Dystopia is a crowded field in today’s television. As early twenty-first century reality catches up to the cyberpunk of the 1980s, streaming and cable television takes to bridging between the Way We Live Now (Mr. Robot) and the world inevitably to follow (Handmaid’s Tale, Upload, Black Mirror, Y: The Last Man, among many others). HBO’s Westworld stood apart even from that critically lauded selection, always seeming to aim higher and with greater intelligence.
