Laura's Choice: An Exploration

I wrote this for tumblr, but let's put it here, too, just for the fun! I almost forgot I even had this blog. 

To be clear, I love writing meta, but I've never written a 3000 word essay out of choice before. Humans is a special case. (And yes, I know exactly what retort that sentence invites, by the way. If I had any shame I wouldn't be posting this.)  

Avoiding preamble and assuming that you've seen the sixth episode of series 3... my initial reaction to the now-infamous ‘Choice’ scene was abject horror and disgust. I couldn’t believe that Laura, of all people, would sacrifice poor little Sam, after everything she’s done for her supposed belief in synthetic humanity. Particularly when her series 1 arc was rooted in her perceived guilt over 'causing' the death of a small boy... And, although Laura wasn't there, Sam very nearly died in the exact way Tom did, just 2 episodes prior. We, the audience, are making that link, which makes Laura's choice even more shocking. 

My second reaction was 'what a transparently manufactured Plot Point!", but this is Humans, you guys: I’ve never been able to hate anything about it for long. I did try to, in series 2, but both times – with the Mattie/Odi storyline as well as Sophie’s Synthee arc – I managed to talk myself around by writing a good old essay. The writing on this show is so rich that it really invites analysis - or I've got to pretend it does, because what else am I doing here? 

So that’s where we’re at now. Rather than berate the scene from a writing angle (and in fairness there's a lot of, um, stuff to be considered when taking this scene in the context of the race relations parallel they’ve emphasised so much this year), I've decided that it's actually GREAT writing, and I’m going to explore Laura’s choice from a character angle.

In the days since the episode aired I’ve been through numerous emotional states, engaged in many debates, and in general come up with a number of arguments that defend Laura’s decision, not as the right choice objectively, but as something that makes sense for her character. Stay with me.

The first thing we have to decide, I think, is this: what question was Laura actually answering? Anatole says she has to choose somebody to die. But was she really choosing:

1. the person she really thought should die,
2. the person she thought had the best chance of survival, or
3. the option that was mostly likely to resolve the situation?

The DigitalSpy interview with the writers would have you believe it’s the first option, and that Laura genuinely chose “her kind” over “theirs”. If Laura seriously chose Sam for that reason alone, then Anatole is in the right, as this excellent Twitter thread points out. For the purposes of this essay (such as they are) we're going to give Laura a little more benefit of the doubt, and hope that there was more to her choice than simply, "side with your own", even if that's a factor. 

But even within the first item on the list, there is room for discussion. One point that’s been well made by @TheSynthWhisperer on Twitter is that Laura may honestly, truly think that she considers synths as our absolute equals, and yet still, under fire and the threat of harm to her family, fold at the crucial moment. I don’t want to believe that of her, but I have to admit it’s a possibility. As Mia points out in 3.1, up until now Laura’s devotion to the synths’ cause has not come at any actual cost to herself. Not the kind of cost that counts. Sure, she’ll sacrifice a career, a marriage, those things aren’t anywhere near the scale of say… Sophie. Who’s standing right there in the corner, easy fodder for if Anatole gets mad. Who of us can truly say that we wouldn’t give up our ideals in that situation? I’m sure we’d all love to say “Me!”, but unless you’ve had them questioned in circumstances similar to this one, you’ll never really know. Sorry. 

So that’s one theory, and the one most likely to bear out, for Sam being Laura’s honest choice for 1: when it comes down to it, her ideals are not as deeply-held as she’d like them to be. She does possess fears and doubts that she has not yet been able to purge from her soul, however much she’d love to, however much she thought she had.

Is there evidence for this line of thought in Laura’s previous actions? Arguably, yes. Every time I watch the series 2 finale I’m surprised by how determined Laura is that Mattie not upload the consciousness code. She’s the character whose relationship with Mia the show has focused on most, and yet she’s the loudest voice saying “No, this isn’t worth it, don’t do it.” Of course, the two situations are by no means the same, but perhaps there is room to argue that Laura’s ideals are subject to her propensity toward panic, when stakes grow to that kind of height.

The other reasoning for point 1: she wasn’t comparing organic life to synthetic life: she was comparing death. We had this hinted at in episode 5, with Sam’s line, “We don’t die in the same way you do.”

