Stevenson.Wbst@PARC-MAXC.ARPA (02/01/84)
Sounds like "The Questor Tapes", one of Gene Roddenberry's creations. Like "Genesis II" and "Spectre", it was a pilot for a proposed series. Questor (played by Robert Foxworth) was an android built by a scientist (Dr. Vaslovic or something like that) who'd mysteriously disappeared shortly before finishing the job. Someone else finished the construction and found the mag tapes containing the programming for Questor (hence the title). Once programmed, Questor waited until he was alone and did a little further work on himself, after which he looked completely human. He then took off in search of Vaslovic to find out his purpose for existing (that part of the programming had been lost), with the FBI, CIA, or whoever in hot pursuit. Along the way, he acquired a human friend (played by Bradford Dillman, I think) who helped him. He eventually found the cave under a mountain (Ararat, I believe) with the row of bodies on slabs, the last body being Vaslovic's. Vaslovic had just enough remaining energy to tell Questor that each "body" was an android -- a guardian, meant to pass for human and subtly influence world events so as to prevent humanity from exterminating itself via war, pollution, etc. As each guardian wore out, it built its successor, but for some reason I don't remember, Vaslovic's construction of Questor had been interrupted. Note that a similar idea of guiding-humanity-through-the-critical-period- while-wisdom-is-catching-up-to-technology was also used in the Star Trek episode "Assignment Earth", where Robert Lansing was a human guardian, trained by aliens from the future and sent back to 1960's Earth, and Teri Garr was a secretary who discovered his secret. Roddenberry had hoped for a "spin-off" series from that episode. -- Bill Stevenson