Review Welcome to Paradox (1998) - episode 11 "Into the Shop"

[Mad-Pac]

Aired Nov 09, 1998 on Syfy

A Lawagon, a VW New Beetle with an AI, is cop, jury, judge and executioner. Of course nothing could go wrong with that.


CAST

Dana Ashbrook ... Federal Police Marshal Stu Clemens
Jorge Montesi ... Captain Kepling
Rebecca Reichert ... Diane Marmon
Rhonda Legge ... A10 (voice)
Michael Philip ... The Host
Brad Loree ... Otterson
Ray Galletti ... Earl
Jennie Rebecca Hogan ... Marshal Shield
Sean Day Michael ... Arbutus Jones
Leigh Faith ... Attendant (as Leigh Cronish)
Bonnie Panych ... Waitress
Michael Nemirsky... Sheldon Kruger

WRITTEN BY

Ron Goulart...(story)


DIRECTED BY

Jorge Montesi

 

[Mad-Pac]

Link is on its way. My problem is that when I try to upload new episodes to my Google Drive, the connection usually gets interrupted, and when it finally uploads something, I can do nothing else on the Internet. This is why it's best for me to upload it at night when I'm no longer using the computer. And since I only remember to do all this on Friday, then that means I'm gonna do it tonight.

 

[Brimfin]

This week: KITT-Y goes berserk. Yes, this episode has a futuristic car, though not as fancy as the KNIGHT INDUSTRIES TWO THOUSAND, and with a female voice to boot. It starts out well. Our lead character Federal Police Marshall Stu Clemens spots a man robbing an ATM. He flees, but Stu isn’t concerned. His partner will get him. Sure enough, his car arrests and fires an immobilizer ray on the crook allowing Stu to arrest him. But when the guy mouths off to her, she zaps him with another immobilizer beam. Stu is worried so he takes her in for a checkup. Unfortunately, the story takes a little nosedive here. The idiot mechanic working on her spills his coffee into her system. Just when it was looking like it was something in her programming starting to go astray, maybe a god complex developing or something similar, it turns into just a coffee-spill-induced short circuit.

A10, as she is called, gets a list of criminals to be on the lookout for, including one Sheldon Kruger, a murderer and Arbutus Jones, who kidnaps and murders women but so far has hidden the bodies and eluded capture. She polishes off the first name while Stu is in a diner. She stops Sheldon, finds him guilty, and executes him on the spot. Stu arrives as A10 is vacuuming up the ashes into a container in the car. The Captain lets him know this may mean a promotion. The only trouble of course is that it later turns out she nabbed and executed the wrong guy. However for now, she is on the trail of Arbutus Jones, who has kidnapped the former lover of Stu - Diane Harmon. Even though she should report that Stu is personally involved with the victim, she doesn’t – making Stu trust her all the more.

Arbutus sends them on a false trail leaving a dummy with a note behind. A10 smashes through the wall and zaps the dummy until it starts on fire. However, she has seemingly logical reasons for it. The guy left something on the dummy to make it seem like it was human; that’s why she rushed in. When she tried to taser him she didn’t sense a drop in his activity so she kept zapping him.

They follow another lead, but she breaks down at kilometer 12, so Stu has to run to kilometer 16 and call for a mechanic. One arrives and enters the car only to have her call him an intruder and apparently disintegrate him. (We never see what happens but he vanishes off the grid afterward.) But he apparently got her running first, because Stu is able to return and drive her away. But then the precinct captain tells him about A10’s little boo-boo of executing the wrong person and eating her mechanic. He wants her brought into the shop right away and promises he can download the info to another car. But A10 has spotted Diane in Arbutus’s car still alive, so he cuts off the call and goes after her instead. All things considered, I can understand his decision.

They arrive and Stu tries to chase Arbutus. He falls for an old ploy. When he tells him to stop, Arb says “Let me think about this – NO!” and then shoots him. Temporarily down, it’s up to A10 to stop the rapist-murderer. Unfortunately, she mistakes him for Sheldon Kruger and his female accomplice (even though I never remember hearing that Sheldon even had a female accomplice) and kills both of them. Stu cradles her in his arms having lost the love of his life in an attempt to save her. The host says, “Stu took a risk of using an unstable machine to save the woman he loved, but his decision proved tragic. Welcome to paradox.” Well, actually, that’s not how it ended. Instead, she starts to compute that no – Stu is Sheldon Kruger, even though Sheldon 1’s ashes are in her car and Sheldon 2 is dead in front of her. It’s totally idiotic even for a malfunctioning computer. But wait, there’s more! Later on, a new female police officer has been assigned A10; even assuring us it’s the same A10 and not a similar model by showing us that Stu’s favorite squeezer stress reliever – given to him by Diane – is still there, before the office casually tosses it out. When she stops and steps out to eat somewhere, A10 accuses yet another passerby of being Sheldon Kruger. So, let me get this straight, even though A10 has killed two innocent civilians, one mechanic, and one marshal, they still put her back into service again without a massive overhaul? This went from idiotic to insane! It’s like watching a bad horror movie.

So what could have been an intriguing story of a computer being given too much power and wielding it too freely becomes a simple – ooops, I spilled coffee into her circuits and now she thinks everyone is Sheldon Kruger. I can only give it 6 green stress reliever squeezers, with an alien face on front and clearly a Sci-Fi logo on the back.

 

[Mad-Pac]

However for now, she is on the trail of Arbutus Jones, who has kidnapped the former lover of Stu - Diane Harmon.

Did a sloppy systems engineer spill coffee in your systems? You got the names wrong. It's James Otterson and Diane Marmon.