Now, in context, he’s talking about Karen, who we’re just supposed to accept is actually irretrievable, and truly gone (despite the fact that only Joe was there to confirm it, He Who Knows Nothing About Synths, for all I kind of love him now). But let’s look at Sam’s line in relation to the synthetic deaths Laura has witnessed first-hand.

She had braindead Max laid out on her dining-room table for a good while, and then saw the code magically make him good as new. She watched Mia and Hester die and then be miraculously brought back to life, even though Mattie wasn’t there in person to do it. We, the audience, remember the bleaker fates of characters like Karen and Flash, but in terms of the ones Laura has actually seen… synth death seems to be an undoable, tragic-but-not-absolutely-final concept.

So while Sam’s life may seem equal to the old man’s, his death does not. Laura has never seen an organic human return to life the way Max, Mia and Hester did. In the heat of the moment, I can perhaps see her clinging to this reasoning, hoping that somehow they’d be able to restore Sam if he did die. ‘They are as alive as us, but perhaps they’re never as dead as us’ - that kind of thinking.

We know this isn’t true, of course, because we know from the Elster Sisters roadtrip that the code is now offlining of its own accord. But Laura’s grasping at straws here. Whatever she chooses, she has to be able to live with it afterwards. A phonecall to Mattie might do the trick with Sam, whereas it’s not going to do Old McOld any good at all.

But what if Laura wasn’t answering Anatole’s question at face value at all? What if she was trying to make a tactical choice? This brings us to point 2, which I like to call “The Max Factor”.

In 3.1, we saw Max faced with the difficult choice between saving Christabel, a synth we didn’t know (but presumably he did) or preserving Leo, his brother, who we know he truly loves. Max, because he’s been elected leader of the railyard, has to set aside his own feelings and choose to sacrifice the person who is, objectively speaking, in the least danger. Christabel is moments from certain death. Leo has about a one-in-three chance of survival. Numerically, the answer is obvious: he should save Christabel, so he does.

To what extent is Laura’s choice comparable to Max’s? Well, although she doesn’t have a computer brain to tell her the percentages, it’s pretty clear from Laura’s viewpoint that the old man is in more danger than Sam is! We happen to know that Anatole doesn’t mind sacrificing the odd fellow-synth here and there to get his point across (RIP Agnes) but all Laura knows is that he’s a purist who’s asking her to set one species above the other.  Clearly, he favours his own kind, or he wouldn’t be here. Out of the two possible victims, Sam has a higher claim on Anatole’s mercy.

Both Laura and Max choose to sacrifice the person who means the most to them personally, and because of that choice both of them risk losing others who love both victim and decision-maker: Max and Mattie’s friendship (which used to be about hugging on sight, remember) is in tatters, and he gets serious words from his big sisters about it too. Laura is making this choice in the sight of Toby, Sophie and Joe, and we see at least two of them shunning her for it later.

Both Laura and Max choose to save the person who they think needs saving most. And in both cases, nobody ends up dying. So technically, both of their tactical decisions paid off.

There’s another similarity between Max’s choice and Laura’s, though, and this one’s particularly fascinating because it’s actually a difference. Both situations have been orchestrated by Anatole. (Whether this is a particular hobby for Anatole or just something he saw work once and decided to use again… perhaps remains to be seen.)

Max, though, has no reason to suspect that Anatole is playing him. He is content to take Anatole’s word for it that (a) Christabel really is dying, (b) Leo really does have a chance and (c) there is absolutely no other way to save Christabel than to redirect the power from Leo’s ventilator. Sorry, guys, what are these lights doing on? You really couldn’t get power from anywhere else, huh? (And gruesome as it may be, especially since one of them’s Flash, but…  there are at least two synths lying around the place who aren’t using their batteries any more. If Anatole’s such a whizz surgeon, couldn’t he do some transplanting? No?)

Because Anatole seems so trustworthy, and has even built up his apparent reasonableness by acknowledging Max’s mysterious attachment to Leo, and expressing regret that it should come to this, Max doesn’t second-guess him at all. Looking back at the scene now, we can see obvious hallmarks of Anatole’s manipulation. In a very dark retrospective twist, we might even suppose that he was the one who ordered Flash’s escorts to desert her in the town, thus leaving Max extra vulnerable. Anatole was the one who’d asked her to go on a supply run without Max’s authorisation, after all.

