![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessElectric Dreams - The Hood Maker
Holliday Grainger was up against herself in Strike with this, and playing a rookie being called ‘partner’ by a more experienced guy again (she might want to talk to her agent about that, because she showed range again as Honor took on her subjects or fellow telepaths’ thoughts). I know Dick via adaptations rather than his writing, so the set up reminded me of Minority Report in the law enforcement privacy invasion in an authoritarian world (and The Adjustment Bureau’s obsession with hats, which you could argue was linked to telepathy being the thing in this story, although it got dialled down as soon as the hoods emerged).
But the POV? While I had some sympathy for norms – who’d want telepaths reading your mind? – the telepaths came across as slaves, and the norms in charge were the powerbrokers. And most telepaths were female, (and the black lady cop in charge didn't allay my suspicions that white men had most of the power) and the metaphor of telepathic reading as sex was used quite quickly, and then more explicitly and grossly. Quelle surprise that the telepaths would rise up against the life they were forced to live and do what their haters accused them of. It was almost surprising that they hadn’t before, or that they didn’t use their telepathy as a more active weapon.
I liked how the Grapevine kind of worked as a telepath-only internet. And the moment Honor put on the hood for some peace and had a struggle with individual identity were good. Ross was the Special One, but we started with Honor observing the ‘dream’ and then using her power at the protest, and ended with her choice.
I was pleased there was a reason for what I noted as Ross’s inconsistency. Also, I’m sure Madden was very excited to use his accent, but I kept wondering about what had happened to Scotland in whatever had gone wrong, as everyone else was English in ‘London’.
The look was a plus – I like retrofuturism, and they’d obviously had fun dressing the set. The ‘teeps’ looked rather eighties. I love the titles.
It’s interesting to watch a total stand-alone episode in terms of the speed of development – which, apart from the icky POV, may be why I wasn’t feeling the ship, even though I like the dynamic elsewhere (coff Dredd, which the source doesn’t indulge in, or, for that matter, the less sci-fi Strike, which was written by a woman. The reason I haven’t read Dick is that I am so very much more likely to read sci-fi written by women, although men produce most of the sci-fi I watch.)
There was a total logical fallacy with the ‘you can read my mind but you can’t read my heart’ bit, because we’d had plenty of evidence that she was as much an empath as a telepath. And I may have been thinking too much about why Ross wasn’t coughing or suffering from the flames in that last scene. But the picture of the two people in the masks kissing made as much of a point as everything else preceding it.
So, I may give other episodes a chance – as it’s an anthology show, it’ll be easier to drop if I don’t get on with a relentless male gaze or telling a whole story in such a short form. Also, I’m so behind on Victoria that I might as well keep on catching up with that on my own steam.
Holliday Grainger was up against herself in Strike with this, and playing a rookie being called ‘partner’ by a more experienced guy again (she might want to talk to her agent about that, because she showed range again as Honor took on her subjects or fellow telepaths’ thoughts). I know Dick via adaptations rather than his writing, so the set up reminded me of Minority Report in the law enforcement privacy invasion in an authoritarian world (and The Adjustment Bureau’s obsession with hats, which you could argue was linked to telepathy being the thing in this story, although it got dialled down as soon as the hoods emerged).
But the POV? While I had some sympathy for norms – who’d want telepaths reading your mind? – the telepaths came across as slaves, and the norms in charge were the powerbrokers. And most telepaths were female, (and the black lady cop in charge didn't allay my suspicions that white men had most of the power) and the metaphor of telepathic reading as sex was used quite quickly, and then more explicitly and grossly. Quelle surprise that the telepaths would rise up against the life they were forced to live and do what their haters accused them of. It was almost surprising that they hadn’t before, or that they didn’t use their telepathy as a more active weapon.
I liked how the Grapevine kind of worked as a telepath-only internet. And the moment Honor put on the hood for some peace and had a struggle with individual identity were good. Ross was the Special One, but we started with Honor observing the ‘dream’ and then using her power at the protest, and ended with her choice.
I was pleased there was a reason for what I noted as Ross’s inconsistency. Also, I’m sure Madden was very excited to use his accent, but I kept wondering about what had happened to Scotland in whatever had gone wrong, as everyone else was English in ‘London’.
The look was a plus – I like retrofuturism, and they’d obviously had fun dressing the set. The ‘teeps’ looked rather eighties. I love the titles.
It’s interesting to watch a total stand-alone episode in terms of the speed of development – which, apart from the icky POV, may be why I wasn’t feeling the ship, even though I like the dynamic elsewhere (coff Dredd, which the source doesn’t indulge in, or, for that matter, the less sci-fi Strike, which was written by a woman. The reason I haven’t read Dick is that I am so very much more likely to read sci-fi written by women, although men produce most of the sci-fi I watch.)
There was a total logical fallacy with the ‘you can read my mind but you can’t read my heart’ bit, because we’d had plenty of evidence that she was as much an empath as a telepath. And I may have been thinking too much about why Ross wasn’t coughing or suffering from the flames in that last scene. But the picture of the two people in the masks kissing made as much of a point as everything else preceding it.
So, I may give other episodes a chance – as it’s an anthology show, it’ll be easier to drop if I don’t get on with a relentless male gaze or telling a whole story in such a short form. Also, I’m so behind on Victoria that I might as well keep on catching up with that on my own steam.
