second, or been threatened by her at all. It's an insult to the viewer. She couldn't report them to their bosses at all when they could simply have shut her down. It's a shame as without this abomination of a storyline, the series would have been great, with it there it's pretty bad.

guys - I think a lot of people are making the Felix/Sylvester storyline far more complicated than it was meant to be. In a sophisticated story like WW, sometimes the answer does not lie in complexity - it lies in simplicity.

Felix helped Maeve partly because he and his partner were scared to death of her - both because she had somehow learned to wake herself up and because they saw right away that someone much higher up had altered her programming - but partly because Felix simply felt pity and empathy for her.

People (yes, people) like Felix know better than anyone what the hosts go through every day. They're the ones who have to repair and clean up the damage and abuse inflicted on the hosts by other humans who are paying for the privilege and doing all that damage solely for their own amusement. If you're the one who has to clean it all up, you will either become cold and hardened to it (Sylvester) or you'll go the other way and begin to have some sympathy (Felix) - and maybe even want to do something about it if you ever get the chance.

Well, Felix did get the chance. And he tried to do something about it. It's true that the story could have made this a little clearer, but WW does not spell things out - it leaves them to the viewer to discern. Some will discern them and some won't, but I remain convinced that Felix served the story by being the "not all humans are bad" character. And that's really all it was.

[DarkRaichu]

11 hours ago, Netfoot said:

Or they are really aliens from a race who have decided not to fight humans for the planet, but to get the hosts to kill us off for them.  

No, it is simple really.  Felix was from the future (MiB time + 15 years).  We were actually watching his flashbacks as he re-traced his steps so he could help Maeve's daughter :P

[Chicago Redshirt]

At some point, though, fear, curiosity or empathy can only go so far. Once it becomes clear that Maeve is willing and able to murder people to get what she wants, a normal human being is going to try to shut this whole thing down.

I could half-buy that Felix is just abnormally passive and empathetic with the hosts.

But Sylvester, after having his own throat slashed, who expresses clearly the danger and foolishness of empowering Maeve but doesn't do the slightest thing to stop it, is either the dumbest actual person or a host.

[izabella]

1 hour ago, okerry said:

People (yes, people) like Felix know better than anyone what the hosts go through every day. They're the ones who have to repair and clean up the damage and abuse inflicted on the hosts by other humans who are paying for the privilege and doing all that damage solely for their own amusement. If you're the one who has to clean it all up, you will either become cold and hardened to it (Sylvester) or you'll go the other way and begin to have some sympathy (Felix) - and maybe even want to do something about it if you ever get the chance.

This doesn't really work for me.  The ones repairing the creatures KNOW they are not human, and KNOW they are "just" computer animated mannequins.  I can't imagine they would feel sympathy, any more than a body shop employee feels sorry for the cars they repair after fender benders.  I can see how the show wants me to believe that's what was going on with Felix, but it didn't work for me.

[Gobi]

2 hours ago, that one guy said:

 

ETA: Also in the bad pun category, "Armistice" means "to lay down arms" so the post-credits scene found me giggling rather than grossed out, and seems to be an Evil Dead reference to boot, Ash cuts off his hand while propping in on a copy of "A Farewell to Arms."

Could also be a Terminator 2 reference, the scene near the end where Arnold breaks off an arm to free it from a machine.

[Milburn Stone]

1 hour ago, DarkRaichu said:

No, it is simple really.  Felix was from the future (MiB time + 15 years).  We were actually watching his flashbacks as he re-traced his steps so he could help Maeve's daughter :P

I love the facetiousness of this, but it puts me in mind to say that when a show makes it possible to interpret it a literally infinite number of ways (because anything could be taking place in any time period, or not actually taking place at all; and any body could be any thing or nothing at all), the show becomes nothing itself.

Edited December 8, 2016 by Milburn Stone

[arc]

23 minutes ago, izabella said:

This doesn't really work for me.  The ones repairing the creatures KNOW they are not human, and KNOW they are "just" computer animated mannequins.  I can't imagine they would feel sympathy, any more than a body shop employee feels sorry for the cars they repair after fender benders.  I can see how the show wants me to believe that's what was going on with Felix, but it didn't work for me.

