On Almost Human, the lead android cop is named Dorian. He’s the only active DRN model. His name is taken from his model number, DRN=Dorian. 10 episodes in before I figured that out. I wonder if anyone calls the MX models Max?
If I recall correctly, this was a common trope in Isaac Asimov’s robot stories. The robots would have some designation and humans would adapt it to a pronounceable nickname. I don’t know if Asimov invented this idea but anyone working on a show about robots is probably familiar with his work.
I have read Have Space Suit—Will Travel about a million times starting when I was 8 years old, but it took me till I was in my 30s before I appreciated a point I believe Heinlein was trying to make in that book.
At one point, the hero is thrown into a pit on Pluto with the two human criminals/traitors who had been working for the aliens that he calls “Wormfaces.” The two are taken from the pit and (presumably) killed and (possibly) eaten.
Kip, the main character, says that although he would miss their company, if there were a way to drown traitorous murderers like them at birth, he’d take his turn as executioner.
Later on, an alliance of alien species based in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud puts humans on trial for their survival, with the charge being that we might one day pose a threat to this alien alliance.
In other words, they practice what he had earlier advocated: determining possible threats in their nascent stage and then killing them. (In the aliens’ case this meant destroying whole worlds.)
It doesn’t show the narrator, Kip, realizing this, but one hopes it sank in at some point.
I recently watched the Blues Brothers with a young man who had never heard of or seen the movie. He pointed out that, after Jake has his religious experience in the church, he & Elwood go to Elwood’s room and have wine and bread.
Holy Communion!!
I’m watching Moonstruck. Danny Aiello proposes to Cher in the restaurant, without offering her a ring. She demands a ring because she had no engagement ring for her first marriage, and she believed she had bad luck. She tells him to give her his pinky ring, and he protests “I like this ring,” emphasizing what a big baby he is.
Later, she sees him off at the airport and he asks him to invite his brother Nic Cage to the wedding. She didn’t know he had a brother, and he says they haven’t spoken in five years, holding up his hand to display five fingers.
He looks at his hand and sees his ringless pinky finger and winces. I never noticed that before, and I have seen this movie probably 20 times. It’s just perfect.
It’s been awhile since I read Asimov but I seem to recall in most of his stories he either gives them numbers or human names. In the Robot series the main android’s name is R. Daneel Olivaw. In the anime series “The Big O” the female android’s name is R. Dorothy, I always wondered how many people got the reference.
For things that might have been obvious at the time, but obscure now, I think I figured out the implication of “Superstar” in Jesus Christ Superstar: it looks like a reference to “Warhol Superstars,” a group of effective nobodies off the streets that Andy Warhol randomly selected and promoted as “Superstars” to uphold his dictum that everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes.
“Jesus Christ Superstar” = “Jesus Christ Some Random Dude Having Fifteen Minutes of Fame”
You’re both right. On Earth, in the early Robot stories, they tended to have initials, which turned into nicknames. TN was “Tony” (in “Satisfaction Guarenteed,” RB was “Herbie” (in “Liar”), DV was called “Dave” (in “Catch That Rabbit!,” SPD was “Speedie” (in “Runaround”), etc., etc., but off-Earth, on the Spacer worlds, the robots got full names, with R. as a prefix (R. Daneel Olivaw, and R. Jander Panell, etc.)
With R for robot?
Yes.
No, R is for Rocket. (Oops, sorry—wrong author.)
Yeah, that’s a good one. We’ve watched it “only” about a dozen times, and still enjoy playing it every year or two. Never fails to amaze me how Cher, one of the world’s dimmer bulbs, could be such a good actress.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit has been my favorite movie ever since it first came out. (I was seven at the time).
It only just NOW occurred to me that Eddie Valiant probably became an alcoholic because his brother got murdered.
While we’re on the subject of Roger Rabbit…
During that montage where Eddie’s drinking himself blind in his office and the camera pans over photos and clippings from Eddie’s past with his brother, there’s a shot of the two boys with their dad–a circus clown.
That means that the boys spent their childhood with a father who, like Toons, made people’s laughter his life’s work. Laughter was once very important in Eddie’s life. Misfortune crushed the laughter out of him, but he finds his way back to it during the course of the movie. Nice?
(That’s what I love about movies like these–every time you watch them, you pick up on something new.)
Phssthpok, the Pak Protector in Niven’s novel Protector - his name is onomatopoeia derived from the sound of opening a beer or soda can!
Or at least it’s one hell of a coincidence.
I don’t know if this is an an ‘obvious’ thing.
I have just re-watched the original Star Wars trilogy. Noticed for the first time that in Empire, when Vader is sitting in that big pod type thing, he sits in a cross-legged (close to a lotus position) pose. I had always assumed he was sitting in chair.
[Shangri-las]
I’ll never forget him
Phssthpok of the Pak!
(Phssthpok of the Pak
And now he’s go-oone.
Phssthpok of the Pak
And now he’s go-one)
[/Shangri-las]
I thought he winced because looking at his hand reminded him of the accident that drove a wedge between him and Johnny.
Interesting. I remember reading an interview with lyricist Tim Rice, who said he used the word “Superstar” after hearing the Warhol quote. While he didn’t originate it, it’s agreed Jesus Christ Superstar led to it becoming a commonplace word.
Spoilers for the end of the Wheel of Time series:
During the last battle Shai’tan orders his minions to use as much balefire as possible, using balefire weakens the pattern and could end up destroying all of existence. I took this as a typical evil “if i can’t win then nobody can” ploy, but it just hit me that the hole into shai’tan’s prison was originally created when future scientists found a place where the pattern was weak and managed to drill a hole into it in search of an alternative magic source. Shai’tan wasn’t trying to unmake the world, he was just ensuring that history would repeat itself and the place where Tarmon Gaidon took place is where the bore is located.