UTOPIA: C4's dark drama featuring torture, conspiracies and a comic book

do you all think that rea's character was actually honest about what was going on?

they could pull another twist i suppose, but rea's idea is more interesting than the standard eugenics stuff they thought was going on before. also rea thought, correctly, he'd been given up so he had no reason to bluff.

I didn't get the bit abt the stones. Did JH dream/flashback to getting one out of the guy's stomach too?

I don't know, it's beginning to collapse under the weight of Wouldn't It Be Cool If-isms. Yes, we're back at the TRUST NO-ONE shitstorm I predicted in the beginning but for me it went over the top when it turned out that the doctor that Dugdale went to is also the one who is selling the Deal's vaccine to Becky - so if he was already on the other side of the conspiracy, or at least knows what is going on, why did he even bother to test the sample that Dugdale brings him if his intention was always to run like fuck as soon as Dugdale's back was turned?

Although that scene with him does exactly explain his motivation that Ronan ponders above. He says there that he wants to be rich, really rich because it'll be his way of seeing out the rest of his life in whatever the world looks like if 'they' succeed. (In other words, pretty much exactly the line that seandalai was looking for.)

I think Dugdale thinks turning them and the vaccine will give him the ability to keep the promise he and his wife made to Anya, that new evidence will set her free. I'm guessing they were bluffing when they went to see her, just in order to see whether she would agree with the adoption/surrogate plan. My favourite bit of the episode was how quickly he put back the vaccine when he heard it sterilised people.

fwiw I think James Fox will be revealed as Mr Rabbit in the last episode. And possibly Carville.

fwiw I think James Fox will be revealed as Mr Rabbit in the last episode. And possibly Carville.

Feels a bit too obvious, but yeah it could happen. Not sure if Mr. Rabbit == Carville works then - why would they need to find the manuscript?

do you all think that rea's character was actually honest about what was going on?

Had the same thought - he (and other downstream characters like Donaldson) might not even know the extent of the plan.

I'm not sold on the idea of Mr Rabbit == Carville myself, but it feels like something the writer might throw in as a DYS. Also the idea of Mr Rabbit as a dissociative personality which allows him to carry out experiments on his son (and maybe daughter) may well be too tempting to him. As to why he would then want the manuscript, I'm guessing potentially his time in the asylum showed him the error of his ways and he wants to destroy it - but he needs to be on the inside to get it and the trial is already too far underway for him to stop it. I would call that complete bullshit but I can see it on screen for sure.

James Fox has only ever been credited as The Assistant btw, which is surely the biggest clue that he's definitely supposed to be Mr Rabbit.

Yes, we're back at the TRUST NO-ONE shitstorm I predicted in the beginning

hang on, we still trust wilson, ian, grant, there's no evidence that jessica is actually a double agent...

dugdale just turned them in to protect his own skin.

becky isn't an actual double agent, she's effectively being bribed by the doctor.

There has to be a reveal about Ian, doesn't there? Every other "hero" is interesting in some way.

Also The Assistant said Letts had provided a good cover, ie for The Assistant aka Mr Rabbit to run things. The soul patch always struck me as rather odd, particularly for an establishment figure. Another hint that The Assistant is not all he seems.

I'm with Ledge on the trust issue. I don't think the plot is anywhere as complicated as some are trying to make it and the characters motivations are fairly clear. I think one of the strengths of Ian is his ordinariness. He's the likeable everyman figure who has managed to keep the gang together mainly through his lack of agenda. While he's made a few mistakes, he's been proven his mettle.

I don't think the plot is anywhere as complicated as some are trying to make it and the characters motivations are fairly clear

yep

The reveal re: Becky's motivations was well-handled. I'd have been disappointed if she'd been just a traitor working for Mr Rabbit. The characterisation is pretty strong - stronger than most paranoid thrillers - which means you can't fuck around with the characters' allegiances too much without destroying a lot of good work and the audience's faith. I don't want Becky or Jessica or whoever to be cold-hearted liars. Arby continues to rule - his scenes with Jessica were the best bits of the episode. I like the way she thinks he's arranging a rendezvous when really he just wants a fry-up. "Talk to the man." "Which man?" "The one behind the counter."

He sort of is arranging something, doesn't he say later he gets a gun from there? The actor is doing sterling work though, agreed.

Yeah that's true about the gun but she doesn't know that at the time. She's expecting an introduction and comes away thinking it was a waste of time. I loved it when he said it was his local and she said, "It's a motorway cafe! It's nobody's local!"

Anyone?

meh

It was entertaining enough but all the big reveals were pretty predictable in the end.

