2001: A Space Odyssey

[Ithekro]

I imagine that around the time the mission specialists were to be woken up, HAL would have played the recorded message from Dr. Floyd to Bowman and Poole, thus bringing them up to speed. The world found out about the Monolith's existence from Bowman's transmissions anyway. Either the mission planners didn't think through how Bowman and Poole were going to be briefed, or they didn't inform HAL on when there were to be briefed and he started to become more and more paranoid that they might find out about the top secret mission that he was not suppose to tell them about because they were getting close enough that they might actually see it if they looked at Jupiter with a telescope. His instructions were written wrong, as seen in 2010 when Dr. Chandra pulls HAL's orders, but did HAL have orders to tell the command team of Discovery about the Monolith?

 

[diankra]

The book pretty much states that; Discovery was already planned, and redirected to follow up the signal from the Lunar Monolith. The late change, and not telling many of the crew, was a factor in HAL's issues.

 

[diankra]

Isn't one of the points brought up in 2010, though I can't recall whether it's in the novel as well as the film, that Hal suffered the equivalent of a mental breakdown as a result of the paradox he found himself in? At that point, he probably wasn't really considering the larger picture so much as trying to handle one crisis at a time.

Yep. HAL is ordered to complete the mission, yet keep the crew in ignorance. The only way he can resolve that paradox is to assume the crew are a threat to the mission.

 

[diankra]

I honestly don't know why Frank and Dave's transmissions back home were (apparently) not monitored or censored. I admit, that's kind of a plot hole. I guess the government just assumed that since Frank and Dave didn't know about the monolith, their transmissions didn't NEED to be monitored.

Perhaps the NCA officials who would have been in charge of monitoring their transmissions, THEY couldn't be trusted with knowing about the monolith either? I mean, if the NCA is keeping the number of people in the know, to an absolute minimum, then that'd be the way to go.

When NASA restricted access to Apollo transmissions, journalists grumbled. So open access was probably the principle, meaning Bowman and Poole couldn't be censored.

 

[Noname Given]

Just had another thought:

When Dave and Frank are in the pod, planning to disable HAL, why doesn't HAL just blow the pod into space right then and there? Even if actually launching the pod might require human intervention, HAL could certainly still open a bay door, which would depressurize the bay and leave Dave and Frank stranded in the pod.

Because at that time HAL's prediction hasn't been shown as inaccurate as yet. HAL knows that if the unit fails as predicted, the crew's faith in him will be restored. HAL isn't lying to Frank or Dave at that point - HAL believes its prediction of the Comm unit's impending failure is accurate.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

HAL believes its prediction of the Comm unit's impending failure is accurate.

Really? I always thought that the AE-35 was never going to fail, and HAL made the whole thing up to justify disabling it and thus losing communication with Earth.

 

[DonIago]

Hmm.

If HAL is wrong about the antenna and knows he's wrong about the antenna, it begs the admittedly nitpicky question of why he chose that point in time to act. Is it that he was holding onto the last shreds of his sanity until then, or that he felt his window of opportunity was closing?

It seems to make more sense that HAL didn't know his prediction was wrong (either due to his programming being compromised or because he made a genuine mistake...maybe he's powered by Pentium?), and once he was faced with the inevitability of his mistake coming to light he either snapped at that point, or the already-unstable HAL just decided to escalate matters.

 

[shapeshifter]

It's explained in 2010 TYWMC. They had figured out (lip reading) he lied about the antenna and were going to disconnect some of his higher functions. He got paranoid and acted to preserve himself.

 

[David cgc]

Really? I always thought that the AE-35 was never going to fail, and HAL made the whole thing up to justify disabling it and thus losing communication with Earth.

The question is how much HAL's left hand knew what his right hand was doing. He seemed to be of two minds on the whole thing. There's the moment where he's talking to Dave, and is trying to hint to him there's something he needs to know about the mission that he shouldn't, but Dave shoots him down, assuming HAL is doing a psychological test to see if Dave is getting paranoid from the isolation. As soon as that happens, HAL reports the failure in the antenna, and his entire affect changes for the rest of the movie, becoming much colder and more mechanical. There could've been a subconscious element to him cutting the antenna, to the point where he wasn't fully aware of everything he was doing.

 

[Ithekro]

Did Discovery 2 actually go to the Jovian system after the events of 2010? It seems like it would be the perfect time to send a new explorer mission on the wake of what happened to Jupiter that year.

 

[dupersuper]

It's explained in 2010 TYWMC. They had figured out (lip reading) he lied about the antenna and were going to disconnect some of his higher functions. He got paranoid and acted to preserve himself.

Is it paranoid if you catch people talking about lobotomizing you?

 

[Skipper]

Once a read a review how it is funny that a computer is the most emotional character in the movie. All the other ones are professional and little cold (as trained astronauts are supposed to be).

Imagine the same scenes happening in a modern movie (the death of Poole and Hal locking out Bowman). The character's screams of desperation would likely destroy the theater's speakers. Followed by a satisfied "Oh yes, I want to hear it mother******er!" while he disables the higher functions of Hal.