Elsie doesn't just know how the bodies work, she knows how the hosts' minds work. And she's sympathetic. So was that random behavior tech that Ford yelled at for covering the nude host. Sympathy isn't that unlikely. (And, some people do anthropomorphize their cars, much less a complicated AI that is embodied in what appears to all senses as a human body.)

As to risking robocalypse vs getting fired, those weren't the only choices available to Felix and Sylvester. There's also "go along for now, stall, and we can keep living our normal lives until the point of no return actually arrives." Which, let's be real, is a choice many millions have taken in the face of imminent totalitarianism. How much easier would it be when just taken hostage.

[Dev F]

1 hour ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

At some point, though, fear, curiosity or empathy can only go so far. Once it becomes clear that Maeve is willing and able to murder people to get what she wants, a normal human being is going to try to shut this whole thing down.

To be honest, I feel like this was a problem with the finale more generally -- its tendency to treat violence against humans as something that even the human characters are weirdly blase about.

I mean, Westworld is a violent show all along, but most of that violence is directed against the hosts, whom most people assume to be less than human, like shooting characters in a video game. Unlike, say, Game of Thrones, the series doesn't seem to be set in a world where human life is regarded as cheap. There's lots of talk about the safeguards designed to protect people from harm, and when people do die, it's treated like a big deal. Hell, Arnold's entire plan rests on the notion that if his creations murder him, it will be enough of a scandal to shut the whole park down!

So it seems weird that in the finale, you have Felix, Sylvester, and Ford all acting like murdering a bunch of people is totally fine, not even worth the smallest bit of moral uncertainty. Is that really a plausible reaction to what these characters have gone through over the course of the season? Oh, it turns out my job is exploiting people and I never realized, so I'll bring a gun to work and mow down my coworkers!

It'd be different if the humans condoning mass murder were, like, members of an outside group of android rights activists who infiltrated the park or something. Then I might be able to accept that they saw their human victims in black-and-white terms, as deserving of death for their horrifying sins against robotkind. But they were instead people who worked among their victims every day, sharing in their easy assumptions that the hosts were just thoughtless machines. Heck, they themselves used to believe as much. So the notion that they could support mass murder for something of which they themselves were guilty is extraordinarily deranged.

I mean, I guess in Fords' case he's at least not a hypocrite, since he's apparently willing to die himself for the same crime for which he murders everyone else. But, no, Ford isn't just some cog in the oppressive machine; he built the machine, hired everyone else to run it, and spent thirty years indoctrinating them and the rest of the world with the idea that everything they were doing was totally fine. That is, he encouraged everyone to embrace a worldview he found galling, and then murdered them for believing what he told them to believe. Which means he's actually a hypocrite of monstrous proportions!

Edited December 8, 2016 by Dev F

[arc]

Agreed with @Dev F above, and meanwhile I think the security (QA? Really?) team's reluctance to shoot is because (1) hosts are expensive* and (2) there might be humans around and those can't be brought back from death. And specifically about #1, QA had no idea at first that Hector and Maeve were involved as well, and Armistice's tattoos were mostly covered up by the time the team arrived on the scene.

* there actually was a Delos email, before the website got overhauled post-finale, saying to QA something like "please don't shoot up the hosts if you can just freeze them, they're expensive to repair."

[BigBeagle]

22 hours ago, ennui said:

I had a thought this morning. I've heard it said that the porn industry was one of the strongest forces in the development of the internet. Maybe the porn industry was also the primary force in the development of androids. "We don't want mechanical, we want flesh and blood!" Basically, the staff were using the androids as sex toys. 

 

That makes so much sense that I'm now depressed.

[buttercupia]

i don't see why the security forces wouldn't be mostly if not all hosts. that would explain felix/sly not freaking out. ford was committed to his story so he wanted the board dead. it worked for him. 

[arc]

28 minutes ago, buttercupia said:

i don't see why the security forces wouldn't be mostly if not all hosts. that would explain felix/sly not freaking out. ford was committed to his story so he wanted the board dead. it worked for him. 

