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mikko_aarnio
Reviews
Black Mirror: USS Callister (2017)
Great episode with "huh", "wait what", "just whyyy" moments.
Like everyone has been saying in comments already, this episode has serious flaws:
1) You can't copy a memory from DNA. They could have explained it by lets say having a backup of the memories (as they do on other episodes) with their head implants, but there's no way you can just access others memories and create copy of them.
2) If you have Godly powers, you wouldn't act slow in case of disobedience and potentially having people to destroy themselves to stop your amusement. You could just exit the game and reappear on the spaceship, right? Or pause the game and do whatever, you're supposed to be admin. Even in WoW you have admins with commands to immediately appear next to other player (ie. I've reported several people from using bots to farm areas) and I can see them appear right in front of that guy and remove him from game.
3) Even if for some reason the system freezes and even the computer runs into some glitch, wouldn't there be at least some backup for the chip to automatically turn off? Maybe a forced exit after 2 hours and asking whether you want to continue playing? Seems like a big security issue for a game or the operating system.
4) The update black hole was just nonsense plot point. And escaping through it should have been skipped entirely and focused more on calling the police to shut down the PC put a stop to their mistreatment.
5) Why wouldn't you have crewmembers with "real" guns? You're admin. You can make your character invurnerable to shots. Even if you were shot and could be damaged, nothing stops you from respawning again? This wasn't clearly thought out as a rule.
This episode has nearly unlimited potential of showing the true terrors of what an admin could do to enslave and humiliate the human AI clones, but it for some reason was dressed up as hopeful escape from a monster... maybe they couldn't find other ways to end episode? Does it have to have an ending?
In the episode about Hot Shot, there was no happy ending, there was no change in the system. The guy who got out from the system and got a nice new home to live in still was saddened by his own betrayal of what he stood for. That episode was a masterpiece. This episode... why did it have to end this way???
If you want to make "kinda" happy ending then at least try to have the plot being coherent with reality. Why not just let them end their lives?
Also missed opportunity to have the admin update version of the game to actually have genitalia for the newly added woman crew member that he clearly felt some attraction throughout the episode. Like this guy clearly hasn't had sex for a long time and surely you'd be at least a bit horny for the opportunity at least for the fake world with no consequences?
This episode could have been way darker... like WAYYY DARKER than it originally was intended.
The Visit (2015)
Interesting documentary
Very interesting documentary, not much about how aliens are going to look, how would they act, but a reflection of humans in a face of visitors.
We view ourselves as "moral beings" who still have war against each others, we're corrupt, we are afraid of the unknown. We are afraid of something that we cannot control.
In a face of alien visitors, a race that has technology maybe billions of years more advanced than us, intelligence far greater than anything we can produce in centuries.. a being of almost magical properties and with a technology that will seem like magic to us... How can we deal with this "God" himself descending on us humanity. We feel already, with just few signs of "god" appearing to us resulting massive panic and need to form some sort of control of the unknown. We are a race that fears the unknown, and yet we appear to ourselves as capable of making judgment on things that are beyond our understanding. Will we bow to our knees and beg for forgiveness or will we say to these visitors same thing that DC universe movie said to alien visitor: "Tell me... do you bleed?"
With such strength of billions of years of advancement in technology, they can wipe us out with just a snap of a finger, create a super virus that can destroy any biological life on instant, they can conjure up black holes in the centers of the planets to consume us all. We feel powerless... and for a good reason.
Indeed an alien visitor might share a bright light to us as a species when we recognize that gods that we worship are nothing but an imagery of how we see us... but the real gods might not have such meanings or ethics as we share.
Are we really more than a physical beings that really are worthy of saving, are the morals the same as humans, or do they see us like we see cows and pigs, nothing more than soulless selfish beings walking in the dark with no purpose, eating what is presented in front of us... or are we really something of... perhaps divine. Perhaps something that needs to be valued. Is our intelligence enough to give us respect, to give us a reason for our existence?
If alien were to visit us, would it be friendly? Would it not just come here to establish a mining colony for their planet, to employ mindless robots to gather minerals and just harvest the planet?
Maybe why we haven't been visited is that there's really nothing in our planet that's worth visiting... maybe it's a good thing that we are left alone... for now. Giving a spark of lightning to a monkey in cage would shock it for a lifetime, it would never recover, it would go into panic...
As long as our need to control everything is a center of us, it makes impossible for friendly contact lead to something prosperous rather than something that will eventually lead to more misery.
Maybe we indeed have been visited, or scanned, but we are seen what we are, a pack of frightened monkeys trying to put sticks together to control everything, and we've been deemed for not worthy of a second visit for thousands of years.
The documentary makes very good points on many places but it leaves out the most interesting aspect of the visit, which is our connection to our need for gods, needs for something greater than us to exist... and how it would impact our spiritual ways of thinking.
The document is dark themed, but so is life, so are the conflicts between humans. Nothing is what we make it out to be, and that leaves us to hope for a better tomorrow, to seek something of a divine... something lasting, something that is solid. Perhaps our need for god ultimately is a tool for prepare us for the encounter... or perhaps the religion will ultimately make us fear the unknown even more...