Similarties

The Royal

The similarities between the Matrix and The Royale that I observed is that both stories are about an alternate reality. The characters in the book the Royal play out their story but they aren't complete robots because when the crew of three first got there they were able to respond to their questions which had nothing to do with the story (the yellow guys remark about them not having DNA or being real). Another similarity I found more clearly in Royal is the topic of race. The Leaders were white men; the lower ranks were played by a black man and a weird looking dark alien looking guy.

Farscape: "The Human Reaction"

Human reaction is similar to the matrix in that they also include a fake reality. The matrix is controlled by a CPU which plays out a life for the people hooked up to it, the same is with John and his thoughts being read and controlled to create a reality for him. The Matrix and the "real world" are only a phone call away weirdly similar to "Human reaction" in where they were only a worm hole away. One thing that stood out to me in Far Escape is that the Alien which created this reality from a book didn't understand human beings and Agent smith talked about how the original matrix that was created for humans also failed to satisfy human being because it was too perfect, I'm not saying that royal was perfect at all but I think human beings are almost impossible to satisfy.


But overall what I walk away from these episodes with the impression that reality isn’t necessarily black and white. It goes back to the question of Morpheus from the Matrix.. “What is real, How do we define real?” the charecters in the “Royale” weren’t limited to the writing of the book itself as they responded to questions from the crew that the scenario they were in didn’t necessarily fit. How does the Crew know that even their lives and their existence is real? What if they are a part of another book without them knowing (I don’t know much about Star Trek) but what if their constant wandering around is written in some kind of sick book.. lol

Then you got Farescape where John believes he is going back to earth but at what point had things stopped being real and turn into this artificial world of his thoughts. Are not our thoughts what make things real? How does John even know that he even figured out the truth.. Maybe his finding out about the aliens and the whole ending isn’t true… maybe its level one if you will… So overall I made a little bit of a circle since the beginning of the semester… its like that saying goes the more you know less you know.