Finally I watched Upload, after a year when my friend recommended it. A wonderful idea at the first glimpse that any memories, thoughts and experiences can be stored and uploaded in the cloud. And the dead people can have their original avatar in the virtual world like HorizonView, which is a tremendous amount of codes running on a huge server. Additionally, people in here can easily contact with the living people in the real world who wearing a VR suit, which somewhat blurs the boundaries between living and death.
More surprisingly, the imagination of this series is more than that. It also explores the inequality after death. It is to say, in the current, and at least the time before the technology develop as the same level as presented in this play, nobody is able to avoid death and death is an inevitable destiny for every human being, which means whatever happens after death, going to heaven like the Christian says, heading into another circle indicated by Buddhism or just becoming nothing as current science demonstrates, is completely equal to any person in the world. On the contrary, due to the highly developed techniques in Upload, people can buy physical objects for the dead people “living” in the virtual world. Therefore, there is a huge difference between the well-off families and the underprivileged ones. The rich people can enjoy feasts and luxuries, basically anything they want as long as their beloved family are willing to pay for them, while the miserable guys merely possess 2 gigs per month, which means monotonous white wall rather than breathtaking landscape, only books with 5 pages free for read, and even thinking a little costing corresponding amount of gigabytes. Once the measly 2 gigs are used up, they will be frozen until the next month. This shit happens partly because of the cost for running and maintenance of server, however, the major cause is the role played by the damn capitalism that anything should be tagged with money and nothing would be useful unless it is lucrative. What the most pathetic thing is that the development of technology is preordained to remarkably widen the existing gap among different hierarchies.
Another realistic thing Upload try to illustrate is human right issues. After dead people uploaded in the virtual world, their own blessing is totally depend on the willing of people who want to spend money for them. Their basic necessities will be cut down if their family are reluctant to pay any money, their dressing styles are controlled by auspices’ preference, and even their memories and avatar can be easily transferred as their family’s wish. For example, in the Upload, a mother is reluctant to update his son’s appearance even if he has grown up as an adult because she wants to keep the moment he died as a 6-year-old boy forever. And the protagonist’s girlfriend causally change his pants to her preference and take advantage of his funeral to establish an independent modern female character in front of the public other than in memory of his tragic car accident in this big day. Under this circumstance, this dead yet thoughts-still-living person has become a property of their relatives or lovers instead of a free person. It is hard to imagine and accept that a human being can readily be transferred, changed or even deleted at others’ wishes.
What is more, this series also want audiences to contemplate the relationship and connection between the living and dead people. The adviser of the protagonist, namely angel, is gradually somewhat into him. The dilemma presented in front of her, between living and interacting in the real world or establishing a relationship with a dead people technically consisting of ones and zeros running on server makes her difficult to choose. Although the advanced tools such as VR glasses and sex suits have already satisfied most visionary needs and physical contact, the weird feeling cannot be completely eliminated. And some people like Nora’s dad cannot accept the upload, for he believes his wife is waiting for him in heaven and it is unfair and shows no respect to those people. The most impressing plot is the protagonist’s girl friend with her insane love upload herself to reunite with her lover at the end of the series. All of those provide audiences with the complicated and elusive emotional attachment between living and dead people.
Moreover, there are other realistic problems mentioned in this excellent show. With such novel ideas and deep thoughts, I cannot understand why the rating in Douban review is so much lower than I expected. A fascinating start, a decent plot development, no apparent logical errors, and a reasonable and open end, it deserves 9 out of 10, from an objective and rational viewer’s perspective.