Once again the best cyberpunk this year is found not in book or film, but in Psych-Pass ...
Season Three, of which I'm now only into Episode 3 is not just a taut science fiction police procedural but has somehow found a way to dive for a third time into the human concequences of a culture formed from cutting edge computer technology, artificial intelligence, meta-gaming systems, and the ability to remotely scan a person and come up with a numerical value describing their soul.
Or, at the least, whether or not you are likely to commit a crime.
They ask the question, what if you could quantify a person's personality? Is this a good thing, is this a bad thing, is it acceptable, is what you give up worth what you get in return? Where does right and wrong, good and evil, fit into these cold equations? And each season the driving conflict against which these questions play out is one that attempts to counter this system - the Sybil System. How can it be thwarted, broken or even fooled?
Season one focused on the personality of a true criminal. Season Two asked if there was an equally sophisticated procedure that could circumvent the system. I must admit, I was very skeptical they could pull it off for the third time.
And they did. Not only did they find a way to beat the system, but it is one that is completely reflected in the complex world we currently live in - leveraging the speed and increasingly periferal nature of our actions not only play out ... but how we could be played.
To say more, of course, would be spoiling things.
Another interesting thing is that it has a 90% new cast. First, this brings a certain freshness to the series, including having the - for lack of a better phrase - abnormal personality type a member of the investigation unit instead of the villain. Second, they did not just run the previous characters over with a bus - layered beneath the story of our protagonists are hints of an underlying arc where something happened to the season one and two cast which formed the foundation of this season - and in little tidbits this tale is slowly being revealed. The most interesting part is when the older characters do show up - they have actually grown, developed, taken on a new life since season one and two ended.
Based on the first two seasons and the episode of season 3 I have watched, the Psycho-Pass has stayed to its strong roots.
For some, it's a successful science-fiction cop show (for a good modern fantasy cop show there's Cop Craft)
For others, it's solid science fiction - taking a "what-if" scenario and following through the consequences good and bad.
For others, it's a very interesting mirror of how we use technology and how technology changes us in return.
And for me, it's all of them combined.
Where can you watch this? While Netflix has season one and two, season three is on Amazon Prime.
Last edited by Wolf; Wed 27/11/2019 19:15 UTC.
