Years & Years

[unique1986]

Starts tonight 9pm
Family drama that flashes forward into the future.

I enjoyed the series as a whole but I did find the downloading scene a bit of a cop out. It felt like a parlour trick to inject some hope and optimism into what was a fairly bleak and unresolved storyline. Even Viv Rook pointed out that, "these problems will never go away" and there was nothing really to suggest that anything had changed or been improved for the migrants after Erstwhile (if what Gran says is true, then surely those infected with the flu wouldn't exactly have been embraced by the general population), but "It's ok guys because we can all live forever now!" Having said that, it was nice to hear an unabashedly sentimental speech. Nothing held back.

I appreciated the little moments, such as Gran giving Celeste what would have been Daniel's share and showing how the Blink devices had been put to use. Very clever.

Brilliant! Best thing on telly recent imo.

Senor's voice had changed , it sounded different that's because it was Edith's.

Wrt languages, there will be nowhere where I live teaching languages as from next year, all being dropped from schools. It's outrageous.

I don't think the downloading injected any hope. It was just an explanation of how the story was being told - the problems were all still there, it was made clear that the next lot of politicians wouldn't be better and Edith herself said she didn't think Vivienne Rook had actually been caught and dealt with. I think it was still pretty bleak as nothing had really been solved.

With Lincoln, I think it was a positive look at how people could wear what they wanted without being pigeon holed as Male/female/transgender. They just accepted him in a skirt etc and didn't see it as anything out of the ordinary. Which is how it should be I think.

With Lincoln, I think it was a positive look at how people could wear what they wanted without being pigeon holed as Male/female/transgender.

This was also my interpretation.

Just binge watched this last night and today. Thought it was fabulous and just going back to read the thread now!

Bethany looked gorgeous at the end! All down to the hair it seems

As was mine - boy likes ribbons, nothing to see here - until that very final scene. I liked how nothing was made of it, in the same way that Rosie's spina bifida was not part of any plot. I liked the transhuman plot twist - we're fine with transgender, you want to do what?!, Lin has no lines throughout and you all could be correct - that he's just a gender non-conforming person with no need for any label. Played by 3 actors, Aiden Li plays him in episodes 5 and 6 - but as I said before, in a blink and you miss it, he appears in the final seance years later presenting as female. No other allusion/reference meaning that in 13 years time noone will care about gender identity?
Non conforming/non binary/transvestite all under trans umbrella now in any case and RTD is an LGBT ally.

What were the blink devices?

I assumed transgender too, what's wrong with that? 🤷‍♀️ (or 🤷‍♂️)

What Viv did when she turned off everyone's mobile phone with a little clicky pen thing. I missed their later use though - how had they been put to use limp?

Rage - it was what was used in the camps to stop them being able to communicate out, what was destroyed by the rocket launcher.

Great series, very thought provoking on so many levels.

Not keen on the ending though - the idea of being downloaded into a storage tank, then being conscious forever whilst having no control over it, is terrifying to me. You could end up with your memories and thoughts streamed online, for paying customers to view, while having no rights over what the owners of the technology did, and no way of ending it. Hellish.

To me, the conscious identity = the soul. I hope that the soul can depart the body after death and live on a different plane. I hate the idea of technology putting a soul into limbo, but I doubt it would be possible anyway.

Re the migrant camps, that was worrying in a different way. It's likely that there will be many more migrants coming to developed countries in the northern hemisphere in future, due to climate change making parts of the world uninhabitable, along with a shortage of resources and rising civil unrest. How will the UK cope? If we take too many in, our systems could collapse, especially the NHS, so the whole country could end up in crisis. We will have to find a way of showing compassion while protecting ourselves - maybe well run camps could be part of the solution, but how easily they could turn into death camps, "accidentally". Frightening stuff.

Not saying anything wrong with it fox unless we are saying he was transed by his aunt using him for take your daughters to work day, pretty sure that's not how it works I thought in the same way you had a disabled actress/character playing a character with no reference to that (aside from one medical technical advance allusion) which is refreshing, that you also had a non binary/gender fluid/genderqueer/gender non conforming call it what you want kid whose journey over 15 years you didn't necessarily see but had ended up happy in their identity. So a subtle way of signalling social change. Which would fit in with RTD signing a GwiththeT letter in support of trans rights in March.

