My kneejerk reply was going to be “Didn’t HAL make the first error of the mission by mistakenly predicting the failure of the radio antenna part?”.
I hadn’t considered that HAL knew all along that the part was actually good, and planned on one of the crew to go on a spacewalk. (But then, there was the first spacewalk, the part got yanked inside for testing. Why not kill the spacewalker then?)
I’ve given this a good deal of thought ever since it was brought up in a Cracked.com article. It makes sense for the most part, but there is one fatal flaw: Ferris’s sister. She has her own subplots that literally have nothing to do with Cameron at all, and you would expect a fantasy dreamed up by Cameron to mostly have events that he is a part of.
Yep. Which connects it to why the “Total Recall is all fantasy” idea doesn’t work.
Because HAL hadn’t yet lip-read Bowman and Poole talking about disconnecting it. It didn’t realize the peril it was in until then.
Must… not… make… Aliens… joke…
Doh! That’s right!
So, even though HAL makes the first serious error on the mission, he still concludes that the humans are too much of a risk?
I encourage you to read Clarke’s book 2010: Odyssey Two, in which the (rather unconvincing IMHO) argument is made that HAL actually became mentally ill by having to keep secrets about the Jupiter mission from the astronauts. He was programmed to be open and honest in his dealings with humans, but then was ordered not to be “for reasons of national security.” He subconsciously tried to cope by cutting off communications with Earth by foreseeing, and then causing, problems with the antenna. As his errors multiplied and he saw how Bowman and Poole were considering disconnecting him, he decided that the least bad option would be to kill everyone. That way he could complete the mission all by himself and not have to lie anymore.
Yeah, I know. But that’s what the book says. The movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact makes much the same point.
I saw the movie, didn’t read the book.
In the (2010) movie, HAL is “fixed” by Dr. Chandre, and HAL becomes a “good guy” again, even sacrificing itself. But it didn’t “sacrifice” itself in the first film, even though it realised it was beginning to make errors. shrug
It’s been an age since I’ve seen/read 2010, but I thought the idea wasn’t that they had programmed him to lie, but they’d programmed him so that, if he had to choose between saving a member of the crew, and accomplishing the mission, that he’d choose to accomplish the mission.
The novelization of the original movie also spells out that HAL went psychotic due to programming conflicts.
A classic case of the Law of the Emasculated Sci-Fi Badass.
I believe you are mistaken.
**Malcolm Reynolds: **It’s of interest to me how much you seem to know about that world.
**Shepherd Book: **I wasn’t born a shepherd, Mal.
**Malcolm Reynolds: **You have to tell me about that sometime.
Shepherd Book: … No, I don’t.
Serenitywas Book’s story.
The part of Book was played by the Operative. It explains Book’s pull with the Alliance in earlier ‘adventures’, it explains why he turned to more metaphysical callings, and it explains why he chose to be close to Mal and crew. I don’t mean Serenity got all fancy with the timey-wimey stuff, just that for all intents and purposes, that is how Book became a Shepherd.
I like that one.
Book’s story has been told in a comic called The Shepherd’s Tale. He wasn’t an Operative.
My movie theory is to do with Aliens. Basically, I believe Bishop was a bad guy and sold them out. There are a few points that stand out, mostly from the Special Edition.
-Bishop gets lost in thought while examining a facehugger. I know this is a bit of a reach but it does establish odd behavior. (This is in the SE for those who don’t remember it)
-He lies to Ripley and co. about how long the second dropship will take, claiming forty minutes flight time when we watched the first one (express elevator to hell!) take four minutes in real time with passengers and a human pilot. Remote piloting by an android should be just as fast, if not faster. My thought is that while he had control of the dropship for a good long while, he ferried an egg up to the Sulaco. This is also why the queen rips him in half at the end, recognizing him as the egg thief.
-Along similar lines check out his expression when Ripley and co. take Newt’s shortcut and show up at the landing field half an hour early. He’s all “you’re not supposed to be here yet!”
-Hicks had a burn on his shoulder. After a visit to Dr. Bishop he never wakes up again!
-We see the “real” Bishop in Alien 3 and he’s either another android or a douchebag. Either way, he’s not a helpful good guy.
I like this theory, just because it so totally subverts the film, but I don’t think this part holds up. The problem is, there’s no way in hell Bishop could get away with a lie like this. He’s talking a squad of veteran marines, who have between them likely made well over a hundred drops. Maybe a couple hundred: Hicks is so used to them, he can sleep through them. And Ripley herself is a pilot. They’d know exactly how long it takes to get a shuttle off the ship and down to the planet. If the forty minutes claim were bullshit, they’d spot it in an instant.
There are plenty of other viable reasons why it would take that much longer to get the other drop ship, including:
-flight prep. Among other things, they probably don’t store those things with fuel in them.
-the Sulaco isn’t directly above the colony anymore, so it takes longer to get a shuttle to them. This might even be a deliberate tactical doctrine: after the ship drops them off, it’s programmed to move a safe distance away from the planet.
-piloting the shuttle by remote is more difficult and clumsy, even for an android. Tricky maneuvers like the “express elevator to hell” are too dangerous to attempt from anywhere but in the pilot’s chair, with your hand on the stick. Similarly, Bishop might just not be that good a pilot. He’s got superior speed and reflexes, but he might have been programmed with only the most rudimentary pilot skills.
If Bishop wanted them dead, he could have just not picked them up.
Ripley has never piloted a dropship though. She piloted a space rig. What does she know about military dropships 50 years newer than the last thing she piloted? Also, in Alien when she lands the Nostromo she breaks the landing gear on a rock. Every spacegoing vessel she’s ever been on has been struck by tragedy. She’s not a very good pilot!
Hicks is sleeping through the drops hence he has no idea how long they take.
But Bishop said flight time, not prep time.
Possible, although questionable doctrine if so. It makes more sense for the Marines to position their support vessel where it can actually y’know… support them.
I will grant that this is entirely possible. Bishop may be lacking the “elite dropship piloting” app. But the only really tricky part would be slowing down for the landing. How hard is it for the thing to fall out of the sky?
But then he’s got no hosts to sneak the creature back through quarantine in…
How dare you say such things about a beloved android!
Falling itself? Easy. Falling in such a way that it’s possible to recover for a soft landing? That’s a bit more tricky. And no matter what his skills, he’d be contending with a comm delay.
It fits if Cameron had a major thing for her, so he included fantasies about her in his daydream. Had it run longer, the fantasies would have gotten raunchier…