minor spoilers

Caspian reaches out to Maddie…

There are two distinct stories unfolding in Pantheon. The first story is that of the UIs. It follows them as they discover what it means to be disembodied intelligences, the boundaries of that, the limits and the possibilities. It also considers their frailties – both emotionally and more practically with the ‘flaw’ they all suffer from.

What’s fascinating about this is the show still presents the most logical idea being that digital intelligence is, really, immortal by default and that anything other than that is an error or aberration to be remedied. It’s an old trope in both SF and a fundamental part of what people like Kurzweil who coined the idea of the singularity.

Sure, there are lots of philosophers and scientists who think it’s nonsense, not least those who inconveniently point out that the brain doesn’t work like any kind of inorganic computer we have. But claims of not being able to do something are rarely as emotionally enticing as ones that promise godlike power.

I’m in the latter camp – especially as cutting edge neuroscience appears to suggest consciousness is a whole body phenomena, not something found solely in the brain at all (I can even provide references!). It’s also hardly a new idea.

Pantheon’s characters labour under the idea that they should be immortal, that their physical worries should have receded into the distance, that they’re somehow free of earthly concerns. The show does an excellent job of refusing to let them off the leash quite so easily. I don’t want to spoil it but it feels like we’re finally seeing that turn towards the godlike I talked about way back in my review of episode 1. It’s the why and the how that’s most interesting in the telling here.

The second story is about the humans. It’s hard not to talk about them as being left behind so I shall be careful. Except that in one very real sense they have been. Not by technology and certainly not in terms of evolution, but emotionally. Our human characters are grieving. Not simply what they’ve lost but also what they’ve discovered. Not all revelation brings joy, not all discovery brings to light truths we wanted to know.

What I think the show does exceptionally well is bring the human drama to life. Maddie and Caspian are grieving. For a way of life, for illusions shattered, but also for the futures they thought they would have. In many ways the things they’ve lost are even more ephemeral than what it means to be an uploaded intelligence.

Against this the writing does a smart and subtle job of conveying how quickly the UIs are losing (or have lost) their emotional cores. The UIs are acting quickly, rashly and even irrationally but their agency is not emotional. If you look you can see that each decision, each challenge they’re facing is not driven by emotional upheaval but by conceptual conflict, by trying to grapple with new information. The thing they want most of all is certainty.

It’s the most excellent indicator that these UI are not emotional in the way the human characters are, that their experience and even their encountering of the world is one driven by something else now – practical expediency, a desire for self-preservation, even a refusal to have their agency curtailed by others.

Yet none of these motivators are fundamentally emotional – not in the way Maddie overwhelmed in experiencing the loss and recovery of her father.

This juxtaposition works well because the human characters aren’t driven from one action to another. Instead action is part of their emotional repertoire but not its only component. As far as the UIs are concerned, action is the expression of their agency and their very selves.

Verdict: This is smart science fiction.

Rating? 9 buzzing motors out of 10.

Stewart Hotston