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Electric Dreams (A Whole Lot of Dick)


SpaceChampion

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  • 1 year later...

Wow,some great casting:

Quote

Cast

"The Commuter"

"Impossible Planet"

"Crazy Diamond"

"Father Thing"

"Real Life"

"The Hood Maker"

"Kill All Others"

"Autofac"

"Safe & Sound"

"Human Is"

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
18 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Apparently first episode out tonight in the UK?  How was it?

It was ok. The production values were really good and felt a bit like a hybrid between "Man in the high castle" and "Blade Runner" (which is fine as they are PKD works too). I mention this as while the stories are set in the future they are much more in the sense of what the future would have looked like from a 60s perspective which is where the Man in the high castle comparison comes in.

The main problem for me is that it was a little rushed at the end. They take their time establishing the world quite well but then it feels like 20 mins has been cut to make it fit into a 1 hour slot. Which is a real shame as it could have made a great feature length TV show. Black mirror does a much better job of making 60 mins work well.

The other thing people who aren't familiar with Dick's work may tripover is mistakenly thinking the show is derivative. There's a lot in here people will recognise from films like "Blade Runner" and " Minority Report". I guess Dick did explore similar themes quite a lot to be fair so it's sort of a legitimate complaint.

I'll definitely check the others out but the first one to me looked great, with decent performances but didn't quite fulfill the promise. Maybe the amazon version has a longer run time? Channel 4 I guess is restricted to the one hour slot? 10-20 minutes more time could have made a real difference to the episode for me.

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On 18/09/2017 at 9:29 PM, red snow said:

The main problem for me is that it was a little rushed at the end. They take their time establishing the world quite well but then it feels like 20 mins has been cut to make it fit into a 1 hour slot. Which is a real shame as it could have made a great feature length TV show. Black mirror does a much better job of making 60 mins work well.

I think I'd agree with your assessment of the show. It did feel a bit rushed, it's a detective story in which the clues just fall into the detectives lap, I don't think that's a fatal flaw since the mystery wasn't really the main point of the story but I agree it might have worked better a 90 minute story.

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I have been reading PKD since the 60's. My older brother had picked up one of his novels, though I cannot remember which one. At 13 years old I really did not understand his themes  much but they got under my skin.  As a much older guy now, I can appreciate them much more.  He did use the same ideas over and over again but recursion was a thing with him.  That and the unreliability of memories. 

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I liked the second episode a lot more. Possibly because I bought into the chemistry between the love interests - which was pretty impressive given the age difference (something that was missing in "the hoodmaker") . Benedict Wong is always welcome on screen too. I've no idea what the ending was about though

did i miss something that could explain the shared dreams and apparent teleportation at the end? Or was it simply a case of the two of them asphyxiaiting and getting to see their dream as their brains died from lack of oxygen?

. The former is a bit random and the second is a bit dark.

Anyway I liked it.

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1 hour ago, red snow said:

I liked the second episode a lot more. Possibly because I bought into the chemistry between the love interests - which was pretty impressive given the age difference (something that was missing in "the hoodmaker") . Benedict Wong is always welcome on screen too. I've no idea what the ending was about though

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did i miss something that could explain the shared dreams and apparent teleportation at the end? Or was it simply a case of the two of them asphyxiaiting and getting to see their dream as their brains died from lack of oxygen?

. The former is a bit random and the second is a bit dark.

Anyway I liked it.

If you wonder at the the ending of anything  by PKD, never assume that it ends with rainbows and sunshine.

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On 25/09/2017 at 0:10 AM, maarsen said:

If you wonder at the the ending of anything  by PKD, never assume that it ends with rainbows and sunshine.

True. Based on some of his other short stories I thought the end was going to involve

some time travel and those two winding up as Adam and Eve

.

I didn't mind how ambiguous or strange the ending was in this case but I suspect it might annoy others. I think it got it around the limits of a show that's under 1 hour which is where the hoodmaker struggled.

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