Ah of course it was, thanks frogs D'oh

the idea of being downloaded into a storage tank, then being conscious forever whilst having no control over it, is terrifying to me
Me too. Very black mirror-y.
and no way of ending it God yes - like in Black Museum.
Except she kind of saw herself as a wandering vengeful sprite - no idea how that works tbh, couldn't she just have haunted Viv in the usual way? I'd make a good poltergeist.
RTD said it was deliberately open as to whether she had successfully uploaded to the cloud but pp have said subtitles had a male/female voice and Senor was now Senora...was she going to be able to vocalise then and actually communicate? Or was she a ghost in the shell type thing or a literal ghost in a literal machine. My Descartes is somewhat rusty

I couldn't work out why Celeste was so desperate to scrub Stephen's name from documents that she went to the trouble of getting a job there. Surely he'd made his own bed?

Secondly I couldn't work out how Bethany managed to "take back control" of her tech from the government. Surely the point was that she couldn't, because it was literally owned by them and they could switch it off/ remove her wires.

Protecting the father of her kids?
No idea why - old ties, empathy because he had been grieving, loyalty to Muriel - family coming first

Bethany would have been monitored and shut down. Had thought blinkydinks might have been used to cause brain damage or something. Am also surprised noone got shot.

I think Celeste wanted to r move Stephen's make to protect the family and stop Viktor from finding out. I suppose he found out in the end because Stephen emailed all the documents and took responsibility for what he'd done though.

With Lincoln, I think it was a positive look at how people could wear what they wanted without being pigeon holed as Male/female/transgender.

This was also my interpretation

Me too. I think throughout they always called him by his given name and referred to him as a boy/he too. My take from that was that in the future gender stereotypes wouldn't be so entrenched and people could wear what they like and present themselves however they felt comfortable without having a label attached. He was still Lincoln, still a boy, just wearing what he liked.

Because she was incidentally exposing him, and didn't want to be directly responsible for that.

Bethany's taking back control was more that her group were doing what they wanted for once rather than what they were told- they rebelled in the same way that other groups were doing- Taking a gamble on not being shot, run over, or stripped of tech.

I didn't think the happy ending was realistic

As pointed out, it wasn't really a happy ending - not least because we don't know who was behind Viv Rook and what they were doing. However, when you look at how unexpectedly quickly communist regimes toppled, I don't think it is unrealistic to show how the Viv Rook regime went fairly quickly; it's the nature of totalitarian regimes that they are dependent on iron control but that is a difficult and expensive thing to impose on a large population, particularly in an era where it is so hard to control the availability of information and communications.

I know what others mean, in reality it seems unlikely that the police would have got involved and arrested her (and isn't that depressing) the same way they would if it was a driving offence.

Either because they'd be corrupt themselves by then, or because like the BBC they seem to tie themselves in knots about being impartial!

Lincoln is interesting, I think you could interpret in both ways and I agree that that was RTDs point, that he invisions that in 15years whether Lincoln in trans or not wouldn't be a major plot point.

I thought it was sad that how gay people are treated by the government in 15 years isn't seen as positively, still no recognition that Viktor had a right to live freely as a gay person and therefore to asylum throughout the early future years - before we get into fully totalitarian stage and it probably doesn't matter from then on, not-British was enough for the government to send him to erstwhile.

I wish Stephen hadn't been shown as redeemed. I don't think Edith would truly have forgiven him although she might have reached a point where she said she did...

I could not forgive a siblings for being involved with a concentration camp, so maybe that's my interpretation putting too much on it.

I posted this in an AIBU

"Years and years" made sense up to the stupid last 2 episodes. I thought it was going to end with the meal they were eating being made out of soylent green from the reprocessed erstwhiles - which would have made more sense than a couple of activists successfully undermining a police state.

The control of society was what made sense, not the miraculous escape from the control.

Coincidentally, I watched Greg Wallace "in the factory", where about 3 people were turning out millions of plastic bottles of Ribena., recycling the pre-used bottles to some extent, to supply ready made blackcurrant squash for a relatively small amount (but on the other hand far greater amount than just diluting some squash in your own kitchen)

Amazing how relatively efficient it was to produce and distribute what they were doing, but on the other hand, hardly worth the bother.

Conspicuous consumption was what gran's "Green" rant (ie Russell T Davies rant) was all about.