The casualness of the security in the bio lab bothers me much more here than in the Alien universe. There it fit with the commentary on corporate culture and stupidity. Here? Not the theme. This is a genetic code from an alien entity and security is a guard at the front door with no clear protocol and automatic means to seal the entire place down with any possible breach of the material or exposure? Just too dumb.
Hive minds in fiction generally annoy me. The intelligence of a hive is not transmitted with awareness to its individuals. The individual ant does not absorb the intelligence (and awareness if any exists) of the whole colony nor is the whole mind controlled by its queen, but the colony can solve complex problems anyway. An individual neuron is still just a cell doing basic integration of inputs to produce an output; it does not possess the intelligence … or sentience … of the resulting mind. Fictional hive minds rarely recognize that the consciousness that would result is at an incomprehensible level. The only one that got it that I am aware of again is The Overmind in Childhood’s End. Maybe this will get to that point?
Meanwhile I’m seeing this as an infectious thing. The “virus” has a very very good means of spreading itself across the galaxy. Any infected individual stays alive and works obsessively hard to infect more individuals who work collectively obsessively to infect others of the local ecosystem until all are infected and then to create technology to spread the virus to other species in the galaxy or beyond, likely leaving a husk of a planet left behind in the process. Creating a blissful sense of oneness serves that purpose. Making enough food doesn’t matter as long as it can spread to other planetary species capable of spreading itself before the current host is killed by the infection. The same model as terrestrial viruses.
But negative emotion does not serve the purpose. So when a negative emotion occurs its connections release.
Really? So you know exactly where this story is going to go because it’s so cliche? Please, tell us how this story is going to unfold.
Your analysis is absurdly reductive. Oh, why watch breaking bad? There have been crime stories before. Better Call Saul? There are dozens or even hundreds of shows about lawyers! When you reach that level of reduction every story has no new elements, especially when you’ve just seen the tiniest fraction of the story. You can’t watch or read anything.
This is also a bit of a concern of mine. I tend to be very interested in psychology and neurology and how cognition works. I know that’s probably over analyzing stories that don’t put that much effort into trying to understand what they’re portraying. But I do want to figure out how it’s supposed to work and even if it’s a bit fantastical, it should at least make sense. For instance, if it’s just a linking of all of human brains, it shouldn’t instantly gain knowledge that humanity does not have, like, for instance, some of the elements of quantum physics we can’t figure out. Now you could make the case that now that all the brain power of humanity is united and organized they could accelerate the gain of new knowledge, that would make sense, but it shouldn’t magically appear. Another concern I mentioned upthread – how is the knowledge of the dead wife stored when she was only part of their consciousness for a moment before she died? Maybe this is trivia and not important to the story elements of the show, and I wouldn’t expect it from most stories, but I have a lot of faith in Vince Gilligan to have put this sort of thought into his story.
There was a scene where she’s asked what the square route of some large number is and she came up with the (rounded) answer quickly. That makes me wonder – are they trying to portray collective intelligence as some sort of super computer? I’m not sure I like that. On the other hand, maybe they have access to the guy in the world that’s an autistic savant at calculating square roots or something and they just had his brain do it. I would imagine through training and talent there are human beings that could calculate the square root of a 5 digit number in their head quickly.
We’ll just have to see how it shakes out and if they’re thoughtful about the rules of the situation.
You are correct, SenorBeef. I do not know where it is going. But the two episodes so far are so derivative and trope-laden that my wife and I both have little desire to hang out long enough to find out what DOES happen. This is especially disappointing because so many reviewers have stated this is nearly the GOAT.
I think it was Sting who commented that he stopped listening to a song if it didn’t surprise him somehow in the first 15 seconds.
Whereas what bothers me is the lack of that occurring in these sorts of stories. Of courses data that is identified as important (and for whatever reason anything possibly relevant to the task of keeping the unjoined happy and getting them to be part of the plur1bus is important to the whole) would be stored redundantly immediately. Of course billions of brains processing in parallel could do a math problem like that as a trivial task. Is there a global transcendent conscious entity, a meta mind? Or did optimal propagation of the virus never need emergent sentience other than the goal to get the viral code spread to others?
Of course the showrunners may be going for more the spread of religious or political ideas as the metaphor … the need to convert others to see the light … but if so that’s less interesting.
Simple explanation, one of the telepathically linked nodes nearby pulled a phone out of her pocket, computed the square root, and transmitted the information back.
Organic farming uses lots of pesticides. It’s a myth that they don’t. In fact they typically use more, as they limit themselves from using the most effective pesticides for arbitrary reasons. Organic farming is nonsense and has no environmental or health benefits, and is just a boutique product to sell to rich westerners. If the whole world used organic farming, even if it were perfectly cooperative and not profit driven, 2 billion people would have to starve – at least with current consumption patterns. It’s much less efficient.
It’s true that a vegetarian society would generally have more calories to work with, though, as producing meat on a large scale is generally a massive net calorie loss (it’s a little more complicated than that for smaller scale meat production where grazing is done on non-fertile lands). They could definitely work something out, though not if they’re taking their non-killing philosophy to the extreme. There’s no way to harvest food for 8 billion people without killing a lot of insects and small animals no matter how careful you are.
Out of the billions of people on Earth there a bound to be a significant number of Rainman types. A thousand Rainmen give their answers and then form a consensus.
Being unbound by the collective ethos effectively gives the dozen unaffected superpowers which may be necessary for humanity to survive. The collective may not want someone to do their dirty work , but they will certainly need someone to.
I think it’s pretty clear that they aren’t taking non killing to extreme. They’re not taking super careful steps everywhere they go. They’re driving cars around which is going to kill plenty of insects.
Great start to the series. I’m picking up many vibes, including Body Snatchers, Twilight Zone, The Last of Us, The Leftovers and Station 11. And certainly Vince Gilligan’s focus on closeups and weird angles, everyday mechanical devices like floor polishers and vending machines, showing rather than telling, and even Jesse Pinkman’s inflatable suit. This intrigues me.
First episode was terrific and very promising. Lots of horror vibes but no horror feel, IMO, but somehow it still worked. The bits that should have been horrific were mostly just absurdly funny. The chiron on the TV “CAROL PLEASE CALL US WHEN YOU’RE READY” made me bust a gut laughing.
I really want to like this show. The premise is very interesting.
As others have said, I can’t imagine where they’re going with this.
I watched the first two episodes, and I probably will watch at least one more. That said, I’m finding it pretty grueling. The pacing isn’t working for me. There’s so much screen time with no dialog or action, just tense thriller music. I understand that is a style of directing, but it’s just not working for me.
I’m finding my mind wandering, like when you read a bad book, and you daydream through a few pages and have to go back and read it again.
Somewhere in my head I knew that but I wasn’t sure. Dalgona comes to mind.