Well he'd know he was been unfaithful to Anita.
Maybe he just didn't find her attractive, didn't fancy her, it happens even with Teenage boys, a hot body attached to a ropey personality can kill a hard-on.

Gawd knows what the thinks will happen with Anita, some completely impossible fantasy, no doubt.
Maybe like the Theatre woman, he's reading stuff into Anita's responses that aren't there, because it suits him.
Hey ho it's a minor diversion to the real action IMO.

I'd agree if we were talking about, say, a marketing manager for example. But surely you couldn't just fake an email saying "Dear Sir, a colleague of mine, DI Voss, will be joining your team from Wessex Police tomorrow", and their DCI would just read it and say "oh right".

I don't know how police tranfers work but I would have though that the synth would be able to find out and make sure she mirrored it - if she's 'clever' enough to get the job she must have worked it out thoroughly. It might just be one of those things we have to accept in this parallel world. I would have though if we can accept a dead child coming back to life as part mechanical human then we can probably get past a synth getting through a recruitment process.

Yeah I know you clearly have to suspend disbelief, I was just theorising what might happen re the DI Voss character. I'll definitely be tuning in to find out anyway!

Assuming he's a virgin it's possible he was just too shy and too intimidated by the prospect. Maybe he wasn't prepared to have his first time with a virtual stranger at a party. Maybe he was worried he wouldn't be able to perform or that he didn't have protection. Maybe he was hoping for his first time to be from a more meaningful relationship.

Everyone's different.

Good point! Though maybe he was hoping for some friendly hacker to help with some inappropriate mods.


In the same way that people having crushes on favourite band members don't just stop having other relationships, but on the other hand maybe it was an on-the-spot panic reaction as opposed to any particularly deliberate chain of thought about not being judged.

What I had a bit of trouble with was that smash club. Surely those synths would have been expensive pieces of kit? Where would they get so many of them from? How could they afford to charge forty dollars to smash up a £10,000-£20,000 machine?

I assumed they kidnap them or something.

I assumed they were end of life and off for recycling, the frame/skeleton is probably what's worth money, everything else is probably junk/old hat after a few years.
Constant small improvements in manufacturing, sensors, actuators, cpu's.
They're £20K new, how much value does a car lose in the first couple of years, about a third?

I've just realised something, how do you recognise the latest model synth from an older model, some people all ways want the latest thing, old is always second best to them.

I think the trouble was that the human girl was actually quite attractive, they should have had a less attractive girl come on to him.

We know that smash clubs were legal because we saw Hobb's colleague intercept a call to the police about a synth going rogue in one. If they were illegal would the humans there have called the law when things went p-shaped?

Just as everyone today wants a new phone every two or three weeks, so too would people in this supposedly utopian world want the very latest synth technology. As a result there would be loads and loads of earlier generation synths around that weren't worth the trouble to update or refurbish. Who, for example, would still have any use for a Nokia 6021, except me? (yes, that's my phone). They'd be bought inexpensively in job lots by the smash clubs, which would have existed solely for the purpose of humans letting off steam without actually hurting anyone! The forty quid charge would probably just about cover the overheads on the warehouse space, leaving a bit over to buy the next batch of out-of-date synths ...

This episode did a lot to improve both Laura and Matilda as characters and their general attitudes towards Synths/Anita in particular.

Sadly, it also did a lot to show Joe as a creep and Toby as pathetic too.

The Synths being used in fights wasn't a shock considering that they've been used as sex objects as well. Not blaming Niska for going postal on some of the humans as well.

Pete's partner being a Synth was a nice surprise and I did like learning more about Leo through his brief meeting with George as well.

It's certainly getting more interesting now, isn't it 8/10

'Pete's partner being a synth was a nice surprise ...' implies you hadn't realised this from the off. Pete's 'partner' is actually his wife and she's called Jill (sure I vaguely recognise her from Coronation Street a few years ago).

That said, the series has been totally absorbing from the first few minutes of episode one. This forum has had so many posts after just the first few episodes .. everyone's got an opinion or a theory and that's indicative of the thought provoking nature of the programmes' concept.

