Safe and Sound

Watching this episode after listening to today's newscast and our current POTUS calling for his ideas to make safer schools, I had to shudder. The technology is almost here now and, as always it's about control and money. I need to look and see just when DIck wrote this story and would like to read it to see how much the script was updated to fit in today's current political mood.

Politics aside, the plot was somewhat predictible and I didn't find the acting or production quality as good as some of the others. But all in all still far better than 90% of anything else on the small screen.

The episode is a fusion of many current issues. Terrorism, racism, increasing government surveillance.

Foster Lee and her activist mother have moved east to an advanced technological society from their bubble in the west, which is more low tech. However Foster and others at school who do not have have a Dex (A handheld tracking and tech device) are treated as second class people, even viewed as terrorists. Those with a Dex look like people from the town where The Stepford Wives reside which deep down is a rather nasty, consumerist society, where you do not get something for nothing.

A fellow student helps Foster get a Dex illegally. The device has a tutorial voice who initially helps her but then inflames her paranoia.

This is a well constructed pacy episode that maybe simplifies its story a bit too much. The viewer immediately is suspicious of the voice from the device and its motives as you figure that the government is inventing scare stories to control the population.

The episode is a good idea based on the well established premise of the Big Brother watching your every move knowing just how to manipulate you to achieve its own nefarious end. It is well shot and well acted. It lets you establish real empathy with the main character, albeit in a manner which can be possibly considered crude or rough around the edges. I think conspiracy theorists will find this story anthemic, but don't let this take away anything from the overall production value.

This is a great episode focused on two groups of people not unlike Americans. There's the establishment "in" group that believes you need to trade freedom for security. For your freedom you will receive high technology and lose your privacy. The other group prefers freedom and is willing to give up high technology to maintain privacy and personal freedom. The establishment group is taught that the "out" group is evil and that they are terrorists even though nobody has ever seen any actual terrorism. They say if you're on the "inside", you're perfectly safe except they show "in" group members violating each other. You're only protected from those on the outside of the group. We can all figure out for ourselves who is who in this drama so I hope that everyone pays close attention to why creating these groups is never a good thing.

Yet another good entry in this Philip K Dick Anthology. The approach of this one appears more aimed at today's teen market weaned on similarly dystopian near-future scenarios like "The Hunger Games" or "The Maze Runner" focusing as it does on the 16 year old daughter of a prominent spokeswoman for one side of opposing factions in a long-running phoney war, the mother meeting senior counterparts on the other side to ostensibly discuss a peace settlement. Trouble is, the other side parleys fake news to its citizens like today's Kim Jung In or Putin which should have been a warning to the mother and daughter but somehow manages to go unheeded.

So said mother probably unwisely let's her daughter loose into this unfamiliar society while she attends her meetings and encourages the young girl to effectively take a gap year learning the ways of her fellow school mates. Not unnaturally she doesn't fit in and casts about looking for friends where she can find them, resorting to wearing the strange wrist-bands the other kids wear which while facilitating school lessons and communications nevertheless have the distinct hint of Big Brother about them. The show makes a good point about modern-day youth interacting more with their comms than in person which leads to the young girl being led to make a choice as to who she can trust, the real-life fellow pupils she meets or the voice in her ear, supposedly watching out for her like a stream of consciousness guardian angel.

Besides the above, references to the use of children in today's warfare in essence as suicide bombers gave the programme an up to date feel, but in the end I didn't enjoy the bleak conclusion or the cynical way adults use youth for their own nefarious tastes.

This episode seemed a little more fleshed out than some others I've seen already and the central character of the exploited daughter likewise appeared just a little too easily led to her acts of betrayal, especially with her mom right there with her. So while it made some telling points which are highly topical today perhaps I found the teen-condescending storyline just a little off the mark for me.