The Android Prophecy - transcript
00:10 CAT: Attention humans! Soon, life as you know it will cease to exist. And then we shall rule the world.
00:28 Title: THE ANDROID PROPHECY
00:35 PROFESSOR RICHARD DAWKINS: I would shed a tear for the passing of any evolved creature,
00:41 Insert: PROFESSOR RICHARD DAWKINS, EVOLUTIONARY SCIENTIST
I would shed a tear for the passing of the black rhinoceros or for that of the African elephant or the blue whale. And in the same way I would shed a tear for the passing of humanity – probably rather a larger tear.
00:51 ARTHUR C. CLARKE: Whether the human race will survive the next century
00:53 Insert: ARTHUR C. CLARKE, AUTHOR
of course is the big question. I’ve said many times that I’m an optimist, I think we have a 51% chance of survival. Sometimes I raise it to 52 and sometimes I lower it to 50 and a half.
01:07 VOICEOVER: When the world’s foremost geneticist and its greatest living science fiction writer both warn of the passing of humanity, it may be time to take our future of existence seriously. Some others directly involved in the process suggest it’s already too late.
01:23 PROFESSOR KEVIN WARWICK: Part of what it means to be human is
01:25 Insert: PROFESSOR KEVIN WARWICK, READING UNIVERSITY
progress, change, moving forwards, and the direction we’re moving in at the moment is into a technological world, with the ensuing intelligence in machines much greater than humans not too far away. I don’t think there’s any chance whatsoever that we can hold onto the reins, as humans.
01:47 VOICEOVER: In laboratories all around the globe, scientists are pushing the boundaries of technological innovation. Their aim? To create robots, cyborgs and androids in our own image and likeness. As the promise of nuclear energy turned into the prospect of Armageddon, as genetic engineering now delivers the imminent reality of human clones, so the world of robotics and cybernetics now threatens our position as the dominant species on earth.
02:18 VOICEOVER: The difference is that this time we were warned – but by movie-makers of all people.
03:06 PROFESSOR KEVIN WARWICK: For what I’m doing with cyborg research, linking technology with humans, there are short-term positives and long-term negatives.
03:17 VOICEOVER: For the best part of the 20th century, science fiction movie directors have been showing what the future might hold for us. But it now appears that we are approaching a time, uncomfortably close at hand, when the screen fantasies will become part of our world for real.
03:37 KATHARINE ROSS: It does frighten me.
03:39 Insert: KATHARINE ROSS, ACTRESS
It does frighten me, maybe it’s out of ignorance or – there are certain things that I think are sacred, human life is one of them.
03:49 NANETTE NEWMAN: It’s now becoming quite a possible thing,
03:51 Insert: NANETTE NEWMAN, ACTRESS
it’s not in the realms of fantasy quite as much as it was.
03:57 PAUL VERHOEVEN: Ultimately,
03:58 Insert: PAUL VERHOEVEN, DIRECTOR, ROBOCOP
we have to face the face that many many generations from now, something like that will happen.
04:03 PROFESSOR KEVIN WARWICK: I don’t believe we’re looking further twenty thirty years for us to get into a dangerous scenario.
04:15 KATHARINE ROSS: Who is behind it, you know? It makes you question, who is the mastermind here.
04:21 [film clip] JOANNA EBERHART: Why?
04:23 [film clip] DALE: Why? Because you can.
04:28 PROFESSOR MAJA MATARIC: One of the important roles that movies and books can play,
04:30 Insert: PROFESSOR MAJA MATARIC, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
and have played, is to actually issue warnings, so they consider possible future scenarios and they say, you know, ‘look – this is pretty scary’.
04:39 VOICEOVER: Early examples of the movies were hardly that. They were normally ludicrous tin can or cardboard creations with all the fearsome qualities of a clockwork mouse. But in 1921, a play opened which first introduced the word ‘robot’ into everyday use. Rossum’s Universal Robots was written by Karel Capek in Prague at a time when the significance of the Russian revolution was beginning to set in. The Czech word ‘robota’ actually means drudgery, or servitude, and Capek’s play would set a theme to be repeated frequently over the next 80 years.
05:24 FRED BARTON: That was a story of
05:25 Insert: FRED BARTON, ROBOT HISTORIAN
man versus machine, and who was the master and who was the servant, type thing – sometimes the lines get blurred, at least that was his theme.
05:33 Insert: METROPOLIS, TRANSIT FILMS (1926)
05:35 VOICEOVER: In 1926, the world’s first great movie robot appears.
05:41 BRIAN ALDISS: Surely the first science fiction classic is Metropolis.
05:44 Insert: BRIAN ALDISS, AUTHOR
And there, you see, the poor workers working away, and the creation of this beautiful but rather devilish robot.
05:59 VOICEOVER: Fritz lang’s epic Metropolis took 16 months to shoot, cost 7 million German Marks and had a cast of over 37,000 people.
06:11 FRED BARTON: It actually showed the first female robot, she was actually a, a social worker, a women for the people and then the mad scientist got a hold of her and transformed her into an evil robot to try to keep the masses repressed.
06:33 VOICEOVER: Lang’s robot, the False Maria, was not a literal prediction of some technological future, but a metaphor for the social and political anxieties of the 20s. Freedom versus oppression. Capitalism versus labour. And the tyranny of industrial machines in the age of the model T-Ford production line.
06:56 JOHN STEPHENSON: Metropolis was my favourite robotic movie,
07:00 Insert: JOHN STEPHENSON, HENSON CREATURE SHOP
and the whole film is beautifully designed but the robot itself is a masterpiece, and has been used endlessly, for years and years and years – people keep on going back to that original robot. I think that George Lucas did.
07:12 FRED BARTON: If you look at Maria, and if you look at George Lucas’ Star Wars and his character C-3PO you can see a direct homage if you will, to Fritz Lang and Maria and her, her design and sculpture, and how 3PO was made, they’re like brother and sister.
07:32 [film clip] C-3PO: That malfunctioning little twerp! This is all his fault! He tricked me into going this way, but you two know better.
07:42 VOICEOVER: Other influences are not so immediately obvious.
07:46 [film clip] SCIENTIST: Hey, uh…stop!
