Soma is a key facet of life to the elites of New London-the utopian society presented in the series-but not everyone is on the same page when it comes to usage. And as we see throughout the early episodes of the show, Bernard Marx (Harry Lloyd) hands it out like candy, offering M&M-like pills to adults and children alike from either a large display in his office, or a small dispenser that he carries around. Sign Up (For Free) For Peacock Here So what is Soma in Brave New World, anyway?Įven for people who haven't read Huxley's book, the show gives clear enough context to be able to piece together what, exactly, Soma is: a drug that numbs any sort of discomfort, from anxiety to stress to general uneasiness.

(There have also already been TV film adaptations in 19 at one point in the late 2000s, there was a plan for a theatrical feature film where Leonardo DiCaprio would star and Ridley Scott would direct, but those plans never materialized into a film).īut now that Peacock's Brave New World has made it into the world-the first two episodes are streaming now for free-it's imperative to understand what Soma is, and how it fits into two different worlds: Brave New World's, and our own. As the first episode shows, this also leads to some bizarre happenings: No one is allowed to have sexual relations with the same partner for an elongated time, and, well, orgies seem to be a pretty standard form of recreation.īut another way that people in New London-the man-made society that Brave New World depicts-get through things is by continually popping a drug called 'Soma.' Soma might sound familiar because, well, Huxley's source material is nearly 100 years old and it's been referenced quite a bit. Based on the 1932 Aldous Huxley novel of the same name, Brave New World tells the story of a future utopian society where monogamy, family, and privacy are all outlawed to make for a society that functions without issues. It's a big time for NBC/Universal, which just launched a major new streaming platform-Peacock-with a major new sci-fi show of it's own, Brave New World. Brave New World is now streaming (for free) on Peacock.The drug, which was featured in Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel of the same name, has also been referenced in writings and pop culture throughout the years.'Soma' is the name of a seemingly all-purpose drug used in the new series Brave New World.

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