Devs and Naturalistic Science Fiction — Is It the Next Evolution?
(Editor’s Note: Spoilers ahead for Battlestar Galactica, Mr. Robot, and Devs.)
The reimaging of Battlestar Galactica that aired on Sci-Fi Channel (now SyFy) from 2004 to 2009 was the last best hope for continuing the Golden Age of Science Fiction Television (1987–2004).
Battlestar Galactica (BSG), developed by Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine writer Ronald D. Moore and executive producer David Eick, capped off an unbroken 17 years of unbroken Star Trek television series, as well as other long running franchises during the 1990s such as Babylon 5, The X-Files, SeaQuest DSV/2032, Sliders, The Outer Limits, Stargate SG-1 and its spinoffs, Farscape, and its contemporary The 4400.
BSG was not another military space opera with a dashing captain, irascible doctor, and cool yet detached science officer chasing after aliens and spouting technobabble each week. It was a serialised show instead of episodic; it dispensed with the geek-speak that other shows such as Star Trek used as plot devices; it was a humanistic and tense drama set against a science fiction backdrop.
Ronald D. Moore called this type of science fiction Naturalistic Science Fiction. In a nutshell, Moore described this as:
“the presentation of a fantastical situation in naturalistic terms.”
And the recent mini-series Devs, created by The Beach author and writer/director of Ex Machina (2014) Alex Garland, is the “next step” in Naturalistic science fiction (NSF.)
For those not in the know, the series is centred on Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno), a computer engineer whose boyfriend’s death is being investigated by Amaya, the quantum computing company they work for, and its elusive ‘Devs’ team run by obstinate CEO Forest (Nick Offerman). The series explores themes related to quantum simulation, free will and determinism, as well as Silicon Valley culture.
The Expanse, written by James S. A. Corey and developed for television by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, shares more in common with the NSF of BSG than the next step in Devs. Devs has a few progenitors, which will be explored in more detail.
Setting up NSF
Naturalistic science fiction was first laid out in the series “bible” of BSG. It has the following tenets:
Visual. The first thing that will leap out at viewers is the dynamic use of the documentary or cinema verite style.
Editorial. Our style will avoid the now clichéd MTV fast-cutting while at the same time foregoing Star Trek’s ponderous and lugubrious “master, two-shot, close-up, close-up, two-shot, back to master” pattern. If there is a model here, it would be vaguely Hitchcockian — that is, a sense of building suspense and dramatic tension through the use of extending takes and long masters which pull the audience into the reality of the action rather than the distract through the use of ostentatious cutting patterns.
Story. We will eschew the usual stories about parallel universes, time-travel, mind-control, evil twins, God-like powers and all the other clichés of the genre. Our show is first and foremost a drama. It is about people. Real people that the audience can identify with and become engaged in.
Science. Our spaceships don’t make noise because there is no noise in space. Sound will be provided from sources inside the ships — the whine of an engine audible to the pilot for instance. Our fighters are not airplanes and they will not be shackled by the conventions of WWII dogfights. The speed of light is a law and there will be no moving violations.
Character. This is perhaps the biggest departure from the science fiction norm. We do not have “the cocky guy” “the fast-talker” “the brain” “the wacky alien sidekick” or any of the other usual characters who populate a space series. Our characters are living, breathing people with all the emotional complexity and contradictions present in quality dramas like The West Wing or The Sopranos. In this way, we hope to challenge our audience in ways that other genre pieces do not. We want the audience to connect with the characters of BSG as people. Our characters are not super-heroes. They are not an elite. They are everyday people caught up in an enormous cataclysm and trying to survive it as best they can.
How then does Devs touch on or evolve upon these tenets?
Visual and Editorial
The visual style of Devs is expressionistic and detached, following “cinematic TV” conventions set up in TV science fiction and drama as far back as The X-Files. Visuals use the 16:9 format as much as possible, lingering in the long to medium shot for most frames. The mise-en-scene is impersonal and flat, reminiscent of the minimalist corporate Silicon Valley culture.
Cinematographer Rob Hardy has collaborated with Garland before, notably on his breakout film Ex Machina. Film editing is focused on character interactions as much as possible, with editor Jake Roberts honing his style in character-driven dramas such as Skins, Misfits, and the neo-noir Western Hell or High Water.
Though Forest is wealthy beyond compare, his simple home is comfortable and relatable, much like the homes found in blue-collar sitcoms like Roseanne or Malcolm In The Middle. The Devs compound itself is otherworldly and ostentatious, glittering in gold and ochre hues not found in the sterile outside world of Silicon Valley, with towering citadels of concrete and steel.
This is in stark contrast to other corporate-techno thrillers like Mr. Robot, which maintains a muted colour palette; apart from one “very special” episode where protagonist Elliott Alderson (Rami Malek) encounters himself in an oversaturated domestic sitcom psychosis.
