Minority Report Television Show Pilot review

 Minority Report Television Show

Pilot

So most of the time, I try to get a whole season or so in for these but the only way to view this series is to buy the episodes on iTunes. So I coughed up for the pilot and if people want more they can join Patreon and help me pay for it. That may be a bit ungracious but it is gonna be my position folks. Anyway, Minority Report started production in September 2014, was approved in May 2015, and aired on Fox from September 21st to November 30th, 2015, all 3 months. Fox even canceled three episodes dropping the season from 13 to 10 and then canceled it altogether in May 2016 after leaving it in Limbo for half a year. So let's take a look at the pilot.  Warning: I will be spoiling the plot of an 8-year-old television show. 

The show is set in Washington D.C. 2065, 11 years after the precogs have been freed and relocated and Precrime has been shut down. One of the precogs, Dash has returned to the city to try and use his ability to prevent murders. He's aided by a truly amazing artistic ability to draw what he sees and is smart enough to put together fragmentary details shockingly fast. He however has a problem: his visions never convey enough information for him to get to the right place at the right time to actually save anyone. 

 Detective Vega of the DC Police has a similar issue in that she joined up hoping to get into Pre-Crime and is tired of just showing up after a crime and cleaning up after it. She also has the rather cliché motivation of her father, a cop, being murdered and his killing never being solved. Now to be fair, the show does a good job of displaying that she's actually fairly good at putting information together and coming to correct conclusions. Like figuring out a murder victim had a daughter they were trying to protect when they were killed. So when Dash tries to pass on some information to Vega on the sly, only for her to hunt him down it's not a shock. They of course decide to team up and fight crime. 

Using Dash's visions and a terrifying police surveillance network (What in many places already exists, or has the technological capacity to exist.), they're able to narrow down a threat to a former Pre-Crime officer now running for mayor. His platform is promising to bring crime back down to pre-crime levels using technology as a substitute. The Hawkeye program uses the already massively common and intrusive surveillance systems in DC paired with an Algorithmic search engine to figure out who might be committing a crime in the near future, flag them for law enforcement, and place them under close surveillance (Some counties in Florida actually do this. You can imagine how racist the results are because it is very easy to build a racist classification algorithm.  The result is black teenagers having surveillance vans in front of their homes, being randomly searched, etc.). Speaking as someone who has to deal with Google and YouTube algorithms fairly regularly? That's terrifying. 

The threat is of course from two victims of Pre-Crime, suffering some brain damage from the method of detention that Pre-Crime used. Which leaves me asking, why did anyone think putting people in some bizarre torture coma was even a good idea? Let alone people who couldn't be formally charged with a crime! (I mean, they're already arresting it and prisoning people who haven't actually done anything. Why not torture them at that point?)So it's not enough to put them away for life without a trial but to use a method that torments them and leaves them brain-damaged? Why!?! Just Why!?! (Our criminal justice system already does this to the limits of technology. Pre-trial inmates in tent cities in the Arizona desert, pretrial inmates on Rikers Island … being on Rikers Island.  Often in solitary confinement for months or years at a time for no reason…) Of course, our two villains are men who despite their brain damage are capable of working together to create a rather complex plot to conduct what I can only call a terrorist strike to kill not just the guy running for mayor, but his wife, his 2-year-old son and hundreds of innocent bystanders in a political rally.

Now points for novelty because their plan to pull this off involves a homemade bio weapon delivered by computer-controlled passenger pigeons. Because the species was deextinctified by one of the men in question before being arrested for being in a vision of committing murder. Seriously, I used a bunch of creatures I wrenched from the oblivion of extinction and controlled through computer chips in their brains to deliver a bioweapon I cooked up on the sly while suffering brain damage is one hell of a science flex and I respect that. It's a completely evil and kinda depraved science flex but a science flex it remains. Also readers, yes I enjoyed every moment of typing that sentence.

