Westworld is an HBO series based on the 1973 movie of the same name. Westworld is an amusement park based on the Old West and set in a frontier town and its environs, where paying guests can come and play make-believe for a week or more. Their hosts are life-like robots programmed to interact with the guests to create one of many available storylines. Oh, and the guests can do anything they want to the hosts, including murder and rape, with no consequences. Hosts’ bullets don’t work on guests and the robots’ memories are wiped at the end of a story to begin again.
In the movie, there was a major glitch and the robots started killing the guests. In the TV show, it is more subtle. Some of the hosts are starting to recall some of the things that were done to them and are acting irrationally as a result. Some even recall the laboratory where they are repaired and examined for behavioral problems before being returned to the park. Add to that one particular guest played by Ed Harris, who is brutally torturing hosts in order to gain entry to a new level of the game, and you have the cruz of the show.
The action goes back and forth between the game and the laboratory where scientists, engineers, and administrators work on the robots, and try to figure out any problems that are occurring. They also argue about upgrades and changes to be allowed or not. This section is a bit slow and tedious at times — the real action is in the park — but necessary to the plot and an understanding of what is actually going on.
One thing I find interesting about this show is that, while there was nothing like it in 1973, now I keep comparing Westworld to the holodecks of the Starship Enterprise. The difference, I suppose, is that holodecks can generally be shut down (although there have been some problems with that.) On Westworld, you’re dealing with individual robots spread over many square miles and the human creators and administrators with conflicting agendas.
There’s also the motivation of the guests. Many of them take advantage of the various women offered them, but the main goal seems to be cruelty. Not to the level of Ed Harris’ character, but many of them seem to enjoy shooting and killing the hosts, for no other reason than that they can. So, on that level the show speaks to human nature, or at least, to the type of men who pay to go to Westworld.
In any case, Westworld is intriguing enough that I will continue to watch it. I suggest you do the same.