Agents of SHIELD: Season 6
- Thread starter OCD Geek
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If the Chronicoms are AI, why do they need to turn back time to save their world? Wouldn't they have a backup?
The Chronicoms seem far more emotional than the usual sci-fi- AIs. This might not be about lives lost, so much as their beloved home being lost.
Damn, that was a beautiful episode, one of the show's absolute best. I always enjoy a show that delves deeply into one's psyche, but here we get both Fitz and Simmons at the same time. I loved the exploration of the issues that has plagued them, both as individuals and also as a team, a couple. From the early platonic partnership to the plethora of terrible events they faced such as Fitz's brain damage, Simmons' running away from him after said damage, Simmons' exile on a hostile planet, Fitz's dark alter ego, Simmons' bottled up pain, and Fitz's death, and so much more.
I got a bit choked up seeing the gang reeling from Fitz's death in the previously unseen moment, leading up to Coulson showing up his near deathbed. We've been through it before and so has Simmons, but seeing that moment from Fitz's perspective made that scene all the more impactful.
Major kudos to the make-up and costume departments (and maybe the special effects team, too?) for transforming Iain De Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge into their younger selves. De Caestecker in particular looked like he was some wet-behind-the-ears academy student and entry-level agent in those two scenes.
Lastly, I love Enoch.
I got a bit choked up seeing the gang reeling from Fitz's death in the previously unseen moment, leading up to Coulson showing up his near deathbed. We've been through it before and so has Simmons, but seeing that moment from Fitz's perspective made that scene all the more impactful.
Major kudos to the make-up and costume departments (and maybe the special effects team, too?) for transforming Iain De Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge into their younger selves. De Caestecker in particular looked like he was some wet-behind-the-ears academy student and entry-level agent in those two scenes.
Lastly, I love Enoch.
Data can be backed up. Sentience is a more complex and dynamic process. Even if you capture a record of its instantaneous state, once you start it up again, it's not going to develop activity in quite the same way as the original. Put the same crowd of people back in the same starting positions and set them in motion again, and the patterns of the crowd won't be the same as before. Consciousness is the emergent patterns and flow, not the static initial conditions. The new mind would probably have memories and behaviors in common with the old one, but would be more of an offspring of sorts than a resurrection of the original.
Alternatively, if they're quantum computers, then they couldn't really be backed up. You can't copy quantum information without destroying the information in the original substrate, so only one copy can exist at a time.
OK...that was a very interesting and surprisingly involved episode. It never ceases to amaze me how much Fitzsimmons has evolved since season 1, but how the actors managed to recreate that so convincingly is truly remarkable.
Like the little continuity nods, like the older SHIELD logo in the recruitment scenes, the telescope in young Simmons's room (I want to say there's been a Diane Fossy reference before, but not 100% sure.) Jemma's id monster was an oddly hilarious touch, though not surprising as she was always the most tightly wound of the pair. I've noted before how she's always the one consistently more willing and able to be utterly ruthless and amoral (anyone remember how Bakshi died?!)
The closest comparison I can think of in Marvel comics seems to be the Technarchy, or I suppose certain versions of the Coluans from DC comics.
Like the little continuity nods, like the older SHIELD logo in the recruitment scenes, the telescope in young Simmons's room (I want to say there's been a Diane Fossy reference before, but not 100% sure.) Jemma's id monster was an oddly hilarious touch, though not surprising as she was always the most tightly wound of the pair. I've noted before how she's always the one consistently more willing and able to be utterly ruthless and amoral (anyone remember how Bakshi died?!)
He can't be an ancestor since his DNA is a 100% match. The other markers in the sample seem to be either environmental contaminants or epigenetic in nature. Both of which seem to agree with him having a long and complicated life away from earth.
I get the impression that what they are is a little more complicated than just AI's inhabiting synthetic bodies. They could be the decedents of synthetics left behind by some long extinct race, or they could even some post technological singularity species that decided to hang onto physical forms. Maybe their ancestors reached the point where genetic manipulation and cybernetic enhancement became one and the same.
The closest comparison I can think of in Marvel comics seems to be the Technarchy, or I suppose certain versions of the Coluans from DC comics.
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Jane Goodall. She was on a poster in Jemma's room and name-dropped by Fitz later on.
Apparently the Japanese Ringu (The Ring) movie franchise. Fitz called her a ringu monster.
So not something from a previous episode like Leopold?
I don't recall -- maybe it's been mentioned before that Simmons is a fan of those movies? Anyway, the whole point is that we haven't seen it before, that it's the darkness that she locks away in her little box so she can stay sweet, lovable Jemma.
Sadly, there's a commenter on Tor.com who insists that it's just an empty filler episode because it doesn't advance the main plot. I feel sorry for people who think that stories are only about plot, not character. Heck, with FitzSimmons, there's no separating the two, because their character and relationship arcs have been intimately interwoven with the plot developments for years now.
It explains her morbid joy in dissecting things ever since the first season.
"I didn't know you liked that."
"I didn't know you'd do that."
"I didn't know you'd do that."
I was anticipating that they might get Leopold and Zombie Jemma to fight each other, so what actually happened between them caught me by surprise.
I actually saw that one coming for once. I couldn't even recognize it was Simmons, she looked really different to me.
Does TV Tropes have a name for these kind of episodes where they're in an empty abstract world in the character's heads? The first one I remember was a "very special episode" of Family Ties.
Does TV Tropes have a name for these kind of episodes where they're in an empty abstract world in the character's heads? The first one I remember was a "very special episode" of Family Ties.
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