Review: Gen:Lock “The First Strike”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

In a flashback happening parallel to the Battle of New York in the first episode, Chase’s mother Roberta, is revealed to a follower of the Union. Years after the attack, New York is more or less peaceful under Union rule, but Dri, Chase’s sister, cannot tolerate watching people in church willingly being disintegrated by nanotech, something that is a part of the Union’s combined religion, the Omnifaith which sees the nanos as a way to take believers to a digital afterlife. Dri eventually runs away and Roberta moves to Babylon, the Union Capital. Soon after, the original Chase (who would eventually become Nemesis) is brought to Brother Tate and Roberta. She acquaintes Chase with the Omnifaith, as well as revealing that she had believed in the Union the whole time, and eventually is absorbed herself.

Prior to this, Yaz lives with her family, though is skeptical of Tate’s promises of beating death, which apparently is keeping her parents from “ascending” themselves. Yaz later joins a resistance group to destroy the “Flow”; the collective data of those who ascended that Tate says is proof of an afterlife. They hope this will make people realize that the Union is blowing smoke, but they’re beaten to it by a Polity fighter sent there by Marin, who feared the Union’s use of nanotech. But instead of destroying the flow, it turns out to be self-sustaining, crystalizing the believers’ faith. This ends up sparking the war prior to the Battle of New York, as well as Yaz being branded a terrorist, forcing her to flee to the Polity.

Later, Tate receives news of Chase’s copy and the Polity’s creation of more Holons and despite his promises to give Chase a body, he instead shoves him back in the Holon and turns him into Nemesis.

OUR TAKE

A bit frustrating to finally get back to the main story after nearly three years and then have the next episode be one entire flashback, but it’s a flashback that fills in some important information…as well as some that is contradictory. The two most apparent examples of that being showing events in 2070 that happened in 2072, the story’s present year, as well as messing up Yaz’s supposed backstory that was mentioned in the first season. In the clunky exposition conversation with Holcroft, he mentioned that Yaz “sought asylum with the Polity after learning she was responsible for outing her parents as intellectuals, after which the Union took them”, but here, they are true blue believers and are only able to be willingly disintegrated after they effectively disown their skeptic daughter. Even keeping in mind that this is pretty much a new writing team coming in for this season, those are two very big screw ups with the continuity, made all the more confusing by a comment in this season’s accompanying podcast where one of the writers says they are writing this season “from the text” of last season. And it’s not even just between seasons, as this basically means that Yaz knew the whole time that the Polity started the war, something that was apparently a big cliffhanger worthy twist last week. I honestly don’t know if they’ll address that fact.

But okay, let’s move away from the negative for the moment and focus a bit on the long standing questions that have now been answered by this episode. After they disappeared early in the first episode, many viewers speculated what became of Roberta and Dri. Chase had every reason to think they died, though many noticed a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in the fourth episode where Dri suddenly appears and then vanishes. Now we at least know that Roberta is definitely dead and Dri is definitely still alive and probably going to show up later. Roberta being Union was a theory I remember floating around during the first season’s run, but it being confirmed here finally gives us something that has been LOOOOOOONG overdue: someone who can represent the Union in a sympathetic light. Last season only ever portrayed them as the evil invaders to the detriment of the storytelling, but now we finally have at least SOMETHING to define them and compare and contrast to the Polity. They’re definitely more faith based than the Polity’s aggressively secular neoliberalism, and I’m not sure I buy how certain faiths combined to form this “Omnifaith”, but it’s clear that spiritualism is prevalent in their philosophy and politics.

So, now we have a clear focal point where the ideas of these two factions clash. The earth is pretty much done-zo due to the effects of climate change and both sides have their own ideas of how to adapt. The Polity wants to either take everyone off planet Jeff Bezos style…or possibly ride it out? Meanwhile the Union wants to digitize its followers into, well, basically The Cloud, which seems absurd on its face until we see the “Flow” work autonomously (something that Tate and his other eleven co-rulers apparently already knew it could do but were keeping from everyone for some reason), which kinda lends a tiny bit of credence to this being a possible way of transitioning people out of organic bodies. Still seems kinda bonkers, but I can at least see how it seems appealing to those who believe it and why it might be the solution they would want. A villain faction needs to be able to pitch itself to the normal viewer in an understandable way, otherwise they just end up the bland evil goons they were last season. Obviously Tate has his skeletons and dark side to him just like Holcroft is showing, but for now let’s see where the Koala man is going with this.

Plus, we might be seeing some inklings in how Dr. Weller’s plans with Gen:Lock might be the intersection between these two ideas that the world needs. It removes the organic body but also gives those using it an option to return. Or at the very least it seems like a go between that might be touched on later. At the very least, it seems like this show finally has something TO SAY about the real life events and topics it is pulling from, which is something that all good sci-fi, especially in the mecha genre that has also delt with topics like future earth adapting to climate change, needs in order to actual make a point. It absolutely should not have taken THIS LONG to get here, but I can complain about that over the rest of this season. For now, I’m honestly just glad to have SOMETHING TO CHEW INTO with this show that it has sorely been lacking.

Unfortunately, that leads me to the main critical flaw with how this episode handles revealing all these details. Personally, I prefer my flashbacks to be diagetic, meaning they come from somewhere in the story instead of just happening, but that’s not necessarily needed to make them work. What I think this DID need was a central character to focus on throughout these events, OR split up Roberta and Yaz’s plots into separate episodes. Have one episode explaining Roberta’s story (ideally keeping her alive so that it makes sense that she’s explaining it), and then one with Yaz (probably with her showing how she witnessed the Polity attack). Cutting between the two periods only got confusing and hard to keep track of, something the writers apparently had trouble with too because they flubbed when certain events actually take place. And I imagine that we’re probably going to see more issues like that going forward. I’m honestly grateful for what we gained from this episode, but it definitely shows me what problems we’ll be facing ahead. Hopefully no more interludes this season so we can just focus on the main story.