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[Brakke]

Hmm hadn't thought of that although I think there would always be the PR worry.

Some people that pay $40,000 a day will expect not to get shot nor for the possibility to exist for them to get shot so even letting one incident happen might be too dangerous to worry about.

You're right though one would assume that any person who can afford to stay at Westworld could afford to fix their body up to what's currently possible.

For sure there are reasons to engineer the hosts to not hurt people. But exactly how credible that promise is is pretty messy. If you're riding a "horse" that gets shot out from under you, you could easily crack your skull open in the ensuing tumble.

It's just weird that they're apparently ensuring "no lasting harm" as a prohibition against flesh wounds but not against brain trauma. Especially given their demonstrated capacity to heal flesh wounds.

 

[Easy_D]

I'm pretty sure now that William dies. Rewatch EP2. The first image we see of him is a reflection of him sleeping in the window that makes him look like a corpse in a casket. Very obvious foreshadowing.

William was obviously repurposed into a bartender, Old Bill!

Edit: What if William is in a super early Westworld that's actually just VR ������������������

 

[zeemumu]

I have to imagine some approximation of what someone can take is calculated and even notes of specific newcomers might be stored in every host. What happens if someone has a bad knee and you kick it out from under them causing irreparable damage? Wouldn't surprise me if MIB's profile has high damage thresholds though as Ford doesn't seem to like him and MIB seems to like a challenge

This is what I was curious about. They can't just have a general pain range because they could accidentally kill someone who couldn't take as much punishment as someone else.

 

[Flo_Evans]

I don't want to say dual timeline is 100% confirmed, and I get annoyed with people who discount the possibility that it might not be true, but I am increasingly on board that train. The logos are what really seal it for me. HBO is meticulous in their details, the use of the old logo in William's scene is nothing if not deliberate, and since then we have seen that logo consistently associated with the old park presumably before Delos bought it. It featuring so prominently on the old computer in this episode can't be a coincidence. Another detail is that Maeve has apparently only been madam of the saloon for a year, and back when William arrived sure enough he didn't see Maeve but rather Clementine who is said to have previously worked as the madam.

Now, what I'm not so sold on is William=MiB. While there's mounting evidence for dual timeline, people have lumped W=M in with it as if they have to go together. Really, they don't, and there's no real solid evidence for that yet other than his apparent relationship with Dolores. Logan=MiB is just as likely in my opinion, or even someone else.

are they though?

 

[Purkake4]

Now I'm totally imagining them having Docwagon-style rapid response paramedic teams to save idiots that manage to have freak accidents.

 

[SuperStiltzkin]

Now, what I'm not so sold on is William=MiB. While there's mounting evidence for dual timeline, people have lumped W=M in with it as if they have to go together. Really, they don't, and there's no real solid evidence for that yet other than his apparent relationship with Dolores. Logan=MiB is just as likely in my opinion, or even someone else.

I don't completely buy into the William=MiB theory either. But outside of Logan, who plays a one dimensional cliche, William's really the only human who has a history with Dolores and Lawrence, which MiB made sure to remind us of. Logan doesn't strike me as the sentimental type to keep visiting Dolores over 30 years or the type to be interested in games that involve as much work as the MiB is going through.

I dunno if it's how the actor is portraying him, but William has shown a darkside. He looked like he was seduced by the whole bounty hunting storyline. And the close up zoom on his face when he turns around to kill the host that was choking Logan seemed a bit sinister as if a dark side was seeping through. It looks like William enjoys indulging in some killing, but he doesn't want to admit it.

I'm not saying I buy into it completely, but I would not be terribly surprised if it comes to pass.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

It's pretty hard to even buy the concept that it's possible to cause "irreparable" damage to a guest, short of death or brain damage. They got all kinds of fancy tissue-stitching machines they use to make the robots in the first place. But they can't repair a real person's bum knee? How do you figure?

Given Westworld's bioengineering capacity, it's probably less "dangerous" to shoot a real person's kneecaps out than to concuss them.

