In between writing code and going for walks I have found a moment here and there to hunker down and keep checking off items from my epic science fiction streaming list.

In the last couple months there has been something of a theme as I spent a month or so in the far future and the world of Asimov’s crumbling galactic empire before clambering back to the nearer future threats of rogue AI entertainment bots.

streaming: westworld, seasons 1 & 2

Reboots are a funny thing. After watching them for a while I always get the urge to go back and find the source material that inspired the reboot.  In the case of Westworld the television science fiction epic that spanned four seasons, it is based on a 1973 movie of the same name written by none other than Michael Crichton, you know, of Jurassic Park fame.  No surprise, because it’s damn near the same premise: man creates beast, man creates theme park based on beast, man is destroyed by his creation. In the case of Westworld, though, the beast in question is quasi-sentient AI robot cowboys in an old west theme park where rich folks cosplay their old west fantasies… until the robots fight back. We watched (most of) this show back when it was still quite new, and I had the seasons sitting in my library taunting me for two reasons: one, I kinda always wanted to do a rewatch, and two, we gave up after season three and I never saw the end (even though reports are that it never quite clambered back up to the quality of the first season… does it ever tho?). Such are the draws of tepid spring days, and I found myself recently binging through the first couple seasons, no small feat given that multiple episodes are movie-length and clocking each season well over ten hours of intense blood, gore and horny robot dramatics wrapped around some intense philosophical exploration on the meaning of consciousness theory of mind mind games. I really need to watch that ’73 flick to see how much of this overlaps. My experience on a second run through though was not quite how I remembered enjoying the show back in the late twenty-teens. This kind of storytelling often relies on mystery reveals to drag the plot forward. This great, don’t get me wrong, when the audience is seeing something intense and weird for the first time. It can pull reluctant watchers through thick plots and convoluted treatises on the nature of reality while they try to figure out who’s who and what’s what. On the second watch tho, the big spoilers have already been drained of all their impact and the only thing I could rely on (personally, say) is that my memory from watching these nearly ten years ago was a little washed over and unreliable. I always knew something was fishy, or that such and such a character didn’t make the casting call for season three, but getting there was only half as fun as the first time besides. If you haven’t ever watched Westworld it is worth the trip. To ask if it holds up in 2026 when we are now ten years closer to sentient robots and some of these weird questions are less hypothetical as we chatbot our vibes with our phones each night, well, that’s just a silly question.

streaming: foundation, season 3

I met R. Daneel Olivaw when I was in grade eight and my best friend at the time bought me a paperback copy of Isaac Asimov’s The Caves of Steel as a birthday gift. It was my introduction to hard science fiction that wasn’t Star Trek, and my first glimpse at the fantastic future worlds created by Asimov filled with galactic imperialism, sentient robots and mind-bending philosophies. The bridge into his Foundation series was not a far leap. Nor is the comparison to Star Trek, especially since this modern adaptation for Apple TV was apparently produced and (often) directed by Roxann Dawson, better know to many as half-Klingon engineer B’Elanna Torres on Star Trek: Voyager, another favourite of mine. And she done good, too. Foundation was long considered unfilmable. I suspect this partly due to the fantastic special effects, but anyone who has read Foundation will immediately know the real reason: the books break all the rules of fiction writing (yet somehow work) because they are literally just long conversations between people, usually sitting in offices, discussing strategic politics in the same way two opponents might have discussed a chess match hours later over a cup of coffee. Film that! Yawn. Luckily they took a different approach. I mention Daneel because (spoiler alert) the character finally emerges as part of the lore of the world recreated in this series (as happened in the books, too) in late season three with the same sort of adapted-for-the-screen sensibility that has followed this entire adaptation. Most of the complaints I had read were about this type of fuzzy interpretation of the source material, but those critiques were usually leaving out the part that Foundation was a serialized series of novellas written by a white immigrant in the 1950s who was telling a different kind of story and needed to get his work published in a deeply racially divided America. (Oh, how times have changed, huh? /s) Gender swapping certain characters, adding a realistic portrayal of a far future society far less concerned about skin pigmentation than ours, and focusing on the bigger themes of the story were only slightly jarring, and only because I had read (and listened to) this book so many times I needed to flux my perception into a new alignment, and yet not a bad one. It was a wonderful take on the story and brought the world to life in a way that I think even Asimov would have marvelled at. It’s just too bad it’s locked up on Apple’s streaming platform and I cancelled my subscription else I’d probably start over and watch it all again.