Hawk-Eye Debuts On 'Minority Report'

Well Monday night's episode of Minority Report settles it. The futuristic version of the country is destined to become a police state. On the Episode 3, "Hawk-Eye," the titular police program monitoring crime debuted in Washington DC with a lot of excitement in the police department. But of course it had its detractors, including Detective Vega herself. Vega made jokes during the Hawk-Eye presentation that the police better have great lawyers and that making arrests and placing people on watch would be tough to do without proper motive or titles for the suspicious behavior. And while all of that is an accurate set of doubts for a cop administering the program to have, there's quite obviously a much bigger problem with the program. Hawk-Eye could turn the country into a Big Brother-style government. And some characters have more of a problem with it than others.

Will Blake is not a detractor, he could not support Hawk-Eye more if he had come up with it himself. He tries to convince Vega of its efficiency and potential by stating that it could be as successful as Pre-Crime was. But Vega of course states the obvious: Pre-Crime failed miserably. It crashed and burned after the effects of John Anderton's battle against it in the film Minority Report. And the problems with Hawk-Eye were more apparently similar to Pre-Crime than anyone could have imagined after the events of Monday night's episode.

Hawk-Eye supposedly tracks suspicious behavior in people and flags them for closer watch. If someone has a repeat pattern of suspicious behavior, they are basically placed under constant supervision. From here, the program monitors whether or not the person will be a threat to himself or to others. After seeing a vision and once again worrying about getting caught as a Precog, Dash is convinced by Vega into working for the police department as a "Hawk-Eye Analyst" partnered up with a detective (Vega, of course), and the two are able to follow their case from the vision. Thanks to Hawk-Eye, the supposed criminal has already been placed under supervision, but things go horribly wrong thanks in large part to the program.

Dash and Vega eventually discover that the criminal Mark Massero was sabotaged by his business partner and therapist to be placed in a new mental health treatment that actually decreased his levels of fear so much so that he didn't fear violence, speed, or even death. So while Hawk-Eye was tracking Mark's activities and psychology, it couldn't actually determine what was really happening. Much like Pre-Crime, Hawk-Eye was only able to determine part of the problem but couldn't take into consideration human intent, free will and the darkness inside of people. There's only so much a program can do, and for the police to use it solely as their method of catching supposed "criminals" proves that people are becoming for more and more dependent on technology to do their work for them in this futuristic locale. Big Brother, watch-dog style police programs aren't saving lives in Minority Report, people do that all by themselves.

Image: FOX