In a way, I feel sorry for [film,music]-makers today, and sci-fi is a good example of an area that has been [carpet,cluster]-bombed with a huge diversity of really neat ideas, making it more and more difficult to be novel.  Perhaps that puts much more pressure on developing broader "film attractiveness" in conventional ways :

• [love,sex or sexiness,violence,altruistic,saviour,criminal,evil]
  
• music - as you have mentioned.  For me, to be a great movie, a film must invariably have a great sound track, and more - great use of [voice,sound,sound effects,etc]  throughout the film.  This is similar to the compositor imagery (new awareness to me, that we take for granted).
• [competition, rivalry] - whether [internal, organisational,external]
  
• dance -
  
• key - escapism, and don't make the viewer work too hard.  Maybe it's just me, but the [escapism,virtual reality] aspect of films is perhaps dominant.  Why do I even waste my time on films, which almost always completely lack and serious content, and which can never compare to the [beauty,power,complexity,etc] of reading a well [written,analysed] book (usually [science,history,economics,business,finance,war,foreign [contexts,affairs] for me).
  

On the dark side :

• turning good guys (in reality) into evil typecasts (in our sociologically twisted thinking), and making heros out of [liars,morons,] most likely under the pretext of dysfunctional [new,alternative] perspectives and political correctness. 
  

When I put some time into an email like this, I usually first post it to my blog, THEN link to the blog to the [person,group] in question.  That also makes it far easier to share with a group, or different [individuals,groups].   In this case, it may have "film proposal competitiveness" implications (not likely, but possibly), so I'm just emailing (easy for anyone to pick this up, though), so I won't post for now.  So let me know if I should "keep it hidden for 1-3 years, or if it doesn't matter so I should just post it now.


Dad


**********************

Perhaps this is an opportunity to be both dramatically novel, and far broader in concept than what has been done before.   That is probably NOT and objective you have, nor are [details,basic science] good selling points for entertainment films (or most actual science films, for that matter!). 

While constant over-arching themes are probably essential glue to hold a film together and to keep the viewer , I assume that one doesn't have to ALWAYS limit oneself to a small number of things in a series to the degree that a single 2 hour film has to focus.  Perhaps a constant bubbling of concepts throughout a series can make it mare [scientifically, thematically] alive, and fresh for the viewer?



**********************
Science side - sub-theme comments somewhat related to "Karma"
[random,scattered,simple,incomplete] thoughts (some simply copied from a recent "paradigm shift" email to Catherine, and the email to you of 19Jun2018)

WARNING :  It would be really easy for you to be [behind,less creative,less aggressive] with your themes than the reality of what science is ALREADY doing!!!

I'm not suggesting that ANY of the ideas in the this section be used.  This is simply provided in case they stimulate other ideas that you might be interested in using, hopefully new [insights,concepts, perspectives] of your own. 


Memory-specific

Replacement parts for the brain (Ted Berger) -   Hippocampal prothesesis : Welcome to an existing, if very immature, reality, but how far will it go?  A company was founded in 2017 to pursue this, and Alzeimer's is their top target for now.  Lots of BIG challenges left to solve, though.  Great basis to expand on for a film series.

• short description in my video :  http://www.billhowell.ca/Bill%20Howells%20videos/160901%20Big%20Data,%20Deep%20Learning,%20and%20Safety/Howell%20161220%20Big%20Data,%20Deep%20Learning,%20Safety.ogv
  
• script :   http://www.billhowell.ca/Bill%20Howells%20videos/160901%20Big%20Data,%20Deep%20Learning,%20and%20Safety/Scenes/Safety%20Hippocampal%20prosthesis/0_Safety%20-%20Hippocampal%20prosthesis.odt
  

This is closely related to your theme, albeit involving machine hybrid.

Magneto-EncephaloGram (MEG)  direct brain process disruption (?Mitsou Kawato?, retired, past Neural Networks journal Co-Editorin-Chief, 2005)   -  Scientific work was understaken to study MEG-invoked disruption to brain process, in order to better understand causality and mechanisms (as compared to fMRI,EEG etc).   No idea how this has turned out in the last 15 years.