Laura, on the other hand, is acutely aware that she’s being manipulated. Anatole is not a trusted friend - he’s come into her life as a marked villain. And this takes us on to point 3: was she merely choosing the option that would most likely resolve the situation?

Unlike Max’s choice, Anatole hasn’t even tried to dress this one up as a real life-or-death issue. Nobody has to die. He’s being pretty open about the fact that it’s a question of morality, not medicine. There’s no logical reason for this choice to be made at all – especially since Laura is fighting for synth equality, not synth supremacy. It’s completely and utterly fabricated, and Laura and Anatole both know it.

So what should she do? Argue for a third option, like “neither!” or “take me instead?” Either of those would have been a lovely gesture, and I’m sure we were all thinking it while watching. “Neither” is, ethically, the correct response to the question, and “take me” is the one that seems most like the person we know Laura to be – courageous and compassionate.

But she’s also not stupid! 

Of course she considers this. Come on, now. Of course she thinks about trying to outwit Anatole. She’s a lawyer by trade. She relies on her ability to out-logic her opponent on a day-to-day basis. But how often, in the past, has she faced someone who honestly intends to commit cold-blooded murder in her own living room?

Well, once, actually. 

When Hester paid a visit in 2.8, Laura tried valiantly to talk her down. She did exactly what we’re asking her to do in 3.6. She delivered some series-best dialogue, some really hard-hitting, beautiful lines of logic, and what happened? Did Hester suddenly go, “Oh, you’re right, humans are wonderful! I do apologise, here, have your neck back?”

No. Laura’s attempts to reason with Hester only escalated the situation. Hester went from scarily-but-calmly waiting for Leo to arrive to literally brandishing a weapon in Laura’s face, all because Laura tried to go all lawyery on her.

So, faced with a similar showdown: is Laura going to risk it? Is she really going to try and talk Anatole down? Because let’s remember that with Hester, all Laura had to lose was her own life – they were the only two people present. This time, two of Laura’s children are watching, and so is their father. Wouldn’t it be so much better to end the situation before Anatole gets really mad and starts picking people off? He’s come with a miniature army – what’s to stop each of his lackeys getting hold of a Hawkins throat and pressing down until Laura stops wailing “take me! take me!” and changes her answer to one of the actual options?

Nothing! This is a very scary situation! Anatole is clearly not going to be reasoned with. Were he a reasonable person, he wouldn’t be here asking her to choose a side as a test of equality. Anatole, honey, that’s the literal opposite of what equality is.

Which he obviously knows. Because really it all comes down to that line of his: “You’ve already made your decision”. While Laura quite possibly hasn’t, at this point, done anything of the kind, that line makes it obvious that Anatole doesn’t want to test her, he wants to prove himself right! He doesn’t, for one single instant, think that she is going to do anything but what he’s scripted for her.

So she can’t choose the invisible third option. It’s definitely going to have to be one or the other. All right, so who should Laura choose?

Let’s say she does what we secretly wish she’d done, and picked the old man. For a start, there’s tonnes of horrifying ways that could go down, involving the types of blood geysers that put an end to Helen Aveling and Pete Drummond (RIP, guys). Laura obviously doesn’t want to see that, and she certainly doesn’t want Sophie to witness it.

And since this so clearly isn’t what Anatole wants her to do, even the chance that it’s a bluff might not be enough to save the old man. Imagine, okay, let’s imagine she points a finger and says “Old McOld”. (I really wish they’d given us a name for the sake of this essay, but I see that it was a very artsy decision not to, adds to the whole anonymity vs. familiarity angle, hmm yes very clever Ms Coulam)

Laura putting one synth before one human isn’t going to prove SQUAT about humanity in general. (Hester again: “Our existence is meaningless to all but a few out of billions…”) Choosing that option is going to make Anatole angry, because he’s come here to be proved right and he’s damn well going to prove himself right. If Laura tries to make a stand for what (we presume) she actually believes (that Sam’s young life IS more worthy of preservation than the old man’s, by virtue of his greater potential for a future) then Anatole, like Hester before him, is not going to suddenly beam and say, “Thank you, Laura, you’ve shown me the error of my ways.”