Humans aren't blank slates that you can just fill up with red juice though. The show has somewhat dangerously confused what it says (bioengineering) with what it shows (body printing with life-like properties). Not to repeat a point, but the rules of the show are somewhat lacking in being specific for the sake of deciding it on the half-way point, which was this episode.
Additionally, we don't come back from the dead or can be repaired in critical areas. Damage to the heart, liver, lungs, and brain is pretty much goodbye in the real world. See the story on concussions in NFL. Or that once you have a heart attack, you pretty much only have a few years left. People don't live very long after the damage is irreparably done.
Medical science kinda sucks and there's nothing we do about that. You can't repair the whole by trying to fix the parts when only the whole matters. That's also why you shouldn't fall for "singularity" crap. We will never be immortal, we will never live longer than our maximum genetic complex lifespan, and we will never be able to avoid the suckage of life. It's what we got, and that's it. If you want to live long, you're going to have live a life that will let you live long.

On the side, I can't wait for that timeline crap to finally fucking die, particularly because now that we know who 'Arnold' is in term of voices it makes no sense for that to be the case.

 

[SuperStiltzkin]

For sure there are reasons to engineer the hosts to not hurt people. But exactly how credible that promise is is pretty messy. If you're riding a "horse" that gets shot out from under you, you could easily crack your skull open in the ensuing tumble.

It's just weird that they're apparently ensuring "no lasting harm" as a prohibition against flesh wounds but not against brain trauma. Especially given their demonstrated capacity to heal flesh wounds.

Ford mentions something interesting about the world outside of Westworld in the first episode when talking about evolution. "We now have the power to heal any injury, cure any illness. Eventually we may even be able to bring the dead back to life. You know what this means? It means this is as good as it gets. Mankind has peaked." I dunno if it's plausible to accept that real world fatal injuries are minor in the World of Westworld though.

On the side, I can't wait for that timeline crap to finally fucking die, particularly because now that we know who 'Arnold' is in term of voices it makes no sense for that to be the case.

Why is that the case?

 

[YesNOnoNOYes]

Humans aren't blank slates that you can just fill up with red juice though. The show has somewhat dangerously confused what it says (bioengineering) with what it shows (body printing with life-like properties). Not to repeat a point, but the rules of the show are somewhat lacking in being specific for the sake of deciding it on the half-way point, which was this episode.
Additionally, we don't come back from the dead or can be repaired in critical areas. Damage to the heart, liver, lungs, and brain is pretty much goodbye in the real world. See the story on concussions in NFL. Or that once you have a heart attack, you pretty much only have a few years left. People don't live very long after the damage is irreparably done.


On the side, I can't wait for that timeline crap to finally fucking die, particularly because now that we know who 'Arnold' is in term of voices it makes no sense for that to be the case.

Are you saying that their world has advanced enough tech to make the hosts as much flesh and bone as humans and can make the hosts immortal and young forever but this tech is not applicable to real humans? Like, do you think real humans (guests) in ww have to age and get old?

 

[Brakke]

Humans aren't blank slates that you can just fill up with red juice though. The show has somewhat dangerously confused what it says (bioengineering) with what it shows (body printing with life-like properties). Not to repeat a point, but the rules of the show are somewhat lacking in being specific for the sake of deciding it on the half-way point, which was this episode.


On the side, I can't wait for that timeline crap to finally fucking die, particularly because now that we know who 'Arnold' is in term of voices it makes no sense for that to be the case.

I mean people walk around *today* with artificial knees just fine. I don't think this is an actual problem for the show. "Serious injuries bleed" is a fine ~dramatic truth~. But especially given everything we know about concussions from NFL players I think it's worth acknowledging that that dramatic truth isn't even kind of consistent with the real world.

"The robots pull their punches to be just hard enough to knock someone out but not hard enough to damage them" is a total nonsense model of human physiology.

 

[Rentahamster]

Ford said in the first episode that with modern healthcare, humans basically live a really long time. Even the sick ones.

 

[Shrike Alvaron]

are they though?

That's a promotional image from a presumably cut scene; that doesn't show up in the episode itself (the guide just mentions the guns are "real enough" and doesn't take one out). In the real scene the old logo is on that door. Since the new logo is what's being used to advertise the show, it's understandable if they would modify that to show the new one to avoid logo confusion among potential viewers.

In fact, here's a good picture of the door in the show:

 

[SuperStiltzkin]

At the end of the day, all the technical science mumbo jumbo and vague world building is just a way to say "don't sweat the details, we just need you to believe this world to tell our story." I take the same approach to this as I do any movies/tv shows that involve Time Travel.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

Are you saying that their world has advanced enough tech to make the hosts as much flesh and bone as humans and can make the hosts immortal and young forever but this tech is not applicable to real humans? Like, do you think real humans (guests) in ww have to age and get old?

Yes (edit: at the second part. The first part no: we know they're not flesh and bone like us, see printing process). We saw the process in detail in this episode for that reason. The blank slates that we've seen in the intro the whole time, is filled with juice and thereby color in this episode, to show how the hosts are made - and differ- from humans / guests.
You can't 3D print a new brain because you are your brain, and the Maeve plot established that the hosts don't have one either. Of course, then they cheated by saying it's more complex than ours, which also contradicts the earlier mention of wetware (you can't have something more complex than an actual quantum computation organ and still have wetware), but I'm starting to think this show isn't very self-consistent, unfortunately.

 

[Norwegian_Imposter]

That's a promotional image from a presumably cut scene; that doesn't show up in the episode itself (the guide just mentions the guns are "real enough" and doesn't take one out). In the real scene the old logo is on that door. Since the new logo is what's being used to advertise the show, it's understandable if they would modify that to show the new one to avoid logo confusion among potential viewers.

In fact, here's a good picture of the door in the show:

That woman is super fine.

 

[The Mule]

Pretty sure they're on a planet, with the whole GPS thing.

GPS would work just fine on a moon. Doesn't need to be a planet.

 

[Poimandres]

Maeve is so fucked by the end of this season and it's really upsetting that that's the case. She's a fascinating character but she's moving her plot ahead too fast to be anything but a doomed martyr.

Nah, I think she's going to be the robot villain of the show. She's going to be full on "enslave/murder humans" and Dolores will represent the robots grappling with empathy and understanding so it's not simply robots = bad, humans = good. They might even be leading different factions, or Dolores works with humans to bring down Maeve.

 

[YesNOnoNOYes]

Yes. We saw the process in detail in this episode for that reason. The blank slates that we've seen in the intro the whole time, is filled with juice and thereby color in this episode, to show how the hosts are made - and differ- from humans / guests.
You can't 3D print a new brain because you are your brain, and the Maeve plot established that the hosts don't have one either. Of course, then they cheated by saying it's more complex than ours, which also contradicts the earlier mention of wetware (you can't have something more complex than an actual quantum computation organ and still have wetware), but I'm starting to think this show isn't very self-consistent, unfortunately.

oh im just more interested in the aging part

not the injury part

cuz if i was rich and i live in that world, there is no way i am going to age if i can afford it and if the tech was around

 

[SuperStiltzkin]

Ford said in the first episode that with modern healthcare, humans basically live a really long time. Even the sick ones.

I'm assuming that's why they don't have to worry about getting STDs from the prostitute hosts.

 

[Rentahamster]

GPS would work just fine on a moon. Doesn't need to be a planet.

I'm not sure their level of technology would suggest they have interstellar travel or terraforming capability, so I doubt it. They also repeatedly refer to "this planet".

 

[shira]

That woman is super fine.

Musk married her twice

 

[Brakke]

Ed Harris shows the virtues of aging at least to a point. Eighteen year olds just cannot be that sneeringly intimidating no matter how clear their skin or good heir hair.

 

[Matty77]

True

Are they able to calculate how much blunt trauma they can put on each specific person, though?



Well he went limp after that punch so I assumed he was out cold.

I guess...? I'm just saying it's the official explanation, I'm not so sure I even buy into it making sense.

