Skip to main content

You Say Tomato, I Say Automata [Automata Episode 2]

The second episode of Automata is a lot of fun. I'm warming to automaton PI Carl and his smart, non-human comments in every situation. Good to see him in action too - turns out automata can kick 1930s ass when needed. Every detective story needs an arrogant and stupid chief of police, so when Sam returns to the robot brothel to find his former target has been murdered, he has to call in his former police boss who isn't exactly woke to robot rights.

Automata is still very much a 1930s remix of Humans - and that's a good thing. Like the TV series Life On Mars, the moral dilemmas faced by the protagonists are in sharp contrast to the immoral, dinosaur attitudes of everyone else, and there's a lot of humour in these exchanges too. This episode also takes the story forward with several plot twists crammed into a busy 10 minutes. I guess this is necessary for a 5-part series.

You can find out more about Automata on the Facebook page here and you can watch the episodes here on Dust - a new episode every Tuesday. This is an impressive webseries, it's really delivering and I'm looking forward to episode 3.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Rikki Don't Lose That Number [Sci-Fi Telephone Booths]

We're all familiar with a certain Time Lord and her preferred mode of telephonic transport: But while the Doctor was one of the first, she is far from unique - in fact there's a long and respectable tradition of science fiction heroes travelling in telephone booths. Excluding the good Doctor, here are my top five long distance callers: #1 Bill And Ted Doctor Who has spawned many spin-off series and movies over the years. My favourites were the Bill and Ted movies - Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) and Bogus Journey (1991). It's a blast - a great time-travel comedy and a decent attempt to create an American Doctor Who. It's absolutely canon. The eponymous heroes, played by Alex Winter and Keanu someone or other, travel through time in a US phone booth "borrowed" from Time Lord Rufus (who strictly speaking should be called The Rufus), encountering historical celebrities in their quest to complete their homework and ultimately secure the future of ci...

St. Albans Film Festival Preview

The Romans were forward thinkers. When they founded their settlement at Verulaneum, who knows - perhaps in their minds' eyes they could see, in the distant future, a time when their descendents might recline in the local forum, taverna or caldarium watching a finely curated selection of entertainments, while an army of slaves fed them grapes and sweetmeats and attended to their every whim. We will perhaps never know if they did indeed ponder on such a prediction, but if so those Roman thinkers would be gratified to know that they got it broadly right. The third St. Albans Film Festival is already in full swing (admittedly with surprisingly little slavery), and there's an exciting programme coming up this weekend. On Saturday, choose either Monsters Vs Aliens or Alien Resurrection while you swim at Westminster Lodge, head to the Maltings to see the first three Star Trek movies in their non-reimagined, pre-reboot glory, or make your way to the Town Hall for the music video progr...

Work in progress: Broken Bird

Modelling a stylised dove for Broken Bird.  Trying out some basic materials. Still working on the mesh. Rigging wings for flight. Modelled in Blender 2.68