Westworld, the experience

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

These are the laws Isaac Asimov wrote down for posterity in I, Robot, and which Michael Crichton adapted for his novel Westworld. These principles are also the ethical basis on which –more or less– artificial intelligence is based.

The fascinating Westworld is HBO's latest multi-million dollar project, and an answer to the need for something out of the ordinary now that the end of Game of Thrones is looming. But the ambition with which this monumental project has been designed and created poses a serious problem. Is the average viewer truly ready for an existentialist sci-fi series with a storyline that is at the limit of what narrative prime time television can withstand without dying in the process?

For a start, we have nothing but praise for the capacity of Jonathan Nolan, brother of Christopher and screenwriter in all his films, for bamboozling the network into accepting such a monstrous budget to create its very own theme park. Westworld offers the viewer what this theme park offers its visitors; an experience. Everyone will have his or her own. For those who love Asimov, the more hefty Crichton or a universe like that explored by Stephen King in The Dark Tower, the series digs deep into our brain, like a chip taking shape as the minutes pass.

But what exactly is Westworld? Androids dreaming of electric sheep. Exactly that. They are human and we the predators. The Wild West, filmed as never before on TV, in a setting where men rape, kill and exert violence without punishment as a consolation for the boring life that supposedly makes up their reality.

This is artificial reality which will one day attain consciousness and turn against us. Terminator, Matrix and Ex Machina are but simplistic examples. In Westworld man takes the role of god until Eve (Dolores), an excellent Evan Rachel Wood, tastes the forbidden fruit and complicates things beautifully. Between robots programmed to please us, characters that amaze, the man in black (Ed Harris at his best), a visitor 30 years in the park, a robot leading a revolt. What is reality? What do we seek? Who are we? What do we want? Kierkegaard would have a field day.