"Brain Decoding for MEG/fMRI data"  (Subba Reddy Oota, Hyderabad  https://www.linkedin.com/in/subba-reddy-oota-11a91254/ ) -  At the IJCNN2017 Anchorage conference,
memory location depending on subject


Confabulation Theory of cognition  (Robert Hecht-Nielson) -  This is the ONLY [specific,quantitative,predictive] model of cognition (as Hecht-Nielson describes it) that I know of!!!!  For "Karma", a key point not mentioned in my other write-ups is that the implicit theoretical limits to memory and cognition could by vastly increased quantitatively by machine confabulation.  The reverse of the hippocampal conversion of short-to-long-term memory in the brain is not defined, but if possible that might potnetially be a key to unlocking evolutionary "locked-in, never-expressed" memory, behaviour in a sense that compliments what the character "Sarah" does.

• 24Aug11 Confabulation Theory for Cognition: "Next Plausible Sentence" survey - Confabulation is a biologically-inspired theory for cognition that was developed by Robert Hecht-Nielson of San Diego. It is described in an overview fashion in Section I, and in much greater detail in his 2007 book "Confabulation Theory: The mechanism of thought" As a gross overview, Confabulation Theory assumes that information is held within "attribute classes" in roughly 4,000 thalamocortical modules (carrying information about "mental object attributes") and roughly 40,000 cortical knowledge bases (establishing "meaningful co-occurrences" between thalamocortical modules). Confabulation DIFFERS from Bayes theorem in statistics, and these simple differences make confabulation a superior form of reasoning for the real world, where information is often incomplete, erroneous, or event misleading (predator – prey). The "Next Plausible Sentence" exercise as presented in Part II of this paper was a critically important eye-opener for me, and gives a very strong "hands on" sense that while technology has a very, very long ways to go, it is a very, very long ways further along than commonly thought.

"MindCode : Given that computer code is used to program the computer, then MindCode ..."   -  This is my "priority project that I never work on since the late 1990's"  (http://www.billhowell.ca/Neural%20nets/Howell%20150225%20-%20MindCode%20Manifesto.odt)   - see my email to you 19Jun2018.  Obviously I'm biased on this long-term project of mine, of which I see traces in some current research (self-delusion?).  A good way to keep this in perspective is my catchy phrase :

"...   Everything we learn, our education, experiences, amount to only a thin layer of peach fuzz on top of an enormously powerful, complex, and beautiful "machine that has been predefined by the evolution of our species and its predecessors.   ..."   What mainstream computer science does are the [simple,easy] computations (such as physics, chemistry, database management, etc) to which we assign the highest level of intelligence, but Computational intelligence is only starting to do modestly  hard stuff, like tying your shoe-laces which we consider to be "dumb".

One hypothesis of schizophrenia (Wolfgang Maas ~2007?) -   Disrupted gamma rythms?  Quickly - a mismatch in timing of perception and "thinking" giving a confusing mismatch and misunderstanding of reality.  Paranoia might be expected!!!


Unsupervised learning and glial cells (Harold Szu, 20016 or 2017)  -  Beautiful idea, no time to describe.  It could be useful for "Karma".


Traditional thinking versus science  -  This is an area that IS of active interest to me.  I slowly collect items here and there, even though most examples are lost or not recorded.   This is driven by my own gradual realisation of the failures and limitations of science and scientists.  It could be a very fruitful area for conflicts and growth individually for each of "Sarah" (more traditional) and "Abigail"  as well as for the relationships between them and others.   The whole challenge of communicating one's perspective, and for gradually appreciating the strengths and weaknesses of belief systmes and interactions between belief systems might be very interesting.  Having the courage (foolishness?) of pointing out the catastrophic failures that are characteristic of ALL areas of science could make your series unique, or at least make it a contrast to occasional commentaries on the "almost perpetual roll-over" of limitations and failures of science and scientific thinkers. 


Science as an outcome of religious thinking and institutions - 
Science IS an ecosystem of (non-theological) religions - 
These are kind of obvious from history, albeit not complete explanations.   My thinkimg uses, but often disagrees with Lucio Russo's "How science began 300 BC, and why it had to be reinvented"
No time to elaborate...


Science-religion antagonism -   Perhaps originally, and to a much more limited extent today, religions have been antagonistic towards science, but I feel that the criticisms of religion have been largely [dishonest,Quixotic] on the part of scientists (Richard Dawkins being a modern example).  It's odd to me that so many scientists are rabidly anti-religious, given that many (if not most) the great strides in thinking were often developed in religions (Western science itself can be seen as having formal origins in religious communities, and the oft-portrayed religious antagonism to science is oft-untrue. 


Don Quixote approach to argumentation and self-promotion -   Perhaps more often than not, argumentation in general and social change in particular are promoted by "creating a monster" (a little fire, far more smoke), attacking and killing it, then making onself out to be the hero.   The problem is that the "evil dragon" is usually GOOD [people,systems,organisations], with or without issues, who are dishonestly painted the wrong cover, and who suffer tremendously.   The hero, on closer inspection, is a liar and a moron, but most often with good intentions.


Lies, damned lies, and scientists  (http://www.billhowell.ca/Climate%20-%20Kyoto%20Premise%20fraud/Howell%20150331%20Lies,%20Damned%20Lies,%20and%20Scientists%20-%20Summary%20&%20context.pdf)  -  My own project, long-term back-burner, to study dysfunctional thinking by scientists.  Apart from drawing parallels between science, my own focus is on SPECIFIC, REPEATABLE, PREPETUAL failures of [science, scientists].  Although I do liken science to religion, the basis of the analysis is pure science itself.   If "Abigail" is like essentially all [government,academic] scientists, she will NEVER be able to understand failures, becasue she will be COGNITIVELY INCAPABLE of deviating from her "programmed" belief systems.

"All theories are wrong, but some are useful"  (American geologist in 50's? - probably others going back to the ancients)
"...  but the most successful theories, which have passed from [fashion -> cult -> religion], ultimately become our greatest impediments to progress, as they stifle thinking, and are fiercely defended by their scientist-disciples, who destroy the personal lives and careers of those who dare challenge the beliefs."  (Howell) -    To me, there are huge commonalities between modern scientists and traditional religious fanatics (example - jihadists, crusaders, Catholic inquisition - although there are strong reasons for that).


Multiple Conflicting Hypothesis -  A key them of mine, I had to throw it in somewhere.   Perhaps in a film perspective it could be useful - one doesn't always have to have an answer, and may be better without one - questions and multiple conflicting hypothesis may be far more powerful.


Post-[rational,logical,scientific] thinking - We take [rational,logical,scientific] thinking as being "the true way", and the "target to strive for] if other people weren't so stupid.   It is great (and often provably optimal) for classical problems in [technical,engineering,scientific] areas, and will continue to be a part of more advanced thinking, but it is inadequate for even modestly complex systems, and ignores that other "thinking" processes are essential for [solving real problem, decision-making,beliefs,etc] even when it is applied.   Non-[rational,logical,scientific] thinking includes [random or biased search,pattern recognition, ....  ????.  

"Butterflies in the clouds, and the Milancovich wandering of greener pastures and glaciers :  Towards a quasi-predictive model of civilisations" :

08Aug07 Mega Life, Mega Death, and the invisible hand of the sun: Towards a quasi-predictive model for the rise and fall of civilisations. This is an update of our document first posted ~05May07, still in early draft, incomplete stage but lots of fun stuff! The underlying theme in "poetry form" is "Butterflies in the clouds, and the Milankovic wandering of greener pastures and glaciers" Forget that little butterfly in Indonesia that destabilized the thinking of a whole generation of scientists merely by flapping its wings :-), and find out about the real "Monster buttlerfly of solar chaos" and other chaotic processes that compliment more regular, predictable astronomical processes.

