lewis%Shasta@spider.UUCP (02/01/84)
The TV movie you are remembering is "The Questor Tapes". Part of the
reason you probably found the scene evocative is because this was the
pilot of a Roddenberry project ans he tends to pay attention to details
like background music having character themes and careful scene setting.
I thought the opening where the robot wakes up and realizes it must
transform itself into the semblance of a human-being and get away the most
powerful. being born and growing up, all in a few minutes! The scene with
the predecessor "guardians" (about 30 as I recall) is, of couse, orphan
finds father. It had everything: life, death, family tradition, good against
evil (including saving the world), even a little love and sex.
Whenever one of these lone good guy against the evil organization plots
gets instanced, did you notice that all the good guys, who are linked in no
particular organization, recognize our hero as a good guy who deserves their hel help, and proceed to give him/her/it useful advice, helpful tools and one
or more pointers to other people who are good guys that might help him/her/it?
It seems to be one of those things that is too obvious to mention, that the
good guys of the world are all linked together in this chaotic non-organization
(like SF fandom or the Usenet...) and that good guys recognize each other
because they notice each other doing "things that good guys do" (like helping
other people out).
As I recall Questor very quickly stumbled onto the right people to help him -
perhaps because anyone is at most 5 friendship-links away from everybody esle
in the world. I wonder if we could figure out whether the human race is really
going to make it from the relative efficiencies of a non-organized network
vs a set of quasi-competing distinct organizations. Can the set of organizations
that interact on neutral principals (eg cost/benefit) be ignored in figuring
this model? If the cost/benefit interactors in the net help the bad guys,
then apparently, capitalism is bad like the socialists claim. That would be
an interesting system to model.
- Suford
Decwrl!rhea!Spider!Lewis@SHASTA