Electric Dreams

I was really excited to watch Stan's original Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams but after watching the series I feel like they should have taken PKD's name out of the title.

After realizing they changed a lot of the endings to his original stories it made sense why the plots of the episodes felt misguided and confusing. PKD is a very clear cut writer, granted his novels such as Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep? are a little "Inception-Like" in that some things are left a little unclear but for the most part he has very concise and clear endings to his stories because he's trying to convey a meaningful message.

Many of the episodes of this series use his source material extremely loosely and seem to use the film adaptations of his books as inspiration more than his actual books making them feel more like general sci-fi themed stories than true PKD ones. I also can't help but think of Black Mirror while watching and it feels as though they're simply trying to recreate the feeling of that.

I appreciate the way they use 70's iconography and keep the future looking gritty and focusing on the negative applications advanced technology can have as well as the benefits. The bleak outlook he always had on literally everything especially relationships is also quite prominent. On a whole it sort of does feel like Philip K. Dick but it really could have done a lot better if it had simply stuck to the source material and kept the endings true to them. For instance "Impossible Planet" had a much better ending in his story than the show tried to come up with, I get that the creators want to have some fun but if you're taking directly off of a master and then only changing a few things around you're going to fail since it was already great to begin with, that's why it's so well known. As they say, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Philip K Dick's stories have been shown by films like Bladerunner and Minority Report to be brilliant source material to make great screen adaptations. Black Mirror has shown how great a science fiction anthology series can be. The first two episodes of Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams hint at how great the series could be.

There have been many adaptation's of P K Dick's stories into movies. The makers of Electric Dreams would do well to study those carefully. They would learn that the closer film makers stick to the spirit and intention of P K Dick the better the end product is.

Electric Dreams feels half true to the originals. As a spoiler free example of where they stray, the first two episodes change the endings of the stories. P K Dick is a master of the plot twist and the original endings are not only shocking but made you think. His signature themes make you question the nature of reality, of memory and whether people really have what they want. In the show, these themes are muted: replaced by the writers' own hackneyed ideas and messages.

The first episode looked really cheap. It could have been a cop show set in the seventies. There was no sense that it was the future. The second show was far better and looked believable as a vision of the far future. As a writer, P K Dick doesn't delve to much into how things look or the minutiae of individual's character's. There is so much space for film makers to fill with something incredible as Ridley Scott did in Bladerunner.

I'm excited to see the coming episodes and I hope there are future series. Most of all I hope the makers quickly learn that, as is shown by the first two episodes, P K Dick was a great writer and the further you veer from what he was trying to say with his stories, the weaker the adaptations will be.

This is an anthology series based on the works of futurist sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick. It's ten episodes switching back and forth between American production and British. Despite loving the Blade Runner franchise, I don't think I've ever read his work. This has a darker tone. Some of the British ones remind me of Black Mirror which was probably the original intent. It's a murky hit-and-miss proposition. I don't know about the Philip K. Dick part. His name is useful for selling this. It has some good sci-fi ideas. I like the darker tones but the lighter tones is awkward at times.

Each episode is it's own sci-fi feature, and they are all acted and shot consistently and incredibly. Out of the 10 episodes, four of them for me are remembered as average plots with interesting premises (2,3,4,10), still great television but not incredibly memorable. Each of the other 6 episodes was grade A television. So good that I went to see what people had to say about it on IMDb, and then had to write a review because this show is not getting anywhere near enough credit. I think because Black Mirror, which actually got me to watch this show, has spoiled us with fantastically creative twist endings and foreshadowing. Electric Dreams is not about twist endings, its about the story itself. DON'T EXPECT TWIST ENDINGS. Just enjoy the ride through some excellent adaptations of ingenious short stories.

The episodes do not take place in the same universe and aren't all set in our own reality, and so aren't always as relatable as Black Mirror. If your'e looking to dip your toe in try episode 5 (Real Life, an action packed story of VR and dealing with grief) or episode 7 (Kill All Others, fantastically tense political tale about an everyday guy who notices something).

The Hood Maker was an episode inspired by - but very different to - the short story by Phillip K Dick but the world created on the screen was one I recognized from both Blade Runner and the many short stories Dick wrote from the 1950s onward.

It was dark but laced with a cynical, dry humour - Dick's forte - and was complex and adult - even hard to watch in places - so well done on not copping out on the darker aspects of Dick's work, even for a mass TV audience.

For those who complain about the show changing the stories (but keeping the themes), try comparing Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Blade Runner: Dick's imagination was possibly too wild for any scene-for-scene adaption of his work, as his radically different movie adaptions suggest.

Overall, I was very encouraged by the first episode and look forward to the rest of this intelligent, visually enticing series.