Forbidden Planet Morbius's job
- Thread starter Gov Kodos
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Or just avoiding the grad students by making his office hours as inconvenient as possible. I think there is plenty in the nature of Morbius's job, and the reasons for the Bellerophon mission to have been sent with a very highly trained professional in languages to make a great prequel film. Sufficient evidence is found of the Krell technology but absence of a current existing civilization. The power signature of the great machine was detected leading the sponsors of what becomes Morbius's mission to assemble a team with archeological and linguistics expertise and orders to keep the existence of any existing technology quiet for purposes of military/industrial exploitation. That sounds like something from Babylon 5, but a story that I'd like to see.
You've already suggested the answer. His secondary specialty on the ship was linguist. But his primary job was a gofer for the engineering crew, the "fillologist", and that's how he introduced himself to the C-57D.
Because remakes are iffy to begin with, and nothing I saw of the FP remake was encouraging at all.
I would have liked to see it!
I was excited for it, when I heard JMS was doing the script, I had faith in him to get the script right.Because remakes are iffy to begin with, and nothing I saw of the FP remake was encouraging at all.
He didn't get married until after the Bellerophon arrived. Adams remarked that there was no mention of a wife in the crew manifest.
^^ If the mother resembled the daughter, I don't blame him.
I can't remember at the moment what he said his plans were, but I remember cringing.
Since the film is basically a version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, I wonder if they could just do a reboot where they keep the outer space setting AND (as much as possible) the Bard's dialogue...
I don't know how much is fact or speculation here. The idea of a trilogy I can believe as Hollywood loves a franchise. I don't know how well it would have worked, but I do like the idea that the daughter was connected to the machine and able to manipulate things with it. http://www.comicmix.com/news/2008/12/22/james-cameron-may-be-joining-jms-on-forbidden-planet/
I am guessing the Diana mentioned is Morbius's wife. I thought her name was Julia?
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The synopsis would have been better if the daughter had turned out to have been a creature from the Id. I'd prefer to see a remake rather than a prekrell, sorry I mean prequel. A triology, though, nah...
Immediately after the announcement that there were no signs of civilization on approach, the C57-D was radar-scanned from an area "twenty miles square," which from the dimensions I can only assume to be the surface of the Krell machine, being a cube with a 20 mile edge. Clearly, the C57-D did detect signs of civilization on approach, and indeed signs of the Krell.
One thing I was curious about was whether the Bellerophon was similarly scanned when it first approached.
It wasn't mentioned in the movie, but it would be a reasonable supposition that the Bellerophon was scanned and chose to land in that area as a place to investigate.
It's not similar enough to Tempest to do that, although I suppose it might be possible to homage specific pieces of dialogue.
Thanks for the link. Yeah, I don't like that at all. It turns Altaira into the threat, rather than Morbius's id, and sounds more like a straightforward action movie, lacking the meaning of the original story. There's not much there about the first movie, but the second movie sounds like a good idea, if it were unconnected with the original FP.
All right, but either way, the point I was actually making was that they couldn't tell whether or not it was inhabited until they actually travelled there. The topic under discussion is how and why the Bellerophon expedition would've selected its personnel, so what's relevant here is not what they did at Altair, but what they didn't do back on Earth before they set out. If it were possible in the FP universe to determine a planet's habitation status across interstellar distances, then the C57-D crew would've arrived already knowing its status and wouldn't have needed to do the scans we saw them doing.
Therefore, the question "Why would they send a philologist to an uninhabited planet?" is improperly formulated, because at the time they were selecting the expedition's members, they wouldn't have known whether or not it was inhabited.
Improperly formulated or not, it's a useless crewman if the planet is uninhabited. Secondary skills are beside the point, the skill is USELESS to survival, if there is no one to talk to. A PhD professor is overkill without knowing if there's someone to talk to. If there's no one there, what's the point of wasting ship's resources on a crewman who is not useful for much else than making cool crossword puzzles. It's unlikely Earth put folks in a ship on a blind mission. A blind mission is one I can't see the need for Morbius on board. More believable would be a robot probe detects a radar scan from the surface as the C57D did. Earth figure the data isn't natural, but there is little other sign of life. Morbius is included in case there is life based on the hypothetical probe detection.
Well, do we know for a fact that Altair was the only system the Bellerophon visited? Everyone here is taking that as a given, and it's always important to question whatever you're taking for granted. True, that did seem to be the case, but I don't think it was ever stated for sure. Maybe it was actually a multi-year expedition (a five-year mission?) to survey various systems. Given the long travel times, you might as well take in other nearby systems and get as much as you can out of the journey. An expedition to Altair could have also visited, say, Wolf 1055, 70 Ophiuchi, AX Microscopii, or 61 Cygni.
I'd say bringing Morbius presents the same problem. Going into a survival situation, you don't bring something unless you know you will need it, and anything should have multiple uses. Carrying anything not useful to survival is a drain on resources that could kill you. The same should hold with your crew choices, all their skills should be useful all the time, primary and secondary. Just random contact, the commanding officers can be trained well enough to say hi. Having found a race to talk to, you report to base and a linguistics team can follow up.
But, see, that's you're mistake. We're not talking about "a survival situation." We're talking about a scientific research expedition. The goal is to discover and learn as much as you can. You don't want to arrive on the scene and be unprepared for whatever you may find, because then you would've wasted huge amounts of time, money, and resources. If you're going to put that much effort and investment into an expedition, you want it to be ready for whatever it might encounter, so that the effort isn't wasted.
And it's ridiculous to say "all their skills should be useful all the time." How the hell can you possibly know which skills will or won't be useful until you get there? If you could predict that in advance, you wouldn't need to go investigate new stuff in the first place. (What if you bring a computer specialist and then crash on a planet where some technobabble field ruins all advanced technology and you have to live Robinson Crusoe-style?) You're engaging in the same oxymoronic reasoning as politicians who say "Why should we fund this scientific research if we don't know what benefits it has?" It's a self-contradictory question because you can't discover those benefits until you actually do the research and know what it has to offer. The whole point of science is to investigate those things we don't already have all the answers about, so there has to be a willingness to take chances, to make investments that may or may not pay off. If you limit yourself to situations where you can already predict exactly what you'll need, then by definition you won't even try to learn anything new.
And it's ridiculous to say "all their skills should be useful all the time." How the hell can you possibly know which skills will or won't be useful until you get there? If you could predict that in advance, you wouldn't need to go investigate new stuff in the first place. (What if you bring a computer specialist and then crash on a planet where some technobabble field ruins all advanced technology and you have to live Robinson Crusoe-style?) You're engaging in the same oxymoronic reasoning as politicians who say "Why should we fund this scientific research if we don't know what benefits it has?" It's a self-contradictory question because you can't discover those benefits until you actually do the research and know what it has to offer. The whole point of science is to investigate those things we don't already have all the answers about, so there has to be a willingness to take chances, to make investments that may or may not pay off. If you limit yourself to situations where you can already predict exactly what you'll need, then by definition you won't even try to learn anything new.
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