According to the Sense8 Wikia Episode 3 of Sense8, “Smart Money is On the Skinny Bitch”, like all the episodes in season 1, was written by The Wachowskis & J. Michael Straczynski. J. Michael Straczynski is known for movies Babylon 5 and World War Z. Lana and Lilly Wachowski also wrote The Matrix and its sequels, as well as Bound. They wrote these movies as The Wachowski Brothers, but they are both trans women and now write simply as The Wachowksis. Nomi, one of the 8, is a trans woman, and the Wachowskis likely use their personal experiences to make Nomi a realistic character.

Sense8 stands out to me as having very minimal verbal communication. There is no voice-over or narration, and many scenes feature either no spoken words or only a couple of single lines spoken without responses. For example, the opening scene of this episode features two scared and as-of-yet-unidentified children watching around a corner as a mysterious man cuts open a woman’s skull with a surgical saw. The only dialogue is the girl whispering “Don’t look at him…”

A young girl whispers in the opening scene

One of the 8, in contrast, has strikingly more dialogue than the others in this episode. Lito, a famous actor has three separate scenes, all of which are focused on his dialogue with three other side characters. In these scenes, however, more emphasis is placed on what is left unsaid. Lito trips over his own words when trying to express his emotions to a woman in the first scene, and eventually his boyfriend takes pity on one/both of them and explains what Lito was unable to say. In the next scene the woman explains that Joaquin, who she is hiding from, “had words” with someone, and that her father is in the “import/export” business, once again leaving the real message unsaid.

Despite the lack of dialogue, there is rarely silence in Sense8. Whether it’s the whirring of sawing through bone, the roar of a crowd at an underground fight club, or a piano solo one of the 8 is remembering her father perform — the lack of dialogue leaves the audio track open for other forms of communication about setting and mood.

Additionally, a falling low-note and fading of the audio is often used to indicate that a character (or in this show, a pair of characters sharing senses) is entering bullet-time, a cinematic element originally popularized by The Wachowskis in The Matrix in which heightened perception is represented by other characters and setting elements moving in slow-motion while the camera pans at normal speed. This visual effect is able to be smoothly incorporated into Sense8 due to a lack of dialogue, which would normally have to be paused for a bullet time shot.