 

[DonIago]

Once a read a review how it is funny that a computer is the most emotional character in the movie. All the other ones are professional and little cold (as trained astronauts are supposed to be).

Imagine the same scenes happening in a modern movie (the death of Poole and Hal locking out Bowman). The character's screams of desperation would likely destroy the theater's speakers. Followed by a satisfied "Oh yes, I want to hear it mother******er!" while he disables the higher functions of Hal.

My understanding is that the irony is intentional. I think Dullea and Lockwood comment on it on the commentary track for the film.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Once a read a review how it is funny that a computer is the most emotional character in the movie. All the other ones are professional and little cold (as trained astronauts are supposed to be).

It's not funny at all. Stanley Kubrick actually intended it to be that way.

Did Discovery 2 actually go to the Jovian system after the events of 2010?

We have no idea what ultimately happened to Discovery 2, although I assume that it was made redundant by the Leonov.

 

[Ithekro]

I would imagine Earth would need some massive scientific research around the creation of Lucifer, and there seemed to be a bit more space traffic by 2061.

 

[Forbin]

I would imagine Earth would need some massive scientific research around the creation of Lucifer, and there seemed to be a bit more space traffic by 2061.

It's way too early in the morning for me. I read that as "massive scientific reach-around."

 

[Allyn Gibson]

We have no idea what ultimately happened to Discovery 2, although I assume that it was made redundant by the Leonov.

Until this moment, I'd never given a second's thought to the fate of the Discovery 2, though after the transformation of Jupiter the NCA would have a good reason to complete it. There's value in getting a vessel to the Lucifer system as soon as possible, though what they really need are craft capable of landing on the Galilean moons (excepting Europa), which the Disco 2 was not.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

In the novelization, wasn't Discovery 2 intended to pick up the crew of Discovery 1 after the successful completion of the mission?

Seems like that would have been a massive waste of resources. Why go to all the effort of building a second ship to rescue the crew of the first? Why not simply make Discovery 1 able to take the crew to Jupiter and back?

I mean, if Discovery 2 could make the full round trip, then surely the first should also have been able to.

 

[David cgc]

In the novelization, wasn't Discovery 2 intended to pick up the crew of Discovery 1 after the successful completion of the mission?

Seems like that would have been a massive waste of resources. Why go to all the effort of building a second ship to rescue the crew of the first? Why not simply make Discovery 1 able to take the crew to Jupiter and back?

I mean, if Discovery 2 could make the full round trip, then surely the first should also have been able to.

In the novel, Discovery 1 was designed to go to Jupiter and back on its own, but was diverted to Saturn during late construction on a pretense because the Tycho monolith sent its signal there. Even with a gravity-assist maneuver while passing Jupiter, Discovery 1 still had to use up its fuel for the return to Earth to get to the new destination, so the mission profile was redesigned so they'd just study Saturn and its surroundings (really, the monolith on Iapetus) until they started to run low on consumables, then all five crew members would go into hibernation and wait for Discovery 2 to show up for follow-up science, and then the combined crews would return to Earth on Discovery 2, which was built to go as far as Saturn and back.

The movie streamlined that down so the monolith's signal was directed at Jupiter, IIRC because of disappointing VFX tests for Saturn's rings, but Clark could keep the Saturn stuff in the book because such considerations don't apply to the written word (though Jupiter worked out better for the sequels, anyway, since the Voyager missions showed it would be more likely to find life on Europa than in any of Saturn's moons). Based on 2010 (movie and book) Discovery 1 was designed to make it back to Earth from Jupiter on its own, and Discovery 2, whether it was commissioned after the disaster with the first Discovery or was always planned, was a totally separate mission.

 

[Marc]

In the novel, Discovery 1 was designed to go to Jupiter and back on its own, but was diverted to Saturn during late construction on a pretense because the Tycho monolith sent its signal there. Even with a gravity-assist maneuver while passing Jupiter, Discovery 1 still had to use up its fuel for the return to Earth to get to the new destination, so the mission profile was redesigned so they'd just study Saturn and its surroundings (really, the monolith on Iapetus) until they started to run low on consumables, then all five crew members would go into hibernation and wait for Discovery 2 to show up for follow-up science, and then the combined crews would return to Earth on Discovery 2, which was built to go as far as Saturn and back.

The movie streamlined that down so the monolith's signal was directed at Jupiter, IIRC because of disappointing VFX tests for Saturn's rings, but Clark could keep the Saturn stuff in the book because such considerations don't apply to the written word (though Jupiter worked out better for the sequels, anyway, since the Voyager missions showed it would be more likely to find life on Europa than in any of Saturn's moons). Based on 2010 (movie and book) Discovery 1 was designed to make it back to Earth from Jupiter on its own, and Discovery 2, whether it was commissioned after the disaster with the first Discovery or was always planned, was a totally separate mission.

Is my memory faulty or was Hal told that Discovery 2 (which wasn't yet built) would retrieve Discovery at a later date after all her propellant was used to boost Leonov for an early return to Earth before admitted that the ship on her computer were actually going to be toast?