The Peripheral: The Doodad Books Included
November 26, 2022 2:52 PM - Season 1, Episode 7 - Subscribe
Flynne, Burton and Conner meet with Lowbeer and are put to the test. Meanwhile, Ella’s life is in danger, and Tommy deals with the Sheriff and Corbell Pickett his own way.
Very little of what happens in this episode is in the book.
As I was remarking to a friend of mine (who hasn't yet read it) last night, and as I think I've alluded to here the couple of times I've commented on Peripheral episodes, I have such mixed feelings about the ways the book has diverged from the show. Like, sure, I'm okay with a certain loss of subtlety because I know that that's just always going to be a casualty in the transition from the written word to television, but I find myself somewhat put off by some of the things the show has invented out of whole cloth or altered virtually beyond recognition, like Lowbeer apparently having had a daughter, or the nature of Ash and Ossian's employment with Lev--not to mention Lev behaving like much more of an unambiguous villain in the show.
I'll admit I'm still enjoying it for what it is, which is a show that bears mostly only superficial resemblance to its source material, but at the same time, if someone could connect to the stub where they got a more faithful adaptation and pirate it from there, that'd be great.
posted by zztzed at 3:14 PM on November 26, 2022 [3 favorites]
As I was remarking to a friend of mine (who hasn't yet read it) last night, and as I think I've alluded to here the couple of times I've commented on Peripheral episodes, I have such mixed feelings about the ways the book has diverged from the show. Like, sure, I'm okay with a certain loss of subtlety because I know that that's just always going to be a casualty in the transition from the written word to television, but I find myself somewhat put off by some of the things the show has invented out of whole cloth or altered virtually beyond recognition, like Lowbeer apparently having had a daughter, or the nature of Ash and Ossian's employment with Lev--not to mention Lev behaving like much more of an unambiguous villain in the show.
I'll admit I'm still enjoying it for what it is, which is a show that bears mostly only superficial resemblance to its source material, but at the same time, if someone could connect to the stub where they got a more faithful adaptation and pirate it from there, that'd be great.
posted by zztzed at 3:14 PM on November 26, 2022 [3 favorites]
~Is any of this in the book?
~Nope. Not one scene.
Is there even a reason to have a book+show thread anymore? Other than to point out how far afield the show is from the book, I mean.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:30 PM on November 26, 2022
~Nope. Not one scene.
Is there even a reason to have a book+show thread anymore? Other than to point out how far afield the show is from the book, I mean.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:30 PM on November 26, 2022
> I find myself somewhat put off by some of the things the show has invented out of whole cloth or altered virtually beyond recognition
I was feeling like this, too, but I'm re-reading the book & finding Wilf hiring the Fishers to impress an old flame (D.) and A.'s murder being the secret that they're pursued for less compelling than Aelita trying to exfiltrate what the R.I. is really up to w/ Burton's haptics.
(I'm only 1/2 way through, though, so don't yet know (nor remember from previous read) who's working against the Fishers, Lev and Lowbeer.
That said, Lowbeer using the word perspicacity in a show that spent that much time with pointless melee is something, huh?
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 7:45 PM on November 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
I was feeling like this, too, but I'm re-reading the book & finding Wilf hiring the Fishers to impress an old flame (D.) and A.'s murder being the secret that they're pursued for less compelling than Aelita trying to exfiltrate what the R.I. is really up to w/ Burton's haptics.
(I'm only 1/2 way through, though, so don't yet know (nor remember from previous read) who's working against the Fishers, Lev and Lowbeer.
That said, Lowbeer using the word perspicacity in a show that spent that much time with pointless melee is something, huh?
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 7:45 PM on November 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
Oof. This show has gotten so tropey and so violent.
I don't mind some of the liberties taken. For example, the book is fairly slow in the beginning; the first episode of the show condenses an awful lot of plot in a brisk and effective manner.
There are also some innovations that are interesting. We get far more of an understanding of just what the Marines' haptic implants are all about in the show, and the idea that Ash and Ossian tried to download data into Burton's implants is intriguing.
Even the Irish hitman is kind of an interesting character -- he has more personality than the completely anonymous assassins in the book. And the RI and its director -- even if she is somewhat vampy and ridiculous, a la Servalan in Blake's 7 -- serve a useful function, since the villains in the original story are fairly nebulous for most of the book.
But there's some stuff that just makes no sense. Why would the headset create bacteria with altered DNA in Flynne's brain when it couldn't find implants to connect to?
And there's stuff that just feels like a betrayal of the source material. The way Tommy killed the sheriff seems very unlike Tommy as we know him in the book. (TV Tommy was reasonably consistent with Book Tommy until then, I thought.)