07:48 PAUL VERHOEVEN: The design of Robocop is of course very much the design of Fritz Lang. The female robot, and the stylising… If you put the two of them together then our robot is a little bit more high tech and our screws are a little different, but it’s the same sleekness, it’s the same form, nearly.
08:08 VOICEOVER: At the time of its release, Metropolis was not a commercial success, though it did find support in some unlikely quarters. Adolph Hilter was so impressed when he first saw it that on taking power in 1933 he summoned Lang to Nazi headquarters to demand he make a series of propaganda films for the party. That same morning, Lang packed his bags and slipped out of the country. Few directors of the period had Lang’s talent or vision. Their idea of robots bordered on the farcical.
08:45 FRED BARTON: The thirties was not a good year for robots in the cinemas. They weren’t taken seriously, they weren’t really a part of anything you had... I think Gene Autry did a film, and he had some robot servants in it. You also had some of the serials that ran through the thirties and into the forties, you know, Flash Gordon, Dr Satan, these type of robots that were just mindless drones, and they actually look like walking washing machines or water heaters. The whole genre was just really for children, it was a filler, a Saturday matinee serial, they weren’t really science fiction films.
09:24 VOICEOVER: The forties fared little better. Hollywood had other matters on its mind.
09:36 FRED BARTON: When you get into the 1940s and the films of the 40s, the mindset of Europe and the United States was more toward patriotism, propaganda films, trying to win the war, get the people’s minds also off the war, have some kind of escapism, but you really couldn’t get away from the war. You didn’t see a renaissance for real until the 1950s.
10:00 VOICEOVER: You have to travel to the very Southern tip of Massachusetts to Martha’s Vinyard, the playground for the privileged, to find the woman who by crying out in an alien tongue succeeded in saving the world.
10:13 PETER WELLER: Gort, Klaatu barada nikto.
10:22 FRED BARTON: Klaatu barada nikto.
10:26 VOICEOVER: Oscar-winning actress Patricia Neal now spends her days in retirement, tending her garden.
10:33 PATRICIA NEAL: Gort,
10:34 Insert: PATRICIA NEAL, ACTRESS
Klaatu barada nikto – frightening! But I saved the world with that.
10:44 Insert: THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX (1951)
10:49 [film clip] HELEN BENSON: Gort. Klaatu barada nikto. Klaatu barada nikto.
11:00 VOICEOVER: Gort, from The Day the Earth Stood Still, was the first truly memorable robot since Metropolis. The nuclear age had arrived, and with it, the Cold War. For the first time in humanity’s existence, we faced the realistic prospect that our planet might be entirely vaporised by our own creation. If only some great force from the stars could lift mankind away from its warlike ways.
11:40 BRIAN ALDISS: In the movie, the robot is the servant of the man. This came from a science fiction short story, called Farewell to the Master, in which the man is subservient to the robot. It’s the robot that has the wisdom. But Hollywood was not far enough advanced, nor was the general population, to swallow that hypothesis.
12:08 VOICEOVER: Although the film would become a genuine classic with a powerful message for the world, director Robert Wise faced early difficulty simply getting his actors to take it seriously.
12:18 PATRICIA NEAL: I thought it was hysterical, I really did. I mean, I’d done one film with Robert Wise, our first one, it was called Three Secrets, and he wanted me to be the lady in this, well I thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever read in my life. Michael Rennie, the leading man, would say, “uh, excuse me, you intend to laugh this?” I would say “No, no no no no,” but to me it was exceedingly funny.
12:51 VOICEOVER: Rennie played the alien visitor Klaatu, who has come to earth with his all-powerful robot to expose mankind’s paranoia, and to warn us that we must live together in peace.
13:04 PATRICIA NEAL: His greatest problem is understanding our stupidity.
13:13 VOICEOVER: To demonstrate the awesome power that resides outside our planet, he stops the world’s machines.
13:21 PATRICIA NEAL: The message of the film was that we, all of us humans, do not destroy what we have – we should not destroy the earth, we should not make it blow up, because it’s the only one that we know, is it not?
13:37 PETER WELLER: That speech that Michael Rennie says at the end –
13:39 Insert: PETER WELLER, ACTOR
they ought to say that in the environmental councils of the world today. ‘Soon you will be testing new weapons’. I’m paraphrasing here but ‘there’s no room for them in the atmosphere. You are – you will endanger, you know the well-being of the universe’ – you know in other words global warming, man, is the whole damn thing this guy’s talking about here, it’s present in 1952.
14:01 [film clip] KLAATU: Your choice is simple. Join us, and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.
14:19 PETER WELLER: Probably will be around a long time man, a long time. We got a whole lot of science fiction, a whole lot of cop movies, a whole lot of romantic bullshit, they’re gonna go fall at the wayside. The Day That Stood Still, you know – that’s a milestone. In American cinema, not only in science fiction.
14:38 VOICEOVER: Gort had come from outer space to bring his message: change, or be destroyed. We didn’t listen. In 1956 the Soviet Union launched the first nuclear weapon into space. America wasn’t far behind. Soon afterwards, Sputnik, the world’s first satellite, announced the arrival of the space age. Science was catching up with Hollywood, but Hollywood was ever-ready to take us to the next stage. Tinseltown believed, as a matter of course, that we humans would travel to the stars, and there encounter fabulous alien technologies.
15:26 [film clip] ROBBY THE ROBOT: Welcome to Alkehor gentlemen,
15:30: Insert: FORBIDDEN PLANET, MGM/UA (1956)
I am to transport you to the residence. If you do not speak English, I am familiar with 187 other languages along with their various dialects and sub-tongues.
15:44 VOICEOVER: Fred Martin is widely regarded as perhaps the world’s foremost expert on robots in the movies. Forbidden Planet and it’s star, Robby the Robot, was for him where it all truly began.
15:56 FRED MARTIN: It was MGM’s first big-budget science-fiction film, it was the first film that was really treated seriously. MGM had it’s all four sound stages at the time devoted to Forbidden Planet, it had the same great art directors and prop makers that were working on the Wizard of Oz and all the Golden Age of MGM who had the same crew working on Forbidden Planet.
16:20 [film clip] SOLDIER: This is uh, no offence, but – you are a robot, aren’t you?
16:24 [film clip] ROBBY THE ROBOT: That is correct, Sir. For your convenience I am monitored to respond to the name ‘Robby’.