 

[YesNOnoNOYes]

Ed Harris shows the virtues of aging at least to a point. Eighteen year olds just can be that sneeringly intimidating no matter how clear their skin or good heir hair.

not aging is a bigger thing for womenfolks, i thinks

menfolks gain different 'attractiveness' as they age


(and i agree, ed harris is really fab)

 

[Rentahamster]

I'm assuming that's why they don't have to worry about getting STDs from the prostitute hosts.

Hehehe

An interesting point about that bit of dialogue between him and Bernard is the line about resurrecting the dead, and calling forth Lazarus.

Possible Arnold reference or foreshadowing?

 

[Flo_Evans]

That's a promotional image from a presumably cut scene; that doesn't show up in the episode itself (the guide just mentions the guns are "real enough" and doesn't take one out). In the real scene the old logo is on that door. Since the new logo is what's being used to advertise the show, it's understandable if they would modify that to show the new one to avoid logo confusion among potential viewers.

In fact, here's a good picture of the door in the show:

Yes, it was probably way easier (cheaper) to replace in the static shot (most likely a still image, the color temp is off too) but why is debatable.

They have used the old logo in flashbacks, and on old computers.

I think they filmed this orientation scene early on and at some point changed the logo of the show. I think they just left it in cause they thought no one would notice/care, internet runs wild with timeline theories now they are being purposefully obtuse to not "reveal" anything solid about timelines.

 

[Rentahamster]

not aging is a bigger thing for womenfolks, i thinks

It is, but I still like older women too, especially if they're SMRT.

 

[The Mule]

They also repeatedly refer to "this planet".

Ah true, I forgot about that.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

I have a mega crush on Elsie.

You are a good man.

 

[silva1991]

What an episode. Maeve rules!!

Also Elsie is dumb for going alone after the last incident.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

Why is that the case?

because we've seen the voices in relation to both supposed 'times' with 'Arnold' now being in the present, which pretty much excludes the possibility of there being a timeline twist ahead without being utterly contrived and ridiculous.
It's an intuition on believability of a story: if a story goes so out of range that anything goes, there is no story. "everything was a dream" is one those devices where it completely break any suspension of disbelief to a point where nobody in the right mind would still care. It's too much fuckery to be good, basically.

I mean people walk around *today* with artificial knees just fine. I don't think this is an actual problem for the show. "Serious injuries bleed" is a fine ~dramatic truth~. But especially given everything we know about concussions from NFL players I think it's worth acknowledging that that dramatic truth isn't even kind of consistent with the real world.

"The robots pull their punches to be just hard enough to knock someone out but not hard enough to damage them" is a total nonsense model of human physiology.

I really liked how Last Action Hero actually made that into both a joke and a plot point: "it's just a flesh wound". Whereas in real-life, you die from those.
Media presentation of actual medical practice and science has changed a bit since then, but not that much.

The show can do what it wants, and obviously depicting violence and consequences works under rules of drama, not reality. But how much attempt at realism there is tells you a lot about the person writing it: their understanding of real-world effects, their ability to restrain magical solutions, their ability to write the story around the unchangable, and so on. It's a sign of internal complexity and thereby the maximum imagination the writer can wield.
Well, to me anyway.


edit:
btw, on some stuff that's in the show because of Michael Crighton:

- everything was Japan, because economy is booming! (and then the middle 90s happened, yeah)
- every company is incompetent with both cutting costs where it matters, and not checking on the actual merchandise. (it's kind of a trick that he used to make it seem as if science-men were smart, when in reality the company setup was unrealistic. But perhaps not so much in 80s. Just look up safety culture back then: ho boy)
- every company is involved in espionage and trying to dick over the rest. (stealing IP property was a subplot in the Jurassic Park novels too)

 

[le.phat]

`This was the episode where the show turned dumb. Jesus christ what a drop in quality

 

[More_Badass]

because we've seen the voices in relation to both supposed 'times' with 'Arnold' now being in the present, which pretty much excludes the possibility of there being a timeline twist ahead without being utterly contrived and ridiculous.
It's an intuition on believability of a story: if a story goes so out of range that anything goes, there is no story. "everything was a dream" is one those devices where it completely break any suspension of disbelief to a point where nobody in the right mind would still care. It's too much fuckery to be good, basically.