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 8:25 PM on November 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
I don't mind some of the liberties taken. For example, the book is fairly slow in the beginning; the first episode of the show condenses an awful lot of plot in a brisk and effective manner.
There are also some innovations that are interesting. We get far more of an understanding of just what the Marines' haptic implants are all about in the show, and the idea that Ash and Ossian tried to download data into Burton's implants is intriguing.
Even the Irish hitman is kind of an interesting character -- he has more personality than the completely anonymous assassins in the book. And the RI and its director -- even if she is somewhat vampy and ridiculous, a la Servalan in Blake's 7 -- serve a useful function, since the villains in the original story are fairly nebulous for most of the book.
But there's some stuff that just makes no sense. Why would the headset create bacteria with altered DNA in Flynne's brain when it couldn't find implants to connect to?
And there's stuff that just feels like a betrayal of the source material. The way Tommy killed the sheriff seems very unlike Tommy as we know him in the book. (TV Tommy was reasonably consistent with Book Tommy until then, I thought.)
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 8:25 PM on November 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
So much ultra violence in this episode :(
posted by lazaruslong at 2:18 AM on November 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by lazaruslong at 2:18 AM on November 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
(I'm only 1/2 way through, though, so don't yet know (nor remember from previous read) who's working against the Fishers, Lev and Lowbeer.
If I remember correctly, they were up against a shadowy group from their own time, which is never revealed in the book. At one point, there’s a behind-the-scenes money war with each group leapfrogging each other, buying political influence, spending up the ladder starting with the sheriff, and ending in, I think, the Oval Office. But, I don’t believe we never know who they are (I could be wrong)
.....
Why would the headset create bacteria with altered DNA in Flynne's brain when it couldn't find implants to connect to?
Yeah, that’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it? It also raises questions about what the headsets might be able to further do to the user. Rewrite their DNA completely?
posted by Thorzdad at 3:16 AM on November 27, 2022
If I remember correctly, they were up against a shadowy group from their own time, which is never revealed in the book. At one point, there’s a behind-the-scenes money war with each group leapfrogging each other, buying political influence, spending up the ladder starting with the sheriff, and ending in, I think, the Oval Office. But, I don’t believe we never know who they are (I could be wrong)
.....
Why would the headset create bacteria with altered DNA in Flynne's brain when it couldn't find implants to connect to?
Yeah, that’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it? It also raises questions about what the headsets might be able to further do to the user. Rewrite their DNA completely?
posted by Thorzdad at 3:16 AM on November 27, 2022
I always knew I'd be dissatisfied to some degree with even the best possible adaptation (and this certainly isn't that; I'm retroactively relieved that Vincenzo Natali's film adaptation of Neuromancer never came to fruition). Maybe I didn't approach the show with an entirely open mind, literally sitting down with notepad and pen in hand beginning with the pilot, but with the exception of last episode, I've been on a steady trajectory toward hate-watching and I'm probably there now.
More nitpicking about language: I really didn't like the use of the term klept with the indefinite article or in the plural form, both of which were said in this episode.
The title of this episode here in Japan is ”裏切り” (Betrayal) rather than a translation of "The Doodad", which prompted me to think that Reece would somehow be a turncoat like when he abducts Flynne in the novel (incidentally, "What About Bob?" became the more prosaic ”殺し屋ボブの過去” / "The Past of Bob the Hitman").
As noted by others already, the Zoo was yet more uninteresting action for action's sake and doesn't advance the plot or reveal character (other than Conner's reaction to being kicked off the rooftop). Bob vs. Reece also went on too long. Reece could have just bled out from the multitude of stab wounds rather than being choked and Bob's self-inflicted wound seemed serious enough to have been more hindrance than it was worth as a ruse.
Ash remains a lot less interesting than her novel counterpart (judging from Nuland and Lowbeer's costuming, it seems like they could easily have done justice to her Victorian goth look and at least made her interesting visually), though if I squint, I guess I can see how the writers got from her mourning the losses of the jackpot (particularly the non-human losses) to wanting to see the current setup burn.
If Agency ends up adapted as part of this series (and I might not have so many quibbles about changes as I didn't find it that good to begin with), Verity's stub won't be unique in contact having been established so much earlier than was thought possible seeing as it was made clear that the RI managed to do so with this stub circa 2022, which is just five years later.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 4:40 AM on November 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
More nitpicking about language: I really didn't like the use of the term klept with the indefinite article or in the plural form, both of which were said in this episode.
