Gerty
Moon (2009)
While the sentient computer installed in the lunar base in Moon is very reminiscent of 2001's HAL, the mental processes of Gerty - voiced by Kevin Spacey - are somewhat different, with more human-like co-operation than Kubrick's self-aware logic-led machine. It also has a small emoticon display to reflect its mood. Cute.
After our protagonist tricks Gerty into breaking programmers' orders, ignorance is shattered with both parties discovering the sordid truth to their existence. With conflicting orders - obey the corporation or provide support to its astronaut - the computer is left to make a moral choice and does so without the traditional motherboard implosion.
Hal Rating 70%
More info IMDB
HAL 9000
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Even in this day and age, Kubrick's Space Odyssey blows me away. It's incredible to think all of that happened just a decade ago... In all seriousness, though, the film's Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer - more familiarly known as HAL 9000 - is one of the greatest computers the world space has ever seen.
Capable of speech and facial recognition, lip-reading, natural language processing and, of course, an appreciation of fine art and music hall numbers, HAL 9000 is far more than your average personal computer. Brainy as it is, HAL turns fruit loop when ordered to lie to the astronauts in its care. To protect the mission, HAL panics and starts to kill everyone on board. You can hardly blame a computer for that.
HAL Rating 100%
More info IMDB
Next page: Holly
COMMENTS
Dark Star?
Not a computer per se but the computer-controlled bomb in Dark Star is worth a mention, surely? Nice to see Holly in there though.
Worst computer
Perhaps the "Talky Toster" from Red Dwarf should get a mention, it's toasted bread products obsession was something to behold. I always thought of it as a Microsoft Product.
This list is broken, no mention of Orac or the ships computer from Star Trek.
Re: No...
Slave?
Avon: "Slave. Why have the lights gone blue and the screen blanked out?"
Slave: "I most humbly regret to inform the masters that a program exception error has occurred in location 0x00fe09cda2, and that as a result the ships operations have been closed down to prevent possible damage. An error log is being generated, and upon the system rebooting the fault will be reported. Sir. Once again, I am most dreadfully sorry that this has happened."
Re: re 2001
No, you're mangling 2001 and 2010 (when they put in the kill device, and then Doc Chandra quietly took it out again when nobody was noticing).
I always felt rather sorry for HAL --- he wasn't evil, he was driven insane by bad management and unfollowable orders. Even so trying to kill everyone on board is a little extreme; all he really needed was a little primal scream therapy.
