Questor meet Mr. Trent

The Questor Tapes popped up - I really can't remember if I ever saw it before or not.  It was a TV movie, essentially a pilot for a TV series which didn't sell ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Questor_Tapes

The tape on Archive is from January 23, 1974 - a Wednesday night ?  So maybe I was hard at work studying for my freshman electrical engineering classes ?  (yeah, right :)

https://archive.org/details/questor-tapes-1-23-74

The video quality is strictly Beta or VHS although watchable.  But it reminded me of the Demon With a Glass Hand episode of The Outer Limits, mentioned previously here:

https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/11/youtube-stuck-in-its-thumb-and-drew.html

Both shows featured robots who didn't quite understand what their purpose was, at least at the start.  

"Through all the legends of ancient peoples – Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerican [sic], Semitic – runs the saga of the Eternal Man, the one who never dies, called by various names in various times, but historically known as Gilgamesh, the man who has never tasted death ... the hero who strides through the centuries ..."

OK, that kind of fits both of the characters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_with_a_Glass_Hand

A colorized version:  https://archive.org/details/the-outer-limits-tv-1964-s02e05-demon-with-a-glass-hand

"Like the Eternal Man of Babylonian legend, like Gilgamesh, one thousand plus two hundred years stretches before Trent. Without love. Without friendship. Alone; neither man nor machine, waiting. Waiting for the day he will be called to free the humans who gave him mobility. Movement, but not life."

Now here is where Gene Roddenberry and Harlan Ellison would have parted ways, Roddenberry might have spun Mr. Trent out into a TV series, maybe even a sitcom with Consuelo as he maintains his 12 century vigil :)

But Harlan Ellison was too much the iconoclast to have ever allowed a series and besides, Roddenberry would have been busy with Star Trek  :) 

The Questor Tapes was an interesting beginning, sort of like Route 66 but one of the guys is an android and instead of a Corvette they fly in a private jet ?  :)

BTW, the guy with the briefcase is supposedly Walter Koenig (Chekov from Star Trek):

He didn't get to do or say anything.  And this is Majel Barrett (Nurse Chapel from Star Trek):

She gets to at least say a few lines.  And here is Lew Ayres:

He's the Obi-wan of the story but he only gets a little speech at the end, lying down !

Questor is the last in a long line of shepherds of humanity

checkout that little transmitter :)

By the time that this movie was broadcast Roddenberry was probably working on other show ideas - unfortunately the only one of his creations that ever hit, Star Trek, only became really popular after it went into reruns.  So then of course Paramount kept it alive through versions with new casts and titles but basically the same space opera formula.

Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm