On to the second episode of The Masters of Luxor - but first,
let's briefly talk science fiction and scientific speculation. First,
there is a thread in the (overlapping, but distinct) SF and scientific
communities that looks to the future and attempts to make extrapolations
and predictions of the plausible. Sometimes these actually come true in
our timeline, Arthur C. Clarke's famous invention of the communications
satellite being a prime example (though he apparently originally
described it in an article, not a story as is sometimes assumed).
On the other hand flying cars haven't appeared yet - but perhaps they
will by the time this marathon reaches Gridlock. Another common
"golden age" assumption was that robots would be built in humanoid form,
and while that age was coming to an end in 1963 it is still noteworthy
that it is addressed here in Susan's comments about wheels or tracks
being more sensible choices than legs.
Sometimes speculation is just playing with ideas rather than making
suggestions or assumptions. The concept of self-replicating machines -
while going back to at least 1802 - was first studied in depth by John
von Neumann in the late 1940s and popularised in the 1950s. Others
(Edward F. Moore, to begin with) took those ideas and tried to make
practical solutions, but they are still called "von Neumann machines"
after their conceptual father.
Of course, the robots of Luxor don't just make identical copies of
themselves, they make improvements. It would be lazy to call this
"evolution" without knowing the mechanism of the Perfect One's
development, but with the 1950s discoveries of DNA and the mechanisms of
biological replication and genetic variation, and the impact this had
on popular thought, such ideas were in the air at the time Anthony
Coburn was working on this script.
And they were in my mind, too, listening to it. I thoroughly enjoyed the
episode, but unusually it was a very cerebral kind of pleasure. There's
a lot of "how does that work?" discussion, which might not have been to
everyone's taste in a family program on TV but kept me entertained on
audio.
Of course, it's not all cerebral - but to show the physical stuff properly would have required the budget for Forbidden Planet!
Climbing down a series of balconies in the enormous building would have
been done in a way that wasted the mental image, I suspect, and is far
better on audio. Incidentally, I chose that film specifically because of
similar imagery there - and it fits right into the period. This is
superior 1950s SF.
Rocky Roads (The Robots), part 1: Robots and Cavemen and Giants, oh my!
Coming to William Hartnell fandom late in the day I never read the
scripts for any of these stories, or indeed found out much about them
and the circumstances that led to their abandonment - until this
marathon. Now, however, I've taken the time to find out a bit more. As I
run through these episodes I'll also provide a potted summary of how
this serial ended up as an audio release.
When the initial run of TV stories was being hammered out in 1963 the first serial was to have been C.E. Webber's The Giants, and this was to have been followed by Anthony Coburn's The Tribe of Gum.
When Webber's story was postponed Coburn was asked to move his up the
schedule and also to write a second to follow straight after: The Masters of Luxor (or, as it was originally known, The Robots). Of course the latter wasn't going to happen, as we shall see next time...
Rating:
7.5/10.
Next Time:
A Light on the Dead Planet.
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