The computer's voice: how did they get it wrong?

[WarpFactorZ]

While watching an episode of TOS, I started to wonder: how did they screw up the computer's voice? Why would they think, 300 years in the future, the computer would sound like a robotic, cold, voice synthesizer? They even got it right (ironically) in "Tomorrow is Yesterday", where the voice was completely human.

Given the forward-looking and creative outlook of science fiction in the 50s and 60s, what made the producers balk and make the computer what it became?

 

[Phaser Two]

I have never had a problem with it. I especially like John Winston's take on it in Mirror, Mirror.

 

[mos6507]

Hindsight is 20/20.

Robotic voice, although not universal, was a standard cliche' still in use as far as the late 80s (Small Wonder). Heck, even the new Robot in the LiS reboot has "robotic voice" although in his case he's an alien so you can kind of understand why he has trouble speaking.

In retrospect HAL's voice in 2001 is closest to how modern speech synthesizers sound, which is not so much monotone as singular in emotion. Natural inflection but no ability to shift emotional tone regardless of context, hence HAL still coming across calm and collected even when he is panicking due to his brain being disassembled.

 

[Maurice]

I think they wanted it clear the voice was a machine and not a person on speakerphone.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I think they wanted it clear the voice was a machine and not a person on speakerphone.

This.

Also: the venue of TV is different than the venue of a movie theater. Just because HAL was successful, it doesn't mean that TOS got it wrong. Robby and the Lost in Space B-9 robot were aided by the fact that you could see their bodies.

 

[johnnybear]

Who's to say that a future computer voice system wouldn't sound like that? How many of us will still be here to say, you got it wrong there guys?
JB

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Yeah, maybe not monotone, but putting a tenor into a voice to make it sound unambiguously artificial is quite useful and perhaps generally desirable, I would think.

 

[Timo]

...Heck, some American radio shows today make major effort to give foreign voices a thick fake accent in the English overdub/translation to make them identifiable as foreign. Making machines sound like machines is a much lesser "Umm... What?".

Perhaps there will be an #ittoo storm in defense of humane portrayal of machines, and Kirk's era is living through the inevitable backlash? Although it could also be a bigger thing, a true Butlerian Jihad against ambitious AIs that once threatened mankind. We know Trek humans are prone to extreme measures and long grudges on such issues (COUGHuments!).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SpyOne]

I think they wanted it clear the voice was a machine and not a person on speakerphone.

That and they wanted to make it clear that the computer was not an AI in the sense of having emotions. (It undoubtedly uses what we now understand as AI to parse conversational speech, for example, but not the 1960s version of AI which slmost always meant some kind of machine people).

I've known several people with vastly divergent interpretations of 2001. My brother felt the core problem was that Dave and Frank acted towards Hal as if he genuinely had emotions rather than just simulating them. If they had explained to Hal that it appeared he was malfunctioning, that wouldn't upset him the way it would a person.
Just another possible reason to keep your computers sounding like computers.

 

[WraithDukat]

Maybe it's a preference thing, a 'desktop theme' if you will. We know Kirk likes antiques so maybe it was his choice. This would explain why it doesn't sound like that on Discovery too.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Perhaps by choosing a more robotic speech pattern, he's not tempted to forget it's a computer. That may be why the flirty post-Cygnet XIV voice unnerved him so - if the chain of command prohibits looking for love among his crew, he may start talking to the computer like it's his girlfriend. (And wind up talking it to death?)

 

[alensatemybuick1]

I always thought the point in 2001 was HAL acted more human / expressed more emotion than Bowman or Poole.

As far as the TOS Enterprise computer voice goes, its hard to call it "wrong" only with decades of hindsight. Steven Hawking kept his early mechanical voice emulator's signature "accent" long after he could have upgraded to something more closer to natural speech (of course because it had become such a part of his persona).

 

[Maurice]

Wow, 2001 is a favorite subject of mine. To me, the humans in 2001 are still the dying primates from the Dawn of Man. A lot of the action between the two sequences is the same....the listless existence, the scenes of eating, the tribes (in the year 2001 being the chilly relationship between the Soviets and the west), etc. The match cut from the bone to the [nuclear bomb] satellite basically indicates that we're in the same scene, just 4 million years later, and the bones have become bigger. Said bone is the tool used to kill your fellow man, and HAL is that first weapon in it's greatest expression...the bone club given the ability to wield itself. And humans have to kill the tool, let go of it, transcend it, in order to stop being dying apes.

Or something.

 

[Pauln6]

I always thought the point in 2001 was HAL acted more human / expressed more emotion than Bowman or Poole.

As far as the TOS Enterprise computer voice goes, its hard to call it "wrong" only with decades of hindsight. Steven Hawking kept his early mechanical voice emulator's signature "accent" long after he could have upgraded to something more closer to natural speech (of course because it had become such a part of his persona).

I saw this at the cinema last week. I think Arthur C Clarke wanted to make the point that the most effective astronauts on an 18 month journey would be ones who did not crave personal contact. They talk to HAL far more than to each other.

Personally, I prefer computer voices to sound artificial. I'd love to have Majel's voice on a sat nav or SIRI.

 

[Maurice]

I want all my devices to sound like original BSG Cylons... just so I never forget the danger.

 

[Pauln6]

I want all my devices to sound like original BSG Cylons... just so I never forget the danger.

Admittedly, Twiki is my first robo-love, then Majel, then Bender, then VINCent, then the cylons

 

[alensatemybuick1]

Big fan of KITT here.

In my college fraternity, we had a pledge we named TWIKI, and we made him construct and wear a cardboard Dr. Theopolis and wear it around his neck for all of Hell Week.

By the way, I only discovered many years afterwards that HAL's twin sister SAL, in 2010 was voiced by Candice Bergen, credited under the pseudonym "Olga Mallsnerd", apparently a play on her husband's name and one of her father's dummies.

 

[XCV330]

While watching an episode of TOS, I started to wonder: how did they screw up the computer's voice? Why would they think, 300 years in the future, the computer would sound like a robotic, cold, voice synthesizer? They even got it right (ironically) in "Tomorrow is Yesterday", where the voice was completely human.

Given the forward-looking and creative outlook of science fiction in the 50s and 60s, what made the producers balk and make the computer what it became?

It's even more inexplicable, because if any of them had visited the 1939 world's fair, they could have actually heard early speech synthesis that was surprisingly natural sounding, the Voder (worth a look if you're into retro-tech).

Forbidden Planet/Lost in Space had given a mechanical but still expression-capable voice for Robbie.

Thank goodness Starfleet had not adopted a tonal langauge for its lingua franca. The main reason I think they wanted they didnt want the computer to sound like Nurse Chapel. That would have been confusing and probably would have pissed Lucille Ball off further.

In-world guess: Spock tried running an algorithm to develop a voice that didn't sound like any member of the crew, so as not to be confusing, and this was what he came up with.

 

[alchemist]

I'm really old school. It's Colossus/Guardian or nothing. When my alarm clock goes off and Colossus tells me to get up and proceed to the shower, well, it's just...

 

[Poltargyst]

I'm really old school. It's Colossus/Guardian or nothing. When my alarm clock goes off and Colossus tells me to get up and proceed to the shower, well, it's just...

I remember that movie.