By Todd Garbarini
If Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968), Joseph Sargent’s Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), Sir Ridley
Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), Simon Wincer’s D.A.R.Y.L. (1985),
and the television show Small Wonder (1985 – 1989) are all about
anything that we can be absolutely sure of, they are about prescience and the
coming of “Artificial Intelligence.” Following Stanford University professor John
McCarthy’s 1955 Dartmouth workshop and his introduction of the term “Artificial
Intelligence,” or “AI” as it is generally referred to now, AI means many things
to many different people today. When these outings reached audiences, they were
merely regarded as science fiction, though today there is an argument to be
made that they should be reappraised as science fact. AI was not a term used
when those films were released and has only come into universal parlance with
the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022. One wonders how Alan Turing,
Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, and Herbert A. Simon, the four men all regarded as
the “founding fathers” of Artificial Intelligence in the early 1950s, would
have regarded these stories and if they were in line with their notions of AI.
Richard Colla’s The Questor Tapes is a
made-for-TV movie that was largely ignored by audiences despite its interesting
premise of a scientist named Emil Vaslovik (Lew Ayres) and his desire to build
a superhuman android named Questor, expertly portrayed by veteran actor Robert
Foxworth. Filmed in 1973 and intended to be the pilot for a projected NBC
series, Questor was the brainchild of Gene Roddenberry, a television
screenwriter and producer who is best known for both being confused with author
Ray Bradbury as well as being the creator of the initially unsuccessful but
later wildly popular sci-fi television series Star Trek. Broadcast on
Wednesday, January 23, 1974, Questor begins with a team of scientific
and electronic experts who, following the disappearance of Vaslovik, attempt to
bring his vision to fruition despite being unable to decode the programming
tape while also accidentally erasing most of the tape’s contents – a nod to the
Watergate scandal of the time?
Geoffrey Darrow (John Vernon) is the new head
of the project, and he butts heads with Vaslovik’s assistant, Jerry Robinson
(Mike Farrell), who interrupts the data transfer and insists that the
programming should be done with the partially erased tapes. When the android
fails to respond, the “experts” leave the facility, dejected. While alone,
Questor, bald and naked, whirrs to life and, in a positively ridiculous
sequence, begins to transform itself from an “it” to a “him” (wait until you
see how it adds hair to its chrome dome), managing to dress itself in clothing
that perfectly fits. Questor sets off on a journey to search for Vaslovik and
hopes to understand his purpose while attempting to fill in the blank spots due
to the erased portions of his memory tapes. To do this, he enlists the help of a
reluctant Robinson. Questor begins by talking the way that a robot would be
perceived to speak, but through his travels with Robinson he begins to sound
more and more human. There is a humorous sequence after the duo make their way
to London and need to obtain more money. Questor solves this issue by using programmed
intelligence to gain the upper hand in a casino sequence that would be later
used by Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman in Barry Levinson’s Rain Man
(1988) and by Jessica Alba in the “Cash Rules Everything Around Me” episode
from October 2000 of the James Cameron-created series Dark Angel.
They make their way to a wealthy Lady Helena
Trimble (Dana Wynter) who worked with Vaslovik and he gleans more info from her
as to his creator’s whereabouts, though he is shot in a park by a soldier and is
summarily returned to the laboratory. Following his repair, Questor sets off to
Mount Ararat, allegedly the location of Noah’s Ark, and locates Vaslovik in a
cave thanks to some nifty matte work by the late great Oscar-winning artist
Albert Whitlock. Vaslovik, as it turns out, is also an android – shades of Blade
Runner? Who can forget the revelatory stuttering of Felix Flankin at the
end of Jules Bass’s 1967 outing Mad Monster Party? I will leave it up to
you, the reader, to have a look at the film to explain the rather involved denouement
but suffice it to say Mr. Roddenberry had a knack for creating projects that
initially went nowhere, then revisiting them and turning them into hits. While Questor
was initially conceived of as a series, with the movie intended as the series
pilot, creative differences between Mr. Roddenberry and NBC forced it to be nixed
and promoted as a one-off movie-of-the-week (known in the industry as an MOW)
which, I feel, explains the film’s abrupt ending. Many of the ideas touched
upon, including the notion of automatons and androids, made their way into the
highly successful Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987 – 1994).
Questor explores themes common to other films
of a similar ilk: What gives us our identity and what constitutes humanity? How
do we, as humans, quench our thirst for knowledge and curiosity? Both Mr. Foxworth
and Mr. Farrell possess good chemistry and it would have been nice to see where
the series went.
The laboratory portions of the film were shot
at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. While the technology of
1973 was considered to be “state-of-the-art” and then destined to become
“soon-to-be-obsolete” as all technology inevitably does (at least according to
Moore’s Law), it’s a kick to see how the experts reach their conclusions as to
how Questor will react to the environment. The special effects are, as you can
well imagine, dated, however the ideas are just as thought-provoking and
visionary and never more topical than when viewed now in an era when robots are
poised to man 18-wheelers, serve customers at fast food joints, and perform
minimum wage tasks deemed repetitive and boring.
Kino Lorber has released the film on Blu-ray,
and it looks great. There is an informative and spirited commentary track by
film historian and screenwriter Gary Gerani. Extraordinarily
knowledgeable and enjoyable to listen to, I will seek out other films that he
speaks on. His commentary encompasses brief but thorough bios of the leading
performers and makes comments on much of the onscreen action, how the sequences
were accomplished, while also delving into matters of the plot and how they
relate to the here-and-now. A first-rate commentary that easily lends itself to
repeated playback.
Rounding out the extras are trailers for the
film, as well as for Fear No Evil (1969), Scream, Pretty Peggy
(1973), Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979), The Groundstar
Conspiracy (1972), The Black Marble (1980), and Fuzz (1972).
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