16:32 ANNE FRANCIS: We decided, as a cast,
16:35 Insert: ANNE FRANCIS, ACTRESS
that we were going to make as true as we possibly could in our performing, in other words we didn’t go, we didn’t want to just run through it and go, you know, “this is a sci-fi film, and take what you like and leave the rest” you know? The most important actor was of course Robby the Robot. I was told at the time that he cost about a million dollars, but I really don’t know whether that was to impress us and keep our hands off him, or, I don’t know.
17:06 VOICEOVER: Forbidden Planet was more than a childish fantasy. Adults around the globe are still fascinated by it. And apparently the Bard himself had an influence.
17:16 ARTHUR C. CLARKE: After 2001, my favourite science fiction movie is still Forbidden Planet, which of course had the, the plot written by one W Shakespeare, which is a pretty good screenwriter!
17:28 BRIAN ALDISS: It’s based rather cleverly on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. And there you have Robby the Robot, so benevolent that he can give you cans of beer for free – the sort of robot that everyone needs, really.
17:45 [film clip] ROBBY THE ROBOT: Will sixty gallons be sufficient?
17:48 [film clip] DR MORBIUS: I think the best thing you…
17:49 VOICEOVER: Walter Pidgeon played the misguided scientist Morbius.
1753 [film clip] DR MORBIUS: Goodnight, my dear.
17:57 ANNE FRANCIS: Walter loved to recite limericks. Of course, he had everyone in uproar with his collection. None of which I could repeat right now. Although maybe I could, with the way television is going.
18:10 ROBBY THE ROBOT: Do you remember one of those limericks, there once was a man from Nantucket, do you remember that one?
18:16 ANNE FRANCIS: I’m sorry that you do!
18:19 ROBBY THE ROBOT: Well, I remember everything in my memory banks.
18:21 ANNE FRANCIS: Well, we can wipe that one clean!
18:24 ROBBY THE ROBOT: Oh, I’m sorry Miss.
18:26 [film clip] ALTAIRA: Robby, I must have a new dress right away.
18:29 [film clip] ROBBY THE ROBOT: Again?
18:30 [film clip] ALTAIRA: Oh but this one must be different! Absolutely nothing must show – below, above, or through.
18:36 [film clip] ROBBY THE ROBOT: Radiation proof?
18:38 [film clip] ALTAIRA: No, just eye-proof will do.
18:40 [film clip] ROBBY THE ROBOT: Big and heavy?
18:42 [film clip] ALTAIRA: Oh no, no Robby – it must be the loveliest, softest thing you’ve ever made for me.
18:46 ROBBY THE ROBOT: Miss, do you require another dress by any chance? I still have the pattern.
18:51 ANNE FRANCIS: Well, you know, I think Robby we should go a little shorter now, maybe…just above the knees…
18:59 ROBBY THE ROBOT: Really thick and heavy?
19:01 ANNE FRANCIS: No, very thin, and slim, and, and you could make it semi topless, and maybe just a few little sequins around the nipples?
19:14 ANNE FRANCIS: By the way, how did you get down here to earth yourself?
19:18 ROBBY THE ROBOT: Excuse me?
19:19 ANNE FRANCIS: How did you get down here to earth, you didn’t come with us?
19:21 ROBBY THE ROBOT: No, I did. Don’t you remember I was at the helm? You were busy getting married,
19:25 ANNE FRANCIS: Oh I was –
19:25 ROBBY THE ROBOT: you had stars in your eyes, your father was getting blown up, it was a terrible, wonderful time, oh…
19:32 ANNE FRANCIS: it all just, it’s a blank –
19:34 ROBBY THE ROBOT: It’s a blur…
19:47 Insert: SANTA MONICA PIER, CALIFORNIA
19:51 ANNOUNCER: World famous, internationally renowned, The Generators!
20:08 VOICEOVER: The human companion of television’s most famous robot shows off his musical skills. Almost four decades on, the youthful looks are still there.
20:40 [film clip] ROBOT: Alert! Alert! A moving object attached to line!
20:44 [film clip] WILL ROBINSON: He’s got a big one!
20:45 [film clip] DR JOHN ROBINSON: Ha! Give me that pole – let an expert show you how it should be done.
20:48 BILL MUMY: I loved playing Will, he was like a little superhero, I was always a fan of adventure superhero comic books, so when the opportunity to play Will Robinson came along, I jumped at it. Here was this guy, he was the one
21:00 Insert: BILL MUMY, ACTOR
who figured everything out all the time, he got to wear his little superhero outfit, he had a laser gun that he actually got to use. He was the one who could reprogram the robot and fix everything, and save everybody week after week, so what was there not to like, you know, he was great. He was bold but he was polite, but he listened to his own inner voices even if that meant disobeying his dad and stuff, to save everybody’s butt week after week.
21:24 [film clip] ROBOT: Do you need any help, Dr Smith?
21:29 [film clip] DR SMITH: There are many things which need to be done. But unfortunately you are incapable of doing any of them.
21:34 BILL MUMY: “How dare you? Mind your manners or you’ll lose your friends. Dr Smith – one of a kind”. Look, Jonathan made the show what it was, you know, Jonathan Harris created the character of Dr Smith, it was initially just a straight-ahead bad guy, that probably would’ve been killed off after about six episodes, and he turned it into that comedic villain that you love to hate.
21:56 [film clip] DR SMITH: You sir, have reached the end of the line – the joyride is over. I had planned to redesign you, possibly into a pleasure vehicle, but I think you would be substandard even as that.
22:06 FRED BARTON: You had Dr Smith, who was constantly in the middle of things, he was the instigator, and he also had this love-hate relationship with the robot, I mean, and the robot, vice versa the robot was constantly insulting Dr Smith, and Dr Smith was constantly insulting the robot.
22:20 [film clip] ROBOT: It is not necessary that I stay here and be insulted.
22:23 FRED BARTON: Originally there was no robot in Dr Smith, in the show, it was not written for them, and the producers looked at the first pilot, and thought “well, this is rather flat, I mean we have all these great-looking props and so forth but this is really just a family out in space, and it’s hot and it’s cold but there was no… it had no antagonism other than the weather.
22:42 VOICEOVER: Producer Owen Allen originally wanted the world’s most famous robot.
