“[………….]” –Plato

District: Megacorp Valley

Occupation: Unemployed.

Plato is a lot of nothing. We’ve seen several underdeveloped and ill-conceived playable characters, and this fella sits proudly among them atop of a huge throne.

After scanning through the files, we can only find a brief mention of Plato scribbled on the back of the above photograph where he’s sitting in some sort of vat.

It reads thus:

Pecker thinks it’d be a good idea to have a playable “superbrain in a vat” character called Plato. He said it serves two purposes:

1. Superbrains in vats reek of philosophical wonder.

2. This gives depth to the series without us having to do anything.

I’m inclined to agree. Plus brains in vats are soooo cyberpunk!

Author unknown

The obvious problem with the first purpose is that the “brain in a vat” concept has nothing to do with the Greek philosopher Plato.

Forgive us for sounding patronising, but we imagine that a considerable percentage of any given television audience won’t have a clue about Cartesian philosophy or simply don’t care about it when they’re trying to escape into a cyberpunk television episode for an hour.

Those people in the same audience who are well versed in the finer points of early Enlightenment enquiry into metaphysical problems will immediately notice that calling such a brain in a vat Plato is a huge blunder.

This means that the second purpose outlined above won’t ever figure: viewers will either not recognise the reference or they will recognise it, think it through in a nanosecond and will be mildly annoyed that it doesn’t really make any sense. They will then do that annoying thing we all do and tell everybody in the room how utterly wrong the writers were and how utterly clever you are for spotting it.

Of course it never went that far. In fact it went no further. The Plato character remains a scribbled footnote of a bad idea which, in some ways, is actually quite poetic.

Preferred Weapon: N/A

Is there any point asking you anything?: [silence]

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