Over at Tor.com, Natalie Zutter discusses “Why We Shouldn’t Reboot ReBoot”.

One of Hefferon’s big arguments was the need to update ReBoot’s structure, plot, and pop culture/technology references for a 21st-century, post-social media, cloud-inhabiting audience. Not only do these kids not know what the original ReBoot was like, but they didn’t grow up playing the kinds of single-player computer games that marked you as a User, the sprites’ eternal, existential enemy. Or, if you want to delve into the jokes behind various characters’ names: “I don’t think too many people would remember what a Dot Matrix [printer] is anymore,” Hefferon said by way of example.

Hell, by the time I was watching the show, I hardly knew what a dot matrix printer was! I used the Ray Tracer search engine for a hot second before Google monopolized that corner of the Internet, and I never even laid eyes on a capacitor, but nonetheless I appreciated the characters named for those. You didn’t have to know all of a computer’s guts by heart to appreciate ReBoot’s technological references.

While I would agree with most of Zutter’s points, I think a reboot of ReBoot would be a great thing. ReBoot was one of those rare shows that not just broke new ground, but created its own niche. It’s nostalgia talking, but I miss ReBoot. Coming in at the end of the original “cyberpunk” movement in science fiction, this show captured a lot of the zeitgeist of that period of the genre.

MS