Shows that are sci-fi/fantasy shows and nobody knows it.

[CorporalCaptain]

I did not mean that Robby was playing Robby- a modified Robby was playing the robotic character.

Right.

While Columbo did not need be in continuity with any space sci-fi to have a scifi element, i seriously doubt a machine in 1970 would have the visual accuity and dexterity to work a keyboard/physical controls in the 70's which is why I submitted the show.

Agreed, but that's why I said "theoretically possible" instead of something like "state of the art."

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Columbo
Peter Falk had to solve a murder where a robot (Robbie from Forbidden Planet) was used as an alibi. Note- they put Robbie's upper torso on a wheeled transport because they were afraid with him walking around he would upstage Peter.

Sorry for the delayed double post, but your posts motivated me to think more about "Mind over Mayhem."

If one summarizes the episode as the robot providing an alibi, then that certainly sounds very Asimov-ian. But this is probably Robby's most grounded incarnation. Compared to Asimov's robots and to Robby in Forbidden Planet, MM7 is at the other end of the scale of sophistication.

That episode summary is nevertheless accurate, and even though the robot is not that sophisticated it sounds like science fiction. It would also sound like science fiction, if one eliminated the robot altogether, and just focused on the fact that what makes the alibi work is that the participants on the computer network cannot tell that what's driving the war game is a computer program instead of a person. In present-day terminology, they can't tell that it's really a 'bot on the net running the show instead of a person. That makes the episode forward-thinking for that reason alone.

So, to me, the question of whether the episode was really science fiction in the 1970s revolves around whether positing the inability of the witnesses to tell whether the agent on the network is a person or automaton made it science fiction. I would have to say, yes, that theme made it science fiction then, but leaning much more towards hard sci-f than the alternative.

So, yes, I agree after all. It's science fiction.