(no subject)
Over the weekend I saw the two Doctor Who episodes "The Rebel Flesh" and "The Almost People," mostly because I find Doctor Who inoffensive and other people were watching them.
And twin/clone stories are great! But DW did not take them all the way, which most stories do not, so it was sort of flirting with the narrative id rather than romancing it thoroughly. What I really wanted to see was a story in which original and copy were totally indistinguishable from one another from the start, both confused and horrified (rather than the original horrified and the copy secretive and scared). It is never so interesting to me as when the ringer character cannot be convinced that she's a ringer, and insists on her originality. I did like that the twinned characters knew themselves/each other so well, and that that clear vision mattered; no self-deluding fools these.
I was also hoping for both Jimmys to live, or really, I just like that complicated uncomfortableness of two people struggling to share something they'd really rather not share, i.e. custody and memories of a son. Unwanted and unavoidable intimacy are always cool to work through. At least the group that lived was a mixed group of originals and copies, and presumably at this stage, when gangers have no human rights, it's important not to just walk into a press conference and doom ganger-Jimmy to a summary execution. Although I foresee a very interesting activist movement in that time-period's future.
What would that look like, I wonder? Imagine the bereaved identical twin, mourning her sister, who pays zillions of dollars on the black market to get a ganger. And doesn't realize till it's done that now they're both bereaved twins, and it's not like having that lost sister back at all, and they'll both have to live with that loss. Imagine the uprising, being rebelled against by a hundred people who share your face and your memory and hate you because you get the privileges they don't. Imagine the great opportunities for identity fraud! I can't have committed that bank robbery, officer, as I was on camera halfway across the country at the time!
This entry was originally posted at http://vehemently.dreamwidth.org/23846.html. Comment wherever you like.
And twin/clone stories are great! But DW did not take them all the way, which most stories do not, so it was sort of flirting with the narrative id rather than romancing it thoroughly. What I really wanted to see was a story in which original and copy were totally indistinguishable from one another from the start, both confused and horrified (rather than the original horrified and the copy secretive and scared). It is never so interesting to me as when the ringer character cannot be convinced that she's a ringer, and insists on her originality. I did like that the twinned characters knew themselves/each other so well, and that that clear vision mattered; no self-deluding fools these.
I was also hoping for both Jimmys to live, or really, I just like that complicated uncomfortableness of two people struggling to share something they'd really rather not share, i.e. custody and memories of a son. Unwanted and unavoidable intimacy are always cool to work through. At least the group that lived was a mixed group of originals and copies, and presumably at this stage, when gangers have no human rights, it's important not to just walk into a press conference and doom ganger-Jimmy to a summary execution. Although I foresee a very interesting activist movement in that time-period's future.
What would that look like, I wonder? Imagine the bereaved identical twin, mourning her sister, who pays zillions of dollars on the black market to get a ganger. And doesn't realize till it's done that now they're both bereaved twins, and it's not like having that lost sister back at all, and they'll both have to live with that loss. Imagine the uprising, being rebelled against by a hundred people who share your face and your memory and hate you because you get the privileges they don't. Imagine the great opportunities for identity fraud! I can't have committed that bank robbery, officer, as I was on camera halfway across the country at the time!
This entry was originally posted at http://vehemently.dreamwidth.org/23846.html. Comment wherever you like.