I'd like to watch it again because I got confused. I also want to know what happened to Arby

well, i would suggest that the Arby story will be picked up in Series 2.

(note the presence of 'Series 1' declaration on the cover of the DVD)

Only just started watching this and OMG 'hidden in my greatest creation' is such an over-worked and lazy trope I can't believe it's actually going to be that.

There's no Arby story to pick up - he was in the old hospital building where Jessica took the manuscript from him. Either he was killed by the agents that were following (and he had started to torch the hospital to delay) or he was in on the plot to bring Jessica to Milner and this was just another strand to it.

The end was really predictable, but the Becky reveal proves (I think) that Becky was working for Milner the whole time and was the double agent I thought she was. Think about it - the only people we ever hear of that have Deal's Syndrome are Becky, her Dad and Milner's son (who is only used as a fake-out device by Milner). It's a rare disease which only has experimental medication to cure, and Becky happens across the one guy (who also is the bent scientist in the Department of Health labs) who can get his hands on the cure? What was it she said about James Fox? "He even had words carved into his stomach to maintain his cover. You wouldn't believe the lengths people will go to." The cover of 'Becky' has served its usefulness so she can just leave Ian and Grant to it.

I'd give Becky the benefit of the doubt. She wanted to spare Ian the horror of seeing her succumb to Deal's. If she was part of the plot, why would she need to go through the palaver of bargaining with the scientist?

Because he's needed to keep Dugdale?

The whole thing's overly complicated tbh. If Milner's plan has always been to get hold of Jessica then she's always known that the manuscript said Jessica was the key. She's also always known Jessica was chasing the manuscript. She could have caught her in episode 1 in that case.

I think it's less complicated than you suggest. Making the manuscript the MacGuffin was a fine twist. It provided great cover and allowed Milner to gradually pull in her real quarry.

No, you only need the manuscript as a MacGuffin if you're going to make it complicated.

If you are head of a super-secret agency (which may be within a different agency) that is as powerful as has been demonstrated in the plot you don't gradually pull someone in, you just take them. And Milner has always knows where Jessica was - Jessica gave Milner's number to Ian and Becky in the first place as someone she trusted, remember.

The only justification for gradually reeling her in is that she wants The Network destroyed before she takes Jessica - but given she would be using and risking Jessica in order to do that, it would be an amazingly stupid plan. What if Jessica died in a park toilets in the middle of nowhere? How would that help you get Jessica?

Ok, but if she took her at the start you wouldn't have had much of a series...

Yes, but that's where the simple plot ends up.

The conspiracy and how complex and interlinked it is is the story. Milner has a ludicrously complicated and risky plan for something very simple. She never needs Jessica to know Arby is her brother. She never needs the manuscript and even says "I only pretended because you would bring it". She has risked the only thing she wanted, utterly pointlessly, for no reason. That just makes no sense as a plot.

Milner can control Jessica more now that she knows about her past. The line about Daddy's love and all that.

Endlessly debating Milner's best course of action is missing the point. Was this a compelling story with clever twists and a sly MacGuffin? Yes. Job done.

She doesn't need to control Jessica, she just needs her blood. She even says that.

It's not missing the point. Is Westlife's Greatest Hits a nice album with smiley young men and hummable tunes? Yes. Job done. If we're not supposed to discuss the content of media then we can delete a good 70% of ILX, certainly all of ILM.

I do owe you a debt of thanks though - since you made me concentrate on it I've realised there's no way the Milner plot can work. Neither she nor The Network (hence RB's mantra of "where is Jessica Hyde") need the manuscript as they know the content. If she needs the vaccine destroyed, well she's got an agent in charge of The Network. But instead she sends another agent undercover as a prostitute to honeytrap a civil servant in the hope that he acts totally out of character and tries to blackmail The Network?

Let's use Raiders of the Lost Ark as an analogy. In the big final scene, the Ark is opened on an island in the Agean and everyone dies. In the Milner Utopia version of this, all Hitler needs to do is to get Indy to that island to win. The Nazis don't need the Ark and know what's in it. The bad archeologist knows what's in the Ark and doesn't care about it. And it turns out that Indy knew where the island was and was planning a holiday there with a nice German man called Adolf who he trusted completely. All of the stuff in Nepal, in Egypt, all the fights and poisonings and fires and threat is all there just because if it wasn't then you wouldn't have had much of a film; and because Hitler planned it that way as there was no risk Indy wouldn't get to the island under his own steam in the end and of course he would survive.

Now do you see how barking an idea the plot is?

