Wednesday 16 November 2016

Humans: Season 2, Episode 2

"Why do you hurt us?"

Two episodes in, and both the plot and the philosophical subtext become clearer. At one extreme we have Hester, the Malcolm X of the synths, who hates the oppressive humans and has no compunction about killing them. On the other we have Niska, synth, avid reader of philosophy and, as she's determined to be tried as a human would be for the murder she has committed, someone rather likely to have read The Outsider. This series seems to have moved on from literary sci-fi to French existentialism. I like it.

Niska is the most fascinating character- but she has competition. Mattie, for one, manages to work out what Niska has done with her disk, and that synths are slowly becoming sentient; just the odd one for now but... where will it end? Mattie is also quite brazenly restoring the late lamented Odi in plain sight, which shows an admirable amount of brazen cheek. I love her. Then we have the wise gentle Max, and the kind and loving Mia, who suffers heartbreak here from nothing but an act of kindness.And then we see Kate and Pete again, their relationship having grown rather lovely. Meanwhile, over in that country which seems to think that handing loads of power to Donald Trump is a good idea, Athena has decided to go to England and visit our old friend Hobb.

To an extent things are still setting up, and perhaps it's taking more time this series for things to really start to be sublime, but the philosophical heart is already there.

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