Brilliant!

Smash clubs may or may not be illegal, not sure really know yet, could be a low level crime or one the Police aren't interested in because many share the same attitude to synths as the customers.
It's like sending the firearms unit into a Brothel, they won't be interested in the vice crimes.

If someone goes ape at a crack den and starts stoving peoples heads in with a baseball bat, charged with possession or get your head stoved in, you'll call the Old Bill.
It wasn't a synth going rogue, reported, it's woman going ape bashing people up.
It's probably inconceivable to most people that a synth can go rogue, they've had years of the Asimov rules, humans have long history of going 'rogue' though.
It's possibly a synth only to a small group of people.

A bit harsh, isn't it? It's like you have a new satellite system with a way to unlock a hard core porn channel just stiitng there. You're left alone, sexually frustrated because your wife is putting her work ahead of you and never seems to be around. Why wouldn't you give it a try?


I think Niska is just as deluded as any human who anthropomorphises the synths. She may be sentiient but the others are no more worthy of consideration for their feelings than an outdated PC or mobile phone. .She'll be attacking humans for mistreatment to automobiles, next

Sorry you're making no sense there.

Partner as in work partner, common parlance for when 2 coppers are 'partnered' together.
There have been suspicions that his work partner is a synth, equally that could have been a red herring and they could have said she was somewhere on the Autism spectrum.

Right I better stay out of this, I foresee some of the long winded stuff coming along which happens in the lull between episodes.

Er, one of us has the wrong end of the stick here.

I thought the reference in that post was to his work partner, the DI 'female' . His wife (played by Jill Halfpenny) definitely does not seem like a synth to me, but she is having a lot of fun with the physio. synth who is 'helping' her!

Yes I agree. A lot of the synths won't be sentient and will be just automaton.

Being sentient she should recognise the difference but she is also childlike so like a child will treat things as humans (such as a cuddly doll).

Was I the only one who clocked the female detective as a Synth?
Some plainly obvious robotic movements and mannerisms.
I did question it a little with the scar on her neck but then the latest episode confirmed it for me before the reveal.

Mattie doing a complete u-turn wasn't in keeping with the way she's been set up so far.

The boy (name?), idiot. As a once teenage boy (many moons ago) I can safely say that a crush on someone else doesn't stop you sowing your oats.

I was half expecting Hobb to try to reason with Niska.

I've clearly missed something critical here - why is it that Jill H-p is getting so many specific mentions? Not a criticism of those who have but I genuinely don't know, do I lose street-cred for that?

I only recognise her as Nicola from Byker Grove.

I don't think it's anything specific. She was in last week's a bit more maybe, or the scene was more relevant? Overall she hasn't had more mentions than anyone else.

How come Anita/Mia has been running for 14 years when Odi is pretty much ready for scrap after just six?

I have been wondering if the more human synths, have minds based on human brianwaves, the rest do not, as for why she is working order, I dont know synths seem pretty sturdy to me, and can be easily repaired, if one lives a quiet life, does not get involved in car chases and the like, they should live a long time. I suspect more are replaed for a newer model, than because they stop working.

Also makes you wonder if like smart phones, is there a strong second hand market for synths? I dont see why not, can they be taken to CeX, or can they be traded in off the price of a new one like a car, and then a dealer gives them a tune up and sell them second hand, whilst the fact Antia was bought "new" from a store, seems to suggest no, im surprise that, this is not the case.

I don't get the impression the Coppers Wife is 'having fun' with her synth or that he's 'helping' her, nothing worthy of quotes.
It's a useful machine that's helping her recovery and she doesn't find it objectionable as her husband finds synths.


Synth detective has been mentioned more than once, read some of the thread at least.
Last page or two would do so you can keep up with the discussion.

I don't think Mattie's done a complete U-turn, lots of people find sex with inanimate objects odd, blow up dolls for example.
I think her objections were spelled out, Sex with and de-activated synth, clearly had some parallels with drug rape.

Oddly enough many of us were also teenage boys at one time and see reasons why he wouldn't have copped off with the Girl at the party.