22:47 [film clip] ROBOT: Something is approaching from the South West. It is now quite close.
22:50 FRED BARTON: He wanted Robby the Robot in his show. But he couldn’t get Robby, for a number of reasons – a) he was an MGM star, and he was a movie star unto himself. So he went to Bob Kinoshita and he goes, “you made Robby, you drew him up”, he goes, “make me something Robby-ish. Maybe something that doesn’t have as many mechanisms, that won’t be so loud on a sound stage, something that won’t break down because it’s going to be used every day, five days a week, eight hours a day. And, umm, something reflecting the sixties.”
23:18 [film clip] WILL ROBINSON: We’re about as ready as we’ll ever be. Let’s go.
23:21 VOICEOVER: But however successful his new robot was, Allen still wanted revenge. So he persuaded MGM to lend him their famous star, for a television episode he entitled, ‘War of the Robots’.
23:36 [film clip] MAUREEN ROBINSON: I can’t see a thing.
23:38 VOICEOVER: Allen made certain that Robby lost the war.
23:46 [film clip] ROBBY THE ROBOT: You have destroyed me.
23:48 [film clip] WILL ROBINSON: He did it!
23:49 VOICEOVER: Even to this day the other stars of the show were unaware of Allen’s devious intentions.
23:55 BILL MUMY: You know I never heard that before. But I had no idea what was going on in the mind of Owen Allen, I never did. It’s a scary concept to even want to delve into now!
24:05 VOICEOVER: But not as scary as the recent reinvention of Allen’s harmless lost in space robot into something altogether harder edged. The menacing machine, designed for less sentimental movie audiences.
24:22 JOHN STEPHENSON: The origin started with Stephen Hopkins, who was the director, who visited the Creature Shop, and didn’t actually tell me what he was there for. And then, I suppose 2 months later he came back and said, “look, I’ve got this film, and I think we need to build the mother of all robots.
24:51 JOHN STEPHENSON: I think personally that you notice on film if things aren’t powered-up enough, so the first decision in terms of going about building the robot was to make sure that it was seriously powerful, so for that reason, most of the big movements were hydraulic, which obviously is very strong. It’s actually got more power than a forklift truck, this thing, it’s hugely powerful, very dangerous.
25:20 JOHN STEPHENSON: Everybody was kind of gob-struck when they first saw the thing moving for the first time because it is – it’s amazing. Seriously good.
25:30 [film clip] ROBOT: Destroy all (inaudible). Destroy Robinson family!
25:33 Insert: LOST IN SPACE, NEW LINE CINEMA (1998)
25:34 [film clip] DR JOHN ROBINSON: Maureen, the children!
25:40 [film clip] ROBOT: Destroy!
25:42 [film clip] DR JOHN ROBINSON: Deactivate safely.
25:48 [film clip] ROBOT: That. Was a mistake.
25:50 VOICEOVER: Henson’s are of course better known for artificial creatures of another kind.
25:57 CAT: So. Your name is DBH?
26:00 DAVID BARRINGTON-HOLT: This is true.
26:02 CAT: Ah, I see. What is your human position here?
26:04 DAVID BARRINGTON-HOLT: I’m the creative supervisor of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.
26:07 CAT: You don’t say.
26:08 DAVID BARRINGTON-HOLT: I do say.
26:10 CAT: You did. So, if you would, what is the advantages of live animation versus computer animation? Like I care.
26:20 DAVID BARRINGTON-HOLT: Oh, you should care. Umm, well, the obvious advantage of live animation is that you are physically present, and I could grab you by the throat.
26:28 CAT: I wouldn’t suggest that.
26:30 DAVID BARRINGTON-HOLT: And, computer animation, there’s nothing really there for the actor to work with.
26:34 CAT: Really?
26:35 DAVID BARRINGTON-HOLT: So, you’re an actor, that we can play with.
26:38 CAT: Glad you noticed. Another question: who are these gentlemen below me?
26:43 DAVID BARRINGTON-HOLT: Ah, well the gentlemen below you, they’re the people who are operating you.
26:48 CAT: No kidding.
26:49 DAVID BARRINGTON-HOLT: Some things are beyond your control. So down here we have 3 puppeteers, who are making you move, making your head move, making your paws move, making your tail move, making you look around.
27:00 CAT/PUPPETEER: And that fellow over there, across from me, who sounds distinctly like myself. Who is he, hmm?
27:06 DAVID BARRINGTON-HOLT: He’s your puppeteer. And he’s performing your face and making you talk.
27:10 PUPPETEER: I don’t think that’s possible. Good try.
27:14 VOICEOVER: However loud and self-opinionated a puppet might be, by definition it can be controlled. But how certain can we be that technology apparently under human control will not turn on its master?
27:29 BRIAN ALDISS: This is the thing about West World for me. Who are the people who go there? Well, I suppose they’re the rich middle classes, they want entertainment, they want to live safely, the way they imagined cowboys did, in the old West, except that there’s a much more plentiful population of whores,
27:55 Insert: WESTWORLD, WARNER BROS (1973)
female androids waiting to satisfy the male customers.
27:56 [film clip] JOHN BLANE: Sounds good to me.
27:58 [film clip] PETER MARTIN: Are those two girls machines?
28:01 [film clip] JOHN BLANE: Now how can you say a thing like that? Come on.
28:09 FRED BARTON: It’s really kind of an overblown Disneyland. People are going out for a vacation and they want to live out their fantasies that they couldn’t possibly do in everyday life, so they go to a little, Western town. And sure enough there’s some kind of computer glitch, and the robots take over, and they start killing the people.
28:25 [film clip] PETER MARTIN: Not you again. It’s too early!
28:31 [film clip] JOHN BLANE: Let me do it this time. Your move.
28:48 [film clip] JOHN BLANE: I’m, I’m shot!
28:50 VOICEOVER: Michael Crichton’s West World was an illustration, a warning that technology could get out of control. It was beginning to dawn that machines and computers could be a threat in reality as well as in science fiction.
29:02 PROFESSOR RICHARD DAWKINS: There is a danger that a computer which is running something exceedingly competently could be given the wrong instructions and carry out the wrong instructions with just as great, with just as great competence. That’s always a sort of nightmare that we have to bear in mind.
29:16 [film clip] JOHN BLANE: I’m shot!
