Mind Games: Why Alex Garland's new series Devs will blow your mind

Scene from the new sci-fi thriller series Devs

It's 8am on a Friday morning and I'm discussing quantum mechanics, multi-universe theories and the science behind how particles work with writer/director Alex Garland. This is a very early time to be discussing such things. Especially when you comprehensively failed science at school and don't know your quantums from your qubits.

To give you an idea of our conversation, wrap your head around this:

"You can say a quantum computer could theoretically simulate a quantum state to a high degree of complexity. They can't do it yet, but the principles of qubits, which are ones and zeroes at the same time, that is true."

Is it? I'll have to take his word for it because I can barely understand it. But that's okay. Neither could Garland initially, as he readily admits when I ask if grappling with these sorts of hard science concepts hurt his brain.

"Yeah, it did," he laughs. "Definitely."

Like his previous movies, the visually stunning and very thinky Natalie Portman-led metaphor that is 2018's Annihilation and 2014's frightening artificial intelligence thriller Ex Machina, Devs takes complicated scientific theories and ideas and extrapolates on them to craft intriguing, unsettling stories that trust - and test - the audience's intelligence.

Where Devs differs from his previous work, however, is that Garland has chosen to tell the story on television. Surprising, I say, given the critical acclaim and success of his movies. Why did he want to move to TV?

"One of the answers might be that I haven't had success with film," he softly chuckles. "I've made several films that have lost quite a lot of money. There have been people out there that have really liked the movies, which is great, but in commercial terms, I haven't been successful. But also, this particular story, it didn't have any way to tell it via a movie. The areas it goes and the way it tells the story, the way it unfolds, could only work on television."

Devs tells the story of a young computer engineer working at a big tech firm, comparable to an Apple or a Google, whose boyfriend mysteriously disappears shortly after being transferred into a prestigious but highly secretive division. As she starts digging into what happened to him she uncovers all manner of awful truths that threaten her life.

Scene from the new sci-fi thriller series Devs

The cultish devotion people have to incredibly powerful tech companies, the biggest of which have as much money and clout as nation-states but without any real oversight, was one of the ideas he wanted to explore.

"The skeptic in me felt troubled about that," Garland explains. "There's often a culty vibe that goes along with them, like there's a lot of Kool-Aid being drunk."

But Devs is also about grander ideas that pit science against philosophy to explore the very nature of humanity.

"I'd encountered some ideas in the world of science, which had philosophical implications that I found very interesting and provocative and thought-provoking," he says. "The show talks about the fundamentals of science, quantum mechanics and principles like determinism, which is a scientific concept that meets a philosophical concept."

To get a handle on these, frankly, mind-boggling concepts, Garland says he read and read and read and watched university lectures on YouTube.

"It's really, really hard work," he says. "It'd be easier for people who had minds that are better able to understand this stuff than I do. But if you oversimplify the science you tend to make the science false. And when you make the science false that means the philosophical ideas that flow from it are false. So I try to keep it true. Ultimately, what I'm interested in are the ideas."

We discuss some of these ideas, which is devastatingly interesting but also heavy going and has Garland saying sentences like, "Particles that appear to be in multiple spaces at the same time actually are at multiple spaces at the same time. But then when you observe them they sort of fold in and they're only in one," or "There's a very strange idea that says there are many concurrent existing, almost parallel universes, all of which have equal status to each other."

But the most fascinating that Devs deep dives into is the idea of determinism versus free will. We know what the latter is, the ability to make our own choices, but determinism argues we have no control over how we act and that our lives are essentially on rails we are powerless to get off.

Devs posits that if you could build a supercomputer powerful enough to harness the quantum mechanics involved to crunch those qubits and make sense of those particles that somehow exist in multiple universes at the same time, then what you would have on your hands is a machine capable of accurately predicting the future.

Take a moment to think about that. Then another to imagine the horrifying ramifications of a machine like that being in the hands of, say, Facebook. Yikes.

But that's not even the worst part. No.

Alex Garland (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)

The really frightening thing is the thought that if such a thing was possible - and Garland's writing is coming from a factual basis, remember - then it proves we have no control over any of our choices. We are merely cogs grinding along our predetermined wheels with no autonomy over our own lives.

Surely this is just sci-fi scaremongering in order to tell a ripping yarn? I look to Garland for reassurance. Did he reach a conclusion?

"Yeah, I did," he says. "I come down on the side that we do not have free will."

Oh.

This is not the answer I'm expecting.

"The more you look at it, it becomes increasingly difficult to see where free will would reside," he continues. "I know we have a very intense sense that we have free will, we're all pretty convinced of it, but the harder you look the more elusive it gets."

Scene from the new sci-fi thriller series Devs

He gives a simple example of a person committing a crime. Did that person have free will, choosing to commit the crime, or did the fact that their parents were drug addicts and they were addicted to crystal meth by age 16 play into it?

"Suddenly their free will is starting to evaporate and they are more a victim of circumstance. That's an easy example to prove a case," he says. "But the more you look into it the more that extends to everything. It's just more subtle. Instead of talking about mugging someone at knifepoint, it's about whether you prefer coffee to tea. Then it gets more complicated as quantum mechanics starts to throw up areas. Personally, it never gets to a satisfactory answer for me. I suspect we have the illusion of free will but we don't actually have it."

So no need to wonder if you should watch Devs or not. I can tell you that it's intelligent and challenging, intense and thrilling, visually and aurally stunning, brilliantly entertaining and an unsettling viewing experience that leaves you mulling on what you just watched long after the credits roll.

But, if Garland is correct, the choice to watch the show or not has already been made. And you had nothing to do with it.

LOWDOWN
Who: Writer/director Alex Garland
What: Sci-fi thriller Devs
When: New episodes weekly on Neon and Soho.