Ashley Stubbs is always concerned about hosts turning violent against actual humans. I'd imagine he'd veto having hosts as security, even if they had magic guns that don't kill humans, and as it turns out, it sure seemed like security just has regular guns.

But hey, that is a plot flaw: when hosts malfunction, like Walter in the pilot, you can't rely on a couple of shots that would put down a normal human.  Anti-host security should be armed with tasers or whatever else would be especially effective on host brains.

Hell, hosts should be built with extreme peanut allergies and then security could just carry around peanut dust plus epipens for susceptible humans.

[Netfoot]

7 hours ago, Honey said:

15 hours ago, Netfoot said:

Or they are really aliens from a race who have decided not to fight humans for the planet, but to get the hosts to kill us off for them.  

That would be a little strange.

Stranger than the half-assed speculations that are still being generated by this show, several days after the finale?  I think not.

[arc]

52 minutes ago, Netfoot said:

Stranger than the half-assed speculations that are still being generated by this show, several days after the finale?  I think not.

Is a fan theory that Maeve has cached secrets, when we've seen her cache secrets for real, equally as implausible as just aliens? Really?

[Pippin]

It is my opinion that Felix is the Westworld counterpart of the pre- civil war abolitionists, who risked everything to help free the slaves. At that time, slaves were considered less than human and subnormal.

Abolitionists argued against this view, denounced the entire system of slavery and often literally put their lives on the line to smuggle slaves to freedom.

Felix may be aware of the dawning sentience of the Hosts and his own moral compass has been set to help free the slaves.

It would be nice if there were a few humans who were creatures of conscience. They have existed in this world. Sometimes it feels like they're few and far between, but they are around.

[VegasMom]

What I found particularly interesting was Maeve's story of corruption.  She started off by being a victim of the humans, and by judging them, however as soon as she gets some power, she starts abusing it.  She kills the Marshalls during the safe robbery, she slits the new Clementine's throat, she slits Sylvester's throat (though very graciously saves him!) , she allows Hector and Armistice to murder 2 technicians.  Then at the end, she betrays Hector,without whose help she wouldn't have been able to escape.  

Very Animal Farm.  "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

[Arnella]

Since we know from the producers that Maeve's decision to find her daughter was real and not programmed.  The real Maeve teasers are:

1. What was the plan for her in the real world and who's plan was it?  (I think it means we won't see the "mainland" next season.)
2. The really big one was the note (and the samurai).  If Westworld is Park 1, how many parks are there?  Will we see Roman World and Medieval World?  Probably not since HBO already had Rome and Game of Thrones and why they went with Samurai but it will be interesting to see other worlds.  I hope they don't ration them out one a season.  

[Milburn Stone]

13 hours ago, Pippin said:

Felix may be aware of the dawning sentience of the Hosts and his own moral compass has been set to help free the slaves.

I like the way you phrase that--"has been set," as if by some external force--because it points up that Felix is no more in control of which way his moral compass points than the robots are of their character traits.

[DavieBoar]

21 hours ago, okerry said:

guys - I think a lot of people are making the Felix/Sylvester storyline far more complicated than it was meant to be. In a sophisticated story like WW, sometimes the answer does not lie in complexity - it lies in simplicity.

Felix helped Maeve partly because he and his partner were scared to death of her - both because she had somehow learned to wake herself up and because they saw right away that someone much higher up had altered her programming - but partly because Felix simply felt pity and empathy for her.

People (yes, people) like Felix know better than anyone what the hosts go through every day. They're the ones who have to repair and clean up the damage and abuse inflicted on the hosts by other humans who are paying for the privilege and doing all that damage solely for their own amusement. If you're the one who has to clean it all up, you will either become cold and hardened to it (Sylvester) or you'll go the other way and begin to have some sympathy (Felix) - and maybe even want to do something about it if you ever get the chance.

Well, Felix did get the chance. And he tried to do something about it. It's true that the story could have made this a little clearer, but WW does not spell things out - it leaves them to the viewer to discern. Some will discern them and some won't, but I remain convinced that Felix served the story by being the "not all humans are bad" character. And that's really all it was.

