Total Recall 2070 Machine Dreams Created by Art Monterastelli

Total Recall 2070 Machine Dreams

Created by Art Monterastelli

Total Recall 2070 was created by Art Monterastelli and first broadcasted in 1999 on the Canadian television channel CHCH-TV and later on Showtime. Mr. Monterastelli served as executive producer and it was part of a 25-year long career for him. His other projects include films like the 2008 Rambo movie and the paramount thriller film ”The Hunted.” He is currently working on a documentary on intelligence operations between Russia and the United States while living in California. This review is going to be of the 90 minute pilot of the television show, which ran for a single season (22 episodes) before being canceled with the story unfinished. Quick note readers: the showtime and Canadian versions do have nude scenes and some scenes of violence that were edited out for syndication on American networks. The DVD version of Machine Dreams that I managed to get a hold of for this review was the Canadian version, so I don't recommend this series for children. Additionally given how hard this series is to find and it's age, I'm going to go ahead and give spoilers so you are warned. That said let's get to it.

While named after the 1990 film Total Recall, the television doesn't share a lot with it. If anything it comes across as an ambitious fan fiction attempt to place Total Recall within the world of Bladerunner and if we're gonna be honest doesn't do a terrible job (Gooood). While the ReKall corporation exists in the film, it is re-imagined as a corporate juggernaut capable of pushing around government agents and exercising large scale cover-ups. Our main character is David Hume (HAAAH!), an officer of the Citizen's Protection Bureau, and his partner Nick get called in on a break-in at a ReKall facility. Once there they find a pair of murdered humans and a crew of murderous androids kidnapping a ReKall programmer (If they are sapient androids, I am gonna go out on a limb and say this is fully justified. Will correct down the road if necessary.{Normal androids are not sapient. These are but it looks like that might have been an accident. The pair that were killed was a programer that made ReKall vacations and his girlfriend who he had smuggled in to give a free trip to, neither even knew that ReKall had anything to do with the androids, there’s also the kidnapping of a child on the part of the androids}). Against the laser blasters of the androids the cops, armed with nonlethal weapons, are utterly outgunned and Nick is killed (Was he two days away from retirement? {What makes you think there are retirements in this setting?} I don’t, but it’s the whole Buddy Cop thing.). David, however, does manage to find an old pistol that fires actual bullets and kills an android in return, driving them off and preventing them from kidnapping the human programmer. This is a bad night for David, to put it mildly; and while his superiors grill him over what happened, Mr. Collector - the head of ReKall security - swoops right into his station and collects the programmer without so much as by your leave (Wow. So they own the police so completely they can obstruct the investigation of a police officer’s murder? Wow. I mean, the only Officer-Involved Shooting that police agencies give a shit about is when their own is on the slab, and then they go really extra. That’s an impressive corporate dystopia…). So it doesn’t get any better for him. The next morning David finds he's paired with an overly polite rookie named Ian, who is sitting at Nick's desk. David has to manage Ian while trying to figure out just why a bunch of androids, who are supposed to be completely unable to harm humans, were breaking into ReKall and killing people? Why is ReKall so anxious to hide everything? What connection does this have to an immigrant couple who were brought in because the wife had a mental break down in the mall screaming and grabbing at small boys? David is also on a ticking clock here because he has to find the clues and assemble them before Mr. Collector can find them and bury them (possibly literally) as well as battle against Mr. Collector's claims of needing to protect ReKall’s intellectual property and trade secrets (That shit don’t protect from criminal investigations even in our current capitalist hell-pit. This really is impressive…). All of this while Mr. Collector is insistent that ReKall has nothing to do with androids and so the break-in that started this whole thing was a senseless act done by clearly malfunctioning machines.