Mythology isn't a myth (David Talbot and others) -   https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/  and https://www.facebook.com/groups/mythsarehistory/
Mythologist have really made fools of scientists since at least the 1950's, notably in [physics,astronomy,geology,climate]


Creativity and novelty   -  Systems evolve in [competition,collaboration,other] to a point where [problems,challenges] drive a level of [proficiency or understanding (these are NOT the same!)] such that what appears as [random,statistical,mysterious] to less [evolved,effective] agents  becomes [identifiable,model-able,predictable,controllable].  It changes the entire perspective.  It changes the QUESTIONS.

In your prospectus, "Sarah" undergoes something like this with her "supernatural powers". 

(Ali Minal, Uof ?Ohio? Cincinnati, INNS Past President)

... out of time

Extra-Sensory Perception (or perception via unrecognised perceptual and actioning systems?) 
I am EXTREMELY weak in this subject area!!  Here are a couple that intruiged me (mostly the Paranormal thing)

Human Bioelectricity and the EU Model (Eileen McKusick, EU2017)  -  Electric Universe theory shows us that the Universe we inhabit is electrical in nature. But what about us as humans? Medical science has been entrenched in the chemical/mechanical nature of the human body, yet we too are electrical in nature. In this talk, we will consider research on the bioelectric body and see how that fits in with the EU model.

Paranormal (Dean Radin, "Men Who Stare at Photons"  at EU2017 conference in Albuquerque) ( http://www.noetic.org/  https://noetic.org/profile/dean-radin)-  By its discernment of connectedness within every domain of the physical world and of life itself, the Electric Universe progressively pushes the boundaries between normal and the so-called paranormal. Now it calls for consideration of phenomena that have been rigorously investigated for over a century, along the way developing many of the gold-standard scientific methodologies commonly used today in conventional disciplines. Those phenomena include experiments involving direct interactions between minds, and between minds and matter.


Emotions, Decision-Making, human failures, Brain structures


Rich Clubs of the Brain (Olaf Sporns)  -  High degree of short-range connectednes, and more sparse long-range commenctions maximizes complexity of a system.  In an IJCNN2013 Dallas Plenary talk, Sporns described ?23? centers of high-connectedness in the brain (mesoscale) and discussed the significance.   But what about organisations, societies, multi-agent machine systems ...?


Chaos theory as a fundamental principle of brain operation at the meso-scale  (Walter Freeman, Robert Kozma, Quian Quiroga, Stuart Kaufmann) -  (meso- is between micro (neuron) and macro (brain regions) scales)
This is extemely interesting, but I've no time to eloborate at this time.


[Rational,logical,scientific]  versus [non-rational,non-logical,non-scientific] thinking 
   (Artificial Intelligence)       versus     (Computational Intelligence), both in contrast to [Emotional, Intuitive] thinking
The [big,new,powerful] stuff is CI, not AI.  So what about all ouf our current mis-perceptions and basis for [philosophy,problem solving, understanding the failures of how we are doing things]?


"Anti-Murphy's Law and Anti-Engineeering" -  It seems to me that scientists and engineers work directly with the brain, the normal rules are irrelevant.  The brain itself (monkey or man) makes things work.


[Astronomical, Astrological] influences on [emotional,physical,mental] human processes


Neurotransmitter hypothesis (Kenji Doya)  -  Dopamine, acetocholine, nor-adrenaline, serotonin .  No time to elaborate, but the really fantastic insight (unproven) was the critical role of randomness (serotonin).  Reminiscent of Chaos theory as a basis for brain function (above).


Parasite-driven behaviour modification -   For some time this has been studied in science.  With relation to humans, I've long wondered if hyper-sexual activity is a product of this (microbe, bacteria more that parasites, but who knows?). 


