The Problem with Cortana
07 Apr 2022
Exposing the Master Cheeks.
So hey, episodes 2 and 3 are out.
Episode 2: Plot dump ahoy, nothing particularly egregious to speak of here.
Episode 3: Spoilers Ahead.
Okay, so there’s a few severe changes to the Halo canon that I really don’t like. It mostly comprises of two things:
- They wiped John’s memories as a child when they conscripted him, and,
- The entire way AIs work.
So, let’s start with John. In the show, they wiped his memories before the age of six - before they conscripted him into the Spartan program. It’s not outright stated why they did this, but it’s pretty clear that they - the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), and Halsey - are afraid that if the Spartans knew who they used to be they wouldn’t want to be Spartans anymore. In proper canon, the Spartans are effectively brainwashed into being soldiers by dint of being trained from the age of 6, but they do remember everything. In the novel The Fall of Reach, the topic of erasing memories is briefly discussed but immediately dismissed by Halsey, stating about targeted amnesia “A memory loss that may leak into other parts of the brain. No, this will be dangerous enough for them even with intact minds.”
Part of the plot of the show has John recovering memories about his prior life through interacting with the artefact. As of episode 3, it just so turns out that John knew about another piece of the artefact back since before he was kidnapped and conscripted. I’m sure it’ll end up mattering more and more through the series and frankly I’ve got a pretty good idea of where it leads; the librarians geas - the idea that the Forerunners implanted a sort of genetic DNA in the human race to fight the Flood. That’s one of the weaker ideas of 343’s Halo and while I’m not surprised to see it show up here - it does tie into why I find the changes this show makes all the more frustrating - I, well, find the idea that your hero’s actions are pre-determined to be kind of weak.
Moving slightly tangentially - Cortana. In actual canon, Smart AIs - that is, AIs born of scanning actual human brains - are fairly common, at least among UNSC and ONI systems. There’s also dumb AIs - AIs that are completely synthetic and rather limited in scope, used for maintaining systems, running city networks etc etc. Smart AIs like Cortana are able of thinking in the way that we would define it for ourselves - coming up with new ideas, not just following programming. They’re used for when tasks are too complicated for a Dumb AI; Cortana’s specialty is in information processing and computer network manuipulation. More importantly their appearance, name, and behaviour are all entirely determined by themselves on first boot - they’re self-deterministic. For an example, we’re all pretty familiar with Cortana, the girl in the skintight blue leotard, but in the books there’s also AI like Black Box… who presents themselves as a black box.
In the Silver timeline, there’s no such thing as a Smart AI as far as I’m aware. It takes until episode 3 for anyone even to mention the existance of AI outside of “The Cortana Program”, where they’re usually all over the plot of any Halo story, often taking centre stage in the narrative. The fact that Halsey clones herself is fine for the narrative the problem with it is that ONI, this supposedly shady organisation that’s totally fine with kidnapping six year olds somehow draws the line at cloning humans. Also, it leads a deeply creepy moment with her assistant and the clone that I have no idea why it’s there apart from making us know that yes, this guy is an absolute creepshow.
In any case, after an unsettling surgery scene, Cortana comes online and I have to admit that Jen Taylor threw me for a loop here. It’s the voice of Cortana, but it’s really not her character in the slightest. There’s a few lines here and there delivered in such a way that I’m like “There she is!” but on a whole, this isn’t Cortana. Cortana canonically isn’t an AI that “follows directives”, or has problems when the plan changes, and here, at least in episode 3 that’s exactly what she does. She literally says “This isn’t what I was made for.” and that’s not what a Smart AI is supposed to be in Halo canon - Smart AIs mostly determine for themselves what they’re made for.
Bringing it back together this is the major issue that I have so far with Halo: The TV Series. They’ve taking characters from the canonical story and stripped them of their free will. In canon, while brainwashed to a degree John knows exactly what they’ve done to him. He’s made the decision to be a soldier protecting humanity and Halsey and the Spartan program is simply the best way that he has access to of doing that. Cortana has less say in the matter, when it comes down to it she’s just a chunk of silicon, but she took a look at what’s going on and decided that she was going to protect John the best she could.
This might come off as very whiny fanboy of me, in fact I’m 100% sure it does, but they took agency away from these characters and I think they’re all the more weaker for it. They’re going for a narrative of these characters regaining their own agency, when it really should be a narrative of characters in a system that already have limited agency and how they decide to use it to protect Humanity from being wiped out by the Covenant.
Plus, it always boils down to War Crimes are Bad and frankly that’s not what I find is interesting about Halo.