So this week, we had the regular and tired "humans have too much faith in technology and pay a heavy price for that," law enforcement edition. It doesn't help that things are made even more stupid because the sloppy mechanic spilled coffee in the Lawagon computer and in the end it is released to work with another innocent police officer. The story was just too ordinary and I wish they had explored the idea of how things could go wrong even if the technology worked perfectly, because a legal system like that described in the episode has too many flaws to work, even if coffee is not spilled into the machine...

I can say I liked certain aspects and details of the episode.

- We see Bobby from Twin Peaks again.
- I also know the girl, Rebecca Reichert, from the episode Outer Limits episode "Flower Child," in which she plays the plain girlfriend while a man faces an alien seductress, though I liked the plain girlfriend better. It's good to check the episode if you like the actress.
-It seems a good idea to attach the weapon to a person's wrist; this way the weapon can't be accidentally dropped. But I think these futuristic weapons are too puny and nothing they do can rival the horror people feel to see a man with his guts open after being shot with a .38 in the stomach. Why is it that death in sci-fi is always so clean?
- We learn more about Betaville's tunnel system for traffic of vehicles, which we've seen in a couple earlier episodes. I found it naive that the writers would think of this system as an express lane across the city. It's the same thing people said about modern avenues and highways in the 1940s, just to have them plagued by daily traffic jams 50 years later. And imagine a traffic jam in an underground tunnel.
- The apartment Stu and Diane got looked like it was an office in an university campus. I bet that part of the episode was shot in an university. Usually when low-budget producers want the location for a sterile and futuristic home, they look for university architecture. I think that says a great deal about how modern universities are built.
- Stu says that biometric sensors are better and you never lose your thumb. Well, call me a pessimist, but I would assume Betaville would suffer from an epidemic of severed thumbs if crime is on the rise.
- We never get to know the real Sheldon Kruger after all. I sort of imagine him like The Big Bang Theory's Sheldon Cooper wearing a Freddy Krueger's outfit.

This was a very uninspired episode. It only gets 4 Sheldon Krugers in the Sheldon Kruger scale (and three of them aren't even the real Sheldon Kruger).

 

[Cloister56]

Oh wow it's Bobby. On a related side note I finally finished Twin Peaks Season 2 on my third attempt.

I think shows like Welcome to Paradox and Black Mirror work best when they introduce a new technology, establish it's benefits and then follow it to often unexpected and terrible outcomes.
There is the potential for that here. Before the coffee we do see signs that A10 isn't just behaving as you might expect, delivering a bit of sass to the cash machine robber and then

But when the guy mouths off to her, she zaps him with another immobilizer beam. Stu is worried so he takes her in for a checkup.

Then the coffee. Surely if the mechanic spilled his coffee in an expensive and technologically complicated technology which is armed he would be a bit more concerned before letting it go, especially as it immediately shows signs of impairment. Plus what is that analyser box doing why doesn't it pick up the fault. I guess A10 drives off before the service is complete, but then why does the mechanic just sigh and not shut A10 down right then, or warn everyone? Maybe he was hoping it would be ok and no-one would find out he spilled his coffee in an expensive machine.

Sadly this means instead of gradually and logically exploring where this technology could go wrong without a major fault we have a clear trigger. I guess you could criticize the water proofing and the safe guards in the cars AI but that's for another day.

I guess we do get to explore Clemens confidence in his new technological partner and it seems the level of confidence the system has placed on it. The first time the authorities begin to suspect something is wrong with A10 is when the real Sheldon Kruger is apprehended. Up to then it's all celebrations and talk of promotion. I guess they would have tested the remains and found it didn't match Sheldon Kruger at some point.

It is nice to see that the VW Beetle is the car of the future, perhaps here it is called the VW Beetal. Have I made that joke already, I think I might have done.

I think the last 3rd of the episode does elevate things. We know the car isn't working correctly. Clemens now also knows this. We have seen a white beetle arrive with the service engineer. We haven't seen the service engineer since he entered A10.
Is the shot A10 showing of Arbutus and Diane in a white beetle faked or is it the same white beetle.
Is Harmon chasing the engineer or Arbutus?
There was some tension as A10 reminding us that time was running out while the chief insisted Harmon bring A10 in.

The mystery is quickly solved, Yes it's Arbutus. I think they could have strung this out more, have Harmon creep around the warehouse, perhaps see a figure and shoot, perhaps wounds the guy. He then finds something that points to it being the tech, oh no his trust in A10 was misplaced, he drops his guard and then boom it's Arbutus he gets the drop on him and escapes to the next scene.
Instead we get some ok running around firing wrist lasers at each other.

I think the ending was ok. A10 is still obsessed with Kruger so kills Arbutus, again incorrectly identifying him as Kruger.

Unfortunately, she mistakes him for Sheldon Kruger and his female accomplice (even though I never remember hearing that Sheldon even had a female accomplice) and kills both of them.

Yeah I think this would have worked better if we had seen that. Perhaps a mug shot of Kruger followed by his female partner would have planted the seed.

A10 is fully obsessed then identifying Clemens as Kruger and I assume killing him too.

When she stops and steps out to eat somewhere, A10 accuses yet another passerby of being Sheldon Kruger. So, let me get this straight, even though A10 has killed two innocent civilians, one mechanic, and one marshal, they still put her back into service again without a massive overhaul? This went from idiotic to insane! It’s like watching a bad horror movie.

Yeah this was ridiculous. I think it was completely unnecessary and hurt the episode to include this scene.

Overall I think this episode had some merit. Initially I thought it was a bit crap but typing up my thoughts has made me reconsider a little.

6 earthly remains of Sheldon Kruger when there should only be one, out of 10