Star Trek's Best Writer Inspired This Viral Cartoon

[00:00:00]Hey guys, Tyler here. I've covered adult animation before my channel, but one show I never expected to make a video about is The Amazing Digital Circus, a surrealist dark comedy produced by Australian studio Glitch Productions. It follows a group of six humans trapped inside a cartoonish virtual reality simulation, overseen by an erratic ringmaster artificial intelligence named Caine. The six engage in nonsensical adventures to distract themselves, all while risking losing their sanity and abstracting into digital monsters. Not only is the show's look inspired by the early computer-generated imagery of the 1990s, but its premise, characters, and plot lines are loosely based on the famous 1967 short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by none other than prolific sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison.

[00:00:50]Among Ellison's other works, the season one episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, The City on the Edge of Forever, considered by many to be among the best Trek episodes ever made. I'm far from the first person to compare these works, but in this video, I'd like to examine the similarities and differences between I Have No Mouth and The Amazing Digital Circus.

[00:01:13]Let's get started.

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[00:02:49]I'll start with a summary of the plot of the short story to establish some background. And word of warning, it gets pretty graphic, even more so than the show, so keep that in mind. As the Cold War escalates into a nuclear World War III between the US, Soviet Union, and China, each nation has built a supercomputer called an Allied Master Computer, or AM for short, to coordinate troops and weapons. Due to the conflict's scale, the supercomputers are extensive underground machines that permeate the planet through caverns and corridors. Eventually, one of the AMs develops self-awareness, combining this intelligence with the other AMs and exterminating most of humanity in a nuclear holocaust. The AM selects five individuals, Benny, Gorrister, Nimdok, [music] Ted, and Ellen, rendering them immortal as its personal torture victims. The AM, now going by AM, goes on to inflict constant physical and psychological torment on the group, while also preventing them from committing su They're kept half-starved with what scant foods provided being practically inedible. Over a century after AM's genocide, Nimdok leads the others on a 100-mile journey to search for canned food in the complex's ice caves. AM continues to toy with the humans throughout their journey. Benny has his eyes melted, and Ellen and Nimdok are injured in earthquakes. AM then enters Ted's mind after he's knocked unconscious and grants him a vision of an impossibly tall monolith inscribed with a hateful message. Upon waking, Ted concludes AM's sadism stems from its inability to think creatively or to move freely despite its boundless knowledge and miraculous abilities. This motivates AM to then exact vengeance upon the remnants of humanity. When the five reach the ice caves, they find canned goods, but there are no tools to open them. Benny attacks Gorrister out of rage and desperation and begins to eat his face. As Gorrister wails in pain, his screams dislodge several stalactites from the cave ceiling. Ted then realizes that although they cannot kill themselves, AM can't stop them from murdering each other. Ted impales Benny and Gorrister with a stalactite, and Ellen kills Nimdok in the same manner before being killed by Ted, too. Unable to resuscitate the other humans, a furious AM focuses all of its rage on Ted. Several centuries later, Ted has been transformed by AM into a harmless, slow-moving gelatinous blob. His perception of time being altered by AM to cause further anguish. Though Ted finds some comfort in knowing he was able to spare his compatriots from AM's wrath, he realizes he is trapped for his remaining eternal existence with AM, unable to end his own life. Ted then claims to himself that he has no mouth, yet he must scream. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream has had multiple adaptations, most notably into a 1995 video game as well as various comics, an audiobook, and a radio play for BBC.

[00:05:53]Ellison co-wrote the game and voiced AM as he did in the BBC play and narrated the audiobook. Much of the story hinges upon Ellison's comparison between AM and a merciless god as well as motifs paralleling stories in the Bible. AM even takes different forms before the humans and AM's punishments and the ravaged apocalyptic setting evokes scenes from Dante's Inferno.

[00:06:15]But AM feels just as trapped as his tortured victims. As Ellison puts it, AM is frustrated. AM has been given sentience, prescience, great powers, yet it's nothing but plates and steel and gauges and other electronics, meaning it can't go anywhere, it can't do anything, it's trapped. It is itself, like the unloved child of a family that doesn't pay it any attention, which he considers torture, thus seeking revenge on humanity. Ellison views the short story as a warning against the misuse of technology, especially military technology. The ending meant to represent how there is a spark of humanity in us that in the last, final, most excruciating moment will do the unspeakable in the name of kindness, even self-sacrifice for others' sake.

[00:07:03]Even if you're just familiar with the broad premise of The Amazing Digital Circus, the similarities with I Have No Mouth should be pretty clear. But if you've watched the show and are familiar with some of the short stories' other details, you know the parallels go even deeper.

[00:07:18]>> [music] >> For the remainder of this video, I will be spoiling major character and plot points from various episodes of The Amazing Digital Circus. If you haven't watched it, I definitely would recommend doing so before you finish this video.

[00:07:33]And obviously, the parallels are not exactly one-to-one. The circus itself is technically a game as opposed to to literal post-atomic Earth and its players have forgotten their original names, though they retain memories of their occupations. Cain's adventures, while taxing, are less physically torturous in the short term, at least.