He happens to believe Laura won’t practice what she preaches anyway, but even if she, personally, does put Sam first… What, suddenly all humans are fine? No, his whole point is based on Laura being an outlier. So really if she tries to prove him wrong she’s just prolonging the (very dangerous) situation.

Anatole will almost certainly push her to switch for her “true” answer, the one he wants her to go for. Personally, I don’t think he’s even considered what he’ll do if Laura chooses to kill Old McOld, because he’s so sure she won’t, but I can see him having Stanley apply as much pressure as he can, get as close to going through with it as is biologically possible before actually killing Old McOld, to give Laura the longest possible anguish and try and force her to change sides. Anatole claims later that he was bluffing, but I think he was only bluffing so far as he knew what she was going to go for.

On the other hand, if she chooses Sam, then Anatole has made his point. Having manipulated, humiliated and demoralised Laura to the point where her own family can’t even look at her, he doesn’t even need to kill Sam - and as mentioned in point 2, Sam was probably never in that much danger in the hands of a fellow synth, anyway. Choosing Sam is not only the option that is least likely to lead to the death of one of the binary options, it’s also the option that will shut this whole thing down fastest. Remember again that Laura’s family is in the room. One of the lackeys has already made an attempt on Joe’s life. This was never just about saving one of the two people in front of her.

Of course, Laura can’t think any of this out loud, and it’s not a novel so we can’t read her thought process – and, crucially, neither can her family. Like us, they’re looking on in horror but they, themselves, are not the ones being called on to make this choice, so they’re not considering the options as deeply or as quickly as Laura has to. I think she knows full well that they’re going to hate her decision. But having decided that Sam is the most logical choice, she can’t exactly go, “Don’t worry, Soph, I’m sure they won’t actually kill him!”

She could explain it afterwards, of course, but it’s going to sound like making excuses, isn’t it? It’s going to sound weak and defensive, and Laura is anything but weak. So she lets them shun her, she doesn’t shout her reasoning through the door Toby’s just shut in her face, because she understands why he’s feeling like that, why it’s better for Toby and Sophie to grieve about it together before she asks them to see things from her point of view.

Nothing Laura did in that room, from the moment they opened the door to Anatole, was going to make the tiniest difference to Anatole’s hatred of humans – except maybe to heighten it. The safest, most logical thing to do was not to hedge, not to pull the concept apart, but to accept it as the binary choice he demanded and just choose what he wanted her to choose.

Of course, in this case, the safest choice was also the most painful. She runs the risk that Joe and the children will never understand what she did, or that she or one of them will die before a reconciliation – that’s the world they’re living in now. So even though she may have chosen the option that gives her the most peace of mind, it’s not… it’s not a LOT of peace of mind, is it? So of course she leaves her phone and keys and flees into the night.

I started out so angry with her, but I’m coming around to the idea that she really did think this through, and her thought process wasn’t “Sam’s a machine and we aren’t”. I don’t want it to be that. I believe in Laura Hawkins. But even if that belief turns out to be slightly pedestal-bound, and we do see Laura try and redeem herself for a hasty siding with her own species... I have nothing but praise for a show that can make me think this deeply about any character, even if my end result is, basically, a load of nonsense that's going to be completely debunked by the coming episodes. 

But don't look at me, you're the one who kept on reading this far! 

Humans Series 2 Launch Q&A - Spoiler-free Version

The following is a partial transcript of the Question and Answer session led by Morgan Jeffery at the Humans series 2 press launch, Thursday 13th October.

The panel took place after a preview screening of episode 1 of the hit show's second series, so questions whose answers refer specifically to the events of that episode have been omitted. General questions and those pertaining to content in the trailers which have already been online are included.

Comments made by Tom Goodman-Hill which expand on the trailers, but no further than he already expanded in his recent NYCC interview, are also included. Comments made by Katherine Parkinson and Gemma Chan alluding to scenes from the second series which are not in episode 1 have been included.