Flashbacks and "it was a dream" are two completely different things. Not sure why you're even bringing up the latter

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

Flashbacks and "it was a dream" are two completely different things. Not sure why you're even bringing up the latter

because under 'William isn't real' assumption, he and Logan are dreams, being visualized by Dolores gone rogue. I mean, that IS what 'timeline' people are saying.

Also the phrase "I'm in a dream" is obviously big in use for Dolores, so it's not altogether unthinkable that it would play out that way, but it's still just "everything William was dream". So I'm not a fan of that.

 

[SuperStiltzkin]

because we've seen the voices in relation to both supposed 'times' with 'Arnold' now being in the present, which pretty much excludes the possibility of there being a timeline twist ahead without being utterly contrived and ridiculous.
It's an intuition on believability of a story: if a story goes so out of range that anything goes, there is no story. "everything was a dream" is one those devices where it completely break any suspension of disbelief to a point where nobody in the right mind would still care. It's too much fuckery to be good, basically.

I'm not sure I follow? Arnold voice can't be in both the past and future? The timeline theory isn't contrived because there is continued mounting evidence supporting it. I don't see how there can't be an Arnold incident in the past and it was possibly suppressed through wipes and updates. The recent reveries in the present has only made it resurface and more severe.

Also flashbacks are not dreams. What happens in a dream does not matter and does not effect the story. What happens in a flashback is a whole lot more relevant and does matter.

because under 'William isn't real' assumption, he and Logan are dreams, being visualized by Dolores gone rogue. I mean, that IS what 'timeline' people are saying.

Also the phrase "I'm in a dream" is obviously big in use for Dolores, so it's not altogether unthinkable that it would play out that way, but it's still just "everything William was dream". So I'm not a fan of that.

No one is saying it's a dream and no one is saying William is fake.

 

[KingKong]

Dolores is following the maze and William is following Dolores. MiB is following the maze and Teddy is after Dolores. Dolores and William were at Pariah, and MiB and Teddy are going to Pariah. Rather than searching after tiny little clues, isn't it more likely that the writers are simply writing a story where the four characters will end up meeting and clashing at the end of the season?

 

[SuperStiltzkin]

Dolores is following the maze and William is following Dolores. MiB is following the maze and Teddy is after Dolores. Dolores and William were at Pariah, and MiB and Teddy are going to Pariah. Rather than searching after tiny little clues, isn't it more likely that the writers are simply writing a story where the four characters will end up meeting and clashing at the end of the season?

Except where characters could clash (Teddy and MiB meeting Logan, thereby disproving the two timeline theory) they conveniently don't. Teddy and MiB conveniently don't go to Pariah because it is too heavily guarded. Instead they go through a camp in the middle of nowhere. Pariah is coincidentally fully booked and they can't let anyone else in.

 

[FStop7]

That woman is super fine.

She used to be married to Elon Musk

 

[Nothus]

Some real high points and also some very low ones in this episode for me.

Again some great use of music - first we had Fake Plastic Trees and then that great scene of Maeve walking through the facility while a fantastic string version of Motion Picture Soundtrack played in the background. It was beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time.

But then to counter that, we have those terrible scenes with Elsie in the abandoned theatre. I mean, really? Abandoned buildings, phone calls cut short to keep us hanging, squeaking floorboards and then some unseen character sneaking up behind her? What the fuck was that shit? I thought this show was better than that, it felt like I was watching the final season of Dexter all over again.

The less said about Sizemore, the better.

 

[The Mule]

She was pretty hot on Raising Hope

 

[SuperStiltzkin]

But then to counter that, we have those terrible scenes with Elsie in the abandoned theatre. I mean, really? Abandoned buildings, phone calls cut short to keep us hanging, squeaking floorboards and then some unseen character sneaking up behind her? What the fuck was that shit? I thought this show was better than that, it felt like I was watching the final season of Dexter all over again.

