Almost Human

[jeffbert]

I am just now watching the recording of tonight's episode, & a few things occurred to me.

1. the premise of the show: technology can no longer be controlled by the govt. I am not sure I want to live long enough for this to happen. I recall that in THE PHANTOM CREEPS, Bela Lugosi's character had created something that some other guy felt that it was too important/dangerous for anyone but the govt. to possess. Thus, Lugosi, the entrepreneur / inventor was to be deprived of his creation, & he became the villain, for wanting to reap the rewards of his own inventiveness.
2. the guy who created Dorian lost his license to work in robotics. I suppose that since by robotics we in this case mean humanoid robotics as opposed to industrial robotics, I can see why they want it regulated. But the society seems too close to a police state for my liking.

Now I will resume watching the program.

[Earthshine]

Yes! And the "Wall" that we were just introduced to is certainly interesting. I wonder precisely what the "Wall" is and what it is for (other than the obvious). We're learning more about this futuristic world as the series advances. I think you're right that in some parts of this series it is a bit like a police state, which in part makes sense (how on earth are you going to keep things regulated and 'safe' without having some infringing law enforcement?).

The portrayal of Dorian's creator actually reminded me a lot of Dr. Wily from Hitoshi Ariga's Megaman Manga; he loves his creations and they are his children but he lost his way and is willing to risk and sacrifice life in order to insure that a world will exist in which his creations can thrive. Which of course was similar to the good doctor Dr. Light's ideas but he was unwilling to allow anyone to die or break any laws to see that future and ultimately knew that 'humanity was immature to recognize a fully sentient robot' thus had to put his dreams on hold and privatize them.

That's what I saw, but also these themes are in many ways inevitable in science fictions when androids and robots come into play. It's really hard to not do these scenarios.

As for the world structure I am looking forward to learning more about it; we haven't learned a whole lot about this world and how things are run. It will be interesting to find out its history and how things work.

[jeffbert]

good points, Earthshine. I wonder why they put episode 10 next week?

[Earthshine]

I know! I guess we're going to have more episodes after all. Unless the Almost Human fan community was mistaken in that the last episode was the season finale. Hmmm...

[jeffbert]

the most recent episode was "#13" though so-called #10 will air next week.

[Earthshine]

Well this episode certainly was interesting and brought us a little more information about the world, particularly the often-done in sci-fi biologically controlled humans dubbed 'chromes' in AH.

This episode seemed to drag on and on for me, not sure about anyone else though. At least we got to know a little more about the incident which took John's leg and the mysterious woman.

click for spoilerHowever the Russian doll given to him by said woman being a 'microphone' is definitely going to bring up a lot of questions for future episodes.

So far we have a lot of questions and not a whole lot of solid answers. It really does seem like it's building up for a second season or at the very least a long season (some TV shows define a season as 12 episodes and others 24... hmm).

[jeffbert]

MY question is, why are the episodes shown out of their proper sequence?

[Earthshine]

I have no idea. The fan community is questioning that as it is. It's really disorientating. I would think that after last weeks amazing episode the show would go onto a more serious and darker path. There were some episode placements that were changed that made a lot of sense because of character interaction click for spoiler(such as the episode where John was extremely protective of Dorian and shot an MX in the face). That episode was originally supposed to be episode 2... which would not make a whole lot of sense as John would probably not have gotten to know Dorian well enough to have that reaction.

However having the most recent episode Chrome right after what we learned last week just kind of is a let down... I wanted to know more about The Wall and the immediate investigation of that aftermath.

I understand that this series is episodic in nature but having these episodes out of order really can mess with the overall feeling of the moment in the show. :d oh:

[jeffbert]

I looked for info on the order/disorder thing, but wiki omits any mention, & the official web page has nothing, either.

[Earthshine]

I'm just familiar with the fan community on Tumblr and there is one very knowledgeable blogger that posted the actual episode order up to a point. I can't remember how they got their information though. I'll see if I can find that post here in the future (slow internet connection).