Toolsets of science in the area of Computational Intelligence - 

• Backpropagation versus Ordered derivatives, and other neural network training algorithms  (Paul Werbos) - 
• [Approximate,Adaptive] Dynamic Processing  (ADP, Paul Werbos) - optimisation, adaptation
• Reinforcement Learning - mentioned above...
• Unification of optimal and adaptive control theory areas (Frank Lewis) -  ADP context
• Information theoretics or the Thermodynamics of learning - 
• "True learning MUST involve evolution - parameter adjustment of models just won't do."  (David Fogel)
  

Influencing capabilities, vision, and leadership  -   The character Sarah is portrayed as a lone, exceptional individual.  But ultimately, even exceptional individuals are vastly more powerful when the [found,organise,manage,develop] following and organisation that can attract individuals.   I find that Hollywood mostly fails to [understand,portray] leadership in anything but the most [simplistic,mis-leading]  ways, even when films about great leaders are produced (eg recent film on Churchill, but modern portrayals of J. Edgar Hoover, General George Patton (which actually did a pretty good job), Margaret Thatcher, etc).  Portrayals have far more to do with the unbalanced and, to me, childish political bent of Hollywood than reality.   I guess one can say that all perspectives are valid, but when the are almost uniformly one-sided politically, that is a major failure and sickness.

• Challenges of leadership and management - 
  
• Complexity of organisation and decision-making processes - 
  
• Experts, generalists, and solvers -
• Hollywood's inability to portray leadership - 
  

Game theory  - 

AlphaGo beat top Go player  (Alphabet Inc (Google) Deep Mind, 2015?) -   This is STILL huge news, and surprising.  Moreover, apparently that's it for traditional board games, and the focus has turned to competitive, real-time, 2D-or-3D [interactive,competitive,tactical,strategic] video games (I would also unfairly dump military strategy training systems, flight simulator training, etc into this).

No time to elaborate ....


Reincarnation -  see my email to you 19Jun2018

Aging :  "We may be the last generation to die" (presenter in early-mid 2000s) -  I did a survey on that, but never wrote up the results and comments.  Pity.  Very interesting potential impacts on [iIndividuals, economics, societies].   This theme may change dramatically, or not?  It seems to be a tough biological nut to crack.


**********************
Science side - Machine-Robot sub-themes
AGAIN :   [random,scattered,simple,incomplete] thoughts (some simply copied from a recent "paradigm shift" email to Catherine, and the email to you of 19Jun2018)

My own thinking is relatively limited in the direct line of the "Karma", themes, and I naturally migrate or change the subject to familiar-to-me themes, which relate much more to machine intelligence and robots.  I don't spend much time on robots per se - just the Computational Intelligence basic tools that are applied to robots.   So here it goes, no matter how irrelevant...


Machine Consciousness - [human,machine,hybrid,emergent,collective,systemic] 
(John Taylor's theory based on Paul Werbos' control concept & the brain, as well as psychology)
Like Robert Hecht-Nielson's Confabulation Theory above,  in spite of HUGE literature on the subject, John Taylors' work (deceased in 2016 or 2017) is the ONLY [specific,quantitative,predictive] model of Consciousness that I know of!!!!  Although very interesting, I am NOT so impressed with other concepts I have read through.

Who am I?  Why am I here?  -  Defining one's own reason for being is perhaps one of our greatest challenges, done perhaps most often by default "following whichever way the wind blows" (including university program choices?).   But this is also a key NECESSITY of advanced systems.  I don't think I described this in one of my Social Media reports done while at NRCan (see the point immediately below).

Social media and consciousness  (Howell paper)

Quantitative limits to human memory and cognition, and the implications of [community,machine] ultra-large capacity

• Qualitative broadening, deepening of cognition far beyond human limits - (see Confabulation Theeory above)  A common misconception is that bigger faster machines lead to more advanced capabilities.  This may be how even many scientists wrongly see the "Big Data" excitement of the last few years, even though [speed,memory-storage size]  re important.  But repeated examples over time show that the key to advances has been the conceptual and algorithmic advances that break new ground and give rise to completely new capabilities.
  

Machines versus evolved humans versus symbiotic hybrids -  One thing I like is that your proposal is NOT just another sci-fi "...   the machines will evolve and destroy us   ..." film.  On the other had, maybe the reason this is always presented this way is because that is what sells many sci-fi films?  

