Monday, October 28, 2019

Gender Bending in Electric Dreams


The very first episode of Amazon's TV series Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams has a gender bender theme.

(This post contains spoilers, be warned!).

Electric Dreams is a series in the same tradition as The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror, with freestanding episodes with a science fiction or fantasy theme.


The script writers have made a clever use of the science fiction reality concept of virtual reality. In this case the virtual reality is so real that it is indistinguishable from real life.

The main character, which starts out as the future cop Sarah, uses a VR machine for therapeutic purposes and finds herself in the past, as a man.

So is it a male to female transformation story? Maybe not. That's the clever part of this story.

In any case, even if the gender change is not the main topic here, there are some interesting reflections of why the virtual reality is relevant for readers of this blog.

Please note that in some countries this episode is listed as episode 5 of season 1.