Yeah, the only way it makes sense is if they didn't know it was in her blood until they read the manuscript (as it was not in the section Jessica gave to Grant). Then when Milner says at the end she didn't care about the manuscript she means she doesn't care about it anymore. If she knew along it was Jessica the whole thing does fall to bits.

Nothing wrong with discussing the content of media at all, but in this case I can't help but feel that picking apart every aspect of the plot detracts from the fun of the series. Sure it's ridiculous, but then it is a conspiracy thriller...

I don't think Milner would have "turned good" if Jessica had turned up in the warehouse. She says something like "this is all of them?" as soon as she enters the kitchen they're tied up in.

And Milner has always knows where Jessica was - Jessica gave Milner's number to Ian and Becky in the first place as someone she trusted, remember.

As far as we know, Jessica learns about Milner from the Tramp at the same time we do.

Anyway, I came into the last episode expecting everything to fall apart and it overperformed my expectations, so I'm happy. I've been mostly watching for the visuals and the characters, with a side order of enjoyable but nonsensical plotting. Are there any recent conspiracy TV shows that do manage to hold it all together at the end? (I don't watch that much TV, genuinely curious to know). None of the reveals were surprising but I was glad The Assistant wasn't the big boss. I agree the big picture is incoherent, maybe if they'd had Milner using the situation to *acquire* power over the Network it would have made more sense.

I also think Becky is "good" btw. It makes a lot more sense that way, and they show her crying as she gets on the train.

Is that right, about the Tramp giving Jessica and Ian the number? That changes things to a degree, but Milner at the end still says she doesn't need the manuscript, that she was only interested in it because she knew Jessica would deliver it. Given the depth of her conspiracy, that must have always been her plan so she never wanted the manuscript.

The Assistant was the big boss, it was just that Milner had had him replaced with one of her flunkies. He was still behaving, however, as if he was one of the bad bad guys. "What do you call the assassin who kills the assassin?" Or quis custodiet ipsos custodes if you like. And I think you'll find I metioned a British trial upthread when it turned out the bad bad guys were police double agents undercover.

iirc the Tramp gave Milner's name to Jessica. Ian et al. then contacted her by ringing MI5 and asking for her (too easy? red flag?). And The Assistant wasn't the big boss in the sense of being top of the organisation, he was "cover". Milner seems to be the highest-up we've met so far.

I completely agree the Network should just have gone after JH as soon as they had her location - if it's just DNA they need they wouldn't even have to take her alive. A recurrent issue was that the Network was set up to be too powerful. Why bother blackmailing the unpredictable Dugdale - why not just have him fired and replace him with a Network agent?

Yeah, I can agree with all that. istr I drew attention to there being a car already at their location when they first phoned Milner before they were supposedly on the radar, which maybe has a different reading after the event.

Yeah that was the guy Milner shot in the church, right? Presumably a Network agent sacrificed by Milner to gain the gang's trust.

Some sort of defence: We have to assume that at the beginning of the series JH has managed to keep her identity secret since she was a girl, the Network doesn't know what she looks like (though how quickly did the Tramp recognise her? Can't remember). Once the Utopia manuscript appears the Network realise they might be able to catch her so they send Lee and Arby after her (why just them?). Between Ep 1 and Ep 6, how many opportunities do the Network have to catch her? She tends to appear and disappear, e.g. I think she never meets Milner until the end. Arby does catch up with her but then goes rogue. In the end Milner makes JH come to her willingly. Um. Having the Network focusing on the manuscript - to a degree beyond pretending to focus on the manuscript, e.g. Letts' orders to Arby - still doesn't make sense though.

Apologies if it seemed like I was trying to shut down debate upthread. It's just that I'm willing to hand wave certain plot holes in the name of entertainment. After all, how many movies would be over in minutes if the big bad's plans were ruthlessly efficient? Bond villains and their elaborate schemes which allow Bond to get away - a quick bullet to the head would solve everything, but wouldn't make for a fun movie.
That said, I wonder if we're overlooking human fallibility on the Network's side and the possibility that they are improvising to a certain extent. Best laid plans and all that. Milner clearly kept everyone else in the dark about Jessica's DNA. And it was clearly in her and the Network's interest to explore other options for delivering Janus, hence the elaborate conspiracy with the Russian flu vaccine. Milner probably could have brought Jessica in - but would that have succeeded? She's pretty bad ass. I see Milner as playing a cat and mouse game with Jessica, wanting her to come willingly, which might not be the most efficient way of getting hold of the DNA, but makes Milner seem all the more evil and twisted. She enjoys all this.

