writes:
I have been thinking about the "living ship" or the "ship with a
personality"
used on Andromeda, Blake's Seven, and to a lesser extent on Farscape. It
seems related to me to such characters as KITT, the Knightrider car, my
Mother the Car, the talking figurehead of the Argo, and even Balaam's ass
in
the Bible. I am sure Brin-listers can think of other examples.
Living ships? Well, let's get the list going:
1) From "Stories From a Parallel Universe" and "Lexx", The ship Lexx is a
living ship (organic), but doesn't exactly have much of a personality (though
it does talk and can take matters into its own hands if it deems it
neccessary, though that aspect is rarely seen in the few movies/episodes I
have seen).
2) From "Earth: Final Conflict", All taelon structures and ships are "grown",
not built, implying that they are (to an extent) living, but again, not much
of a personality.
3) From "Star Trek: The Next Generation" eppisode (IIRC) "Tin Man" they find
an powerful organic ship that forms a symbyotic relationship with a pilot.
The ship has personality, but it doesn't talk, so you only see it indirectly
through the actions of the ship.
4) From "SeaQuest: DSV"... ok, I don't know if this really counts, only the
outer hull was organic so the sub could repair itself.
5) Already mentioned "Farscape". Apparantly most of the ships in that series
are organic, the personality of the ship is not really played much though,
and you usually only hear about what the ship is doing/thinking through Pilot.
6) The center of this discussion: Andromeda. The ship is just a machine, but
has an advanced AI interface which can control ship opperations, and thanks
to one of the new crew, has an android body it can manifest itself in.
7) From Babylon 5: The Vorlon and Shadow ships were living ships, but we
never see internal opperations, so personality cannot really be seen.
8) Again From Star Trek:TNG. In an eppisode (I forgot the name). The Ship
is affected by a computer virus or anomoly and "comes to life". It takes
over the vessel (chaos ensues in the holodeck of course), and in the end, the
ship creates an "offspring" in the cargo bay, after which the ship returns to
normal.
9) From Star Trek:Voyager, the ship uses "bio-neural gel packs" as processing
relays (I suppose). This is much like the Sea Quest example though,
functional, not really a living ship, and definately no personality from it,
which was disapointing I must say. Why didn't they have an episode where
Voyager becomes inteligent and gets tired of running home and decides to go
on its own pursuits?
10) From 2001: HAL. I don't think this needs further elaboration. This is
more along Andromeda's lines minus the android and holographic form.
11) From the movie Event Horizon. The Event Horizon becomes "posessed" and
kills off the crew through phantoms and halucinations. More of a "ghost in
the machine" thing than a living ship.
12) From the movie Flight of the Navigator. Along the same lines as HAL and
Andromeda.
Nothing else from popular culture comes to mind at the moment, though I am
sure that more exist. My mind isn't in book mode right now, so I don't
recall anything from there at the moment.
Michael Harney
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