Big area and history - no time to elaborate

Fight the near-uniformity of "anti-robot racism"!  -  


Evolution -  It strikes me when reading your description of the future, that it seems to be going down a somewhat conventional path of thinking on the subject, especially as it relates to films.  It is curious, as processes of [biological, computational] evolution are vastly more [creative,powerful] than human thought, and NO ONE describes evolutionary process well.  If you wanted to be a bit different and innovative, you could go deeper into the unpredictable nature of evolution, and it shear power (>> human!). 

Here are some sub-sub-themes on evolution :

"Temporal flexibility of evolution and variability of phenotypes depending on functional criticality" (some source or other I've forgotten, embellished by my own extensions and BS).  The key point here is that brain function,  : 

• mitochondrial DNA - comes from the mother only  and is assumed to have been the result of a symbiosis of prinitive micro-organisms and multicellular organisms.  Energy efficiency and negative effects of by-products are critical, so there is probably little room for experimentation on the short term, although mutations, changes are always happening at some (small ?) rate.
• Heart, liver etc -  There is more lattitude here for variance, but side effects are important.  So probably a low rate of change and variability.
• Skeleton, muscle skin -  Maybe there is a fair degree of latitude here.  In a sense, bone and bone marrow are highly dynamic - changing with [average,peak] stresses of living.  I've often though that bone thickness and the "bone fibre" in the marrow are like neural networks - computational systems for [strenght, stress, shock, bio-affordability].
• Hands -  Special case I haven't thought of much.  Dexterity and strength are critical for human effectiveness, and robustness must be really important.
• Facial features, skin color etc -  Now variability is important!   (mate selection, identification of individuals, etc)  Actually, for spies and crooks, there would be huge advantage to having "morphing [facial,hair] features" so they can more easily escape detection.  An interesting side issue is that Mendelian heredity
  
• Endocrine system - 
• brain -  As a set of many, many "universal function approximators",  fairly large changes in brain [synapses,neuron function,architecture] and concepts well past [operating systems,controls] can be expeerimented with without undue catastrophe - as much can be compensated for.
  
• psychology & social -
  
• language - Gary Markus "Kluge" ( about the immaturity of the evolution of human language, from which I infer massive evolution both gradually and in "switch-overs".
  
• behaviour -  Not only hugely flexible, but my guess is that propbably little of "innate behaviour" ever gets expressed, as the conditions only arise for some individuals in some generations.  But we only need to consider family and friends to know that there is HUGE potential for biological [diversity, change] in behaviour.
  

Future effects -  trivial deterministic [actions,thoughts] versus  giant [creative,powerful,non-predictive] realistic changes
Much of Hollywood necessarily focuses on fast changes in a breakthrough [concept,science], but the beauty and richness of time and effort are far more substantial.  I think this has created gross misunderstandings in the scientific community, not to mention the public. 


Lamarckian heredity versus Mendellian heredity  -  This another really fun subject

• "...   The objective of our group is to destroy the central dogma of all biology : genetics   ..."  George Mattick's group at the Uof Queensland, Brisbane (~2002?).   As usual, grand pronouncements of certainty and truth by essentially ALL [govenment,academic] reserach scientists have proved to be baloney, over and over.
  
• Lyshenkoism -  Was he RIGHT (at least partially)?  He certainly became hated ...  and sometimes that's a signal to look closer.  It might even be a fun [politically-incorrect, historically based] portion of a film, with DARK overtones?
  

Evolving Connectionist Systems (ECOS, Nik Kasabov, Auckland, NZ) -  Nik is a giant in the area (Plamen Angelov is the younger leader), but I've no time to explain.


Hyper-evolution -  

• "Neuro-evolution"  (Risto Miikkulainen and Ken Stanley) -  see my email to you 19Jun2018.  This takes on special significance with human-machine hybrids (see Ted Berger comment below), as advancing understanding AND re-definition of the process of evolution itself will be extremely easy to implement on the machine side (famous last words).
  

