The Andromeda Strain

[Mecha82]

Crichton was also a bit of a luddite and unable to accept criticism, to the point that he made a critic of one of his novels a pedophile in a later novel.

That's some Uwe Boll levels of not being able to accept criticism right there.

[Fianna]

Not only that, he made the guy a pedophile with an incredibly small penis.

That's so petty, I actually kinda love it.

[PaladinWolf]

Don't forget his anti global warming novel that pretty much everybody in the scientific community decried as misleading.

[Beastro]

The fourth video has him saying "Brain" so much I had the lyrics of "Pinky and the Brain" stuck in my mind afterwards.

[Nobody700]

I see he put the movie on the page but he didn't seem to upload it. Are we getting that soon?

[SFDebris]

I see he put the movie on the page but he didn't seem to upload it. Are we getting that soon?

Just needs to be edited.

And recorded.

And written.

[Nobody700]

I see he put the movie on the page but he didn't seem to upload it. Are we getting that soon?

Just needs to be edited.

And recorded.

And written.

So it's almost done, got it.

[Petike]

Finally, while they explained how the guns (in theory) couldn't kill a guest (and the novel described a scene where the gunslinger alters his gun to bypass this) they didn't explain how the primitive weapons in Medieval world and Roman World couldn't accidentally kill a guest.

A great post, and yes, as much as I love the original film, there are some obvious contrivances to raise tension. My own headcanon for the original film is that Delos tried to skimp on some security and safety measures, so some of the infrastructure really is that badly designed. And, in the current series, the incompetence of Delos security grunts at shooting straight when robots are on the run might be a homage to that bit of Delos incompetence. "We spared no expense", my behind...

To adress the melee weapon and possibly archery weapon question, I have this other bit of headcanon for both the original film and the current series: The robots are programmed to telegraph their moves, but their reflexes are so accurately controlled, they have no trouble swinging a weapon at someone, and stopping literally an inch from them, without really harming them. Same with arrows. They shoot them from weak-poundage bows, and sloppily. All bluffing, smoke and mirrors, enough to make a guest feel threatened, but with no chance of really harming or killing them. It's all just posturing, to give guests an adrenaline rush if they decide to get into a fight with robots. Though you can't proof a melee weapon or bow/crossbow the same way you can do it to a prop gun (a "smart gun" with sensors, potentially even "smart cartridges"), you could potentially proof the robots, as part of their "threaten guests, but harm no guests" programming. A serious malfunction or intentionally engineered malfunction could (pun intended) skewer that omnipresent sense of "it's all just fun and games, they can't harm us" sense of safety.

Though the original film never explains what the nature of the programming or control errors were (and I like that, it keeps things mysterious), I've always liked the thought it might have been some off-screen industrial sabotage plot by some Delos competitor (or even company critic or critics, wanting to shut down the parks by hook or crook).

[ran76]

When Chuck mentioned his "Jumbled Aircraft" analogy all I can think of was WH40K Orks being involved somehow.