The less said about Sizemore, the better.

I feel like, outside of Bernard and Ford, everyone in the company swears an embarrassing amount because "This is HBO."

 

[Rentahamster]

She used to be married to Elon Musk

Twice!

 

[ZOONAMI]

If anything that theory makes even more sense after last episode.

How?

Host punching mib reinforces hosts are more violent further out from Sweetwater.

Talk of soldiers, etc. increases liklihood of same war narrative, etc.

Mib and teddy literally retracing their path through cemetery.

Photo of Ford and Arnold not Arnold but photo of Ford and his father.

Relays being used to control hosts with voices, Dolores hearing voices suddenly, while in scenes with William.

Lack of electricity and flooding in lower levels confirms finaces aren't great and Logan actively looking to buy out Delos makes sense, also Ford's earlier comment that board reps are already in the park, to the bewilderment of Meredith.

Also this entire "1st generation" host thing makes zero sense, as the woodcutter guy was a gen 1 host and we're supposed to believe Bernard and Elsie never noticed that? It was some big revelation to Bernard that gen 1 hosts were active (Ford's family). What? After continued contact with Dolores, he never noticed either?

I am open to the timeline theory but I don't see why people keep saying 100% that's what's happening. Completely dismisses end of ep 3 and most damming Stubbs saying to pull Dolores, sheriff guy tries to pull her, william stops that from happening. Then they still don't pull her and she's on a weird solo quest on the train by herself? Chronologically well past wandering off the farm when they noticed she was off loop?

I know the logos are potentially a big clue, and there are transitions that hint at it, but nothing is definitive there's an alt timeline happening, or that mib = william.

 

[DukeLongfellow]

Twice!

How in the hell did he let her go... twice!

 

[Captain Zyrain]

How in the hell did he let her go... twice!

Edit: Nope. Finalized Oct 2016.

 

[Rentahamster]

Also this entire "1st generation" host thing makes zero sense, as the woodcutter guy was a gen 1 host and we're supposed to believe Bernard and Elsie never noticed that? It was some big revelation to Bernard that gen 1 hosts were active (Ford's family). What? After continued contact with Dolores, he never noticed either?

I don't think they said he was "first gen" necessarily. Just "an older model".

 

[ZOONAMI]

I don't think they said he was "first gen" necessarily. Just "an older model".

Bernards tablet showed that he was 1st gen for sure, and Elsie confirmed it iirc.

 

[Captain Zyrain]

I don't think they said he was "first gen" necessarily. Just "an older model".

I also imagine some have been improved, even given upgraded bodies? Since presumably Dolores is a Gen 1, or at least started that way. Do we think she's like the boy or like the newer models?

When the woodcutter cracked his head open, could we tell what his skull was like?

We don't know if ALL of the newer models were missing the Arnold receiver, do we?

There's a lot of gray areas.

 

[ZOONAMI]

I also imagine some have been improved, even given upgraded bodies? Since presumably Dolores is a Gen 1, or at least started that way. Do we think she's like the boy or like the newer models?

When the woodcutter cracked his head open, could we tell what his skull was like?

We don't know if ALL of the newer models were missing the Arnold receiver, do we?

There's a lot of gray areas.

Stubbs knows that Dolores is the oldest host in the park and Bernard doesn't? Updated or not. How does behavior not know how old are all the hosts are? Not until after Bernard stumbled on Ford's family he realizes there are 50+ gen 1 hosts on his tablet. What?

 

[jackdoe]

Apologies if this was posted already, but I found this interview interesting:

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/11/06/westworld-adversary-interview

Particularly this part:

Nitpicky question though: Couldn’t the body shop guys just jack down Maeve’s levels to knock her out, and make some lobotomizing so-called “mistake” to take out her memory? We’ve been shown over and over the humans have so much control, it’s hard to believe they couldn’t get the upper hand on a rogue host.

Nolan: I will point you toward episode 8.

Always nice to know they have some kind of explanation for this kind of stuff.