**********************
Science side - Genetics and  sub-themes
While I have spent a significant amount of time looking into this (MindCode, for example),  I just haven't been able to keep it up.  I am also out of time to work on this email, so I'll leave it to the side for now.

Epigenetic switches and childhood [mental,behavioural] dysfunction caused by home environment (Michael Healy, McGillU) -   Early stage, how will this progress?  Getting back to parenting again.... ???  Are we all damaged?  Is damage caused by modern parenting theory?


Programmable genetic phages for medical treatments (?Israeli paper ~2002?) -  They emphasized on cancer, but the concept is very broad in application potential (if it can be done).  It could be [related to,combined with] to the huge problem of getting past the "small-molecule" limitations of medications, because only they can easily get across the membranes.  Large molecules could be vastly more powerful, effective, limited in side effects.  So how can one deliver macromolecules. 


"Our objective is to destroy the central dogma of all biology : Genetics"  (John Mattick & colleagues, ~2002?)


see also MindCode above ...




**********************
[Sci-Fi,Psyc] Films that come to mind


Sci-Fi - with  Some relevance to "Karma" proposal
Most films listed below are heavy on the robot side of things. 

Ready Player One -  Easter Egg, gamers (few hot shots, but everybody wants to be one?), love story, evil company, revolt
Near the end of the film, a BIG hint :
Parcival :  "Is Halliday dead?"
Halliday : "Yes"
Parcival :   "Are you an Avatar?"
Halliday :  "No."

Ex Machina -   Strong conceptual basis and questions (albeit classical Artificial Intelligence more than modern Computational Intelligence), sexy robot, a bit [stale,tinny,slow] like Kubrick films

Galatica  (prelude to Battlestar Galactica series, which I've never watched)  (no so much Caprica) -  Interesting and nicely done

Minority Report (Tom Cruise)  -  "Pre-cludes" [mind,situation,prediction]  theme

Selfless (Ryan Renolds, ?Ian? Kingsley) -  Tycoon takes body of another, but the original mind resurfaces

Kill Command -  great portrayal of machine evolution (but again anti-robot racism)

Player of games (author?)  -  Sci-fi BOOK (no film yet that I'm aware of).  Really interesting perspective on society, game theory, etc



Psychic

The Sixth Sense - with Bruce Willis.  Somewhat distantly related to your theme (on the Sarah side).


Mythology/Fantasy
These probably shouldn't be listed, but they are great films and the way they were put together may help provoke ideas.

Lord of the Rings, Hobbit -  Very powerful series for me, having read the books decades ago.

Beowulf -  Fun for me because of the traditional [teutonic?, viking] mythology base

Labyrinth (David Bowie music and acting)  -  children's film, beatiful music (dance scene)

Pathfinder -  Viking-in_North-America plus indigenous theme, dark mood but well done

Legend of the Naga Pearls -  Plot is a bit [crummy simple], but well put together, and with a mythology-style theme.

Great Wall (Matt Damon & ?French actor?) - fascinates me, probably because it refers to ancient legends about the wall, and I have no idea if there  is any real [myth,legend] for a periodic natural  "invasion" from the North (likely herbervoire migrations, rather than carnivore?).   However, Mongols on horses, especially if they had vastly superior "breakthrough" war horses, would be easily believable.  Kind of a human-animal hybrid of terror.



Not so much : -    Not related so much to "Karma", but I mention anyways

Warcraft - superbly done animation film, great theme action, challenges.  but not much [mind,memory] stuff.

Predator, Total Recall  (Swarzenegger version, but recent is good too)  -  Something haunting, attractive about them

Tales of Riddick (vin Diesel in Crematoria) -  Richly done sci-fi film

Guardians of the Galaxy -  great music, animation, story.  Witty and hilarious at the right places.