I completely agree the Network should just have gone after JH as soon as they had her location

when do they actually know her location? Is Arby the only one who manages to find her, by which point he has his own agenda? (seandalai otm in other words).

Admittedly this is pretty much a comic book style conspiracy theory (no pun intended), I can't help thinking of Edge of Darkness (Bob Peck not Mel Gibson) which towers over it terms of story and moments of pure wide-eyed drama, but I don't think it's as hole-ridden or convoluted as is being made out here. (Although I didn't really get the bit where Dugdale is the one who has to test the vaccine and he says "this is why you wanted me all along".)

The Tramp recognises her straight away, and calls her by her name.

Let's look at it from the other side - the Milner doesn't know all along that Jessica is all that's important. On the roof she uses the phrase "hidden in his greatest creation" which we know is from the manuscript. In fact, we know more than that, we know it is from the pages that Grant hid in the chair because Becky & Alice can't make sense of it until they have those pages and they tell us that in ep 6 - which means Fake Rabbit can't have known it from the time Arby brought it to him and passed the information to her. This means the only time she could have found out is after she rescues them at the warehouse, which is AFTER her plan has played out. (Or the alternative is that someone from the house told her, and since they think she's been executed beside her son would make them an agent after all.)

Another thing has struck me while making a coffee and I can't believe I never picked it up before. Pretend we don't know anything about Milner or Fake Rabbit from ep 6. Why exactly do The Network want the manuscript? They have Janus, otherwise they couldn't have made the vaccine. So why? Keeping Rabbit's name secret is the only motivation, and generally keeping the manuscript out of the public eye. Which works, right? Only then we find out that the molecule itself is hidden in the pages of the comic when you lay it out as a poster (like the final issue of Promethea), that there are numbers in the text which describe what Janus is and how it's produced, and that it's actually all in Jessica's blood anyway - which Milner needs to enact Janus. SO THE WHOLE VACCINE PLOT WAS FAKE.

Umm. Yeah.

and then she kills the tramp so (assuming he was a double agent) the network still don't know where she is.

they don't have janus, they have their attempt at it, which might not work.

My Tramp point wasn't about where she was, it was about whether people knew what she looked like which was seandalai's question.

The 'trial run' was presented all along as a test to see whether it would do exactly what Carville and Rabbit thought it would i.e. sterilise 95% of the population, not whether it would work at all. Now OK, "as it was presented" but the trials they've done to get it to the stage of production they have (and the massive expense incurred as a result - think of the Dugdale panback to show just how much vaccine is in the warehouse) mean that lab results show it works the way it's supposed to. There's a more than convincing argument that says if their attempt at Janus works pretty much exactly like Janus, and a large trial demonstrates it behaves pretty much exactly like Janus, then it might as well be Janus for the purpose of their machinations. Which means they don't need Janus.

The other bit of evidence that implies it's fake/doesn't work is that Milner destroys it all without a second thought. All that time, all that investment, all that Janus-like gone on the off chance that afterwards Jessica will feel guilted into coming to her. That's a seriously massive gamble given you effectively have what you always wanted.

Milner being Mr Rabbit actually makes it all start to unravel.

The other bit of evidence that implies it's fake/doesn't work is that Milner destroys it all without a second thought

hang on - the show claims it doesn't work, you're arguing that doesn't make sense therefore it must be a fake - so that evidence doesn't help either way! i think there are as many holes in your interpretation as in the straightforward reading :)

anyway y'all need to go and watch Edge of Darkness to see this kind of thing done properly.

No, my logic there is that Milner destroys it without a thought therefore she must know it doesn't work, because otherwise you might as well try it given the effort you've put into it and your trials show it works pretty much exactly like Janus. If you wanted a ham and edam sandwich and you'd gone to all the trouble of making a ham and gouda sandwich, after having taste-tested the gouda to see whether it works (which it does) and now it's lunchtime - do you just throw it in the bin because your binman might see it and bring you some edam and you know he has some?

All the show claims is that it might not work exactly like Janus because it isn't exactly Janus.

well we don't know what testing they have done, although yeah they'd be pretty stupid to have gone so far without having some idea that it works. if it comes down to putting my money on crappy writing vs everything we think we know will turn out to be wrong in series 2, i've gotta plump for the former.

if it comes down to putting my money on crappy writing vs everything we think we know will turn out to be wrong in series 2, i've gotta plump for the former.

yep

Though if you believe the story is not altogether a shambles, I guess it comes down to what Milner knows and when; and arguably (for completeness) what Letts/Assistant know and when. And we have no real idea about that.