Re Ed Harris - I just posted this on the US thread

"some people are speculating that the show is now operating on 2 different timelines:

Timeline 1 - the present day with Hopkins & The Man in Black

Timeline 2 - set 30 years ago with William & his friend.

We were told in the pilot that there was a "critical" failure 30 years ago - perhaps William was the sole survivor & asked for lifetime access as payment?"

Interesting how the shocking behaviour is coming from the humans. Hate that English script writer guy.

I'd had another when that guy turned up again tonight....all a bit pointless, didn't care about any of the characters, new guest or hosts - arty farty nonsense.

The Westworld of 1973, may have dated, but it's a lot better than this 'G&T' rubbish.

Is the Thandie Newton character turned human form as she was not acting like a robot when she woke up from that table

I think she woke up 'in character'. They'd turned up her aggresion so she was all knife wielding tart type.

Have to admit, the fractured narrative is a little difficult to engage with. But I'm still intrigued enough to stick with it for now.

Random speculation -



Not really I spoiler I know but best to avoid potential trouble.

I can't believe there's anywhere deeper that man in black could find. Surely they'd guide him there rather than let him keep massacring everyone. But it does seem odd. I've said before he's like a power gamer but I can't see there being an unused hidden level. It would be a waste of resources.

I watched the original movie recently and the possibility of accidental guest on guest violence seemed to be a bit of an oversight. There was even a bar fight where the guests were actually getting punched and could easily have ended up hitting each other, even if the robots themselves were pulling punches.

At least in the movie you could tell the guests from hosts by looking at their hands. In the TV show there doesn't seem to be a way to tell. Which would seem to lead to all sorts of possible accidents if a guest attacked a guest thinking they were attacking a host

I doubt they'd have Ed Harris spend all this time looking for something that didn't exist to be honest. There could possibly be earlier versions of Westworld, abandoned after newer iterations were constructed. When Dolores father was being put in storage, his face showed emotion, to me that showed his trauma had triggered some kind sentience. And maybe this has happened before? Also, why is it that the AI's seem to know the secret of the hidden level, and why are they so protective of that knowledge?

Lol, who knows? I'm probably way, waaay off.

Fighting with real swords too. None of this would be allowed to happen because of the fear of being sued by one of the guests. Still a great film, though.

I'm all for discussing each episode and what might happen next and so on but lists of questions are just a bit much

Whatever happened to just enjoying the show and seeing how they answer everything

Loving this show, Episode 2 was great

You might be right. As you say, it makes little sense having him search for something that's not there unless you want a storyline where he discovers he's seen everything, gets depressed and shoots himself. But that's not much fun!

Maybe 'the maze' (and finding it) is the ultimate 'Turing Test'. A kind of inbuilt failsafe to determine if they can really 'feel' and their suffering should be stopped?

For me the guest on guest fighting questions are too serious a flaw in the story to ignore and without a credible explanation I'll probably give up on this show.
With so many gunfights how come there are never any human to human shoot outs? It would be bound to happen but I guess it would ruin the whole premise of such a role playing fantasy land story.
"Bang bang you're dead"
"No you're dead"
"Is there something wrong with these guns?"
"Oh, we're both humans. Crap, I was just getting into that"
Worse still if knives or other objects were involved, how would a fail safe avoid serious injuries or deaths? For example, those two humans sitting at the table having a drink and the guy who walks over and starts chatting to them gets his hand stabbed. That could've have been a human. Or is there some sort of safety feature in the knives?

That's a good idea but it would seem odd if a human broke a robot mentally and discovered the maze, which then led to the highly profitable park being shut down. And wouldn't the park's staff be monitoring a long term guest searching for the maze far more closely?

I was a bit confused by this scene. I was hoping that the other guy was going to say "How did you know that he wasn't a human?". He could have answered something like "Because I shot him dead last year". Or maybe show the other guy how the blade retracts when it senses a human. Hopefully there will be an explanation at some point.

@pavier

I agree that not explaining all the key guest safety protocols from day 1 is a bad mistake. Michael Crichton wouldn't have allowed a hole as big as that at the start of the series.

It also seems wasteful that the 'very expensive' robots can be shot to pieces and have to be carefully repaired afterwards. And what happens if there's explosions.

I'm not happy about how the humans mistreat the robots. Would rich middle class folk be this savage? I think the writers are sometimes thinking of the world as a video game rather than a physical thing, where characters can be wiped out and quickly respawned.

That would have been a good time to introduce an explanation about human to human safety protocols although I suppose the way the man was acting fed up like he's heard it all before as the robot starting talking implied that it was actually a robot talking

Even in the future they aren't going to be cheap to build and run. So, it's going to be very expensive to let them be treated in this way.

I'm pretty sure the guy said he recognised him when his friend helped him outside and that he was just going to lead him on some treasure hunt and sure enough wehn they saw him again later that's exactly what happened.

As for finding it hard to believe middle class people could be so cruel, historically it was quite common for the upper/middle classes to treat those they see as an underclass incredibly poorly.....and those people were 100% human.

Maybe only a select hierarchy know of it; it might predate the current crop of employees - for example, the sneery English guy can't have been there 30 years, but Anthony Hopkins character would have been there all along.
It could have been his personal project, spurred by guilt over the sophistication his creations had reached. And Harris' Man in Black... clearly some staff know what he's about, but others don't. I'm inclined to think he's part of Ford's (Hopkins) plan.
There was a voice-over on an advert on Sky this week, which appeared to be Harris, that was suggestive of something in this vein. Posted in the US pace thread, but I'll spoiler tag it here in just case:



They knew he was one of 'them'. He was the old prospector that had a 'pratfall' into the muck from the back of a wagon in the street earlier. When 'White Hat' went to assist him, 'Black Hat' told him not to bother, as it was just a scripted story opener - the hapless prospector is programmed to respond to an act of kindness with the offer of some gentler adventure that Black-Hat wasn't interested in.
When they encountered him in the saloon later, Black-Hat told his friend to stop making eye contact because he'd initiate another story-opening oportunity, which indeed transpired. The old prospector was very unlucky - he was responding as he was supposed to, rewarding an act of kindness with a story arc suited to the kind of person who would offer him assistance - but his helper was part of a pair, one of whom wants only the more extreme things on offer. Including random violence.

True but these are, I'd hope, enlightened citizens of the future. That new visitor acted as you'd expect a reasonable person to.

Society is a very mixed bag though, unfortunately there are plenty of people out there who would act very uncivilised if they could get away with it.
They only conform because modern society demands it, it's the very theme Westworld is trying to explore.

@Asmo You've been playing close attention and both your points make sense. It would be interesting if the ruthless Man in Black is actually trying to improve the robots' lot by encouraging their self awareness.

I'm probably being naive but I really didn't like the way that swarmy guy treated that old prospector. He would have gotten his arse kicked along the railway line all the way back to the visitors centre if it had been my park!!