Pantheon is so Underrated
A Sci-Fi that tackles the humanity and wonder of technology... what's not to like?
The Pantheon TV series was released in 2022, yet I had only just finished it a few days ago. It went under the radar, due to an exclusive release on AMC+, a relatively obscure platform (Why are there so many streaming platforms??). But just last month, Season One was released to a larger audience on Netflix. That’s how I found the show. (Season Two isn’t on Netflix, you can find it for free on YouTube though. Apparently, it’s a licensing agreement thing…)
And what a show it is. Just a few weeks on Netflix, and the show got “Most Liked” on Netflix US. With a unique perspective on the ethical (or unethical) use of technology, namely “uploaded intelligence”, it’s a compelling watch. To make sure this article doesn’t ruin the surprise in the show, I won’t give specific names or chronology. This is also a review only for Season One. Season Two is great and all, but it adds in a lot of new ideas. This is a simple review for a horribly underrated show. I won’t spoil the show; give it a watch yourself.
Uploaded Intelligence
In Pantheon, “uploaded intelligence” is the scanning of a physical brain into “the cloud”, thus killing the person being scanned. They are thereby transferred from the physical world to the digital world where they remain conscious on the cloud. In development by a corporation called “Logorhythms”, the founder tragically died years before he could “crack integrity”. It turns out there’s a fundamental flaw with the upload. Although the point of the technology was to become immortal and to unlock the hidden potential of the brain, if you overclock your brain or use too much brain power, it decays quicker leading to death. Thus, the technology cannot be used effectively.
Logorhythms continued the project for years after the founder died. As the years went by, no breakthrough had resulted and the flaw remains. The possibilities are endless if it eventually gets solved and it’s no wonder the company would stop at nothing to gain such a breakthrough.
Morality of Technology
Scientific developments always need to be experimented on before they are released to the general public. This doesn’t always have to be public experiments. Ethics of corporation, greed, and the pursuit of scientific advancement are meshed into this show.
A man is forced to have their brain scanned. Once uploaded to the cloud, he has his memory wiped and is kept in an infinite loop of work and more work; it’s a crude form of slavery keeping the slave under control through manipulation of the mind.The show makes it compelling with a substantial moral gray area in conjunction with the complex ideas surrounding the development of ethical technology usage. A real-life example of this would be the Japanese “scientific” experiments conducted on the Chinese population during WW2. Unit 731 was an especially brutal facility where
“Japan began experimenting with pathogenic and chemical warfare and testing on human subjects. There, military physicians and officers intentionally exposed victims to infectious diseases including anthrax, bubonic plague, cholera, syphilis, typhus and other pathogens, in an effort to understand how they affected the body and how they could be used in bombs and attacks in WWII.
In addition to working with pathogens, Unit 731 conducted experiments on people, including — but certainly not limited to — dissections and vivisections on living humans, all without anesthesia (the experimenters believed using it would skew the results of the research).”
This was not an isolated incident. There were other facilities in China where the Japanese experimented on the civilian populace. At what human cost is it worth innovation rather than stagnation?
We’re living in unprecedented times. The growth of technology is insanely high; just a few centuries ago it would have seemed impossible for humanity to reach for the stars. Our future depends on whether we use our technology for the future of humankind.
This TV show pushed me to make this publication in the first place. I was interested in these topics before, but this was the match that lit the flame. I finished the show a few weeks ago and with the year ending, this goes down as my favorite show of the year. With an insightful view into the exciting development of technology, it stands as a show unlike any other.