29:20 VOICEOVER: Such nightmares would come back to haunt us.
29:31 NANETTE NEWMAN: I’ll just die if I don’t get this recipe.
29:37 VOICEOVER: West World was the first movie to properly introduce the theme of androids at war with humans.
29:45 NANETTE NEWMAN: I’ll just die if I don’t get this recipe.
29:48 VOICEOVER: Now, a new and increasingly savage war was being waged. This time between man and woman.
29:54 NANETTE NEWMAN: I’ll just die if I don’t get this recipe.
30:01 VOICEOVER: That gender war was brilliantly depicted at the very height of the women’s liberation struggle by the cult film The Stepford Wives, directed by Bryan Forbes, and starring, amongst others, his wife Nanette Newman.
30:17 BRYAN FORBES: That was actually the shot where you said, there’s location all around the swimming pool, “Well, I’ll just die if I don’t get that recipe.”
30:25 Insert: THE STEPFORD WIVES, PARAMOUNT/VCP (1974)
30:25 [film clip] CAROL VAN SANT: I’ll just die if I don’t get this recipe. I’ll just die if I don’t get this recipe.
30:36 NANETTE NEWMAN: I’d already become a Stepford wife right at the beginning of the film. And Bryan just said to me, just play her so nice and so, you know, sort of, very very normal, but just so that you think there’s something a bit odd, why is she so charming and, and so cool. And I think that was what we all tried to do, just make them all very believable, but just slightly that edge where you think “oh, nobody can love housework that – why is she so thrilled to be polishing? Why does she love, you know, why does she love baking so much? Just so that everybody was kind of just slightly odd.
31:12 KATHARINE ROSS: It was a story about a kind of
31:15 Insert: KATHARINE ROSS, ACTRESS
middle-class family, that is making a big move from New York City into the suburbs, to raise their children in a more family-like atmosphere. And the wife is not terribly happy about this move – it’s really kind of the husband’s instigation.
31:36 BRYAN FORBES: I suppose I gave more direction to Pete Masterson than I gave to anybody else, because he had really the most difficult task, because he doesn’t quite know why he’s been asked
31:46 Insert: BRYAN FORBES, DIRECTOR, THE STEPFORD WIVES
to go to Stepford at the beginning, and they, they gradually suck him in, and the moment when he agrees to go along with it, and he realises – although the audience doesn’t realise – he’s going to kill his wife.
32:03 KATHARINE ROSS: She has one friend, that, she feels something in common with and they kind of both think that there is something strange about this place.
32:15 [film clip] JOANNA EBERHART: Like Walter says, it’s all so dazzling, why don’t I like it? I mean, I like it, it’s perfect, how could you not like it? I just don’t like it. Am I making any sense?
32:26 [film clip] A STEPFORD WIFE: Well hi you two!
32:28 VOICEOVER: The problem with this charming town lies under the skin. The wives of Stepford are not what they appear to be. The men have replaced them with subservient androids.
32:40 KATHARINE ROSS: These men had gotten together and technologically could, could alter their wives into whatever their vision of perfect Woman was.
32:51 NANETTE NEWMAN: They would become these, you know, sort of little docile, you know, housework-doing things and then sex demons at night.
33:03 [film clip] WOMAN’S VOICE: You’re the king, Frank… You’re the champion, Frank…Oh, you’re the master!
33:14 BRYAN FORBES: I remember when it was previewed in New York, the film. And there were various critics there, including the famed Pauline Kael, but there was also the other lady, Betty Friedan, tremendous sort of, you know, women’s lib – and she actually attacked me with an umbrella, and said “you chauvinistic pig”. And I said, “you’ve missed the entire point, I mean it’s actually not anti-women, it’s anti-men! The men are the morons.”
33:45 [film clip] DALE: Our new way of doing it is just perfect. Perfect for us, and perfect for you.
33:50 CAT: Here’s a song for all you humans. A-five, six, seven, eight! [singing] Anything you can do, I can do better; I can do anything better than you!
33:59 DAVID BARRINGTON-HOLT: No you can’t.
34:00 CAT: Yes I can!
34:01 DAVID BARRINGTON-HOLT: No you can’t.
34:02 CAT: Yes I can!
34:02 DAVID BARRINGTON-HOLT: No you can’t.
34:04 CAT: Yes I can, yes I can!
34:06 VOICEOVER: Jim Henson knew one man who was convinced he could make a better science fiction movie than any before. One of the key ingredients George Lucas would require was a neurotic, interfering robot.
34:17 ANTHONY DANIELS: My agent rang, talked about somebody I’d never heard of who’d made a film I’d never seen –
34:21 Insert: ANTHONY DANIELS, ACTOR
two films I’d never seen, THX and American Graffiti, and he was American, and back then, kind of Americans were generally loud and whatever, and wore plaid trousers, and so… Also she said, you know “it’s a science fiction film, there’s no money for the actors, it’s all going on effects, and he wants you to play the part of the robot, but I do think you should go and see him”. Because she knew – she knew what my reaction was going to be, like “moi? A robot? No.” But I did go and see him.
34:50 VOICEOVER: Lucas didn’t seem too keen either.
34:52 ANTHONY DANIELS: It was all very boring, and quiet, and like tedious – because I didn’t want to be there, and he was going out of his mind I think. And then just past him in the silence I saw a painting on the wall by Ralph Mcquarrie, an original concept of the character, and I – you know, as I sat there, and I looked at the painting, and the painting looked back at me, there was this extraordinary – it’s never happened before or since in my life – this… It was like falling in love. Which has happened. And I thought – I don’t know what I thought, I just needed to be with this person, not necessarily be him, but I, I loved it. I loved the look. Then we started working, and that’s when I found just how difficult it was to, to see people, to relate to people. I very quickly learned to cheat, because I realised if I really looked down at R2D2 for instance, I would have done the whole performance like that, so most of the time I’m kind of pretending to see him, in the distance.
35:45 [film clip] C-3PO: At last! Where have you been?
35:46 Insert: STAR WARS, TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX/LUCASFILM (1977)
35:47 [film clip] C-3PO: They’re heading in this direction! What are we going to do? We’ll be sent to the spice mines of Kessel, smashed into who knows what? Wait a minute – where are you going?
