Last Train To Transcentral [Review: The Commuter]

This review may contain some spoilers: please ensure your swibbles are fully functional.

The third Electric Dream is a slice of coffee-and-walnut flavoured insanity served with hot chocolate and marshmallows. Ed (Timothy Spall) is a station manager living and working in drab and dreary Woking. An encounter with a passenger (Tuppence Middleton) trying to buy a ticket to a station that doesn't exist leads Ed on a journey to a town unlike any other. Heaven? A quantum leap into an alternate reality, or back in time? An escapist fantasy?

I am enjoying the strong sense of location in these adaptations - not least the fact that of the first three, two have been set in the UK. Superficially Electric Dreams is an anthology of stand-alone stories. However three episodes in I'm starting to think about the connections and trends in this series.

Thoughts so far: There's a trend of increasing dreams and visions. The Hood Maker has Ross's vision of the river, The Impossible Planet has the visions of the bicycle and the lake that run through the story and foreshadow the ending, and The Commuter is full of dream-like events. The Commuter also has a further layer of unreality - from both Macon Heights and the reality of his own attic, Ed finds his way into a strange, light-filled dimension that seems to lie beneath both realities.

Along with the increasing visions, there's a trend of decreasing logic. The Hood Maker has a story that makes pretty sound logical sense if you start from the existence of the telepaths. This first episode may however be an exception. The Impossible Planet makes sense to start with, but the visions and ultimately the ending defy logic. Macon Heights is a place of dream-logic - repeated events, idealized people, sudden transitions and so on. It also leaves too many questions if you try to think about it logically - for example, why does the passenger ask Ed for a ticket in the first place? And who are the people who help the returning commuters get back on the train in the evening?

The Impossible Planet and The Commuter both pose the Matrix dilemma in different ways. Which would you prefer to live in - an unsatisfactory real world, or a better fantasy?

In another respect, though, The Commuter is the most real of the three. It's set in the present day, more or less, and in a recognizable, everyday world at least for those of us who live in the UK and use the rail network. There's a family struggling with mental illness, and later with sadness and loss.

All three episodes so far have been of outstanding quality, and I'm particularly impressed by the visuals which once again are stylish and unique - due to the uniqueness it's hard to put any of these episodes into context, but the sense of a perfect, fantasy town that's just a little sinister is right out of The Truman Show.

Overall: yes. I think definitely yes.

Star Tours [Review: The Impossible Planet]

The second of Channel 4's Electric Dreams TV dramas is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's short story The Impossible Planet. In a distant, space opera future two cynical intergalactic tour guides, Brian Norton and Ed Andrews, take parties of human tourists on cruises to see the most beautiful sights in the Universe - secretly editing the sights and sounds to make them more dramatic. When an elderly woman knocks on their office door accompanied by her personal robot and a suitcase full of cash, asking for a private tour of Earth, Norton and Andrews know that they can't really do this - after all, Earth was vaporized centuries earlier. But she is persistent, and able to pay cash. Perhaps there's a way they can grant her wish after all...

The Impossible Planet is slightly reminiscent in places of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide or a good episode of Doctor Who. It's just as inventive and darkly funny. However that's as far as it goes in terms of comparison. Amazingly, this is a space-based drama that feels nothing like Star Wars, Star Trek or any other mainstream space opera. It has an eccentric look and feel of its own, from the quirky art-deco spaceships to the wooden android who seems a little too smart.

After watching last week's episode The Hood Maker, then listening to the Electric Dreams podcast about that episode, I realised that a lot more had gone into the backstory than I'd originally picked up - for example there's a whole story about how and why that society had regressed from advanced electronics back to 50s typewriters and internal combustion.

This week I've learnt my lesson - I paid more attention to the story. In this version of the future the dominant industry and political power appears to be space travel and logistics, with space tourism a minor side-swindle. Also, the existence of faster-than-light intergalactic travel means that everything in the Universe has already been discovered and all that's left for humanity is to be idle, gullible tourists.

Once again the cast are brilliant - this time Jack Reynor as Norton, and Geraldine Chaplin as Irma, and the writing is good. Again there's an everyman hero - get used to this, they are PKD's bread and butter - and this one is absolutely typical, the kind of person who's not unrealistically honest, but while he's made his peace with small cons he struggles with his conscience over bigger moral issues. Meanwhile watch that wooden robot - he's up to something, and his own moral choices are also pretty interesting. The ending to this episode is more of a puzzler than The Hood Maker - it makes good artistic sense but you need to be ready to believe a few more impossible things before breakfast. A planet, perhaps.

What should Channel 4 do next? [Twitter poll]

After #ElectricDreams which sci-fi author should @Channel4 adapt next?

— Sci-Fi Gene (@scifigene) September 18, 2017

Boyz n The Hood [Review: The Hood Maker]

Electric Dreams, Channel 4's season of Philip K. Dick dramas, begins with The Hood Maker. This drama is set in an alternate history where tension is rising between "teeps" (telepaths) and "normals". Honor (Holliday Grainger) is a teep recruited by police agent Ross (Richard Madden) to help in the search for anti-teep activists, but when she participates in an interrogation they uncover a trail leading to a group of militants with a secret.

