Scientific innovation, technological advancements are supposed to lead humanity to a better future, make lives sustainable and easy, but only when these mediums are in reliable hands. As numerous works of arts and literature have prophesied time and again, human vices have the potential to turn the prospective utopia into dystopia by exploiting, abusing any medium for dastardly means. Netflix’s recently released Thai sci-fi anthology series, Tomorrow and I highlights both human goodwill and malice in a futuristic setting and uses technological advancement as the metric of exploring the intrigue presented by gender identities, religion, human psyche and a number of different aspects. Showcasing four self-contained narratives which share the core theme of charting the future course of human civilization, Tomorrow and I is both universal and topical in its tone and presentation of subject matter. Having good production value allows each of the four segments to shoulder the ambitious nature of the narratives, and despite the pacing being somewhat dragged, the unique aesthetics presented by four different worldview allows viewers to stick it out to the end.
Spoilers Ahead
Episode 1: Black Sheep
The first story of the anthology, titled “Black Sheep”, revolves around gender identity, introducing a unique spin to the concept of cloning by using it as a means of gender transformation. The episode focuses on Noon, a celebrated doctor/ astronomer, who has left Earth three years ago, leaving her loving, supportive husband, Nont, behind to pursue her research of creating artificial organs using 3D printing. Noon’s research is successful, and as she is on her way back to earth, her shuttle undergoes technical issues, resulting in an accident which costs Noon her life. A disheartened Nont is unable to bear with the agony of the separation, and in his desperation, he asks their common friend, Vee, who is an expert geneticist, to clone Noon. It should be mentioned that the episode touches upon the ethical issues regarding cloning, and the question whether societal position or contribution to humanity gives someone greater right to life compared to commoners. Unable to convince Noon’s family to allow her cloning, Nont steals her head – which will allow Vee to recreate Noon’s memories in her new body during the cloning procedure. However, as Vee and Nont go through Noon’s memories, they find some secrets regarding Noon, which changes the way they knew her for so long.
Noon was afflicted with gender dysphoria since her teenage years, she wanted to be a man as she couldn’t connect with the identity she was assigned after her birth. But unfortunately for Noon, her parents were not supportive towards her willingness to transform herself, with her father even showing his disdain for Noon’s wishes. Noon thrust herself into academics and career to suppress her wish, and continued to live a false life. Even though, after meeting Nont, she felt much more freedom than she had at her home, she wasn’t able to share her secret with him. Learning about the truth, Nont initially feels betrayed, and suddenly questions his love for Noon, when Vee shares her support for Noon’s decision. Ultimately, it’s the person with whom Nont had fallen in love, something which makes Nont realize that it is his selfishness that is creating the conflict. Nont requests Vee to clone Noon and bring her back to life as a man. Soon after, Nont is arrested by the authorities for desecrating Noon’s corpse and he spends three years in jail. After his release, Nont meets Noon’s clone, who has adopted the name of Nont as well and has been living the life he always wanted—all thanks to Noon’s support. He is working at ISA with his new identity, and they have been supportive about his transformation. However, Nont II has to leave Nont, as he has been stationed in a lunar colony to continue the research on artificial organs and limbs—and this time, his stay is going to be permanent. The duo bid each other an emotional farewell, and five years later, Nont II is revealed to have made significant accomplishments for the future of healthcare while researching from his new home at the lunar colony. Earlier in the episode, Noon and Nont had connected for the first time during an exhibition of Nont’s artworks, one of which caught Noon’s eye, one with a cozy, beautiful wooden house in the moon. Design-wise, the house didn’t fit in with the aesthetic of the background, but it appealed to Noon with its comforting presence. Similarly, Noon’s true identity didn’t go along with his father’s or, by extension, society’s confines, but it was his choice at the end—something that Nont helped him to attain. As Tomorrow and I episode 1 ends, when questioned by an interviewer about getting homesick, he remarks on what Nont had made him realize—home is where love and understanding are. For him, Nont is her wooden house on the Moon.
