Westworld

In the original Westworld (1973), which took place in the distant year of 1983, the robots go bad.  It was great stuff and Yul Brynner's gunslinger is the stuff of legend.  Of course, this was made when computer programming was comparatively primitive, the internet did not exist, advanced video games consisted of Pong.  It is a classic Michael Crichton creation that is ripe for reboot in our modern technological age.  Or is it?

 

The robots - called hosts - are far less mechanical than the ones in the original.  In fact, they appear to be assembled from some milky substance, starting with bones and adding musculature, ligaments, tendons, and so forth.  Precisely how they work is unclear as of the 3rd episode.  There was a flashback that showed a more mechanical version of the hosts as well a youthful Anthony Hopkins.  However, we do know that the hosts have programmed responses, the ability to 'improvise' conversation, and get updates from time to time.  Also, it is revealed that the hosts have been given knowledge of nightmares so that, if a technician forgets to wipe the host's memory, it can view its death or rape or such as a bad dream.  Ah, it is confirmed that we can wipe the memory.  They are just a big complex computer.  However, unlike a modern computer, these ones cannot be accessed remotely.  At one point, a host wanders off - it is referred to as a stray, indicating this is not uncommon - and park employees have to hike through the desert to recover it.  Once close enough, the technician was able to 'shutdown' the stray with a tablet.  Therefore, there is some wireless communication with the hosts but it is very short range.  This is probably a safety precaution; you wouldn't want some hacker in Russia taking over a host and wreaking havoc.  With this in mind, the story is preposterous.

 

If the hosts have programming and some are accessing old memories, just reimage them.  Modern computers are often reimaged to resolve all sort of intentional and unintentional errors.  Overwrite the existing operating system, programs, data, etc. with a clean copy.  Voila!  Good as new.  The very idea that the hosts are getting confused by accessing 'memories' from previous storylines is just crazy.  Since you can just erase all the programming and start from scratch, it makes no sense to retire the physical units.  The programming has clearly gone awry when hosts are waking up when not prompted and committing suicide by bashing in its own skull.  Such problems call for a return to the last restore point when the host was working properly but the park has to 'kill' all the problem hosts in a massive bloodbath - for the benefit of the guests - rather than just do the fix in much the same way they did the update.  Silly.

Then there is the effort to make the hosts as central characters.  Does the show want me to side with the robots who will rise up against their cruel masters or am I siding with the humans?  Well, I'm with the humans.  This is just a fully immersive video game for the superrich and it is hard to give the hosts more value - because they have a physical form - than all the digital characters in traditional video games.  Sure, the code is more complicated but it is still just a product of the code.

All that aside, I have enjoyed the show thus far.  It is possible that the expanding number of failures is intentional tinkering by the top programmers.  Anthony Hopkins character certainly seems to dismiss the problem entirely too readily.  Why is that?  I'm pretty sure we will find out.