We live in an age where artificial intelligence is designing medications that nobody can determine how they actually work. While very few in 1974 could have anticipated this development, that year’s The Questor Tapes has an android who can do very advanced machine learning, in addition to being able to physically modify, and do surgery upon, themselves. The plot largely concerns his programming, the full extent of which is a mystery to the main characters. Fast-forward fifty years and you have the reality of us creating intelligences we don’t understand.
This made-for-TV film is a sci-fi / conspiracy thriller from the mind of Gene Roddenberry while he was in those wilderness years between when the original Star Trek was cancelled and the nostalgia for it began. It seems to foretell such Trek characters as Data.
The project to create that humanoid was well under way when his creator, a mysterious Dr. Vaslovik, disappeared. The doctor left an encrypted tape containing his code to program Questor. Government officials are suspicious of what that program will do but, unable to decrypt it, they decide to write their own. Mike Farrell, playing a leading scientist who worked under Vaslovik, is insistent they use that doctor’s tape, much to the chagrin of a by-the-numbers government stooge played by John Vernon.
It appears the programming effort is a failure, and so everybody calls it a day. Alone hat night in the empty lab, Questor awakens and proceeds to make his own modifications to his smooth, plastic exterior. I was disappointed the song “Plastic Man” by The Kinks wasn’t employed for this scene, since it would have been deeply funny. Soon, he has transformed himself into Robert Foxworth, though I suspect he was trying to make himself into Cliff Robertson. I like the idea of a robot being self-aware and having the tools and knowledge to disguise itself as a human. It is a very empowering and robot-positive film.
Fortunately, Foxworth was also programmed to not go out into the world unclothed, and soon he is wandering around the campus looking like an average person of the time. His first contact with a human occurs when visiting the missing scientist’s library. The administrator he encounters there seems nonplussed, despite the android’s rather bizarre mannerisms and manner of speech. While not a lie, per se, Foxworth does manage to cover these deficiencies with, “I think it is truthful to say I have spent most of my life in the laboratory and lack social graces.”
Foxworth has been tasked with finding his creator, though he does not know why that is imperative. Farrell is soon roped in on that quest, and they jet off to “London”, which is just more of the template Universal studio city set pieces, but dressed with some elements appropriate for that city. Odd that I have seen enough of this studio’s telefilms that I recognize some of the components of this set.
Also typical of these films is the use of once-famous actors now past their prime. Dana Wynter has held up well, but she is not as jaw-droppingly beautiful as everybody here is making her out to be. Foxworth knows this wealthy woman is somehow part of the chain of people who can get him to his creator. Farrell is tasked with seducing her and fails. Foxworth next tries the same, explaining he is fully functional. I was surprised by this, as I imagined him being as featureless in the southern hemisphere as a Ken doll. Then I started wondering if Questor has a range of attachments, and possibly different speed and vibration settings. Regardless of all these possibilities, I mostly wondered why not just ASK her for the information?
If there’s two elements this type of set-up have always had, they are 1) the android will have a variety of special powers and 2) there will be comic mishaps as he tries to be more human-like. As for the former, he has super strength, is basically the original GPS, and can absorb mass volumes of new information effortlessly. As for the latter, consider Farrell’s light criticism of Foxworth’s approach to reading on the plane: “Humans can’t read in the dark” and “Slow down. Nobody reads that fast.”
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the plot is whether the missing scientist’s intentions were entirely noble. There are also the questions as to full extent of his program that is now driving Foxworth. In the end, we will learn the full story of the scientist and I have to admit I did not anticipate the answers we receive.
Another aspect of the plot I found interesting is Vernon’s villain; namely, that he is revealed to not be as diabolical as he is first presented to be. The character takes a turn towards the end I did not fully believe, but which was interesting.
And now for a quick roundup of some other aspects of the production. The score by Gil Mellé splits the difference between innovation and tradition by largely being a very conservative work interspersed with moments of some rather off-putting early synth noises. The opening credits are the most 70’s thing I might have ever seen. Effects work is largely matte paintings, including one shown as an unfinished effect in a trailer on this disc. Before seeing that, I did not realize this was a matte effect when watching the film.
Like so many of these films, The Questor Tapes was intended to be a pilot, though the resulting series did not materialize. Although I like this film, I did not feel the need to follow the adventures of Foxworth and Ferrell any further than this. There is a bit of wonder in this movie, and familiarity would quickly diminish that. For just this standalone film, however, I am amused by a scientist realizing “I never put anything together before that said to me it needs my help.”
Dir: Richard A. Colla
Starring Robert Foxworth, Mike Farrell, John Vernon
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray