Westworld (TV series): "Journey into Night"

Westworld: "Journey into Night." Season 2, episode 2 (22 April 2018). 70 minutes (season premiere).

The episode presents a beautifully convoluted plot, developing the theme of humanoid-robot/machine/cyborg rebellion and potential takeover (and potentially of far more than the Delos Westworld Park), of interest here primarily for some striking images.

• The scalping of a dead "Ghost Nation" (AmerIndian) host by a White technician (who at least resembles a host featured in the episode), revealing on the scalp a schematic of The Maze, and the removal of the CPU from the center of an organic brain. As James Hibberd correctly notes in the Entertainment Weekly recap linked above, the CPU resembles a Brita water filter, but it is a high-tech device that can download onto a tablet the final, time-stamped memories of the host. Note imagery of a cybernetic device at the core of a brain inside a being that recently looked and behaved human, in a scene with politically potent implications.

• The descent from the movie-West wasteland of the Park down an elevator into the high-tech control area running (until that short while back) Westworld.

• In the underworld/underground control area note often-messily-dead bodies of humans and hosts — indistinguishable — and "Drone hosts": "non-sentient, unmonitored, off-network hosts used by Delos 'behind the scenes' of the park to carry out support tasks for operations." As explained on the Fandom Westworld Wiki, in appearance "Drone Hosts differ from regular hosts in that they do not have defined facial or other cosmetic features. They appear to have a similar musculature as regular hosts, but with an older model host exoskeletal structure outside of the inner actuator muscles." At least in this episode, they do not talk, nor seem to be able to walk around humans or a host sophisticated enough to pass as human, but "appear to follow basic support routines or loops, similar to that of automated warehouse robots."

RDE, Initial Compiler, 24Mar19