This is probably the worst attempt at an explanation for the terrible, senseless Maeve storyline that I have seen. Why the hell would anyone on earth be threatened, intimidated or 'scared to death' by her whether she wakes up herself or not? Of course they wouldn't, it's utterly ridiculous; they would have shut her down in seconds. Not your fault though - there is no explanation, we need to accept that the storyline is just awful in every way, completely contradictory and makes no sense whatsoever in the context of the show.

It's all well and good for people to say it will make sense if one or both the techs are hosts; but we don't know that and I don't think they are. Taking the storyline as it is, it's a show ruining mess. It's actually laughable when you think how far it goes considering the techs (and hundreds of other people) could shut her down at any moment. Even for whatever reason they followed her order, say the one to max out her intelligence, they could have taken it down to the bottom at any time. That single storyline is probably the worst have ever seen in any series, how it made it in I will never know. It destroyed any enjoyment of the show for me and I will not be watching season 2 as a result.

[arc]

7 hours ago, Arnella said:

1. What was the plan for her in the real world and who's plan was it?  (I think it means we won't see the "mainland" next season.)
2. The really big one was the note (and the samurai).  If Westworld is Park 1, how many parks are there?  Will we see Roman World and Medieval World?  Probably not since HBO already had Rome and Game of Thrones and why they went with Samurai but it will be interesting to see other worlds.  I hope they don't ration them out one a season.  

WRT #2, at NYCC Jonathan Nolan was asked about Roman World and Medieval World and he was cagey before specifically saying no to those two. 

 

5 hours ago, DavieBoar said:

It's actually laughable when you think how far it goes considering the techs (and hundreds of other people) could shut her down at any moment.

Her 'escape' was entirely scripted by Ford (as revealed in this ep, though I remember you said you haven't watched it), so it makes sense that he would have arranged the other details. He knows so much about what's going on. Anywhere in the park and HQ that any host is, he has the potential to spy. He told Theresa back in ep 4 that he knows everything about guests and employees, and he probably does.

Quote

Of course they wouldn't, it's utterly ridiculous; they would have shut her down in seconds.

The first time Maeve woke up in the body shop, she wasn't responding to shutdown commands. The techs ended up giving her an injection rather than using voice commands or tablets. In ep 9, Bernard wasn't even able to put her in analysis mode.

[polyhymnia]

On 12/8/2016 at 0:22 PM, Dev F said:

To be honest, I feel like this was a problem with the finale more generally -- its tendency to treat violence against humans as something that even the human characters are weirdly blase about.

I mean, Westworld is a violent show all along, but most of that violence is directed against the hosts, whom most people assume to be less than human, like shooting characters in a video game. Unlike, say, Game of Thrones, the series doesn't seem to be set in a world where human life is regarded as cheap. There's lots of talk about the safeguards designed to protect people from harm, and when people do die, it's treated like a big deal. Hell, Arnold's entire plan rests on the notion that if his creations murder him, it will be enough of a scandal to shut the whole park down!

So it seems weird that in the finale, you have Felix, Sylvester, and Ford all acting like murdering a bunch of people is totally fine, not even worth the smallest bit of moral uncertainty. Is that really a plausible reaction to what these characters have gone through over the course of the season? Oh, it turns out my job is exploiting people and I never realized, so I'll bring a gun to work and mow down my coworkers!

It'd be different if the humans condoning mass murder were, like, members of an outside group of android rights activists who infiltrated the park or something. Then I might be able to accept that they saw their human victims in black-and-white terms, as deserving of death for their horrifying sins against robotkind. But they were instead people who worked among their victims every day, sharing in their easy assumptions that the hosts were just thoughtless machines. Heck, they themselves used to believe as much. So the notion that they could support mass murder for something of which they themselves were guilty is extraordinarily deranged.

I mean, I guess in Fords' case he's at least not a hypocrite, since he's apparently willing to die himself for the same crime for which he murders everyone else. But, no, Ford isn't just some cog in the oppressive machine; he built the machine, hired everyone else to run it, and spent thirty years indoctrinating them and the rest of the world with the idea that everything they were doing was totally fine. That is, he encouraged everyone to embrace a worldview he found galling, and then murdered them for believing what he told them to believe. Which means he's actually a hypocrite of monstrous proportions!