A full transcript will be posted after the UK broadcast of episode 1, on Sunday 30th October.

Morgan Jeffery: Gemma, for you, and for Emily as well, how easy was it, snapping back into Synth mode for this second series? Were you a little bit rusty? Was there more Synth School required?

Gemma Chan: I was pretty rusty. On the first day back, our amazing choreographer, Dan O’Neill, got us to do the basics, and got us to run, do Synth running. I managed to pull every muscle in both legs. I was in agony for the rest of Synth bootcamp. Yeah, it was harder than expected.

Emily Berrington: Yeah, it was harder. But what was good is that we had some new Synths, so we were at least better than they were.

Morgan Jeffery: You were the best ones. That’s a good point, how easy or difficult was it to find new actors who could live up to the high standard that these guys had set with the first series?

Derek Wax: Well, we were blessed in the first series with the most incredible cast. We're incredibly grateful and appreciative for the solid dedication and talent of our series 1 cast, so we had a quite a big challenge. We have a wonderful casting director, Victor Jenkins, and we searched high and low to get the best people for those roles. I think we struck lucky with Sonya Cassidy, and with Carrie-Ann Moss, with Marshall Allman, and, I’m now going to forget a few people who I ought to mention... but for both finding new Synths and new human characters, we tried to be as thorough as we could, and get the best people.

Morgan Jeffery: Now, Katherine and Tom, what state is Joe and Laura’s marriage in in this second series? I notice you’re sat quite far apart, I hope that’s not a bad sign.

Tom Goodman-Hill: That says it all. Yeah, they’re in a bother, they’re struggling to piece things back together, hence the house move, to try and have a fresh start and see if they can repair their marriage. Or see if Joe can repair the marriage. And also they’re looking out for their children’s interests, that’s the main thing really. Mattie’s now at university, Toby’s at a new school, and Sophie is struggling with separation from Anita. And I think Joe’s position is that he feels that if he can be a good dad, and try and help the kids, then Laura might see that he’s still a good guy.

Katherine Parkinson: Laura cares about the kids too(!). I think what’s particularly interesting in this series is that Laura was sort of anti-Synth last series, and Joe was more pro-Synth, in that he slept with one…(!) And this series, it’s kind of, interestingly, then, it swaps, and Laura becomes sort of a champion of the Synths, or certainly Synthetics having rights, whereas Joe ends up wanting to move away from Synths, and find a community where he can be “Synth-free”. That’s hard to say… after a drink! And I think that was a surprise to me when I read it, and I think that was a really interesting direction to take them in, and it makes sense, because I think Laura’s quite ethically driven, because she’s maybe got some guilt, and so on, whereas Joe is…

Tom Goodman-Hill: Morally corrupt.

Katherine Parkinson: …is, you know, rightly looking out for his children and being protective, and I think that was an interesting way to sort of draw a relationship, and how people can maybe fall apart because they just have sort of different stances, and different beliefs in how they should best kind of…

Tom Goodman-Hill: (Trump voice) That makes me smart. I realise I could be very Trump here, to your Hilary. (Trump voice) And interrupt you.

Morgan Jeffery: And Tom and Katherine, how was it being without Gemma, at least as far as we know at the beginning of the series, and Gemma, how was it for you being down on the seaside with Sam Palladio?

Gemma Chan: I should say, I did pitch Sam and Jon that maybe Mia should have started a new life for herself in Barbados, but they didn’t go for it!

Morgan Jeffery: You were by the sea at least.

Gemma Chan: But Margate, no, it was lovely. I did miss you guys…a bit.

Tom Goodman-Hill: We missed you too, Gemma.

Gemma Chan: And Pixie! (waves to Pixie Davies) Yeah. No, it was great. Sam’s brilliant, as you can see, and it was nice to explore a new dynamic, a new relationship. I think it’s, you know…

Katherine Parkinson: I’d like to have been on the beach with Sam Palladio. (to Tom) No disrespect.

Morgan Jeffery: Gemma, you’ve been working on an exciting little project of your own, sort of Humans-related…What can you tell us about that?

