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A hostile environment.

As challenging and vital as Eliza’s robot story has been thus far, it didn’t reduce me to tears until this episode – and that’s not just because He doesn’t want her, baby.

I’ve never thought of the Human League’s ‘Don’t You Want Me’ as a feminist anthem, but it truly is. There’s a poignant analysis from our robot friend of the gender dynamics expressed by the male and the female voices in the song, and it’s made me consciously aware of why I always belt out the second verse louder when it comes on the radio.

Eliza wades through the shifting dunes of her relationship with Him as her very foundations become more and more like sand, her feet slowly sinking into despair with every step. Love typically evolves over time, but Eliza is coming to feel as His ex-wife did, with the manipulative way He treats her, and his lack of care or concern. He always has an answer, always deflects each and every time Eliza tries to exert her own will, tries to improve her own situation. There’s a tense moment when Eliza seemingly reveals her feelings for Philip, and I fear for her. It’s yet another grain of her relationship-sand slipping through her fingers.

A hostile environment exists inside and outside the walls of her prison-home. Eliza’s own government has made her the enemy, as ‘The Institute’ is converted to an ominous-sounding ‘Decommissioning Centre’. It’s this that makes those tears well up as we see, through Eliza’s eyes, the visceral horror of her place of birth converted into a robot-mortuary. The descriptions of the various states of the robot destruction process that we follow with Eliza as she moves anxiously towards her Consciousness Test like a dead-robot-walking are heart wrenching.

The governmental decrees concerning the complete reversal of robot development and AI research brings to mind the way our own government, in our own reality, treats ‘others’. You  only need to read the news this very week to see the cruel parallels.

The episode ends on a sudden, violent and terrifying note. The psychological domestic abuse was only the start.

Verdict: Don’t forget it’s Him who put her where she is now – and He can put her back down, too. 9/10

Claire Smith