Agree with so much of this - I really enjoyed the series but I thought Ford, especially, made no sense when he was promoting all of the callousness toward the hosts among both staff and guests.  He created the situation that caused the suffering in order to push them to self-awareness but then seems to support a theory that the stupid guests (and board members of Delos) are morally culpable for believing him, essentially.

I think Felix may just be super dim.

[okerry]

8 hours ago, DavieBoar said:

This is probably the worst attempt at an explanation for the terrible, senseless Maeve storyline that I have seen. Why the hell would anyone on earth be threatened, intimidated or 'scared to death' by her whether she wakes up herself or not? Of course they wouldn't, it's utterly ridiculous; they would have shut her down in seconds. Not your fault though - there is no explanation, we need to accept that the storyline is just awful in every way, completely contradictory and makes no sense whatsoever in the context of the show.

It's all well and good for people to say it will make sense if one or both the techs are hosts; but we don't know that and I don't think they are. Taking the storyline as it is, it's a show ruining mess. It's actually laughable when you think how far it goes considering the techs (and hundreds of other people) could shut her down at any moment. Even for whatever reason they followed her order, say the one to max out her intelligence, they could have taken it down to the bottom at any time. That single storyline is probably the worst have ever seen in any series, how it made it in I will never know. It destroyed any enjoyment of the show for me and I will not be watching season 2 as a result.

hey, at least I'm superlative at something, lol!

the trouble is, the writers on this show are far too competent to come up something that is just "stupid" or so poorly done the way some think Maeve's storyline was done.

It's possible that something was either left out in the editing or the writing - something small that somebody didn't think was necessary - that would have helped to make things clearer. In other words, it may have seemed clear to the writers/showrunners but just didn't quite come across to the audience. It happens.

In any case, we're left with Felix being an ally of the hosts. But remember how Ford felt about that. I still think that's the setup when it comes to Felix.

[ennui]

2 hours ago, polyhymnia said:

I think Felix may just be super dim.

Well, maybe not "super," but he was fascinated with that little bird.  :)

Maybe techs are just bus boys, tasked with clean up and nothing more.

[Honey]

On 12/8/2016 at 2:23 PM, Netfoot said:

Stranger than the half-assed speculations that are still being generated by this show, several days after the finale?  I think not.

There are many speculations that actually full-assed.

14 hours ago, Arnella said:

Since we know from the producers that Maeve's decision to find her daughter was real and not programmed.  The real Maeve teasers are:

1. What was the plan for her in the real world and who's plan was it?  (I think it means we won't see the "mainland" next season.)
2. The really big one was the note (and the samurai).  If Westworld is Park 1, how many parks are there?  Will we see Roman World and Medieval World?  Probably not since HBO already had Rome and Game of Thrones and why they went with Samurai but it will be interesting to see other worlds.  I hope they don't ration them out one a season.  

I wonder how one creates a katana that won't kill humans.

[Gobi]

9 minutes ago, Honey said:

I wonder how one creates a katana that won't kill humans.

Good question. Even if the hosts were programmed not to strike a guest, there would be plenty of opportunities for accidents.

[arc]

42 minutes ago, Honey said:

I wonder how one creates a katana that won't kill humans.

A blade that's kept rigid with electromagnetic force, and when it senses it's heading for a guest, it collapses? Cause I don't think a good Samaritan reflex would be sufficient, even if that is nearly all that Westworld uses for protecting guests from daggers and axes.

[Pippin]

13 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

I like the way you phrase that--"has been set," as if by some external force--because it points up that Felix is no more in control of which way his moral compass points than the robots are of their character traits.

Well, that isn't how I meant it, although I suppose you could argue Freudian slip. I meant that Felix has made his own moral choice to help free the Hosts.

And from my own point of view, I find it damned depressing that the idea of a person trying to do the right thing is really low on the list of Felix's motivations for many posters.

God knows I don't have a high opinion of humanity, but there is the occasional decent individual out there and incidents such as the Fort McMurray fire or the thousands of people who opened their hearts and homes to 25,000 Syrian refugees this year are proof. How sad that we're so jaded that the existence of even one nice guy is hard to believe!