35:38 ANTHONY DANIELS: No peripheral vision means that you can’t line up on anything, so, you miss it, you miss it very easily. So you’re dealing with total tunnel, and it’s kind of lonely in there, I tell you, and you know, one of the big problems, psychologically, was that I was alone in a box.
35:18 [film clip] C-3PO: You should be really pleased with that one sir, he really is in first class condition. I’ve worked with him before. Here he comes.
35:27 [film clip] LUKE: Okay, let’s go.
35:29 [film clip] C-3PO: Now, don’t you forget this! Why I should stick my neck out for you is quite beyond my capacity.
36:33 ANTHONY DANIELS: The real difficulty for me was that most of my scenes, all of my scenes were with R2D2 who does not speak during filming, so – “Where are you going? … What makes you think there are settlements over there?” I have to tell you, as an actor, it’s quite hard to time lines like “No, I don’t think he likes you at all. No, I don’t like you either.” It’s hard, there’s nothing to respond to, so you’ve got to, I don’t know, rely on the editing and your brain, and whatever.
37:06 [film clip] LUKE: Here. You see what you can do with him, I’ll be right back.
37:12 [film clip] C-3PO: Just you reconsider playing that message for him. No, I don’t think he likes you at all. No, I don’t like you either.
37:22 ANTHONY DANIELS: In the very last shot in Return of the Jedi that we, we did out in the desert, though, I’m walking along by myself rehearsing, and then I get to a line, you know “Lando Calrissian never returned from that awful place” and then suddenly – beep beep, beep beep – I look round and there is George swanning down, on his knees, shimmying forward, going ‘beep beep’.
37:40 VOICEOVER: Stanley Kubrick had been playing a science fiction follow-up to 2001: A Space Odyssey for some years, and had noticed the public response to Star Wars with more than a passing interest.
37:52 BRIAN ALDISS: Stanley was slightly jealous of the success of Star Wars,
37:56 Insert: BRIAN ALDISS, AUTHOR
because he regarded it as slightly a boy’s movie, and he wanted to know how he could make a science fiction film that would be as popular, whilst still retaining his social conscience. It’s a very difficult question to ask. So we tried to dream up various scenarios, and we concocted a very good one, where, for instance, a small boy of a poor family has to go out into the world to conquer a great evil. And on his way, he collects several rather disparate friends, they fight this evil, and eventually overcome it, whereupon he wins the hands of, the hand of the princess. Possibly more than her hand, we hope. And when we – when we worked all this out, we collapsed with laughter, because this is the story of the first Star Wars.
38:58 VOICEOVER: Kubrick and Aldiss would eventually work together on an idea which evolved into Steven Speilberg’s AI, or Artificial Intelligence, but that was very much in the future. Star Wars was the ultimate escapism. For as we enter the 80s it seemed there was no place left to hide. Darwinian capitalism was the order of the day, as corporations began merging to pool their resources and develop super technologies. Only the fittest could survive the new global economy. One film would reflect these changing times.
39:37 RIDLEY SCOTT: I was starting to see the world, and the logic of the world, and how it could unfold… My visuals come from logic.
39:46 Insert: RIDLEY SCOTT, DIRECTOR, BLADE RUNNER
Logic of the times, how people lived, and therefore how they lived expanding into making me think about the businesses that were able to afford this kind of research and development, R&D. So I thought logically, “well, you know something? There’s probably going to be businesses are going to very soon supersede governments, and eventually the world will be run by maybe two or three companies.
40:14 VOICEOVER: Blade Runner, based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? depicts earth as an ecological swamp, taken over by large corporations, interested only in profit. Genetically engineered humanoid slaves working in far off planets revolt when they discover that they have just a four year life span. These replicants return to earth to seek out the man who created them, Dr Eldon Tyrrel, founder of the giant Tyrell corporation, hoping he will extend their lives. Rutger Hauer plays the lead replicant, Roy Batty.
40:52 RUTGER HAUER: He had no message. He wanted more life, simple as that, and he was trying to get the most out of it.
41:00 RIDLEY SCOTT: One of the best scenes probably is between Roy Batty and Tyrell, when he comes to meet his maker. And the scene is so good because it’s logical, the whole thing – it’s odd but there’s truth and logic in that whole scene.
41:16 [film clip] DR TYRELL: What seems to be the problem?
41:17 Insert: BLADE RUNNER, WARNER BROS (1982)
41:19 [film clip] ROY BATTY: Death.
41:20 [film clip] DR TYRELL: Death? Well I’m afraid that’s a little out of my jurisdiction, you -
41:25 [film clip] ROY BATTY: I want more life. Fucker.
41:29 RUTGER HAUER: Basically, you know, when father says,
41:33 Insert: RUTGET HAUER, ACTOR
you know, there is no life after four years, and he shows him that it ends there, and that – you know, I think that’s where there is a fuse that just goes. And he don’t, he doesn’t – you know, Batty doesn’t really understand why he gets funny, but he has to kill this man.
42:15 PROFESSOR MAJA MATARIC: Blade Runner is an example of possible future scenarios. Definitely.
42:20 Insert: PROFESSOR MAJA MATARIC, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CALIFORNIA
I’m not sure that people have actually taken that though, and said “hold on now, what do we do?” because as long as it doesn’t exist as a real technology, it’s just a movie. But it is a warning, yeah.
42:31 VOICEOVER: Professor Maja Mataric is at the cutting edge of humanoid development in the United States.
42:37 PROFESSOR MAJA MATARIC: We have the power to change what we are, we have the power to direct where we go. That’s definitely true. But we have a power of doing it differently from the way evolution did it, so we cannot direct evolution, but we can create things synthetically. I would love to know what goes on in the minds of Hollywood directors and in fact I’d love to be involved and help them guide their minds where they should go because I think some of the movies could be done better, to serve as better warnings.
43:03 PROFESSOR KEVIN WARWICK: Sometimes the Hollywood directors
43:05 Insert: PROFESSOR KEVIN WARWICK, READING UNIVERSITY
and writers of science fiction can put pointers into the future and say “this is a potential scenario”. As a scientist, we can look at that and say “hey, yeah, that looks good” or “no, no that’s silly”. As a scientist we will swing out into the future, and sometimes do things that the science fiction writers never dreamed of.
