plot

s01e01-s01e06

Steve, founder and CEO of the best company of his time, tried to upload human mind to Matrix and almost succeeded. To ensure the job is kept on even after his eraly death of some incurable cancer, he opted to make a clone of himself. The clone would then be nurtured in the Truman Show based on Steve's own biography to ensure his genius.

• Steve Jobs, the reality layer.
• Trumen Show, the connection layer and sideline.
• Matrix, the sci-fi layer, the metaverse.

It's good TV series in terms of story, great anime production in terms of visulization, but still, it lacks true sci-fi innovation of concept, and not quite consistant in character personality development and logic, in other words it feels awkward to watch from time to time.

plot holes

With the ability to manipulte the entire internet with root access to every device connected, the 'gods' seem quite unimaginative.

The antagonist turns out to have mental problems, which lowers the credibility of the entire set.

The latest development includes some very interesting settings about immortality. I guess the story hasn't quite prepared to introduce the ture enternity. The flaw, that the uploaded mind will decay over usage shows significant similarity to those of original life, which is both reasonable and disappointing. Having such a limit on its core sci-fi setting creates a sense that it's just a common story with some sci-fi tech, restricting further development.

easter eggs

The antagonist, an Indian, shared the tech with 'nations of top cyber', which turns out to be US, Russia, UK, Isreal, Iran, and China. Cannot say if he is trying to protect India by not letting them know such technology. Also, France is the only absent P5. P.S. 20221005 I just learned that the writer, Ken Liu, is a Chinese... all make sense now.

s01e07

It takes the life of a protagonist to make an antagonist. Classic Joffery move. But too many plotholes，too may stereotypes.

Why no backup when everything is digitalized? Why physical annihilation when code injection is much more easy and cost effective?

As to the classic 'Chinese people are kind and reasonble it's CCP causing problems'... It would definitely be interesting to find out how a Chinese degenerated into a white left. Sure, it might not be the problem of Ken but the ideology gets across nontheless.

总结

胶水缝合了黑客帝国，楚门的世界，乔布斯传等，真正的硬科幻比较少，可能经典的画面主要集中于人脑的不可恢复性扫描，缸中之脑的自我意识呈现等。人物行为往往生硬而缺乏逻辑，典型在于初期Ellen对David的非理性抵触，Caspian中后期的逃避甚至寻求宗教，与Ellen大学教授的文化背景、Caspian的极客形象格格不入。情节推动生硬，反派形象由主角的牺牲来刻画是没有问题的，但非必要牺牲则凸显了逻辑缺陷。