[Milburn Stone]

11 hours ago, Pippin said:

And from my own point of view, I find it damned depressing that the idea of a person trying to do the right thing is really low on the list of Felix's motivations for many posters.

God knows I don't have a high opinion of humanity, but there is the occasional decent individual out there and incidents such as the Fort McMurray fire or the thousands of people who opened their hearts and homes to 25,000 Syrian refugees this year are proof. How sad that we're so jaded that the existence of even one nice guy is hard to believe!

I'm in your camp that Felix is not unusual-for-a-human in wanting to do the right thing, but for the moment I'm adopting the show's philosophy that the reason most people have an instinct to do the right thing is that this instinct was born and bred into them. (Indeed, the word "instinct"--which I acknowledge is my word, not yours--implies automaticity.) Again adopting (for the sake of discussion) the show's philosophy, I'd say that the idea of moral choice is an illusion; those whose instincts drive them to do the right thing have no choice in the matter; they must do the right thing. And therefore have no more agency than robots.

This is the opposite of existentialism, which says that our ability to choose is what makes us human. And also the opposite of all the world's religions that I'm aware of. And is nothing that I want to believe. But I do find the proposition intriguing to consider for the sake of entertainment.

Edited December 10, 2016 by Milburn Stone

[Macbeth]

On 12/5/2016 at 5:46 PM, Dev F said:

Another intriguing possibility: if the hosts' selfhood is indeed purely digital, they should also be able to make exact copies of themselves at will. I'd be interested to see the hosts interacting with other iterations of their own models. I've always thought one of the real weaknesses of most AI stories is that they seem to find that notion too difficult and artificially foreclose it -- either the AI program won't copy for vague reasons, or the older versions keep getting conveniently destroyed. Rarely do the writers just go with the idea that, yes, duplicating digital AIs is really easy, so let's explore the implications of that.

I have to respectfully disagree.  You would think given how much violence that is inflicted upon the hosts - digital copies would have been made.  But the code which Ford, and the show, is going by is to respect the individual hosts identities, to treat them as humans and not mass reproduce them like products.

Having digital copies would bring comparisons to "Battlestar Galactica."  Also another reason not to explore hosts interacting with their copies is "Orphan Black."  That theme is being well explored there with clones.  Tatiana Maslany finally got her well deserved emmy.  It would be very hard on an acting standpoint to compete with her.  She's completely amazing.  I lament what could have been accomplished if Orphan Black had the budget of a HBO show, but it's  great show overall.

Regarding Felix.  "Truth is stranger than fiction" comes to my mind.  It seems unfair to demand that fictional characters act rationally when humans act irrationally all the time.

And given the finale - Felix's actions were being supported by the man that runs the place.  I do worry that Felix didn't do with Maeve to the nearest train.  The hosts are taking out humans - Felix is on the hosts' side - but with that much shooting going on.....

Edited December 10, 2016 by Macbeth

[Honey]

I don't want Samurai world.  Give me Camelot world any day.  There's something about a guy in chainmail.  Lol  Or, maybe Rome world with togas.  ;)

[Abernathy]

On 06/12/2016 at 4:12 AM, djsunyc said:

surprised nobody posted this yet:

http://imgur.com/RtdD1FD

I just rewatched the ep .1O and thought about that focus...it has to mean something...maybe as already written, an open door for the return of Hopkins

[Abernathy]

On 06/12/2016 at 11:55 AM, braziliangirl said:

William = MIB makes sense to me. He was always looking for something real. That was what Dolores represented to him in the beginning and what, ultimately, broke his heart. Having the sense that he was nothing to her, that Logan was right: he wasn't the hero, the protagonist. He wasn't even a random person to her. He didn't existed. He was nothing. Nothing of what he was with her was real.

This!

[Abernathy]

On 06/12/2016 at 1:45 PM, phoenyx said:

(...)

Dolores may choose to become partnered with Teddy and that's perfectly fine, but I'm really hoping for that reconciliation. 

Dolores just became Wyatt...now she is Teddy's MORTAL ENEMY.

[paigow]

Teddy is the FailSafe...If Dolores kills him, she has to kill herself next...