Story
Devs is a miniseries and as such has a self-contained story with minimal sub-plots or tangential character arcs. The principal point of view characters are Lily and Forest with rare deviations to Amaya’s sociopathic head of security Keaton (Zach Grenier) or lead Devs designer Katie (Alison Pill) as a point of exposition or plot-driven action. So, is Devs first and foremost a drama, as Moore describes?
The principal plot thread for the first two acts is Lily searching for the truth about her boyfriend Sergei’s apparent suicide. This is the “Hitchcockian” aspect described in Moore’s manifesto.
When she discovers a password protected Sudoku app on Sergei’s phone, she tries to enlist the help of ex-boyfriend and cybersecurity expert Jamie (Jin Ha) to bypass the protection feature — three incorrect attempts and the phone wipes. Jamie is still bitter about how their volatile relationship ended and is reluctant to help. However it does raise the question — if Lily is an encryption expert, why does she need the help of an engineer of similar talents? From a story point of view, introducing conflict is more interesting to the viewer, and links in with themes of memory and nostalgia.
Garland explained to The Hollywood Reporter the themes of the story being primarily that of a thriller, not a science fiction tale dealing exclusively in science fiction tropes:
“It’s a thriller that attempts to deal explicitly with some elements of technology, some elements of science and some philosophical issues that are thrown up from that. It might sound dry and cold, but actually these are the things that we have to encounter and deal with in our day-to-day life, and these sorts of philosophical problems are not really distant and cold. They’re actually quite super-heated.”
Garland touches on the love story element — that being Lily’s extraordinary lengths to avenge Sergei and Forest’s even more extravagant methods for bringing his daughter Amaya back to life:
“They’re to do with love, and they’re to do with loss, and they’re to do with how we cope with that and how we process it. It’s about guilt, where guilt is located and the way in which guilt can be a distorting prism of the world and how we seek to release ourselves from it. At the end of Devs, really what it is, is a set of love stories between many different people, and some of it is romantic love, some of it is the love we can have for friends and colleagues. And in the end, all of that science and all of that philosophy just folds into something as simple as that.”
Despite the “super science” feel of the Devs quantum computer, these are real people — highly trained in computer engineering — encountering unreal situations.
In the third act, the story pivots from solving Sergei’s murder to that of a “countdown to extinction” trope. In Forest’s home, Katie explains to Lily (and us) that the Devs system has predicted the future up to 21 hours hence, until such time the Devs system devolves into chaos and static. This type of metanarrative, that the ‘Devs world’ future is predetermined precisely because it is a work of fiction, is ‘subverted’ when Lily decides against shooting Forest in the magnetic levitation carriage. Though “destiny” still plays out when their co-worker Stewart (Stephen McKinley Henderson) disengages the electromagnet and they crash to a vacuum sealed floor, Garland shows there is no true escape from a deterministic, Bohm’s interpretation, single-world timeline.
Science
The science in Devs is central to the story’s progression. It is not the initiating event but the frame of the story itself. At the end of the series, it gives rise to questions of “was this entire sequence of events a simulacrum?” or reminding the audience — just like Forest watches a 1-to-1 recreation of his daughter playing with bubbles — that we are observing a self-contained universe created in the mind of another human being.
The scientific aspect of Devs is not overloaded with technobabble and lengthy explanations of how the tech works. Like the Warp Core in any given episode of Star Trek, the Devs quantum computer takes pride of place in the shadowy and super-secure Devs compound on the outskirts of the Amaya campus. It doesn’t blink or pump or chirp — it sits there idle like a Buddha on a rock. As fellow TPD writer and editor Owen Morawitz points out, it’s a touchstone for the next stage in human evolution, in the vein of 2001’s Monolith. Unlike Star Trek, we don’t need to see it operate because we can see its output. For example: in the first episode of Devs, Sergei does not take a photo of the machine, just its code and output.
As Forrest reveals the true name of Devs, an archaic Romanisation of “Deus”, it becomes more apparent that we do not need God to believe in his work.
The science is taken as plausible and unnecessary to explain. It is a quantum computer operating at levels we in the present day cannot fathom. It operates with such speed and accuracy it approaches godhood, jettisoning questions of science and instead answering questions of metaphysics. Are there many worlds? Is a recreation of a past event from an alternate universe where only subatomic particles are out of place, a true recreation from our own subjective position and perspective? If one truly believes in many worlds or the Everett interpretation of quantum physics, then Lyndon’s fall from the dam will mean in a multiverse of infinite quantum eigenstates he survives; while in other eigenstates — each one equal yet opposite — he does not.
Other scientific perspectives are that of memory and its function in consciousness. When Lyndon shows off his many-worlds interpretation recreation of the crucifixion of Jesus, Forest fires Lyndon on the spot. It is not “our” Jesus; the one that historically existed as a 1-to-1 recreation. It is only a highly accurate approximation.
