Gabbing Geek staff was shocked to discover that Minority Report was being made into a TV show despite some of our writers claiming to have covered it for a while. And while we are all trying to find time to cram this show into our busy schedules, it was only upon reflection over the pilot that I realized a terrifying thing about the world of Minority Report the TV show. Find out what that is after the break.
If you’ve seen the movie Minority Report (and you should, it was great) then you may recall the first time Tom Cruise gathered evidence from the pre-cogs ending in a laser etched ball with the pre-murderers name. Tom waves his hands and gathers images, details, clues, all ending with an unnecessary Rube-Goldberg device that gave you a too-fancy ball with a name. Because paper printers are so old fashioned. And then Tom presented all this evidence to a judge in order to issue a warrant for the arrest of the pre-murderer. All good. Well, except it wasn’t all good and that’s the point of the movie.
But while the TV show takes place some time after the movie, a huge change has taken place in the society of Minority Report:
The police don’t need warrants anymore.
The show feels like a typical police procedural but with fancier technology and another, sinister plot moving in the background, but in the middle of the pilot we see two clear instances of the police obtaining evidence that would normally require a warrant or some kind of process to obtain. First, the selfie-drone that was in the mall is suddenly accessible to the police back in their lab; given that we saw the drone leave a teenager’s wrist we know it’s private property and yet the police didn’t need a warrant to access its pictures remotely? Then when the detective heads to the recovery center she sees a smartphone that belonged to a victim–one glance at the phone and all of its data is unlocked to her. That’s another instance of private property having its content spilled to a police officer for no reason other than she’s an officer.
Although we don’t have drones today as cool as the ones in Minority Report, nor are our smartphones as awesome, those are still both protected by some legal rights that no longer appear to exist in the more modern society. Either these are huge plotholes in a police procedural, part of the core of what they should get right, or this is a futuristic society in which the police don’t even need a judge’s permission to gather our private data. Scary stuff, when you think about it.
Gabbing Geek 
I’m not sold on this (watched 2nd episode). It’s just another futuristic cop show with _____ as it’s “unique” take/spin.
Continuum is ending soon (2 episodes left) and I probably won’t replace it with another new “genre” cop show. I have Grimm — that’s good enough for me.
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I found that interesting as well. I was prepared for some controversy. The entire premise boils down to covertly (well not so much after the latest episode) stopping crimes before they can happen despite the initial system being disbanded due to all the moral and liberty issues.
I thought that with the current issue with police making headlines, the contact lenses and other little things keeping tabs on cops, and the subsequent investigation taking place when the technology isn’t utilized and doesn’t provide support with the narrative was interesting.
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