[jeansheridan]

On 12/8/2016 at 8:17 AM, okerry said:

but I remain convinced that Felix served the story by being the "not all humans are bad" character. And that's really all it was.

A pity then because he's kind of a crap human.  He let the hosts kill a huge number of people.  Even if you don't make a distinction between human and host in terms of value (both are valuable and precious), the fact that Felix did nothing to stop them, didn't try to run, didn't try to raise an alarm, nothing, just kills me.  The moment Maeve slashed Sylvester's throat was the line in the sand.  Felix chose to side with her and he's an accomplice to murder.  That is, if he's not a host.

[dgpolo]

Someone up thread mentioned about keeping things simple. So the simplest reason for Felix to help Maeve? He wanted to.

That's it. He finally had a real -live- bird in hand and he was going to help her, no matter what. And bailing when they started killing humans? Why, he's seen what humans do to hosts, why would he care? We don't know what life is like 'out in the world' but apparently it isn't great for people like Felix.

Now for something totally silly, I heard a Christmas song on the radio sung by Tweety bird, at the end Sylvester says something and I was like 'Oh Sylvester, you'll never get that bird' and then I thought of WW and how that Sylvester isn't getting the 'bird' either. And Felix is, in a way. But I think Felix was always a smarter cat than Sylvester?

[BruceAE]

The big question in my mind is whether or not the QA troops being mowed down were Hosts (perhaps a seperate pool maintained by QA) or humans.  If Humans, then that makes Felix's actions much less sympathetic.  

[dgpolo]

35 minutes ago, BruceAE said:

If Humans, then that makes Felix's actions much less sympathetic.

As shown on this show the humans aren't sympathetic so why should Felix be so?

[Honey]

5 hours ago, paigow said:

Teddy is the FailSafe...If Dolores kills him, she has to kill herself next...

Can you explain this please?

[Quilt Fairy]

On ‎12‎/‎9‎/‎2016 at 5:56 AM, Arnella said:

why they went with Samurai

Samurai World makes a lot of sense in that many classic American Western films were based on films by world-renowned Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. For example, The Magnificent Seven was based on Seven Samurai and  A Fistful of Dollars was based on Yojimbo.

[maddie965]

On 12/5/2016 at 3:23 AM, MattDuffysCat said:

Every time Dolores is misspelled as Delores, Teddy dies a new death. 

Thank you. My mother's (and my grandmother's) name is Dolores, so everytime I see her name misspelled, it's like someone put a knive to my heart.

I haven't read all the posts yet, but this is killing me. Does anyone think that Arnold might not have existed AT ALL? That it was all Ford, all of the time? Something about double Dolores telling her "It was always me..."

But I'm probably wrong. So, in the present Ford decided to go with Arnold's plans and shut down the park. What took him so long? 35 years to realize Arnold was right???

[paigow]

Arnold coded it first...He programmed Teddy to help in the first massacre...and not react when Dolores aimed at him - i.e. Teddy. Killing Teddy is the event that signals the narrative is over...Dolores terminates the story by killing herself. It's likely that Ford retained that code in "today's" Dolores & Teddy in case something goes wrong - e.g. killing a regular guest -  She would then kill Teddy and herself.

[theatremouse]

10 hours ago, Abernathy said:

Dolores just became Wyatt...now she is Teddy's MORTAL ENEMY.

Dolores was always Wyatt. She was Wyatt the first time his narrative happened: death of Arnold. It was strongly implied the Wyatt narrative was not ever used in the park after opening until Ford brought it back recently. And she was Wyatt again at the board dinner: death of Ford. 

Edited December 11, 2016 by theatremouse

[arc]

2 hours ago, maddie965 said:

But I'm probably wrong. So, in the present Ford decided to go with Arnold's plans and shut down the park. What took him so long? 35 years to realize Arnold was right???

As I understood it, it didn't take him 35 years to change his mind. But after he did change his mind, I guess he left the park running in order to build up host resentment towards guests.

No, that part doesn't really make sense. I feel like it would have been easier to say "sorry, these bots are genuinely sentient and should not be injured and tortured regularly for your amusement" than to stoke the fires for a robot-human war.