The Hood Maker is a good start. Shot in atmospheric yellows and greens, it's a dystopia of slums and riots on the one hand, and a rising police dictatorship on the other. Grainger, fresh from her fresh-faced performance as Cormorant Strike's assistant Robin, acts her heart out as telepath Honor in a challenging role throwing her from innocence to powerful psychic to traumatised victim. Madden has no such range in his role but achieves something else - a decent portrayal of the everyman hero at the heart of so many PKD stories. The episode is well-written. Conceptual sci-fi works best when the unexpected consequences are explored - here, in a quite harrowing scene, a telepath is abused by a man who forces her to experience his disturbed fantasy. She has nightmares about it - and all the telepaths in the area share the nightmares.

Filmmakers have been plundering Philip K. Dick's legacy of paranoid sci-fi for years but Electric Dreams might be the first attempt to treat his short stories with respect. Usually PKD film adaptations - Minority Report and The Adjustment Bureau for example - stretch the short story so far that the original plot and characters are barely recognizable, add shitloads of action and impose a completely new plot, creating a hybrid that may still be enjoyable but lacks the intensity or the irony of the original. Blade Runner is a pleasant exception to this rule- perhaps because it's adapted from a novel rather than a short story and so is cut rather than stretched. Presumably we can also thank Blade Runner for Electric Dreams - the fact that the sequel is about to open must have helped with the funding... 

On the basis of this first installment, Electric Dreams looks to be an exciting addition to the sci-fi anthology catalogue - up there with The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Black Mirror and, going further back in time, Tales Of The Unexpected.

Where Did You Get That Hat? [Review: The Adjustment Bureau]

Adapted from a Philip K. Dick short story, The Adjustment Bureau is a more light-hearted movie than I expected, going easy on the paranoia and the reality-bending metaphysics and adding elements of comedy and romance.

It's also reminiscent of several other films. It's a story about the power of love overcoming the power of fear, with magic doors as a symbol of the choices we make in our lives - great, but Mike and Sully got there first. The idea of our world being organized precisely by a secret cabal of control freaks was explored superbly in The Truman Show, itself a PKD-style slice of paranoia. Unlike Truman, Matt Damon's character is shown the true nature of reality early in the film but is sworn to secrecy.

The Adjustment Bureau - Seasonally Adjusted

The plot centres on the romance between Matt Damon's would-be senator David and dancer Elise, played by Emily Watson. In the grand scheme of things (which for the purposes of this film is a literal concept enforced by the mysterious Bureau), they're supposed to meet once but never see each other again - a series of chance encounters throws them together and threatens to derail the plan.

The romantic element is not ironic and borrows heavily from the standard fate-obsessed rom-com blueprint as seen in Serendipity but I forgive them, because when David makes his obligatory sprint to the chapel to stop Elise marrying someone else, his out-of-breath you-were-meant-to-be-with-me speech doesn't win Elise's heart over but makes him look like a psychopathic stalker.

I also liked the idea that, unlike the Truman Show's production crew or the Men In Black, The Bureau agents themselves are error-prone and tied up in bureaucratic red tape: as a result, although they are less threatening it's a much more interesting organization. Douglas Adams would be proud: bucks are passed, memos are taken down and things are kicked upstairs. The hats are also a nice touch, and as with those MIB sunglasses they are there for a reason.

I Crush Everything [Review: The Lathe Of Heaven]

George Orr, an undistinguished draughtsman, believes that his dreams can change reality, in such a way that only he is aware of the change. Orr is an everyman figure, terrified of the power of his dreams, so he seeks to suppress them with drugs – leading him reluctantly into the influence of William Haber, a well meaning but ambitious psychiatrist. Far from helping Orr to stop the dreams Haber starts trying to experiment with them for what he believes is the common good. Orr hires a lawyer, Heather, to try to stop Haber’s experiments: there is an awesome moment while Orr is asleep in Haber’s laboratory, when Haber and Heather look out the window and see a terrible shift in reality taking place.

Exploring the nature of reality, dreams, power and morality, centred on ordinary characters with believable flaws, laced with paranoia and simultaneously celebrating and subverting sci-fi themes such as alien invasion, The Lathe of Heaven could arguably be described as one of Philip K. Dick’s finest novels. In fact it was written by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Divided States Of America Part II [Review: The Man In The High Castle]

The Man In The High Castle, by Philip K. Dick, also describes a divided America – this time between the German and Japanese forces that have won World War II. Most of the action is set on the Japanese side of the line, while the novel hints at Nazi atrocities committed elsewhere.

While The Years Of Rice And Salt is often about the movers and shakers of the world, this novel is about the under-dogs and middle-men, the Americans under occupation, scraping by and trying to make an honest or dishonest buck. Fakes and fake fakes abound: the Americans are forging historical Americana for the Japanese collectors. The I Ching features heavily again – and yes, I, the author and the cast of the novel are all aware this is not a Japanese philosophy! It’s been introduced to America by the Japanese and is there for a reason. Meanwhile a sudden German leadership contest forces the Japanese colonists and diplomats to choose between supporting different flavours of inhumanity.

