the man in the high castle season 1 episode 10

Is this expertly faked propaganda or a true glimpse into other realities? Now, as new reels come to light, so do appalling visions of a future wracked by nuclear devastation. The compelling spin of Dickian strangeness to what could have been the extended edition of Fatherland is the existence of a series of film reels, which once threaded into a projector (a repeated nostalgic motif) reveal history as it ought to have been with the Allies victorious. The action remains bracing rather than epic. Season Two, luxuriating in an increased budget, expands its global reach to rebuild Berlin according to thrusting, cod-Roman megalopolis of Albert Speer’s architectural blueprints and throws in some supersonic Nazi jet liners and monorails, but sensibly sticks to the claustrophobic, film noir interiors and intense back alley shoot outs. A Nazi-compliant Middle America proved chillingly easy to imagine, with Apple-pie Americans happily swapping “Sieg heils” from their doorsteps and state troopers brandishing those iconic armbands. Without leaning too heavily on CG swastikas draped over the New York skyline, S1 was a triumph of concrete world building. As S1 closed, the Japanese had come into possession of the secrets behind the German’s “Heisenberg Device.”Ī chillingly relevant vision of a fascist America. The deviousness of Dick’s book is that he wasn’t reconfiguring World War II inasmuch as recasting the Cold War. Across the Rockies lies the Neutral Zone as a buffer between the imperialist conquerors. With Washington flatted by an A-bomb, the Nazis now occupy the USA from New York to the Prairies, while the Japanese have annexed the West Coast. To recap: according to Dick’s alt-history - neatly paraphrased over the opening credits using sinister Dad’s Army arrows and a death’s angel cover of Edelweiss from The Sound Of Music - the Axis of Evil was triumphant in WWII. What Spotnitz may not have foreseen - although there’s no ruling out Dick’s paranoid presentiment in such matters - is how chillingly relevant this vision of a fascist America was going to become. Dick’s classic - far closer, in fact, than Blade Runner or Total Recall ever kept to their respective texts - ex- X-Files alumni Frank Spotnitz has masterminded a second binge-friendly series of many guises: sci-fi period piece (this is a nuclear-powered 1962), political drama (as Hitler ails, it’s Game Of Thrones with SS factions), espionage thriller (confronting the psychology of a defeated America), and mysto-historical time-warp (think Lost where the entire USA is crackers). While HBO’s big, shiny, humourless new headliner Westworld has hogged all the Twitter acclaim and pop theorising, Amazon’s flagship sci-fi show has quietly been getting on with its own misery-guts Dystopian business with great assurance.

The man in the high castle season 1 episode 10