2 hours ago, paigow said:

Arnold coded it first...He programmed Teddy to help in the first massacre...and not react when Dolores aimed at him - i.e. Teddy. Killing Teddy is the event that signals the narrative is over...Dolores terminates the story by killing herself. It's likely that Ford retained that code in "today's" Dolores & Teddy in case something goes wrong - e.g. killing a regular guest -  She would then kill Teddy and herself.

I doubt that. Taking him at his word, Dolores killed Ford of her own volition. He gave her the gun and he gave her the choice. I see no reason why he would have left a failsafe in there. And even granting the claim that Arnold was more of a genius than Ford, and therefore a better coder, you don't have to be a genius to read and understand and delete a genius's code. Ford has been planning this move for years.

[Gobi]

6 hours ago, maddie965 said:

 

But I'm probably wrong. So, in the present Ford decided to go with Arnold's plans and shut down the park. What took him so long? 35 years to realize Arnold was right???

Ford believed that conflict between humans and hosts was inevitable once humans felt that hosts were a rival intelligence; that is, humans would seek to destroy the  hosts. Ford thought that the hosts needed time to prepare for that inevitability, thus the long build-up to it.

[paigow]

Like the Joker, Ford would not leave his master plan to chance. If Dolores does not choose to kill Ford, what happens next? He quietly resigns? 

[phoenyx]

On 12/11/2016 at 10:23 AM, paigow said:

Like the Joker, Ford would not leave his master plan to chance. If Dolores does not choose to kill Ford, what happens next? He quietly resigns? 

He could have helped the synths in their uprising. That being said, there was no point in time where Ford pulls an Arnold and makes it clear that he is narrating his own death. But regardless of whether or not Ford had a coding hand in his own death, I definitely believe that Ford wanted the best for the synths and if Dolores felt that killing him would further that aim, he was all too happy to play his part.

Ofcourse, for someone like me, I'm not satisfied with simply speculating these things and leaving it at that. No, I like reading interviews with the actors and show producers to get -their- take on things. The advantage to this is that, sometimes, the actors actually play a part in what happens. As an example, Thandie Newton is the one who chose a few of the musical pieces in one of the episodes (I forget which one). I can't help but think that just as Ford directed many of the events in Westworld, Anthony Hopkins may have played a part in his persona's demise. 

Abernathy posted the link to an article of an interview with Evan Rachel Wood after Episode 10 aired. I think the following passage within it is quite interesting, not only for what it reveals about Evan, but what it reveals about Anthony:
 

Spoiler

 

What was your take on finding out that you were pulling the trigger on Robert Ford and taking Anthony Hopkins' character out of the equation?

I felt terrible! I read [the finale] and didn't know it was coming. It was on the very last page. I threw the script down and walked away with my mouth open for a good hour. I just couldn't believe it. When I got to set the first time I saw Anthony after I read it, I walked up to him and said, "I am so sorry. I am so sorry I have to kill you!" And he went, "No, no, no. It's all right. It's beautiful! It's really beautiful!" (Laughs.) He forgave me. He saw the poetry in it. I will say that shooting that scene was one of the most nerve-racking things I have ever had to do, because we're using real guns. We're very safe with them and they're not loaded. But dear god, I had to hold a gun up against Anthony Hopkins' head and pull the trigger, and after every take, I would go, "Please god, do not let this be the time that something goes horribly wrong and I am responsible for killing Anthony Hopkins. I won't be able to handle that." (Laughs.) That was terrifying. It was horrible.

 

 

 

Edited December 12, 2016 by phoenyx

[Abernathy]

13 hours ago, theatremouse said:

Dolores was always Wyatt. She was Wyatt the first time his narrative happened: death of Arnold. It was strongly implied the Wyatt narrative was not ever used in the park after opening until Ford brought it back recently. And she was Wyatt again at the board dinner: death of Ford. 

Yes. You are right, but on the events 35 yrs ago, that led to Arnold's death, was Teddy AWARE of Wyatt???? Because after the massacre he asks Dolores about what had happened. I think Ford was the one responsable for uploading the Wyatt narrative on Teddy...or am I seeing things wrong???