The title of this episode here in Japan is ”裏切り” (Betrayal) rather than a translation of "The Doodad", which prompted me to think that Reece would somehow be a turncoat like when he abducts Flynne in the novel (incidentally, "What About Bob?" became the more prosaic ”殺し屋ボブの過去” / "The Past of Bob the Hitman").
As noted by others already, the Zoo was yet more uninteresting action for action's sake and doesn't advance the plot or reveal character (other than Conner's reaction to being kicked off the rooftop). Bob vs. Reece also went on too long. Reece could have just bled out from the multitude of stab wounds rather than being choked and Bob's self-inflicted wound seemed serious enough to have been more hindrance than it was worth as a ruse.
Ash remains a lot less interesting than her novel counterpart (judging from Nuland and Lowbeer's costuming, it seems like they could easily have done justice to her Victorian goth look and at least made her interesting visually), though if I squint, I guess I can see how the writers got from her mourning the losses of the jackpot (particularly the non-human losses) to wanting to see the current setup burn.
If Agency ends up adapted as part of this series (and I might not have so many quibbles about changes as I didn't find it that good to begin with), Verity's stub won't be unique in contact having been established so much earlier than was thought possible seeing as it was made clear that the RI managed to do so with this stub circa 2022, which is just five years later.
Nope. Not one scene.I think this is more accurate for this episode then when you said it about the last, though the brief conversation between Ossian and Ash about Lowbeer having sampled their DNA was taken almost verbatim from the book.
TV Tommy was reasonably consistent with Book Tommy until then, I thought.He's not all that much of a character in the novel, but this episode had me conclude that his TV counterpart isn't as smart; the former knew how the county worked and his part in it, it was Flynne who hadn't let herself realize it.
But I don't believe we never [sic] know who they are (I could be wrong)[.]You are, though it's such a late introduction that he's no more than a cipher, the other faction turns out to be headed by the City Remembrancer, Sir Henry Fishbourne, working with Hamed al-Habib and Daedra West.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 4:40 AM on November 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think this is more accurate for this episode then when you said it about the last, though the brief conversation between Ossian and Ash about Lowbeer having sampled their DNA was taken almost verbatim from the book.
We can agree to disagree, but I don't count lifting portions of dialog but putting it in quite different situations as being the same. Similarly, if I took two stanzas of lyrics from Stairway to Heaven and set it to completely different music with other lyrics that altered the context of what I quoted, I wouldn't consider that song to be a version of Stairway.
I'm re-reading the book & finding Wilf hiring the Fishers to impress an old flame (D.) and A.'s murder being the secret that they're pursued for less compelling than Aelita trying to exfiltrate what the R.I. is really up to w/ Burton's haptics.
I agree that the gimmick in the book was one of its weakest points. In the first Fanfare on the series, I even expressed hope that a better defined villain would work well. I'd have been much happier if they'd eliminated the entire Bob subplot and the tower of violence, and spent the time fleshing out what the R.I. is up to.
We get far more of an understanding of just what the Marines' haptic implants are all about in the show
True, but in the book I had the impression they were much more about implants that helped pilot drones (which is closer to what haptic actually means) than what the show is portraying it as.
since the villains in the original story are fairly nebulous for most of the book.
Agreed that that was the other major weakness of the book, particularly making the Rememberancer into the big bad.
It really does feel like Gibson is plunging into Stephenson territory where he can spin up a compelling vision of a world but has trouble wrapping up storylines in an interesting way (and more so in Agency). When the series was announced, I hoped some external vision and guidance would help with this but instead they just ramped up the uninteresting violence.
As a vague prognostication for the 2nd season, there was the 3 walled structure Cherise built for Lev with the Klept, the R.I., and Lowbeer et al balancing each other out. It feels like the Neoprims might be being set up to be the forth wall in season 2.
posted by Candleman at 12:20 PM on November 27, 2022
We can agree to disagree, but I don't count lifting portions of dialog but putting it in quite different situations as being the same. Similarly, if I took two stanzas of lyrics from Stairway to Heaven and set it to completely different music with other lyrics that altered the context of what I quoted, I wouldn't consider that song to be a version of Stairway.
I'm re-reading the book & finding Wilf hiring the Fishers to impress an old flame (D.) and A.'s murder being the secret that they're pursued for less compelling than Aelita trying to exfiltrate what the R.I. is really up to w/ Burton's haptics.
I agree that the gimmick in the book was one of its weakest points. In the first Fanfare on the series, I even expressed hope that a better defined villain would work well. I'd have been much happier if they'd eliminated the entire Bob subplot and the tower of violence, and spent the time fleshing out what the R.I. is up to.