Gemma Chan: Yeah, it’s a documentary. I got to meet some amazing people, people who are kind of the leading minds in AI and robotics, and talk to them, and then alongside that we had a team building as good a robot version of me as they could, and we try to pass the robot off as me! To see how far away we are from the world of the show, that was the idea.

Morgan Jeffery: And Emily, you met the Gemmabot. How was that?

Emily Berrington: It was great, it was…our faces kind of said it all. It was so creepy, to see something that was so like Gemma, but not Gemma. It was almost weirder than if it was, I don’t know, than if it was something far removed from a human. It was the fact that it was so close that was very strange. We were asking it questions, and it could somehow look up information and answer properly. We’d say, ‘What do you think of Will Tudor?’, and it would say ‘Will Tudor is a brilliant actor.’ It was so lovely…but it was weird.

Morgan Jeffery: Of course, the first series was based on Real Humans, the Swedish series, and then it diverted more and more from that as it went on, and this is pretty much wholly original. So how is it different, tackling this second series, compared to the first?

Sam Vincent: It was exciting. We always had the freedom to take the story in a certain direction, but we had this wonderful framework, a basis from the original series, written by Lars Lundstrom, who’s here tonight, I think. And he gave us absolute freedom to do what we wanted with it.  We started quite close, and then it just organically grows away. You make a small change, and that’s magnified further on down the path. So when it came to the second series, we knew it would be an even bigger departure, but lots of the themes that he continued to explore are sort of explored in ours, albeit in different ways. It’s exciting to be doing more of our own stuff, but it’s nice to have something to hold onto as well, every now and again.

(The following questions were from the audience):

Westworld aired last week, do you see it as a rival to Humans?

Sam Vincent: The Yule Brynner film? I don’t know why we’d be worried about that(!)

Derek Wax: Yeah, it shows that there’s a huge appetite for drama about something which feels totally pertinent to our lives now, the interaction with technology. Of course, it’s very different, it’s a theme park. I think what we have - and I’m not trying to say ours is any better - I think obviously what we have is a world which feels very grounded and real, and set in an almost mundane, suburban world on some level. We are dealing with the most domestic, intimate sort of issues, and we’re not trying to set it in a more, sort of sci-fi-ish world. I think that really remains the DNA of Humans. You know, there’s been thousands of movies, from Terminator, to Bladerunner, to Robocop, to…you know, hundreds and hundreds of movies have explored AI. It’s just an accident that Westworld should have aired in pretty much the same week. But I think because they all explore it in such different ways, you get very different angles and perspectives on the subject. And I hope that we’re so far removed from Westworld in terms of our focus on the grounded, mundane realities, as opposed to the huge theme park, that I think we are sufficiently different.

Gemma Chan: I watched the first couple of episodes, and I really loved it. And again, I think, the territory that their show explores and our show explores, these questions of who are we, what makes us human, these questions are so rich, and the answers are kind of infinite. I think there’s definitely room for more than one show in this area. I really enjoyed it.

Sam Vincent: Yeah, actually I…don’t need to say anything now, because I was going to say largely that. I welcome it, actually. I think this area is so at the forefront of the sort of public consciousness that there is room for two shows about it, and it’s really exciting to look at it and see the things they’ve done differently, and the conclusions that they’ve arrived at that are similar. But if there’s room for 256 shows about cops, there’s room for two about AI!

Gemma, where’s the robot now?

Gemma Chan: I don’t know where the robot is now…I think the robot belongs--

How do we know that’s you?

Gemma Chan: (laughs) I did worry that perhaps I was - it did occur to me midway through that maybe I was making my own replacement -  Series 3, I might be out of a job. No, I believe the robot belongs to Channel 4, so it’s somewhere in the Channel 4 building, I imagine.

If you could play a different character than the one that you actually play, who would you choose?

Tom Goodman-Hill: Sophie. Not even kidding.

Katherine Parkinson: Well I’m dying to - I spend a lot of time in my trailer on set practicing my Synth. All I’m gonna say is it’s better than any of the other Synths on the show. No, it’s actually very hard to be a Synth, but I would like to give it ago.

Morgan Jeffery: You’d like to go to Synth School just for fun.

Katherine Parkinson: I would.

Gemma Chan: I’d like to play Odi. Though I couldn’t do it better than Will Tudor.

