Ford Wishes to Bring His Father Back to Life

Published November 16, 2016 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hi!

Viktor from Sweden.

Love the podcast!

I think you are asking all the right questions but I want to focus on why Westworld and how they can drag this on for 5 seasons.

I’m going to assume that Dr Ford is the origin for the story.

Ford has a strict childhood with an authoritarian and technocratic father (Arnold). Fast forward to days of computers and AI. Father becomes terminally ill and dies. Ford is devastated by the loss and sets out to bring his father back to life through sentient AI. Arnold 1.0 = events 30 years ago … it ends badly. We might be at 2.0 or 15.0 who knows but Ford is still at the drawing table. The way to sentience is through the narratives (you can run simulations from the data from the outcome of the narratives). The center of the maze is just a schematic view of how sentience is achieved and in theory you reach the center of the maze through the right narratives. Ford discards Sizemore’s narrative because it’s tried and the hosts are not advancing towards the center of the maze. In his obsession Ford fails to see that Sentience is about /has been reached and fails to understand the danger (the show goes out on a limb showing us Ford is in complete control which he probably isn’t). The reason for the hyperrealism is of course, to make human act human and in term evolve the AI. Ford may or may not need “the company” to fund his quest but Westworld might as well be just a computer simulation a la the matrix.

My prediction is that the show will soon change focus (like lost did with the hatch) and this will allow it to rack up the seasons. We already have tons of distractions that will probably get a simple explanation (the maze, Orion, timelines, William is a host etc).

The most important moment of the season so far is The Ford vs Man in black conversation – Ford looks at the man in black and asks questions to find out how far along he has come in his climb towards sentience … not that far by the look on Sir Hopkins face. The best parts of the season so far is all the scenes with Jeffrey Wright who is just such a fantastic actor.

Thank you for a great podcast!!

Viktor

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