Memory is prone to inaccuracy and cognitive biases — shown by the fuzzy distortion of the “single-world” view of Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe having sex. Human memory is about as accurate; we may remember the act taking place, the setting, the time, the date, perhaps even textures and smells; but much of it is lost to the limits of the hippocampus taking in and storing information and cognitive distortions and differences. Miller’s recollection, understandably, would be different to Monroe’s.
When the many-worlds view or our pile-up of applied cognitive biases is shown, it’s much clearer; even though this “memory” or eigenstate is, by its very nature, incomplete and unrepresentative (at a quantum level at least.) Even if you remember it that way, chances are it actually was not.
This is further explored in the rather odd rekindling of romance between Lily and Jamie; Jamie remembers Lily left him for Sergei even though their relationship had many good aspects to it. As the series winds on, it’s obvious their relationship was doomed to failure due to Jamie’s emotional immaturity; Jamie made Lily his emotional core, a burden no other human being should shoulder in a healthy adult relationship.
Character
The characters in Devs are atypical as far as science fiction goes; Lily is a slight, introverted, and clever developer who is thrust into a world she does not understand and never thought she’d enter. When confronted with an FSB agent, Sergei’s ‘handler’, he attempts to recruit her as an asset. She refuses not because she is wise to spycraft, more out of distrust and disbelief. In turn, her arc is more driven by necessity, finding creative ways to overcome obstacles as she uncovers more and more of the central mystery.
Forest is portrayed as a typical “Silicon Valley eccentric,” with a singular mission and monotonous tone of speech. His life staying exactly the same — same car, same home, same clothes — after the death of his wife and daughter are superficially a play on Apple founder Steve Jobs’ penchant for wearing the same black turtleneck and circular glasses at media-hyped product launches.
There’s no “fast talker” or “whacky sidekick” stock character here. Though Keaton approximates the cold-blooded, analytical killer stereotype — you need a killer instinct when stakes are this high. Lyndon is the closest approximation to a “fast talker” or “whiz kid,” though the narrative takes him on different turns to the typical whiz kid — he doesn’t save the day, he precipitates the final downfall of the Devs system.
Anya, Lily’s friend, is sceptical of her wild claims of faked suicide and a plot within the very company they work for. Like engineers who base conclusions on science and logic, she must also be convinced. She is not the “ride or die” companion featured in other science fiction television. She would act, like NSF suggests, just like us.
Stewart acts more like a Greek chorus, commenting on the action of the “play” while being part of it. Especially towards the end, where he rattles off lines from Shakespeare as the narrative drama of Devs accelerates towards its climax.
Additionally, the Devs machine is also a character, talked about as such by the Devs team within the series. It transcends its character status and becomes the vessel for an entire story; the mind in which an ongoing narrative plays out. The universe, at the end of the series, does not start with a “big bang” but an “upload” into the Devs memory core.
Is Devs NSF 2.0?
Looking at the four main elements: visual/editorial, story, science, and character, Devs contains all the hallmarks of Naturalistic Science Fiction. It could also be characterised as an evolution of NSF, as typified by some of its contemporaries such as Black Mirror, Mr. Robot, Westworld, and Travellers. Compare these to The Expanse and Continuum as NSF 1.0, which are in the same vein as Battlestar Galactica.
NSF 2.0 uses near-future or present settings to tell their stories, using technology we use today. Travellers, created by Stargate SG-1 showrunner Brad Wright, uses a Devs-like “Director” to bring future consciousness into the past (the “twenty-first”) using cellular phone records, GPS data, and other information about people who are about to die and are “saved” using this one-way technology. It focuses on “split” or complex characters — people with fully fleshed out lives used as vessels for saving humanity, who must also maintain their hosts’ prior relationships while being, for all intents and purposes, a different human being entirely.
Mr. Robot is science fiction insofar the science of the mind and technology are at play; the 5/9 incident wipes out almost all economic and financial data held by the largest corporation in the world: E Corp. It triggers a financial collapse and accelerated adoption of untested blockchain technology (E Coin) to correct the damage. The protagonist Elliott is swept up in working for shadowy hackers who may be figments of split personalities or drug-induced hallucinations. The theme of splitting — being torn between two worlds, the one a character knows and the “real” world —appears to be a hallmark of NSF 2.0.
Though some of NSF 2.0 has been fleshed out in these prior shows after the airing of Battlestar Galactica and its spinoff Caprica, it remains to be seen if it becomes its own “sub-sub-genre” much like NSF has been over the past few years (with Black Mirror debuting first in 2011, only two years after Caprica).
As technology advances with ever increasing speed, holding up a mirror to catch ourselves, approaching the bluff using NSF and NSF 2.0 — by showing fantastical situations in familiar settings — may be as salient as ever.
