Science Fiction...
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Science Fiction... |
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Revisit your Favourite Sci-Fi TV Shows at Pazsaz Entertainment Network |
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My
first exposure to the ideas of science fiction came from
television, with such shows as Lost
in Space, with its wonderful robot;
The Time Tunnel,
the heroes forever trying to find their way back to their
present; Space 1999,
with Moonbase Alpha adrift; and UFO,
a series that made me cower behind the sofa on more than
one occasion! Land of the Giants
was a particular Saturday morning favourite. These shows were set-heavy, relatively cheaply made, with little in the way of special effects as we would know them today. But the stories were always weird and wonderful, and they had such an alien quality that they fired the imagination with a host of possibilities. |
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particular, I was fascinated by space travel. I remember
watching the moon landings on our black and white TV. I
was only a few years old, but the sight of real people
walking on the real moon has always stayed with me. Robots too, held (and still hold) a fascination for me. From Robby the Robot in the movie, Forbidden Planet, to Data in Star Trek the Next Generation, my love for the mechanical trying to emulate human beings has never faltered. In the 1970s, the TV gurus brought us The Six Million Dollar Man, and that show's spin-off, The Bionic Woman. Here were human beings, combined with technology. Wonderful stuff! It just occurs to me now that Steve Austin must be the reason I like the Borg-episodes of Star Trek the Next Generation, and Star Trek Voyager the best. Half-person, half-machine, their cold, collective consciousness bring the cyborg idea into a new, sinister realm. |
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We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first Bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better . . . stronger . . . faster. |
In
the 1980s, I discovered the short stories of Isaac Asimov,
in his book "The Rest of the
Robots". His vision of the
mechanical men of the future has influenced science
fiction since the 1950s. His "Rules of Robotics"
are commonly built into robots in sci-fi stories, and
removing a robot's "Asimov circuits" is always
bad news in a sci-fi movie. Asimov's rules are:
1) A robot may not harm a human being, nor through inaction allow a human being to come to harm. 2) A robot will obey human beings at all times, except where this breaks the first rule. 3) A robot will protect its own existence, except where this breaks the first or second rules. Sinister robots, or crazy computers seem to be a human pre-occupation. In the movie, 2001 A Space Odyssey, the HAL series computer goes slowly insane, threatening the remainder of the space-ship's human crew. The word "robot" means "slave" and it is in this context that Mankind uses its actual robot servants. How smart will they become, and what will be the implications of a truly 'smart' machine in the future? How will we treat it, and how will it react to us? |
Revisit your Favourite Sci-Fi TV Shows at Pazsaz Entertainment Network |