Emily Berrington: I was going to say Odi as well! I’d like to just see what being a broken Synth is like for a little bit.

For the actors: did you have any challenging moments, any challenging scenes during filming?

Emily Berrington: It’s always challenging movement-wise, as a Synth, whenever you discover a new thing you have to achieve while still convincingly being a Synth. So I had some - you saw a tiny little bit in the trailer - some action stuff, that took quite a lot of effort and quite a long time. I did also have a stunt double, to be fair. But the stuff I had to do… you know, all it takes is you kick something, and your natural instinct as a human being is to sort of use your face as well. To be able to do all of that as if it’s no effort is really tough. So there’s kind of something like that every day, which is why we have to have Dan O’Neill there every day, keeping us in check.

Gemma Chan: My character does a lot of running in the second half of the series, and I just - I’m just so bad at it. Ivanno Jeremiah is the king of Synth running. I’m more like Phoebe-from-Friends running. And also, I can’t do the Synth run without laughing at myself, so at the end of each bit of running I would laugh, and they’d be like, ‘You can’t laugh at the end!’ So, that, yeah. That was always the most difficult thing for me!

I was just wondering if it’s changed your relationship with technology, do you sort of lean more towards it now, has it made you more fearful of it, or the same as it was before?

Tom Goodman-Hill: Well, I remember being asked in the first series if I wanted to have a Synth, I said yes…and now I categorically say no.

Katherine Parkinson: Whereas I said no, and I’d say yes.

Emily Berrington: I think I’ve been a bit more aware, this time - I’ve thought more about - because of Joe’s storyline - what it means to be replaced. And so I’ve been a bit more aware of things like self checkouts, and stuff like that. You sort of think, that was a job, and now it’s a machine. So I have become a bit more wary, I think.

Gemma Chan: (calmly) I think we’re sleepwalking into our own annihilation. That’s the conclusion that I came to after finishing doing the documentary. Having spoken to the experts, that’s apparently so. And we’re kind of…we don’t really mind! Yeah… But everything’s gonna be fiiiiine(!)

Having played Synths, I’d like to ask what human quality you now most appreciate.

Emily Berrington: I think…oh, that’s such a good question. I think there’s something very unsettling about things that can’t give you the natural responses that you get from a human. It’s so difficult when you’re playing a Synth, not to sort of nod along when someone’s talking to you, and go, ‘Mmmm,’ and show that you’re listening and hearing and receiving information. It’s very unsettling if someone does that to you. And some real people do that! They just sort of look at you for ages while you’re speaking, and I definitely really appreciate that quality that humans have, to show, constantly, even without saying anything, that they’re with you, and they’re processing something.

Being an avid fan, I always find that eight episodes, I’m just left wanting more. Is it difficult for you guys to kind of contain all the material you have? Do you wish you had a bit more to write?

Sam Vincent: You always start off staring at a blank page, going “Oh my God, what are we gonna do, what are we gonna put, what’s gonna happen?” and by the end, you’re like “How are we possibly gonna fit this all in?” You know, that’s the kind of journey that you go on. But we’ll do you a couple more episodes, no problem. These guys’ll do it. We’ve got the Gemma robot now, so we’ll do a couple more.

I just wanted to know when Synth School was actually opening in the UK.

(General wondering about where Dan O'Neill has disappeared to at this crucial juncture)

Derek Wax: I'll just say, as a rather indirect segue, but fantastic credit to Dan, and Synth School, and all the incredible work he did with the choreography. But we also had four amazing directors on this series, whose creative contribution was massive and substantial, and obviously because of the uniqueness of Synth School they don’t get quite the mentions that they deserve. So I just want to say thank you to Lewis Arnold, who directed the episode we’ve just seen - rather brilliantly, I thought - and episode 2, and then we have Mark Carl Tibbets(??*), who directed episode 3 and 4, Francesca Gregorini did 5 and 6, and Mark Grizell(??*), who’s here, did 7 and 8. It’s just very nice to feel that we’ve found directors who really found a way into making this world real, and bringing out the incredible qualities that our actors have, as well.

*Best guess from the recording. Apologies if I've just made up names here! I think you're both called Mark, at least...