Paeter January 17th 2014, 1:10 pm
I just decided last night that I'm probably done with this show. Realized that I needed to watch another episode soon or risk it being rotated out of Hulu. Then I realized I'd much rather play some Neverwinter Nights or rent a movie with that precious free time.
Ultimately I think what does it for me is that Dorian has no character flaws. He may not be invincible, he may not know everything (although he's pretty close there, too) but his character has been presented as flawless so far(at least the 3 episodes I've watched). Set aside that he's a machine for a moment, I'm just not interested in flawless characters being such central protagonists.
jorowi wrote: I've been really fascinated with the idea of what makes us human. What separates us from machines and animals. Almost Human scratches that itch.
It might for me too if I felt like the writers thought there WAS a significant difference. In this regard, the show is a strangely inconsistent mix of anthropological assumptions.
They seem to be coming from a naturalistic worldview, but also promote the existence of "free will", which true naturalism denies. Maybe by "free will" the writers simply mean "the appearance of free will". In which case, they see little or ultimately no difference between people and machines.
If not, they believe true free will exists, but that it can be understood enough to program it into a machine. I just can't buy into the idea that one day we'll be able to develop a programming language for actual free will. We don't even know exactly how it operates in ourselves (and many even claim that there is no such thing) so I don't know how we would program it into anything. The ridiculous "spontaneous development of free will" seen in films like The Matrix, Tron Legacy, and The Terminator almost makes more sense. At least then I can assume that some unknown supernatural agent implanted free will into the machines (as we're meant to believe is the case in Battlestar Galactica), which makes better logical sense.
Of course that's a big rabbit trail and not the reason I'm probably dropping the show. I'd love for Dorian to be so compassionate at some point that it clouds his judgment about what is truly the best moral choice to make. I'd love for his "human traits" to eventually become so strong that he displays human flaws as well. Until then, it seems that Dorian's job is to be right and John's job is to be wrong, which makes for pretty boring stories for me, despite the great performances and production values.