Our heroes of course save the day, but the plotters are killed. Which left me sighing and points I think to what went wrong. Well, several things went wrong. Well, the pilot has this theme of surveillance and the use of it by authorities but doesn't engage with it. There's no debate if the Hawkeye system is a good idea or a bridge too far, it just sits there. Now maybe future episodes will engage that but this would be the time to establish that as a theme of debate of the show if you were going to do that. Instead, the pilot seems to quietly suggest that it would be great if our protagonists had this power because then they could stop all these murders but I have to ask... What else would be done with it? If you haven't realized by now that that is a question we have to ask about any power we hand our government or any other organization, I have to ask if you slept well through the last 2 decades.

Also, everything wraps up a bit to neatly. Our heroes don't ask, where did these guys get the resources to pull this off. They weren’t holding down jobs, and even homemade bioweapons that kill hundreds quickly can't be cheap. It's also odd that no one asks Detective Vega how she got all this information, either (does this seem like a society that cares over much about evidence to you?). Now beyond that, the acting is decent, although the dialogue suffers through sad attempts at Joss Whedon-style banter and comedy. Not to mention hit-or-miss humor using precog powers. As an adaptation, it comes in at D+ because it is rather far off the field of the original short story. As a stand-alone product? Honestly, the show is rather mediocre, coming in at a C at best. It's not awful or bad but it's not good either. I don't hate it but I can certainly think of a better use for 45 minutes of my time. 

Well, I hoped you enjoyed this review.  If you did consider joining the ranks of the ever-wise patrons at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Where for a dollar a month you can vote on upcoming reviews and content, get access to special patron-only content (for example a podcast discussing the Minority Report movie) and more.  Next week we’ll be reviewing the book Anglo-Saxon Myths: The Struggle for the Seven Kingdoms by Brice Stratford, and the week after I’ll be releasing a video on Anglo-Saxon mythology. Hope to see you there, until then take care of yourself, take care of each other, and of course, keep reading! 

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

Minority Report By Philip K Dick

 Minority Report

By Philip K Dick

Minority Report was published in 1956, in a magazine called Fantastic Universe. Fantastic Universe ran for about 7 years from 1953 to 1960, publishing 69 issues. The main editors of the magazine were Leo Margulies who edited from 1953 to 1956 and Hans Stefan Santesson who edited from 1956 to the last issue in march 1960. The story became the basis for the movie starring Tom Cruise (patrons will get an audio cast of a friend and me discussing and comparing that). As well as a television show that ran for a single season (Dear God, I didn’t know about this, and now I cannot un-know it. {There’s gonna be a review of the pilot later!} Excuse me, I’m just gonna go Full Denethor). Now there are going to be spoilers below but the story is old enough to qualify for social security so, I'm past the limit (on caring) I feel folks.

The protagonist of our story is John Anderton, the aging creator and commissioner of the Pre-Crime police division.  Which under his leadership has grown to be the most powerful and effective national police force in the Federal West-Bloc (It’s very easy to be highly effective when you can violate causality, I guess.). I should note that pre-crime in the story can see all sorts of crime but they focus on the big nasty ones, like murder, rape, kidnapping, and assault. Because of this, no one has gotten away with a crime in nearly five years in the entire nation. (In addition to the causality issues, there are also some spectral evidence issues, but I’ll get to that later.)

The story opens with Anderton meeting his Senate-appointed assistant and eventual successor Ed Witwer and he’s resentful about the idea of being replaced. I'm honestly not that sympathetic to him here because frankly, there's a damn point where you just hang up the hat and go home, man. There are too many people in the world who grimly try to hang to every shred of power well past their due date and that's one of the reasons for a lot of the issues facing people of my generation and the Zoomers (I really enjoy being ruled by people old enough to fondly remember the original runs of US government anti-homosexual propaganda films.). You've done your work Anderton, go home, enjoy your wife (We have medication that can help.), and get a hobby while you're able to. Let the new blood have their time in the sun!