We get far more of an understanding of just what the Marines' haptic implants are all about in the show
True, but in the book I had the impression they were much more about implants that helped pilot drones (which is closer to what haptic actually means) than what the show is portraying it as.
since the villains in the original story are fairly nebulous for most of the book.
Agreed that that was the other major weakness of the book, particularly making the Rememberancer into the big bad.
It really does feel like Gibson is plunging into Stephenson territory where he can spin up a compelling vision of a world but has trouble wrapping up storylines in an interesting way (and more so in Agency). When the series was announced, I hoped some external vision and guidance would help with this but instead they just ramped up the uninteresting violence.
As a vague prognostication for the 2nd season, there was the 3 walled structure Cherise built for Lev with the Klept, the R.I., and Lowbeer et al balancing each other out. It feels like the Neoprims might be being set up to be the forth wall in season 2.
posted by Candleman at 12:20 PM on November 27, 2022
> If I remember correctly, they were up against a shadowy group from their own time, which is never revealed in the book. At one point, there’s a behind-the-scenes money war with each group leapfrogging each other, buying political influence, spending up the ladder starting with the sheriff, and ending in, I think, the Oval Office. But, I don’t believe we never know who they are (I could be wrong)
Shadowy, yes, but I think the bad guys in the book were in the post-Jackpot timeline working against Lowbeer's quants, not in Flynn's stub. Probably all controlled by The Remembrancer...who I'd honestly forgotten about until re-reading the book a few weeks ago.
I thought the revelation of Beatrice as a reincarnation of Lowbeer's daughter is an interesting variation on the young and old Lowbeers of the book. And the R.I. as the agent of accelerated jackpotting in Flynn's stub. For all it's utterly ignoring much of Gibson's plot, the show is paying tribute to his themes.
My biggest disappointment is the lack of Ash's animated tattoos.
posted by lhauser at 4:52 PM on November 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
Shadowy, yes, but I think the bad guys in the book were in the post-Jackpot timeline working against Lowbeer's quants, not in Flynn's stub. Probably all controlled by The Remembrancer...who I'd honestly forgotten about until re-reading the book a few weeks ago.
I thought the revelation of Beatrice as a reincarnation of Lowbeer's daughter is an interesting variation on the young and old Lowbeers of the book. And the R.I. as the agent of accelerated jackpotting in Flynn's stub. For all it's utterly ignoring much of Gibson's plot, the show is paying tribute to his themes.
My biggest disappointment is the lack of Ash's animated tattoos.
posted by lhauser at 4:52 PM on November 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
Huh, just came across the part in the book where Wilf exposition-dumps the Jackpot to Flynne and this part "But science... had been the wild card, the twist... cleaner, cheaper energy sources, more effective ways to get carbon out of the air, new drugs that did what antibiotics had done before, nanotechnology..."
...and I really don't see it. The die-off of humans and other life, yes, but look what happened to infrastructure from one pandemic and one (of only two, granted) key canal being blocked. Big science (and it's application) requires way too many people working together all over the world and I'm much less sure than Gibson is that the climate crises to come won't fuck up progress before it has a chance to provide for the survivors.
For instance, there are only 464 semiconductor fabs in the world, concentrated around the Pacific Ring of Fire, and only one company supplying EUV equipment using lasers based on excited plasma of tin.
Makes for a more fun story that humanity's last dregs scratching for grubs in the dirt, though if you add a little Shakespeare...
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 5:39 PM on November 27, 2022
...and I really don't see it. The die-off of humans and other life, yes, but look what happened to infrastructure from one pandemic and one (of only two, granted) key canal being blocked. Big science (and it's application) requires way too many people working together all over the world and I'm much less sure than Gibson is that the climate crises to come won't fuck up progress before it has a chance to provide for the survivors.
For instance, there are only 464 semiconductor fabs in the world, concentrated around the Pacific Ring of Fire, and only one company supplying EUV equipment using lasers based on excited plasma of tin.
Makes for a more fun story that humanity's last dregs scratching for grubs in the dirt, though if you add a little Shakespeare...
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 5:39 PM on November 27, 2022
To be fair, the book was written not just before Covid but before the 2016 election and there was a whole lot more hope in the air at the time.
posted by Candleman at 6:00 PM on November 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Candleman at 6:00 PM on November 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
My biggest disappointment is the lack of Ash's animated tattoos.
We got to see a fair amount of them in the last couple eps, no? I love them!
posted by lazaruslong at 12:51 AM on November 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
We got to see a fair amount of them in the last couple eps, no? I love them!
posted by lazaruslong at 12:51 AM on November 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Huh, just came across the part in the book where Wilf exposition-dumps the Jackpot to Flynne and this part "But science... had been the wild card, the twist... cleaner, cheaper energy sources, more effective ways to get carbon out of the air, new drugs that did what antibiotics had done before, nanotechnology..."