43:26 VOICEOVER: With an identity microchip planted into his arm, Professor Warwick is walking proof of the proximity of science and science fiction.
43:37 TANNOY: Hello, Professor Warwick.
43:39 PROFESSOR KEVIN WARWICK: Hello.
43:42 VOICEOVER: No need for the menial day-to-day tasks like opening and closing doors. The microchip does that automatically for you.
43:51 PROFESSOR KEVIN WARWICK: The difference between science fiction, what’s not real, and science fact, what is real, is very very little now. I can see technically what’s possible if I give myself extra senses, if I can think in many dimensions which I can’t at the moment, if I can communicate with machines, with humans, just by thinking. To me that is all so exciting, it’s unbelievable – I want some of that now. So there’s no question in my mind, I want to be a cyborg.
44:24 VOICEOVER: Professor Warwick now plans to have an revolutionary microchip planted into his arm, which will communicate directly with a computer. He aims to increase the potential of man by merging us with machines. But even he admits there are dangers.
44:44 PROFESSOR KEVIN WARWICK: Looking at potentials – could we have machines more intelligent than humans, what is there to stop it happening? If they were more intelligent, what would they decide to do? What would we decide to do? Would they decide to wipe out humanity or not? These are very important questions, and in the film The Terminator they were addressed in a particular way, and I think they did portray in the film a pretty balanced approach: it could be very dangerous, but maybe there’s a way of avoiding it.
45:13 [film clip] SARAH CONNOR: A machine?
45:14 Insert: THE TERMINATOR, MGM/UA (1984)
like a robot?
45:17 [film clip] KYLE REESE: Not a robot. A cyborg. A cybernetic organism.
45:21 [film clip] SARAH CONNOR: No, no. He was bleeding.
45:23 [film clip] KYLE REESE: Just a second.
45:25 VOICEOVER: In the last quarter of the 20th century, movie-makers like Ridley Scott and James Cameron warned what the future might hold if the rapidly advancing development of robots and androids got out of hand.
45:36 PROFESSOR RICHARD DAWKINS: The idea of a runaway process
45:38 Insert: PROFESSOR RICHARD DAWKINS, EVOLUTIONARY SCIENTIST
is obviously both interesting and frightening. Ultimately, the runaway process might take us into realms where humans aren’t even necessary anymore. And I think that in some relatively remote future, that might be true.
45:52 PROFESSOR MAJA MATARIC: We’re here to discover how things work, to discover truths about nature and what we can create artificially. And in that process, scientists are never aiming at abuse of these technologies. But other forces are. I would say right now, that the defence industry is probably much more interested than big business. Consider Terminator – if you could have Terminator for real, that would certainly be interesting to people. I think it’s quite scary, I mean always implications, wartime implications of technology are always scary, but they will always be there, because that will be one of the goals that people have. And so that’s a part of the ethics we have to consider deeply, right away, not just in the far future.
46:45 VOICEOVER: To counter the growing fear of rampant technology, one film set out to argue that no matter how many microchips and how much metal and plastic are implanted into our bodies, the human soul will win out in the end. And where better to highlight this than the area of public protection and upholding the law? Alex Murphy is an honest cop working for a private corporation that runs the Detroit police force when he’s fatally wounded by villains. Before he actually dies, his brain is transplanted in an experiment for future law enforcement.
47:27 PAUL VERHOEVEN: This is a man trapped.
47:30 Insert: PAUL VERHOEVEN, DIRECTOR, ROBOCOP
In a, in a – let’s say in a metal body. His soul is still there, as we find out throughout the movie. It looks like there is nothing left but then there’s, of course, this tension between what was there before and what is there now, and one cannot come back, but can you combine it, and can you make something out of that that is worth, let’s say, to live for?
47:56 PETER WELLER: You know that the only other machine that
47:57 Insert: PETER WELLER, ACTOR
presents any sort of iota of a nemesis is Ed-209, you know, who doesn’t really work, does he?
48:04 PAUL VERHOEVEN: He is programmed not to shoot a guy when he throws his gun down, isn’t it? But then something goes wrong, he sees some stuff happening in the little control box they have.
48:15 Insert: ROBOCOP, MGM/UA (1987)
48:16 [film clip] ED-209: You now have 15 seconds to reply. You are in direct violation of -
48:20 PAUL VERHOEVEN: So something goes wrong and he doesn’t, he cannot correct himself.
48:27 VOICEOVER: The message is clear: machines by themselves can’t be trusted. And as for Robocop himself, the human part that is Murphy is slow in returning, as we see in the infamous rape scene.
48:38 PAUL VERHOEVEN: For him, it’s just a drag, you know? He is not emotionally involved, no, clearly not – he knows that a woman should not be attacked.
48:48 [film clip] WOMAN: Help!
48:50 [film clip] MAN: He’s going to kill her!
48:56 PAUL VERHOEVEN: I added the thing where he shoots him, where he can shoot him basically through the humans, through the female legs, he can of course target the penis or the balls or whatever it is, of the bad guy, because they will be sticking out, so that was – I added that. Basically I needed some conviction to prove to the studio that that would be okay, because that was kind of perverted, probably in their eyes, and I was more concentrating on that basically to make an interesting visual scene, with a very edgy context.
49:33 [film clip] ROBOCOP: Madam, you have suffered an emotional shock. I will notify a rape crisis centre.
49:39 PAUL VERHOEVEN: He cannot comfort her, because that he does not even know how to do that, because he is not programmed for that, he is programmed to send her to the trauma unit. So I think he sees a very clear-cut face of the situation for him, for Robocop, as Murphy is not there.
49:57 PETER WELLER: You attempt to affect the judgement of someone who’s lost their memory, an amnesiac. So they come up and say, “thank you for saving my life from those hooligans,” you just don’t know what you’ve just done. So you just have to thank them, you just acknowledge the world around you as if you have no idea what they’re talking about. That’s just what you have to take to it. The only thing when it clicks in is when my soul wakes up. He just has the dreams out of his soul, because they have not taken his soul.
50:30 PAUL VERHOEVEN: It’s still the hope, the human hope, that basically whatever machinery we make, whatever we build on top of your self, around your self, inside ourselves, that the soul will survive.
50:44 [film clip] WOMAN: It’s really good to see you again, Murphy.