Episode 2: Paradistopia
Being raised by her sex-worker mother, who allowed one of her customers to have his way with her kid, Jessica has seen the horrors of the fiendish cravings of men. The reality is even more grim in a futuristic Thailand where prostitution-related problems are rampant, and yet the existing taboo about it prompted the government not to legalize sex work. Jessica lost her mother at a young age, and as she grew up as a genius MIT graduate with two degrees, she became determined to change the country’s existing sex culture to bring the victims of the system out of their misery. In the 80s aesthetic adorned Gamalore City, a veritable pleasure den like Miami, Jessica launched her revolutionary startup, Paradise X. The idea is to produce life-like sex dolls laced with generative AI and train them to perfection with the help of former sex workers to provide optimum satisfaction to the customers. Jessica considers her idea will help counter the objectification of women by the patriarchal society, and even though the general social consciousness is against her idea, she believes it will help the society in the longer run. She has also ensured the human sex workers get their due, but the ethical and moral questions regarding her ideas are too heavy to cover through charities and eyewashing.
To ensure the success of her startup, Jessica had sent free samples of her sex toys to political and government head honchos as a form of bribe so that their support makes Paradise X attain the dream Jessica wishes to manifest. However, none of them come to her aid when Gemina, Minister of Arts and Lifestyle, who has been most vocal about Jessica’s innovations being detrimental to the social security of women, critiques her during a public interview. Jessica cannot answer her concerns about the possibility of increased violence against women caused by the exploitation of the sex toys, and her startup almost gets annexed before beginning under massive public outcry. However, Jessica comes up with a cunning plan as she uses her childhood friend/present boyfriend, Witt Hustler, to plant a false story in a public interview about the sex toys having hidden cameras. As a result, all the head honchos who refused to support Jessica’s venture earlier return to her, cowering in fear of exposure, and Paradise X faces no hindrance any longer.
However, Gemina’s concerns come true, as Witt, who had inculcated abusive tendencies by practicing with the sex toys of Paradise X, accidentally ends up abusing Jessica as well. The final blow to Jessica’s venture comes in the form of the allegation that the company is encouraging pedophilic tendencies, as during the launch event of highly customizable sex toys, known as Prime One, one of the customers tries to force the age limit lower than 18. As a result, within two months of launch, Paradise X had to shut up shop, Jessica was incarcerated for three years, and upon getting released, she founded a new startup—with maid robots being her new products to offer. Jessica didn’t really care about the plight of mistreated women; it was her justification to herself to benefit by objectifying women even further.
Episode 3: Buddha Data
Arguably the best segment out of the four, “Buddha Data” pits Anek, a former software engineer turned Buddhist monk, and Neo, a genius entrepreneur who has commoditized religion, against each other as futuristic Thailand copes with the antithetical issue of both human attachment and detachment with religion. Anek had promised his mother that he would become a monk and work for peace, but getting too busy in his grueling work regime, he forgot to keep his word and ended up lying to his dying mother. A guilt-ridden Anek had tried to take his own life afterwards but felt a spiritual connection with a senior monk who was a silent witness of his actions and decided to turn a new page in his life. At present, he wanders in the streets with his droid companion, iBuddy, and lives on charities, but changing times have made it difficult for monks like him to survive. Neo, a genius inventor who had witnessed his religious fanatic parents get swindled by saffron-clad conmen and lose their lives and their house in a horrendous tragedy, had pledged to avenge their deaths by not letting any such deceiver cheat anyone else. He created Ultra, an AI that contains ever-expanding, thorough, compiled data on Buddhist scriptures and allows users to walk a so-called moral path; more importantly, Ultra rewards users for virtues through a point-based merit system. This simultaneously eliminates the human connection to religion and motivates users to follow the moral dictates as well.