...and I really don't see it. The die-off of humans and other life, yes, but look what happened to infrastructure from one pandemic and one (of only two, granted) key canal being blocked. Big science (and it's application) requires way too many people working together all over the world and I'm much less sure than Gibson is that the climate crises to come won't fuck up progress before it has a chance to provide for the survivors.
I track developments in the energy industry, the transportation industry, and environmental policy for my job... and I am actually much more optimistic than I was at the time the novel came out, in many ways.
Not enough people seem to understand that the price of renewable energy has absolutely plummeted over the last dozen years or so. By some estimates, solar panels are about 85% cheaper. Wind is much cheaper also, and so are Li-ion batteries. All these price drops far exceed even the most optimistic predictions from the beginning of this century. Cleaner energy has already won the price war. So the transition to renewables is basically inevitable.
Another thing that's baked in the cake now: The global automotive industry is decisively moving away from ICE vehicles and toward EVs, with all the major players aiming to fully convert their product lines within the next 12 years or so.
The upshot is that the fossil fuel industry is dying. The world just hasn't fully realized it. But I'm pretty sure the coal and oil companies have. Of course, they're not dead yet... and they will use all their political connections to try to stay alive for as long as they can. The smarter ones, however, are already busily trying to pivot toward carbon sequestration and hydrogen production, storage, and transport.
There's also the huge problem of way too much carbon already in the atmosphere and the oceans. But there are some good prospects on the horizon for very cheap and simple sequestration technologies... for example, enhanced rock weathering.
In short: Don't succumb to climate doomerism just yet. Gibson has a long history of being pretty perceptive about many technological developments before they've been well understood by the general public... and my sense is that he's on the right track here as well.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:59 AM on November 28, 2022 [12 favorites]
...and I really don't see it. The die-off of humans and other life, yes, but look what happened to infrastructure from one pandemic and one (of only two, granted) key canal being blocked. Big science (and it's application) requires way too many people working together all over the world and I'm much less sure than Gibson is that the climate crises to come won't fuck up progress before it has a chance to provide for the survivors.
I track developments in the energy industry, the transportation industry, and environmental policy for my job... and I am actually much more optimistic than I was at the time the novel came out, in many ways.
Not enough people seem to understand that the price of renewable energy has absolutely plummeted over the last dozen years or so. By some estimates, solar panels are about 85% cheaper. Wind is much cheaper also, and so are Li-ion batteries. All these price drops far exceed even the most optimistic predictions from the beginning of this century. Cleaner energy has already won the price war. So the transition to renewables is basically inevitable.
Another thing that's baked in the cake now: The global automotive industry is decisively moving away from ICE vehicles and toward EVs, with all the major players aiming to fully convert their product lines within the next 12 years or so.
The upshot is that the fossil fuel industry is dying. The world just hasn't fully realized it. But I'm pretty sure the coal and oil companies have. Of course, they're not dead yet... and they will use all their political connections to try to stay alive for as long as they can. The smarter ones, however, are already busily trying to pivot toward carbon sequestration and hydrogen production, storage, and transport.
There's also the huge problem of way too much carbon already in the atmosphere and the oceans. But there are some good prospects on the horizon for very cheap and simple sequestration technologies... for example, enhanced rock weathering.
In short: Don't succumb to climate doomerism just yet. Gibson has a long history of being pretty perceptive about many technological developments before they've been well understood by the general public... and my sense is that he's on the right track here as well.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:59 AM on November 28, 2022 [12 favorites]
> To be fair, the book was written not just before Covid but before the 2016 election
And yet (Wilf explaining Daedra to Flynne)
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 9:17 AM on November 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
And yet (Wilf explaining Daedra to Flynne)
"She's descended from that, in a sense. Reality television. It merged with politics. Then with performance art."Prescient Bill strikes again!
They walked on. "I think that already happened, back home," she said.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 9:17 AM on November 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
Agency also had a rather timely bit of precognition as an extremely minor plot point.
posted by Candleman at 9:41 AM on November 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Candleman at 9:41 AM on November 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
There better be a weaponized washing machine flying around before this is all over or I'm going to be grumpy as.
posted by aesop at 7:35 AM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by aesop at 7:35 AM on December 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
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Nearly everyone in this episode got hit with a stupid stick and an “end of the season” stick. I think only Lowbeer realized it, though, and was fourth-wall-breakingly apologetic about it.
posted by infinitewindow at 3:10 PM on November 26, 2022 [3 favorites]