50:46 BRIAN ALDISS: It’s not stretching the boundaries of credulity to imagine a person entirely of metal and plastic except perhaps with a human brain, which presumably will have access to computer support, and would be a very superior kind of being.
51:09 VOICEOVER: But is the human brain really so necessary? When Japanese corporation Honda unveiled its latest development, the entire world was taken by surprise. Until now, no robotic creature had the ability to mimic human movement with such amazing accuracy. Asimo has been designed with a view to looking after Japan’s increasingly aging population, in their own homes. In other laboratories around the globe, scientists are busy mastering human facial expressions, which will eventually make robots and androids more acceptable to their owners. Humanoid development is fast approaching the point where we can expect to see artificial helpers in homes within ten to twenty years.
52:03 PROFESSOR RICHARD DAWKINS: It’s part of my world view that there’s no, in principle, objection to one day computers being indistinguishable from humans in the things that they do, in the things that they think.
52:15 [film clip] DR ALLEN HOBBY: I propose that we build
52:17 Insert: AI, WARNER BROS (2001)
a robot child who can love. A robot child who will genuinely love the parent or parents it imprints on, with a love that will never end.
52:27 VOICEOVER: Will future robots and androids have an equivalent to human emotion? This is the film of the incybernetic movie, AI, which Steven Spielberg inherited from Stanley Kubrick.
52:40 BRIAN ALDISS: Stanley suggested to Spielberg that he should direct the film and Stanley should be the producer – a very uncharacteristic thing for Kubrick to let go of anything. Of course he died in 1999. One of the people who attended the funeral was Steven Spielberg, and to Stanley’s wish, he inherited the work and the storyboards.
53:14 VOICEOVER: Kubrick adapted the plot from a Brian Aldiss short story, ‘Super-Toys Last All Summer Long’.
53:20 STEVEN SPIELBERG: I was like an archaeologist
53:21 Insert: STEVEN SPIELBERG, DIRECTOR, AI
going through every piece of paper trying to work out what did Stanley intend, what is the story he wanted to tell, because my job was to honour his story without forgetting about myself – I wanted to also be able to include my own sensibilities.
53:33 VOICEOVER: The film depicts a world where the building of robots, or Mechas, as they are called, has reached car factory proportions.
53:41 STEVEN SPIELBERG: They are made specific. They are designed according to the tasks that they are built to perform.
53:50 BRIAN ALDISS: David is programmed to believe that he is a real boy, and programmed to love his mother. But his mother, Monica Swinton, is not programmed to love him. She can’t have a real child. He’s just a substitute. She rejects David. David doggedly goes on loving her.
54:12 [film clip] GIGOLO JOE: You were designed and built specific, like the rest of us. And you are alone now only because they tired of you, or replaced you with a younger model, or were displeased with something you said, or broke. They made us too smart, too quick and too many.
54:32 STEVEN SPIELBERG: We all have to be careful as we continue to, you know, to quantumly leap into the future that we create for ourselves, you know, to take responsibility for the things that we put on this planet.
54:46 PROFESSOR MAJA MATARIC: One of the big challenges for scientists working in areas like robotics and artificial intelligence is to be perceived correctly in what their research is, because most of the public image of what we do, it comes through the movies.
54:58 BRIAN ALDISS: The main showing of AI, I believe, makes it more likely that artificial intelligence will come about – it directs people’s thoughts towards the idea. So that scientists perhaps have a clear target to work for. Is this going to be for good or evil? This is not a question that you can ask scientists. The first man to invent sail never asked himself if it was going to result in the Spanish Armada, he just wanted to get across the lake.
55:39 PROFESSOR MAJA MATARIC: I think in science we never know when we’ve gone too far. It happens very gradually, because the point of science is discovery.
55:46 PROFESSOR KEVIN WARWICK: I think that scientists have always, not so much taken risks with humanity, but pointed to the potential risks that humanity could be taking. I merely open a window on what’s possible, and people – the rest of society – look at that, and say “yes, we want to go through that window” or “no we don’t”. I can’t make people go that way.
56:09 VOICEOVER: Sixty years ago, scientist and writer Isaac Asimov suggested three laws of robotics to ensure the safety of humans.
56:20 Insert: BICENTENNIAL MAN, DISNEY/TOUCHSTONE PICTURES (1999)
56:20 [film clip] ROBOT: First law of robotics: a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, cause a human being to come to harm. Second law: a robot must obey all human orders, except when those orders come in conflict with the first law.
56:37 VOICEOVER: Today, with science fiction and reality so close, can we trust the scientists to adhere to Asimov’s laws?
56:45 BRIAN ALDISS: It’s always easy to blame the scientists, but that’s… The morality of these things is not within the keeping of the scientific community, it’s in the keeping of the society at large. And if society is unwise enough, as I believe, to be taken over by machines, then that will happen.
57:08 PROFESSOR RICHARD DAWKINS: In some distant future time, one could imagine a kind of human free, organic free, version of evolution. One could even imagine robots of the future, some remote future time, looking back on their own dawn ages, speculating about how they got started and speculating about “maybe, once upon a time, there was some race of soft, swishy, carbon-based life-forms that gave us our start, and over the centuries we’ve gradually evolved.” I can almost see that happening.
57:42 ARTHUR C. CLARKE: I hope that we can share our planet, and other planets, comfortably with the children of our brains – computers. And, worst comes to the worst, well, I hope they’ll treat us as pets, and not call for the flit and exterminate us. Even if we deserve to be exterminated!
58:09 PROFESSOR KEVIN WARWICK: I don’t see it necessarily that it will be machines ruling the world and humans suffering. There is the other way. The other way is to upgrade humans. Take what we’ve got at the present point, and say, “well, we can have some of that intelligence, we can actually put it there, we can communicate in new ways, we can sense the world in all sorts of ways that we can’t. We can become cyborgs. So it’s very much a case of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’.
58:48 PROFESSOR RICHARD DAWKINS: When it comes to technology, when it comes to the application of science in practise, then I think there are great limits. You can do bad things, and you can do good things, and we as a society, we as a people, as a democracy, have to decide which are the bad things and not do them; which are the good things and do them. It’s society that has to take that decision, rather than scientists and technologists themselves.
59:14 [film clip] THE TERMINATOR: I’ll be back.