The central mystery within the novel is another alternative history novel, banned on the German side of the line, which seems to depict a world in which the Germans and Japanese have lost the war. In the final chapter, a meeting with the author of the novel leads to a subtle, existential twist in the tail, foreshadowed by an earlier scene where a minor character briefly finds himself in our reality. It’s the perfectly executed prestige at the end of a great conjuror’s illusion.

Watching the Vast Machine

The Traveller, by John Twelve Hawks, is a thriller about the rise of CCTV monitoring. In the novel, all the CCTV and other forms of remote monitoring are combined to form the “Vast Machine” which gives a small elite the ability to monitor and so rule the world. The only defence is to live “off the grid” but this becomes increasingly difficult. The Vast Machine effectively creates a “virtual Panopticon," a reference to architect Jeremy Bentham’s speculative prison – the Panopticon – in which prisoners are always on view.

The number of CCTV cameras in the UK is not known. In 2004 Professor Clive Norris estimated that there were 4.3 million, with any individual being caught on camera 300 times per day – but as there is minimal regulation of state or private CCTV installation there is no accurate or up-to-date figure. In addition to regular CCTV, Gatso cameras pick up speeding, traffic light violations, inappropriate use of bus lanes and other driving misdemeanours while other cameras enforce congestion charge zones. Eating one’s own food at restaurant tables? Probably in the near future. And more - soon they will be picking up faces or suspicious patterns of movement. There are some interesting articles about the rise of surveillance in the UK on the SpyBlog.

However the fear of constantly being monitored – and who might have access to the data or images – is only one side of the CCTV story. I wonder if other people have driven past a Gatso camera and triggered the flash – it’s not always clear why this happens – and then heard nothing? Or, in trying to recover stolen goods, have discovered that the tapes were “lost” or “corrupted,” or worse, the premises don’t want to share their CCTV with the victim or the police – and are not legally obliged to do so. According to the BBC, about a thousand cameras are installed for every crime that is solved by CCTV. It's hard to see how all those cameras could be effectively monitored unless every one of us carried out some shifts as a security guard, recalling the plot of A Scanner Darkly in which an anonymous narcotics agent is required to set up a watch on himself.

A feature of Bentham’s original Panopticon design was that, while the prisoners would always be visible in their glass cells, the guards were always hidden in the central tower. A single guard could operate window shutters via levers to give the impression of a fully staffed watchtower – or at times there might be no guards at all and the prisoners would never know. Sometimes I get the feeling I’m not being watched…

What is human? What is real?

Philip K Dick - different people seem to respond to different aspects of his writing, the everyman heroes get good press generally. For me the appeal of Dick's writing was his obsession with two huge philosophical questions - what is human? and what is real?

This isn't a review of Philip K Dick's stories however. Andrew Niccol is a scriptwriter and director whose films also explore these questions, often very effectively. Four examples:

The Truman Show (2001, script AN, directed Peter Weir) The central character is unknowingly living on a huge sound set surrounded by actors, and is the central character in a life-long TV show. This scenario crops up several times in PKD's stories. Superb direction creates proper paranoia where traffic jams and mistuned radios become highly sinister; while Jim Carrey demonstrates comic timing without his trademark exaggeration and clowning, leading to a spot-on performance and a genuinely likeable character.

Gattaca (1997, written and directed by AN) this time the focus is on human identity in terms of genetics. This is hard sci-fi with only the tiniest extrapolations from the present to create a near-future society where your life is determined by quick and easy DNA testing. The central plot concerns the natural-born and genetically imperfect hero's attempt to join the space programme by borrowing DNA samples of a genetically perfect but injured athlete; however the subplots
explore the impact of DNA testing in everything from finding a partner to it's most familiar modern day use in CSI-style policing. Characterization is slightly cold in places; script is intelligent and clear, and visual imagery is often stylish and stunning (the two central characters live at the top and bottom of a house, connected by a helical spiral staircase).

S1m0ne - (2002, written and directed by AN) Pacino plays the director who fires his star actress and replaces her with a computer simulation. There are early hints that the simulation may itself be intelligent and have it's own agenda (boring) but in fact the film takes off in a much more imaginative direction - the director has to go to ever increasing lengths to convince the public (and fellow actors) of the reality of his vactress; meanwhile it becomes clear that Sim0ne is actually part of the director's personality.

Lord of War (2005, written and directed by AN) - the perpetrators of war crimes and other atrocities are often written off as inhuman monsters. I won't cite the obvious example as I am a firm adherent to Godwin's Law. In general this is a coward's way out of addressing the horrific truth that human beings are capable of this level of evil, or of thinking about why they might act the way they do. This film deserves full credit for taking this on - Cage's amoral international arms dealer character is given just enough emotional response to the consequences of his dealings that we can't see him as a robot, and are forced to struggle with the uncomfortable question of his motivation.