Westworld - 'The Original' and 'Chestnut'

Welcome to Westworld.

Remember the glorious oddity that was Fargo a few years back? And of course 12 Monkeys? Yeah, we're going through a definite phase of TV adaptations of movies, and now HBO have reached further back for their adaptation of 1973's Michael Crichton-penned Westworld.

As in the film, the titular Westworld is an elaborate vacation resort in the not-so-distant future, where guests pay for an authentic old west experience, provided for them by android 'hosts' programmed to provide whatever the guests want, but without actual awareness that they aren't real people. Through the first episode, 'The Original', we meet several hosts - Dolores, a wholesome settler girl; Teddy, her nice would-be boyfriend; Maeve, the madame of the local bar - some of the staff of Westworld - founder, Robert Ford; head programmer, Bernard Lowe; ops manager, Theresa Cullen; paranoid security chief, Stubbs; and narrative director Lee Sizemore, a colossal tool - and a few guests, only one of whom is particularly noteworthy; the Man in Black.

Visually, the Man in Black is very similar to the android Gunslinger in the
movie, and similarly driven.

The twist is that in this version, the malfunctioning androids aren't the antagonists, or at least not solely or universally. Repeatedly subjected to violence and indignity by the guests, they come back from each refit as full of hope, anger or joy as ever, only to be beaten, raped or killed again by people that they can not hurt or even fight in return. They are very much the better angels of this tale, especially by comparison to the staff who enable their treatment and guests like the Man in Black, a super-rich regular - it is implied that he drops so much money that any usual rules are suspended for him - with a long history of abusing Dolores - the oldest host and presumably the 'original' of the title, unless that's the Man in Back as the original guest - but who has tired of the usual games and, after exhausting the potential of increasing levels of one-sided violence is looking for a 'deeper level' to the game.

Meanwhile, the staff are forced to halt the roll-out of a new software update which radically increases the emotional expression of the hosts when it begins to manifest glitches and to express memories of previous narrative cycles and roles. Taking a group of hosts offline, the staff move up a violent shoot-out to cover the lack of subquests. The lasting results of the glitch force some units to be withdrawn altogether and leaves Dolores able to hurt a fly.

'Chestnut' follows Dolores as she begins to remember snatches of her past, including the death of Teddy in the shoot-out, despite her beau being seemingly recast as a black hat. Meanwhile, a pair of new guests - Logan and William - enter the park. Logan is an old hand and committed black hat, while William is a newbie and shocked by the treatment of the hosts.

"Welcome to Westworld. Meaningless robot sex?"

Logan advises William to stay focused on the meaningless sex and violence, and not get sidetracked into the subquests. As an ST, I can't help feeling for the staff of the park, who clearly devote hours to crafting narratives - treasure hunts, posses, gunfights - for visitors who consider a notional rotating exclamation mark to be a target for pointless violence.

Mind you, I don't extend that sympathy to narrative director douche, who presents a Native American sex-and-violence travelogue, only for Ford to shoot it down in favour of something mysterious that he has been working on, probably during his jaunts into the park. I smiled at that, because the narrative director really is a dick. He also trades heavily on the shallow craving for sensation that marks the thrillseeking, disruptive guests.

Just one layer of the surrogate parent business that is all over this series.

The Man in Black continues his quest, rescuing a man from the noose in order to question him about 'the maze' in his home town. He guns down just about everyone in town with his LeMat revolver* and then turns the gun on the man's daughter, but it is the daughter who answers, suddenly calm and robotic, that the maze is not for him. Not that he cares, or that the hosts have any means of stopping him. It's very notable during the shoot outs that the Man in Black gets shot. A lot. It's just that the guns can't hurt guests (although the mechanic of this is not explained, unlike in the movie where the guns have a built in sensor,) which means that the stakes and consequences of any given fight lie entirely on the hapless hosts. It's not explicit, but it seems likely that this lack of risk is the root of his discontent with the existing narratives.

Hooker with a heart of printed circuit boards.

Back in town, Maeve is glitching, putting off the customers. Sizemore has her patched and sent back with her aggression ramped up to a level that is even more off-putting, requiring another recall and tune up from Elsie Hughes, a young programmer and the last major staff character so far. She detects an infection and sends her for treatment, only for Maeve to wake up on the table, flee and find the storage chambers where the unused hosts are kept. This is of course a wee bit distressing for her.

If you're thinking 'damn, that's a lot of characters' then you've not seen the show yet, because I'm skipping, and all of them have at least basic drives, motives and characterisation by the end of episode two. It's another example of a TV series with real, heavyweight writing and production, an excellent cast and a lot of subtext to focus on. It sometimes feels that as big budget movies get dumber, big budget TV gets smarter. Westworld is definitely smart, transferring much of its satirical commentary to MMOs and other multiplayer online games in which disruptive players might detract from the enjoyment of others in search of their own, and I hope that the payoff when we learn what the 'deeper game' is all about will live up to the opening.

* Yeah, I'm a weird gun nerd (like, weird guns especially,) and the LeMat is a classic bit of Old West weirdness, exploited here by seeing the Man in Black break open what initially looks like a six-shooter and load it with nine bullets and a shotgun cartridge.