No bugger'll drink it
This weekend we relaxed. I think I told you about that. Went around to Si's sister's place for a couple of hours on Sunday which was great and meant we ended up having lunch in the Bracknell Waterstones - where they do fantastic bagels. I had a Tijuana Tuna Melt. Yes! A taste of Tijuana in Bracknell. Baffling.
Watched Red Dwarf II - Kryten with Si tonight. It's a classic and a funny/sad episode, almost timeless. It's a great sci-fi concept, to have a machine or a system that carries on going long after the people that it was meant to serve are dead.
In the book 'Mockingbird' there's a bit where the lead character finds a toaster factory where the toasters are put together piece by piece, fed to a conveyer belt, fall down the wrong chute and are all scrapped, before being taken back and recycled to make new toasters. The loop goes forever - until our hero moves a small piece of metal and toasters start heading out for distribution to the non-existant civilised world.
Although it's macabre and hilarious, there's also something really moving about the scenes where Kryten tries to doll up the three skeletons of the female crew of Nova 5. He dabs lipstick on one in a vague ring around her mouth; another falls into her soup, causing Kryten distress that she won't 'eat nicely'; the third skeleton that appears to be exactly the same as the others he decides looks perfect. They'll never be able to thank him for the hundreds of years of hard work he's put in serving their every need.
And then theres Kryten's dream about having a garden. Possibly cheap and cheesy, but because he's a robot and not actually 'alive' himself it's kind of poignant. To make things grow and bring life is a basic human desire. The thing to do now is to slag off Commander Data in Star Trek and say that in 7 years of striving to human, he didn't have any moment as good as the one Kryten got in his very first episode. Data wasn't striving to be human. He was striving to be a wanker.
Watched Red Dwarf II - Kryten with Si tonight. It's a classic and a funny/sad episode, almost timeless. It's a great sci-fi concept, to have a machine or a system that carries on going long after the people that it was meant to serve are dead.
In the book 'Mockingbird' there's a bit where the lead character finds a toaster factory where the toasters are put together piece by piece, fed to a conveyer belt, fall down the wrong chute and are all scrapped, before being taken back and recycled to make new toasters. The loop goes forever - until our hero moves a small piece of metal and toasters start heading out for distribution to the non-existant civilised world.
Although it's macabre and hilarious, there's also something really moving about the scenes where Kryten tries to doll up the three skeletons of the female crew of Nova 5. He dabs lipstick on one in a vague ring around her mouth; another falls into her soup, causing Kryten distress that she won't 'eat nicely'; the third skeleton that appears to be exactly the same as the others he decides looks perfect. They'll never be able to thank him for the hundreds of years of hard work he's put in serving their every need.
And then theres Kryten's dream about having a garden. Possibly cheap and cheesy, but because he's a robot and not actually 'alive' himself it's kind of poignant. To make things grow and bring life is a basic human desire. The thing to do now is to slag off Commander Data in Star Trek and say that in 7 years of striving to human, he didn't have any moment as good as the one Kryten got in his very first episode. Data wasn't striving to be human. He was striving to be a wanker.