Please make a donation for our |
| If you enjoyed this page, please check out the sponsors' sites below so that the Webzine will always be free. |
         |
Top Science Fiction Novels |
Top Best-sellers and Movie Tie-In Books |
Fantasy/History |
DVDs |
Non-Fiction |
 |
 |
© Logan Bruce 1997-2025 |
Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams [Season 1, Episode 1]
The Hood Maker (70 min)
Shown 17th September 2017 [Sunday]
Richard Madden ( Games of Thrones ) is a police detective in a dystopian future. His partner is a Teep (telepath) - Holliday Grainger . Together they abuse suspects.
Someone has started to make linen hoods that block the abilities of telepaths. However, the cops must find him before the Teeps do.
Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams [Season 1, Episode 2]
Impossible Planet
Shown 24th September 2017 [Sunday]
This is set centuries in the future. An old woman ( Geraldine Chaplin ) hires a couple of dodgy starship tour operators to fly her and her android to long-abandoned Earth. She wants to see her ancestoral homeworld before she passes away.
In deep space, there is an element of unease. The tour operators may be con-men, but the robot seems to be on to them. Meanwhile, the old lady is obsessed with getting to Earth. The younger operator is sucked into her obsession.
Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams [Season 1, Episode 3]
The Commuter
Shown 1st October 2017 [Sunday]
A railway worker (Timothy Spall - Red Dwarf ) has a customer who wants to buy a ticket to Macon Heights. Unfortunately there is no station listed at that location. Not in the semantic Derry/Londonderry way, but in the sense that there is no stop between two listed stations. He becomes obsessed with this.
The story is very slow-moving. The protagonist spends a lot of time doing things, like making a cup of tea for his cow-orker or helping his wife with their troubled tweenage son.
The plot threads eventually tie together. The story could easily be told in a half-hour format like The Twilight Zone , but has been padded out to full hyour-length format. As a result it is slow rather than suspenseful, and the plot resolution is something of an anti-climax.
Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams [Season 1, Episode 4]
Crazy Diamond
Shown 8th October 2017 [Sunday]
This is based on the short story Sales Pitch by Philip K. Dick . It is set in a future where the UK uses replicants like in Blade Runner .
Ed Morris (Steve Buscemi - Armageddon ) lives in a suburb with his wife Sally ( Julia Davis ). His boring day job is at a company that manufactures artificial people. He meets a femme fatale, who convinces him to help in a robbery. Unfortunately, she then has to sell the stolen goods to a gang of gypsies led by the flamboyant Noah (Michael Socha - The Aliens ).
Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams [Season 1, Episode 5]
Real Life
Shown 15th October 2017 [Sunday]
Anna Paquin is a futuristic police detective with a latino sidekick and flying car - like in Blade Runner . She is depressed, so her live-in lover ( Rachel Lefevre ) gives her a virtual reality program. It will allow her to live a completely different life.
She wakes up as a black man (Terence Howard - Wayward Pines ). He and his buddy Chris (Sam Witwer - Smallville: Season 8 ), who get in a 1970s-style shootout with a gangster.
His doctor ( Lara Pulver ) assures him that he is not really a lesbian super-cop in the future with a flying car. No, he is a well-hung single billionaire who spends his nights playing vigilante like Batman (but without the halloween costume). Well, which one of these is the fantasy and which is reality?
Much like Total Recall , the protagonist has two versions of reality to choose from. If he picks the wrong one, he will have a fatal aneurysm.
This was written for television by Ronald D. Moore, who started his SciFi career on Star Trek: TNG . Which is ironic, because one of the things that this episode brings to mind is Reginald Barclay's holodeck addiction. Yes, it seems that ANY virtual reality technology is potentially damaging. Ironic that Holodeck episodes were usually about how the tech could damage the ship, rather than the social and psychological consequences it would bring about.
Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams [Season 1, Episode 6]
Human Is
Shown 22nd October 2017 [Sunday]
In the year 2530, Vera ( Essie Davis ) is married to Colonel Silas (Bryan Cranston - Total Recall (2013) ). The bad news is, Silas is not a great husband. The good news is, he is usually off risking life and limb in dangerous situations.
Silas boss, General Liam Cunningham ( Game of Thrones ), is jealous of his achievements. When Silas comes home as the sole survivor of an invasion of an alien world, the boss is suspicious of him.
Vera realises her husband has changed - for the better. Is he really a better man, or is he a shape-shifting alien? And if the latter, will she rat him out?
Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams [Season 1, Episode 7]
The Father Thing
Shown 26th Feb 2018
A young boy discovers that his father ( Mystery Men ) has been replaced by an alien doppelganger.
The idea of young boys having to save the world was a mainstay of the movies of the 1980s. However, this version is darker and more downbeat.
Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams [Season 1, Episode 8]
Autofac
Shown 5th March 2018
Juno Temple lives in a post-apocalyptic world. A terrible war destroyed civilisation. Even though the war ended twenty years ago, an automated factory named AutoFac is still operating. It is not a monster like Skynet in the Terminator series. Instead, the story is more of a commentary on consumerism, like Dawn of the Dead .
Conrad (David Lyons - Revolution ) and his band of rebels ambush a delivery drone. The plan is to lure out a customer service advisor ( Janelle Monae ) and use her to shut down the factory.
The Final Girl joins the Main Man on his quest. They smuggle tactical nukes into the factory. Of course, it all seems too easy. There is an unexected twist.
Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams [Season 1, Episode 9]
Safe & Sound
Shown 12th March 2018
This is based on the short story Foster You're Dead by Philip K. Dick . It is set in a future where the USA has become a deeply divided society.
Midwest Libertarian politician Maura Tierney brings her teenage daughter to the East Coast. The daughter, Foster, has trouble fitting in at school.
The mother claims that there are no terrorist attacks, and it is all propaganda by the Mega-Corps. If she is correct, it could all be a Government plot. However, she could be a terrorist herself. Worse, Foster could have inherited her father's mental illness and the whole thing might be a halucination.
Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams [Season 1, Episode 10]
Kill All Others
Shown 19th March 2017 [Sunday]
This is set in the year 2053. The three NAFTA countries have been unified into one enormous super-nation. Automation has advanced to the extent that a factory which once employed thousands of workers now only needs three - partly due to the apparent power of the Trade Union, and partly for lip service to the concept of quality control. The biggest change is in politics. Democracy is still in place, but there is only one party.
The protagonist is watching a televised interview of The Candidate ( Vera Farmiga ), when she says Kill All Others. Nobody else seems to have heard it, but soon it becomes an unofficial Government policy. Who the Others are is never specified, but it soon becomes apparent that it refers to anyone who questions social norms.