Blade Runner (original and recent) -  does deal with robot [equality,rights]

Matrix - powerful film!  fun

Extermination (recent Netflix) -  Earth-reclamation invasion by humans against a terrified android population
Oblivion (Tom Cruise) -  Cloned humans fighting terrorists, unknowingly on behalf of aliens who have already conquered Earth

Dune -  The film itself is a bit tinny, but the book had really fired up the imagination.  I have a DVD

I am Legend (Will Smith) -  Plague story nicely done, with zombie [learning,evolution,leadership] 

iRobot (Will Smith) - not warm to Asimov's 3 principals, but film well done.  I don't put it under "sci-fi with relevance to Karma" as I don't see it that way. 

Loopers (Bruce Willis, ???) -   Time travel, love story

Code ?47?, 

Max Headroom - just the yapping head, not the film itself


Dislike :
[Marvel,DC] comic book stuff - but they almost all dominate now
Sci-fi horror (eg ??)  -  You know me, (I think I stated this elsewhere), - I'm the worst guy to go to a horror film as I usually hate them.  Given the [stupid,cowardly,myopic] characters, I usually end up cheering for the monster...
Chick Flicks

**********************
Small editorial things - that caught me on first reading
Random, scattered, incorrect comments - normally you addressed the points below at a later stage of the document.

Initially, it seemed to me that there was a contradiction :
p3h0.65  statement       "...   Their paths cross when the scientist’s brilliant brother falls into a mysterious coma.   ..."
p6h0.65  contradiction  "...   Soon after, however, he falls into a mysterious coma.   ..."
However, on closer look there is no contradiction, it just seemed like that because both twins are neuroscientists, and I mixed up roles.

p3h0.75  change to "...   an equally terrifying and beautiful world and,   ..."

p7h0.7  currently   "...   Abigail contacts Sarah, a schizophrenic psychic healer who can travel to past lives,   ..."
Is Sarah a schizophrenic psychic healer, or a psychic healer of schizophrenics?  The first case, as written,  is probably more interesting. 
p8h1.0 answers this :   "...   maybe this journey will be the key to uncovering the foreign voice in her head...   ..."
p14h0.9   also   "...   These hyper-realistic journeys trigger her schizophrenia to new levels,   ..."
A BIG question for me, is how will you [interpret,portray,use] schizophrenia in the series.   The diversity of ideas is huge, even if convention says otherwise.
Question :  Do you really intend "paranoid schizophrenia", or psychopathic paranoid schizophrenia?
p15h0.8  answers "...   Despite her new found success, it hasn't always been easy for Sarah. She was diagnosed schizophrenic and suicidal at a young age and put in and out of institutions. Today, she is still afflicted by this voice, the one she has always heard.   ..."

p8h0.55  "...   all the while trying to level their mistrust in one another.   ..."
A bit [cloudy,ambiguous], but perhaps that is intended.  The reader's initial assumption is that they started with trust  (Abigail hired Sarah), but perhaps intervening scenes will develop suspicions.

p8h0.7   "...   which she now sees as an opportunity to author and overpower her brother.   ..."
What do you mean by "author" - she already "authors" as a neuro-scientist.   Perhaps what you mean is to be seen as the [originator,inventor] of the concept, and the one who made it work and displace earlier scientific ideas?
Presumably it's too early for Abigail to know her brother is "doing things" while in a comma?   One does not have to "overpower" someone in a comma!
p16h0.7  "...   hunger for celebrity as her twin brother   ..."

p18h0.9   "...   manipulate the arrow of time and tap into memories that stretch far before this life... and future ones?   ..."
I would change the last part which to me is awkward - maybe somethin like "...    and after it into future lives?  ..."

p19h0.95   Owen's character profile : "...   His secret is that he he knows about Vincent's experimental research, and will use it to succeed... at all cost.   ..."
You have almost no choice in how you portray business leaders, as this sad commentary is the overwhelming "knowledge" of our whole society, and Hollywood in particular.   It is also one of the greatest failures of Western thinking, especially while combined with the "[money,greed] is the basis of all evil".   A look at the greatest evils says almost the opposite.

p20 - 



-------- Forwarded Message --------

Subject:	Re: Happy Birthday!!!
Date:	Sun, 12 Aug 2018 11:47:12 -0700
From:	Sarah Howell <>
To:	Dad <>