Based on Philip K Dick’s 1955 short story, “Autofac” was the eighth part of the 2017 anthology series “Electric Dreams”. In a world devastated by war, the Autofac, an automated factory, continues to pollute and churn out products for a civilization that no longer requires them. A band of human survivors (including “Ted Lasso’s” Juno Temple as Emily) aims to strike at the heart of the Autofac bunker and, with the aid of a reprogrammed robot designed for Autofac customer support, find a way of doing just that.

Dick’s work regularly features motifs of self-identity and the evils of capitalism, and “Autofac” is a classic example of those themes. What appears on the surface to be a tale of plucky rebels fighting against an unfeeling oppressor ends up having two killer twists: The rebels are themselves manufactured products of the Autofac, forced to engineer consumers to justify its existence, and Emily is already aware that she is an artificial being modeled after the original human creator of the Autofac.

“Autofac’s” production values never quite match its ambition, but there is no denying the power of its twists.