torkell | Mission: 2110

Ok, so last night's update was actually submitted after midnight, but I claim that it's still yesterday's update as I hadn't gone to bed yet. Thanks to

talismancer for prodding me.

Anyway, time for an actual post which isn't a random meme or a comment on

talismancer's posts.

Recently I've been watching Mission: 2110, which in a nutshell is a futuristic version of Raven. The rough plot outline is that humanity built robots ("Roboids") to help them, travelled to the stars, explored the cosmos, and generally did what you'd expect humanity to achieve in the medium future. Unfortuantly, something somewhere went horribly wrong, the robots turned on humanity, and wiped out everyone in yuor typical robot uprising scenario.

Enter Caleb. He's the last of the resistance, hiding out on the container ships that form Futuregate, and it's up to him to defeat the Roboids. He can't do it on his own, so what he does is build a time machine to summon recruits from his past (2010, our present) to help him out. They have to complete challenges, earn biorods, compete for limited places, and eventually one will become his ultimate recruit.

While watching it I've been struggling with trying to work out what Caleb's motives are in this, and what sort of character he is. See, the challenges in this show are mixed in with various segments of plot, wherein we find out more about the Roboids, Futuregate, and Caleb himself. In the challenges he makes the recruits sneak past Shades and duel with Roboids. He then gleefully gets his recruits face The Vapouriser, which he freely admits is some darstedly invention of the Roboids that will, indeed, vapourise one or more recruits.

Then there's the moments of plot, wherein he's genuinely concerned for his recruits and worried about how they'll do. He's also searching for his own identity - one conversation with the resident AI has him holding up a photo of a child and asking "was this me? was I like the recruits, without cybernetics?" It's as if there's two completely different Calebs: a crazy version, and a confused/depressed version. At least Raven was consistent in behaviour (although myself and

talismancer disagree on his alignment and motivation).