Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams - Impossible Planet review

Impossible Planet opens with an astonishing vista of a purple super nova, and extends what would be a normal visit to a place like an aquarium or museum to the cosmos. Only, the capitalism of the historical institute is progressed to a natural conclusion. Nothing is sacred. Everywhere can be a tourist attraction, for the right price. This is a story that shows a distant future of space tourism.

A time in the future where the universe is no longer a mystery and has been entirely chartered by humanity. Where space travel is an absolute commodity. As the story of Impossible Planet opens, it is a Friday afternoon, and two men are eager to knock off from their week of enhancing and exploiting the tourist experience, when there's a knock at their kiosk door.

It is an old woman who wants to go Earth. A place that hasn't been inhabited for hundreds of years, and is now very out the way. She offers a princely sum - what amounts to five years wages for each of the men, for the pleasure of seeing the planet - and off they go - the woman, the two men, and the woman's robot companion.

image via imdb

But not everything, and not everyone are what they seem on the surface. What follows is a suspenseful story with a "Who knows what they know and who doesn't know what they do know" full of gentle intrigue and the associated high stakes risk of discovery.

Impossible Planet is a story about how truth may just be more than what we simply observe, and how what we are told by others may just form enough truth. At least, for a fleeting moment in our existence. Who am I to question the zoo keeper who tells me of the behavioural patterns of the animals they steward? Or to use another example - if I know nothing about the way a car works - should I trust the mechanic's "truth", or seek to validate?

Or, on the case of this particular story - if someone tells me that my dream is within reach, and it is something that is possible, even though I may harbour suspicions or concerns of my own, could I not just close my own eyes and believe? If a lie makes you feel good, is it better than the truth?

This story is probably not intended to be a psychological horror, but it very can be interpreted as such - the horrors of ageing (where people lose their senses, but not their minds - a role in which the woman's robot companion acts as a kind of guardian) has strong lessons. That we should respect those who have come before, but if we are to cross the boundary from ambition to exploitation, or dream to nightmare - then we should definitely approach the fundamental truths of our place, and our responsibility to it - with integrity, not with a lie that makes someone else feel good.

But drama and lies do make the best stories, and this is easily one of them. Well produced, well acted, and incredibly detailed sets. I very much enjoyed Impossible Planet.

image via imdb