However, the merit point reward system encourages a very mechanical, unsympathetic notion of religion, as people give in to their greed and use the AI’s inability to detect complications of human emotions for their personal benefit. Anek shares his criticism of the faulty system of AI, and given that Ultra shares user data with its source, i.e., the parent company, Neo learns about the shortcomings and asks Anek to help strengthen Ultra’s generative AI by feeding it with data with the help of other monks. Anek refuses his proposal but gets inspired by him. With the help of his friend Atom, Anek creates iBuddha—an AI assistant that brings back human association to religion as Anek shares the teachings of the senior monk by connecting a direct neural link with him to feed the AI. With more monks joining in to share their experience and comfort the ones in need by connecting with their audience via holographic imagery. iBuddha acts as a much-needed emotional support and, in no time, becomes a household product. Meanwhile, Ultra gets scrutinized as the dubious merit point system leads to people exploiting the reward system by putting others at peril, and Neo suffers a setback.
However, soon enough Anek and his creation, iBuddha, come under fire as the AI projection of Anek’s senior monk has been revealed to be harassing young girls with licentious intentions. Turns out, decades ago, the senior monk had allowed such heinous thoughts to creep into his mind, and even though he no longer harbors those feelings, the AI doesn’t know the meaning of reformation. A guilt-ridden Anek decides to leave his life as a monk behind and decommission iBuddy as well—as in a way, the droid was too innocent to understand the depravity and complexities of the human mind. It can be also interpreted as Anek adhering to the teachings of Buddhism about abstaining from materialistic connection. Neo creates another advanced version of Ultra to draw people, but he is not alone in commoditizing religion this time around, as numerous copycats have propped up with similar intentions.
Episode 4: Octopus Girl
The final part of the anthology series, “Octopus Girl,” acts more as a reality check for humans, whose greed and exploitation are causing rapid environmental degradation, and before we realize it, the future generation will not have a planet to sustain themselves. In the near future, incessant downpour caused by ecological collapse has created ‘Rainpocalypse,’ submerging a significant part of the world. The rich are living safely in their high-rise apartments, while the downtrodden section is at the receiving end of a series of maladies like mutated creatures, dengue outbreaks, flooding, and so on and so forth. Media personalities carry on their charade of providing fake assurances, advising to look at the bright side in a time when the sun hasn’t risen in years.
Even in the midst of such a horrendous situation, two best friends living in the impoverished slum area, Pang and Mook, haven’t lost touch with their jubilant spirits and are trying to make do with whatever they have. Mook is infected by one of the numerous waterborne diseases that have plagued their community, and the friends lament the governmental neglect and wanton human exploitation that created the global crisis in the first place. However, Pang is hopeful for a better future, and to help her family and her community break free from the miserable situation they have found themselves in, she participates in a singing competition and garners attention from the judges. Upon being questioned as to what she plans to do with the prize money, Pang shares her willingness to uplift her community and seek a better life for her family. This puts pressure on the government, given the community was living in absolutely inhospitable conditions, and to win public approval, the prime minister promises to look into the situation.
It should be mentioned that to adapt to the new normal, a new vaccine named AquaVac was created from the strains of tardigrade and squid DNA, which came with the side effect of tentacled chins in the users. The people of Pang and Mook’s community were certain that the rich would get the vaccine anyway, but Prime Minister Big Tang had promised that the people of Thailand would not use the US-made vaccine, as it goes against the country’s values and makes people appear monstrous due to its side effects. As Big Tang arrived at the community, his hypocritical nature was brought to light as his chin tentacles were exposed in public and it was revealed that the entire Thai governance, who opposed AquaVac at first, ended up taking it for themselves. Their protest was a way to discourage common people from questioning their government about being unable to provide healthcare to people. This is actually really relatable because we can draw parallels with the COVID crisis.
Big Tang and his government step down under immense public pressure, and Mook and Pang, who brought the conspiracy to light, are treated as heroes as their community gets necessary assistance from the NGOs. For a moment, it seems that everything is going to be alright, and the dream of the safe, bright future the friends envisioned will come to pass at the end, as the Sun shines for the first time after years. However, it was nature’s way of mocking humanity’s hubris of thinking that after draining its resources for millennia, humanity will get an easy escape just by fleeting, temporary examples of benevolence and goodness. The Sun shines bright, so bright that it starts burning the surface of the planet, eradicating humanity in the process.