I'm going to talk about the writing because that's where the show really shines: the writers did a great job of intermixing elements of Bladerunner and Total Recall together as well as putting their own spin on the world. The plot is interesting and holds your interest without getting too complicated or falling into the trap of navel-gazing. This is despite the show wrestling with the ideas of what it means to live in a world where your very memories can be altered and you would be utterly helpless to even realize what was wrong. This is vividly displayed in the story-line of the Soodors, the immigrant couple whose son was kidnapped and then their memories altered so they couldn't even remember having a child in the first place (...Woah. Okay, so gonna have a hot-take here. ReKall needs to be destroyed and it’s execs lined up against a wall and shot. {I don’t disagree about the execs but it was the androids who kidnapped the kid, I’m just pretty damn sure someone in ReKall helped, otherwise how would the androids even have found the kid?} That, and the company deleted the parent’s memories. That’s the part that means they need to be taken out back and shot. The kidnapping… as I said, collateral damage is often acceptable to self-liberate from slavery, which is why I don’t throw stones at Nat Turner. But ReKall went back and covered it up that way… line them up and shoot them. I’ll even volunteer my chemical shed - yes audience, I have a chemical shed.{To be clear here, it wasn’t the company but someone in the company working with the androids. Who and for what reason remains unclear but I don’t think it was for the benefit of the androids}). However, the process couldn't erase their trauma or the underlying knowledge that something in their lives was inherently wrong. The use of memory and hypnosis to alter the very pattern of someone's lives is a very Philip Dick plotline and I was happy to see it featured so heavily. The world-building, while not gone into too heavily is also interesting, there are repeated mentions of contaminated zones from the war (I assume World War III) and there are clear changes in the makeup of North American society. For example, David isn't part of a Police Department, but of a Citizen's Protection Bureau, an organization that has police functions and powers but also seems to serve as a general complaint department for the citizenry. Their powers seem much reduced, much like how instead of carrying firearms they seem to be carrying stun weapons of some kind. David's superiors, while cantankerous, do seem to honestly try to shield him from outside forces that would interfere with his work and do seem to honestly want him to succeed. Which makes a nice change from police supervisors screaming about loose cannons and turning in your badge. There is also an organization of which ReKall is a part of called the Consortium which is made up of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world and are said to pay the majority of the taxes. Since the government is highly dependent on the Consortium to cover its budget, the Consortium enjoys a broad amount of political and economic power.

There are downsides to this series though. The acting is uneven, while Michael Easton and Karl Pruner both turn in fine to decent performances (although I was wondering if David had a throat injury that kept him from speaking a normal volume for 2/3rds of this), some of the other performances ranged from okay to wooden. For example, the actress playing David's wife Olivia seemed to be practicing her lines for a lot of this pilot and the two didn't show any chemistry until the last 5 minutes. There are also scenes of people spouting off bad 1990s dialogue in too-dark rooms because it's the only way they can move the plot forward and stay on budget. Additionally, it takes you all of 20 seconds to realize that Ian, David's new partner is a secret android. They don't even bother keeping this a secret for the whole pilot having him reveal himself as a new class of android with more biological parts than others. The special effects also really show the low budget this show was struggling against, since it looks like they were done by the same team that did the Babylon 5's special effect, in their spare time and using whatever computers they could borrow from the local high school (Um… That’s almost exactly how B5s effects were done. On chain-ganged Amigas.{This show’s effects still look worse.}). That said, I was drawn into the show, David goes out of his way to help the Soodors and even manages to let go of the idea of vengeance on the androids in favor of getting to the bottom of the mystery. Because something was clearly done to the androids that expanded their mental capabilities and it was something with a very short life span. Making those android desperate to avoid going back to the dull, not semi-sapient machines they were beforehand. Which I could understand and even pity. Imagine you woke up tomorrow better, brighter and more than you could dream of being and then were told “oops sorry, limited time only” wouldn't you fight to keep your new state?

I honestly enjoyed watching Total Recall 2070, although I have to admit it's not a masterpiece of television or science fiction. That said, it's trying to be the best it can be and that gets it a lot of points in my book. It was ambitious and it tried and it didn't do that badly. As a pilot or stand-alone film, I would give it a C+ being held back by the uneven performances, inability to hide incoming plot twists and special effects. As an adaptation? Honestly, this is the most Philip K Dick story out of the lot this month. The writers were willing to jump into the sandbox of identity and memory and try building something out of those themes and issues. It makes me wonder what they could have done with more resources and time. As an adaptation, I'm giving Total Recall Machine Dreams a B-. The pilot isn't that hard to find, it's usually bundled with other science fiction movies on discount DVDs, the entire series is pretty impossible, that said if anyone does find it, feel free to drop a line in the comments. I wouldn't mind seeing how it plays out. Next week, we get back to novels with The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kalashate Wilson as voted for by our ever-wise and glorious patrons.

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