SNAPSHOT
In the second eight-part series, Synths all over the world are experiencing ‘a catastrophic malfunction’, or in Mattie’s words ‘waking up’ and questioning the status they’ve been afforded by humans. (synopsis via Den of Geek)
From the “Uncanny Valley”, where people recoil from a computer-generated figure that looks almost human but not quite to pop culture explorations of what it means to be human such as Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek (Data, the Borg), Her and Ex-Machina, and beyond, humanity has long wrestled with the idea of what it means to be us.
One of the most acute and at times devastatingly insightful ways to explore such ideas has been through the presence of robots and cyborgs in society, beings who look and sound like us but don’t have that intangible spark that marks them truly self-aware and sentient.
Until that is, they do and humanity is forced to confront the fact that life can make its presence felt in forms that we may not recognise or necessarily be comfortable with.
One of the most nuanced examinations of this idea in recent years has been Humans, a series that centred on the idea that Synths were everywhere in a near-present parallel Earth, performing all manner of menial, hospitality and caring tasks that people were glad to be freed of and to which they had little inclination to return.
It very cleverly used one family, the Hawkins, to grapple with the presence of sentient Synths, beings who looked like their more conventional counterparts but who could love, care, hate, kill and nurture, just like us.
As Humans brilliantly and compellingly illustrated, that isn’t always enough for these once- artificial beings to be accepted, and their presence sets in motion a panic among humanity in the know about what happens when we are not the only self-aware bipedal creatures on the planet.
Does it all goes pear-shaped and Skynet or do we rise above and evolve and grow as a species? Unfortunately, while we often get to the latter position, we have to, rather messily, go through the former one first.
But is it possible to avoid it? Can the better angels of our flawed nature prevail? In just a few short weeks, Humans will likely give us the answer.
Humans series 2 premieres on Channel 4 in UK on 30 October and on AMC in USA in February 2017.
http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/humans/36393/humans-series-2-first-trailer