Well, I mean if you buy a Real Sex doll, do you ask it if it’s Ok to have sex first? The humans are told these are just robots. Sure, it still shows a evil side to rape and torture a robot, why would any sane person enjoy that?
But having the rescued girl “reward” you isnt any sort of wrong thing.
Blackmail only works if people are ashamed of what they do in Westworld. Given that guests don’t think the hosts are real people, I doubt they are. Can you blackmail someone over what they did in Grand Theft Auto?
True, but think about the whole thing from the perspective of a newly self-aware Host. Sure Maeve seems to be able to move on with ease, but she also was able to deliberately reprogram her personality in a way none of the other Hosts have been able to (so far).
So, they have Android tigers. And an Android bison in the lab. Is the dog wandering among the bodies an Android? What about the horses, are they androids? How much of the wildlife is androids? Plant life?
OK, the plot thickens further. Mughal(?) World, Shogun World.
And why is Dolores so willing to slaughter her fellow hosts? Why not just tweak their programming?
At least I kept the timeline straight in this episode. Maybe.
I was calling it Raj World rather than Mughal World, but I get your point.
My first thoughts on watching the opening:
[ul]
[li]Oh, great, now we have Rajworld to have to keep track of.[/li]
[li]The sitar player launching into “Seven Nation Army” was rather distracting.[/li][/ul]
Dolores is the Yul Brynner robot from the original movie, isn’t she?
ETA: I think the reason present-day Bernard is malfunctioning is that he uploaded into himself whatever encrypted file was stored in Dolores’ dad.
Dolores does not appear to have an innate understanding of how the hosts are programmed like Maeve does. Although she can command them to some extent, it may be outside her means to completely alter their core personalities. Or, perhaps in valuing her own “free will” (such as it is) she is unwilling to ‘program’ the others in some analogue of a moral conflict; she wants the other ‘Hosts’ to make the choice to rebel of their own volition.
It does seem to be set during Crown Rule rather than the Mughal Empire, so I think Raj is more appropriate.
How amazing is it, though, that the opening riff is so distinctive that you can recognize it being played on a sitar?
I wouldn’t take much from comparisons to the original movies and the “Beyond Westworld” show; the original film was an exercise in the sort of technophobia that Michael Crichten made a career engaging in. The show is as much a meditation on ethics, dehumanization, and what a synthetic cognition might look like, e.g. “The Reveries” (old memories that affect patterns of thinking and response). None of the characters in the old Westworld movie and sequels were conscious or capable of actual emotion.
Stranger
So we finally get to see Felix & Sylvester again (really surprised the latter is still alive). And now they’re in Shogun World. Given how Lee reacted when he realized that it does suggest it’s darker & edgier than Westworld. Plus he’s Head of Narrative for Westworld; now he’s in another park where he doesn’t know the narratives by heart.
Well I was wrong about that. :smack: Park 6 is a British Raj setting; I’m guessing late '20s/early '30s. And it’s much smaller than Westworld (which is apparently big enough to have a Klondike narrative). The Hosts have a harder time keeping Guests from interacting with each other and Grace was able to get to the edge of “Guest experience zone” pretty quickly. All of which fits in with it being the newsiest park.
All the animals (except for insects) in the park(s) are Hosts. Real animals would be too hard to control and too much of a liability. Presumably they all have the same safety protocols that normally stop them from attacking Guests even when wild animals would do so. Also just imagine how real horses would react to their riders (& every other “human”) suddenly freezing in place. 
The trees and shrubs don’t really need “narratives”, do they? They just plant them there. Maybe some of them are modified if they wouldn’t naturally survive the environment.
I suspect, given Fords attention to detail and need for control, every animal in the parks is artificial, right down to the birds, dogs and rats. We’ve seen Ford interact with a snake. Guests ride horses, so they have to be artificial. Probably cows too. Not like cows require a ton of programming, but you don’t want a scared cow stampeding a guest.
Lots to unpack from that episode.
Near the beginning of the episode Charlotte, upon Bernard “making it back”, asks about where Abernathy is, something about him slipping away from them so many times … but we leave the ep with Charlotte in possession of Abernathy, him having “slipped” from them once … huh. Where/when do the other slips happen.
In terms of how the storylines intersect - will Delores be William’s “door”, … where he ends and where he began?
I thought she said Bernard is the one who keeps slipping away because he keeps fading in and out.
So what’s the deal with those Ghost Indians that pop up semi-randomly? Here’s what we know about them:
[ul]
[li]They don’t respond to voice commands like normal hosts. Luke’s Hemsworth’s character couldn’t get them to “Cease all motor functions.” Neither could Maeve rewrite their programming.[/li][li]For that matter, how did Hemsworth get away from them?[/li][li]They also let Maeve’s group go.[/li][li]Dolores doesn’t seem to like them.[/li][/ul]
Will they let the woman from Rajworld go?
I assume they didn’t just introduce a new character and have her escape death from hosts, a Bengal tiger, falling off a cliff into a lake just to have the Ghost Nation kill her next episode. Presumably, she was introduced so we can find out the “deal” with the Ghost Nation.
Is it just me or is anyone else uncomfortable with the idea of a vacation experience set during the days of the British Raj? And I realize this is just a TV show about a theme park but still. Are we supposed to believe that people are nostalgic for the time when a small group of Brits ruled over a subcontinent?
If my discomfort seems unreasonable, imagine a park within Westworld set in an antebellum plantation in Georgia or Virginia. Does that seem reasonable?
I suppose the discomfort is the point; that the guests in this park can do things that we’d consider politically incorrect. Like playing cowboys and Indians.
I mean it’s kind of the Brit version of the Old West. A nostalgic exotic part of their history. And both involve the subjugation of native peoples in different ways.
Given the nature of the Delos parks—essentially unrestricted fantasy outlets for the very wealthy, where they can engage in atavistic behaviors without consequence—the subjugation and depersonification of the ‘Hosts’ is actually the real draw. The guests don’t just observe actors running through scripted scenarios; they actively engage in often brutal exchanges without any consequence more than a bruise. And except for Bernard/Arnold and Charolotte, we’ve seen little evidence of ethnic diversity in the Delos upper management and none at all in the guests, although Maeve boards the leaving train without attracting notice so .
South World, with its deep mythology of racial superiority and almost comic faux Gothicism, would make a favorable setting for a park although I suspect it is a little too close to Westworld for Delos to run both settings. Roman World, Viking Wolrd, Conquistador World, or Mongol World, however, would all offer similar elements of subjugation, and indeed, it would be difficult to find a period of mythic history where slavery and subjugation wasn’t commonplace.
Stranger
Yeah, it’s like Rudyard Kipling-land.
For that matter, Edo Japan wasn’t exactly paradise for the serfs.
ERA glad I’m not the only one trying to continue wedging cardinal direction names into the parks.