Sorry, sore point, there.  Well, the resentment explodes into full-blown suspicion when Anderton intercepts a prediction that he'll murder a man in a week. Now the predictions are given by mutants, who are strapped to metal chairs. They are pretty much vegetables. The story explains that the pre-cogs ability to see the future destroys their brain's ability to do anything else. So they have no personalities, or ability to function in any way.  Instead, they mutter their predictions constantly with them being translated by vast and powerful computers (that run on punch cards, this tickles me). The predictions are printed in Pre-Crime headquarters and the Army headquarters to prevent anyone from mucking with them. I honestly find this ominous, why is the army involved in a law enforcement matter? Why not the FBI? (And this is where we get into spectral evidence.  Like, there hasn’t been a crime.  The only evidence is the unverified say-so of a precognitive.  Put them under surveillance, sure…but arresting them?  Really? {Yeah, you think instead you would issue them some sort of precrime warning, there was an episode of Sliders built around that})

At first, he assumes it's Witwer as the victim and he's being set up so the Senate can replace him (weird how there's no mention of a President anywhere in the story). However, when his much younger wife corners him... He finds out that he's actually predicted to murder a man he's never met. Leopold Kaplan was a retired general who fought in the Anglo-Sino War leading the now-abolished Federal West-Bloc Army. These little tidbits raise all sorts of questions and I could spend days just chewing on them honestly (Someone really didn’t want to give Hong Kong back?). Kaplan actually has moles in the Army General HQ (You’d think the precogs would see the moles… You’d think moles would rate, at the very least.{What if the mole was the guy who got to the predictions first though?  These things are being printed directly from a computer run on punch cards after all…} Which is the other problem.  You shouldn’t ever have these going to just one person.) who send him a warning and he has men kidnap Anderton as Anderton makes his escape from Pre-Crime. Kaplan decides to turn Anderton in however rather than risk his own life (And you’d also think that they’d peg to the kidnapping…{Well when you got a mole directly editing the reports…}).

Anderton escapes with help, leading to a game of cat and mouse as he realizes he needs to break back into Pre-Crime HQ to find out if one of the pre-cogs gave a different prediction of the future. A minority report as it's called. Anderton finds one and realizes the implication of this if the pre-cogs can see different futures than everyone they've arrested for having a prediction of doing a crime now as an argument for innocence (Shocking!). It could undermine the entire system. We also have another wrinkle in that we find out that Kaplin has created a veteran's society with officers from both sides of the war and a following within the active duty service. Additionally, Kaplan carried a grudge over having his old position having been abolished and has political ambitions (Happy birthday to you, have a militant coup…)

In fact, when Anderton arrives to meet Kaplin again, we're treated to a full-blown military rally. Kaplin is aware of the minority report, intends to announce it and prove Pre-Crime doesn't work, and overthrow the Senate. Faced with these options, Anderton goes along with Kaplin until the cameras are rolling and murders Kaplin live on international television, and turns himself in. Since Kaplin was about to lead a fascist coup, the Senate decides to grant Anderton exile to a frontier planet as long as the secret of the minority report is buried. Anderton explains to Witwer, his assistant, that the flaw in the system is that anyone who sees the report may change their mind leading to a new prediction. Since the commissioner is the most likely person to see the report, that now makes Witwer the most vulnerable man on the planet.

The story is very much focused on the balance between the needs of individual freedom and security provided by a system (Is it really secure, though?  I mean, with causality being violated…{Anderton argues that this would only work for someone who can see the report and change their mind, so only the police commissioner, it says something that no one suggests, what if we just showed people that there was a prediction of them doing a crime?}  Of course not!  It wouldn’t be a police state if they gave someone meaningful due process.). It's also powered by Mr. Dick wrestling with what free will is and what it means. Mixed into this is Mr. Dick's anxiety towards authority in general but it's a lot lower-key than in later works like a scanner darkly. We also don't see him wrestle with the idea of identity which he'll start to do in later works. It is a good example of his early work though, willing to confront the idea of different timelines and possible futures and how knowledge of your own fate alters it. That said, it feels rough and due to the length (only 20 pages), there's lot left unexplored here. So I'm giving a C+.

    

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Video themes of Philip K Dick, a brief overview

 Decided to go ahead and link the videos I've made making to the blog as well.  Enjoy!