Review of 'Emergence' 1.5

With last night's episode 1.5 of Emergence, Piper has moved from the category of someone with superpowers to Supergirl. That's because she clearly has more than one incredible superpower.

She not only can move around huge objects with ease—like a truck barreling towards her car—but she can also see inside Ed's body and know that the medication he's taking for his cancer isn't working. Either one of those powers would make Piper a superhero, as Mia earnestly asks Piper if she is after Mia, in the same car, witnesses Piper's trick with the truck. Mia doesn't yet know about Piper's medical diagnostic power. If she had, she would likely realize that Piper is much more than your traditional super hero.

And, like Supergirl, Piper has her Kryptonite. That would be Kindred, and the door he's literally able to draw Piper through, to be assert his authority. The question still remains as to what that authority is.

As I wrote about Westworld—and indeed, 20 years ago in a piece called The Civil Rights of Robots. AIs, androids, robots, are entitled to make their own decisions and chart their own destinies if they are sentient. Making a slave of a sentient being we invented is no better than making a slave of a sentient being already in existence. We know now that Piper is an AI. The growing presence of Kindred means that Emergence is now in the same fascinating and treacherous philosophic waters as Westworld.

Which makes Emergence even more eminently worth watching.