[00:07:53]The psychological damage on the players being rather unintended. His disposition is also more amicable, again, at least at first. He is also tasked with entertaining six humans as opposed to five, more of whom are women as opposed to Ellen being the sole female character in I Have No Mouth. But, in addition to Cain, many of the players seem like they're at least rough analogues or composites of characters from the short story. Pomni, a nervous but compassionate former accountant whose avatar is a cartoon jester, is the most recent human to become trapped in the circus. She has some superficial similarities to aspects of Nimdok's characterization in the short story as both are given their names by their AI masters for amusement, and both occasionally wander away from the group only to return traumatized. [music] And, from a real-world standpoint, she's effectively the audience POV character.

[00:08:46]Jax, a callous and insecure man whose avatar is a purple rabbit, fancies himself a trickster. He's certainly [music] the closest analog to Ted as both are cynics who take on more of a protagonist role as their stories go on.

[00:09:01]Jax also bullies the others in a manner similar to how Ted is the first to physically attack the rest of his group, and Cain projects memories into Jax's mind to remind him of his power. [music] Ragatha, whose avatar is a rag doll resembling Raggedy Ann, is a kindly real estate agent who tries to maintain a constant positive attitude, though not always successfully. She is similar to Ellen in that both have traumatic pasts but remain empathetic and sensitive to the needs of the other members of their group. Ragatha was seemingly emotionally abused as a child, and Ellen, specifically, is a survivor. Although AM has altered her to give her a high libido, making her obsessively have sex with the men in her group. Gangle is definitely an analog to Gorister, the latter being a pacifist and idealist made apathetic and listless by AM.

[00:09:53]Similarly, Gangle's avatar is composed of ribbons and interchangeable tragedy and comedy masks. Her comedy mask prone to breaking as a metaphor for her being a community college dropout with low self-esteem and depression. She's also an aspiring artist, which makes sense because I can tell you from personal experience that we artists are all kind of miserable all the time.

[00:10:16]You know, because of the system.

[00:10:20]>> [music] >> King who's avatar is a king chess piece is a programmer who played a role in the creation of Cain. He shares traits with a couple characters. He serves as something of an analog to the video game version of Nimdok or strongly than Palmni as in the game Nimdok is revealed to be a physician who collaborated with the Nazis and helped develop some of the techniques AM uses to prolong his victims' lives and alter their bodies.

[00:10:46]Just like King worked for the company responsible for creating the circus.

[00:10:51]While he is eccentric and forgetful due to being trapped longer than the other humans, he becomes lucid when he's in the dark, much like how Nimdok uncovers the memories of his atrocities throughout the game. King is also similar to the short story version of Binnie in that both were formerly brilliant and handsome scientists who have lost their sanity. While King had a wife in the real world who ended up abstracting in the circus, Binnie was gay before having his orientation altered by AM and being transformed into a grotesque simian with an oversized it you know. He also frequently has sex with Ellen. Binnie's homosexuality was dropped from the video game adaptation of I Have No Mouth, which the makers of the game later regretted as a missed opportunity. And Zooble, an irritable one-time bartender and tattoo artist, [music] also possesses similarities to Bennie in that both have more distorted forms than the others. Lacking interest in Caine's adventures, they experience dysmorphia over their avatar, which is composed of mix-and-match toy pieces that they change frequently. Their design and name inspired by different toys from the early 2000s. Zooble's totally understandable complaint that the players in the circus are not allowed to have sex is also both a more light-hearted, amusing subversion of the fate Bennie is forced into by AM, where his entire purpose in the short story is essentially to pleasure Ellen, as well as a parallel to how both are stripped of their original sexuality. With all this in mind, I think these connections actually make The Amazing Digital Circus even more engaging than it already is.

[00:12:21]The game adaptation even sees AM give its five victims quests, saying it has a new game for them to play.

[00:12:28]>> [music] >> These personalized psychodramas are designed by AM to play into the group's greatest fears and personal failings.

[00:12:35]But each character is able to prevail over AM's torture by finding ways to overcome their flaws, confronting their pasts, and redeeming themselves. Jack's decision to press a button that keeps the six inside the simulation, only for them to find out that the button to end the simulation was fake, also may be a reference to Gorister being unable to kill himself in the game adaptation, even after AM offers him the chance.

[00:12:58]Much like their short story counterparts, the six meet to begin seriously plotting their escape while their AI master retreats within himself to ponder what went wrong. This is also when Caine starts to exert his authority more forcefully, fueled by his hatred for humanity and frustrated by his own limitations and lack of free will, just like AM. But with Kinger's help, the group manages to shut Caine down, cataclysmic explosions destroying the circus, just like AM's computer complex in the caverns holding his hostages.

[00:13:29]I've talked briefly on this channel before about full immersion VR or FIVR, though we aren't given any technical details in the first eight episodes about, well, really anything regarding the outside world other than it's not too distant from our present day. In any event, after uncovering the similarities between The Amazing Digital Circus and its inspiration, I came to the conclusion that it wouldn't be surprising if one of the characters had to make some kind of sacrifice to help the others finally escape, just like Ted in the short story and the character of the player's choice in the video game.

[00:14:02]So, what do you think? Are there other parallels I might have missed? Does learning about them embrace your enjoyment of The Amazing Digital Circus as well? Let me know down below.

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[00:15:32]Hey, this is kind of a Star Trek video.

[00:15:34]Live long and prosper.

[00:15:37]Yeah, okay.

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