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When Summer Glau's Terminator started ballet dancing for no particular reason in a recent episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, it totally made sense: She's just another android/robot who wants to be human. Like the guy in this classic Johnnie Walker Scotch ad. It's like the fourth rule of robotics: The more autistic and socially clueless an android is, the more he/she/it will crave humanity. Click through to see clips of the greatest Pinnochio-bot of all time, plus a gallery.
When Summer Glau's Terminator started ballet dancing for no particular reason in a recent episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, it totally made sense: She's just another android/robot who wants to be human. Like the guy in this classic Johnnie Walker Scotch ad. It's like the fourth rule of robotics: The more autistic and socially clueless an android is, the more he/she/it will crave humanity. Click through to see clips of the greatest Pinnochio-bot of all time, plus a gallery.There have been so many Pinnochio-bots in science fiction: Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man, Haley Joel Osment in A.I., Chip in Not Quite Human, Annalee in Alien: Resurrection, NDR-113 from The Positronic Man by Asimov and Silverberg, and Roy Batty (sort of) Blade Runner.But most people would automatically say Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation is the purest expression of the Pinnochio-bot mystique. After all, he spent seven TV seasons and four movies exploring humanity over and over again. And his quest took him through comedy lessons with Joe Piscobo (the zen master of comedy), painting, Shakespeare plays and Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas. He probably tried to be a male stripper in between episodes.
But really Data is just a knock-off of the original wannabe human, Questor from The Questor Tapes, Gene Rodenberry's 1974 TV movie. Yet another one of Gene Rodenberry's failed TV series ideas after Star Trek, Questor is about an android who's built by a group of scientists using parts and plans from a mysterious genius Dr. Emil Vaslovik, who's gone missing. The android is a roaring (well, intoning) success, with one problem — his programming is incomplete and he doesn't develop emotions. So Questor goes in search of Vaslovik.
Various people are searching for Questor, and B.J. Honeycutt gets accused of having stolen the android. At one point, B.J. tries to stop Questor, who almost kills him to make his escape. But then Questor realizes that killing is wrong. Yay!
Questor's creator, Vaslovik, who turns out to be a super-advanced android himself, the penultimate model in a long line sent before the dawn of humanity to guide us in the proper course of development, blah blah blah. Vaslovik dies, but not before entrusting Questor to B.J. Honeycutt from M.A.S.H., who promises to teach Questor human feelings: Can you just imagine the weekly episodes, where B.J. teaches Questor another important lesson every week? Actually, you can, because it would have looked a lot like the Data-centric episodes of ST:TNG.
Can you just imagine the weekly episodes, where B.J. teaches Questor another important lesson every week? Actually, you can, because it would have looked a lot like the Data-centric episodes of ST:TNG.
Comments
That's why robots can never be smarter than humans: robots can't tell the difference between good scotch and piss.
if not for including my birthday, i'd say wipe the '70s off the face of the earth, please. i'm willing to accept the comparison to 1984 in this case.
Drink more, be immortal. Got it.
(glug glug glug)
@BloggyMcBlogBlog: More proof that I am a robot.
I'm just happy that Annalee become sentient so she could write this blog. Whoops, wrong Annalee. Or is it?
Gene Roddenberry. Master of one plot.
Isn't pinocchio the purest form of Pinnochio-Bot mystique? Also, robots wanting to be human is boring. Let's make a movie about a human who wants to be a robot.
in "blade runner" i love rutger hauer's portrayal of a bot gone wrong, what were they called? nexus6? "i have seen starships on fire on the belt of orion, our memories lost like tears in the rain, it...is...time...to die" i love it.-blurey
Beautiful ad. Makes me want to drink Johnny Walker just to reward the ad team.
Oh and for a Pinonochio-bot this girl was pretty effective.
Bryan Adams (I know, I know, WTF) made an awesime video to the song Inside Out, with a pinocchio-bot(ette?). Weirdly touching, especially in tandem with the lyrics. Pygmalion-esque though it might be.
+ Watch video
blasphemy, an entire post about pinnochio-bots and not a single mention of the actual original/greatest wanna-be human, astro boy.
@B: i don't think there's much interest in a documentary of my life
Dang. I thought his nose was gonna grow.
@blurey: Yeah, this has a beauty to it that most crappy sci-fi misses:
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die.
If Bionic Woman had had even one moment like that, I might share it's (former?) star's theory that it had "potential."
This was also nice from the mouth of Roy Batty:
Fiery the angels fell; deep thunder rolled around their shores; burning with the fires of Orc.
(of course it's a paraphrase of another work.)
@darcymcgee: Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep, the Philip K. Dick novella, explored the relative humanity of the androids who just wanted to live and be free, and the human paid to kill them. To me, the movie wasted that premise.
@B: Right on!
And please, please, please don't turn it into a boring, cliche cautionary tale where, "human desires to become robot, human becomes robot, former human becomes arrogant and gets punished for its hubris." Hasn't that one been done to death too?
IMHO, the most wondrous portrayal of a Pinocchio-bot was Yancy Butler's "Eve Edison" in Mann & Machine, a super-advanced android capable of emotional response - which is currently at the 7-year-old level (although she possesses vast encyclopedic knowledge).
Yancy's expressions, especially in her eyes, were priceless.
[www.scifi2k.com]
We'll probably never get a DVD release of those 9 episodes, but I now see that they've been uploaded to YouTube!
[www.youtube.com]
(Check out the cool nod to Blade Runner in the pilot, when Samantha Eggar introduces the other members of the AI team as, "Doctors Scott, Deckard, Ford and Hauer.")
That was awesome. Reminded me of the second movie from Ghost in the Shell (got me the DVDs). Especially, with the library.
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