|
 Airing
Monday 27 March 9.00pm on BBC Four
“In 1961, A For Andromeda had an audience
of 15 million viewers and had the nation gripped,” says executive producer Richard
Fell, the man behind Quatermass.“We’ve
had sci-fi buffs contacting us to say they’re thrilled this is being made because the
original is lost – they are really up for it. And the sci-fi hard core really enjoyed what
we did with Quatermass so they trust us!”
As a huge sci-fi fan himself, Richard says
the cult classic is safe in his hands – but in any case the original had a lot of
contemporary resonances. “A signal comes from outer space telling them to build a computer; they build one
which is more advanced than they can dream of. The computer then builds a biological
robot,” he explains. “In the sub story, the
brilliant scientist’s assistant gets killed and the computer uses her as a template for
the robot, leading to this weird kind of love affair between a man and a machine.
That raises all kind of questions about how complex a machine should be before it
starts exhibiting qualities which we would describe as human. Is the next stage in our
evolution going to be about us somehow linking with machines?”
Getting into his
stride, he continues: “We already see that there are people out there
who are part human, part machine – people with a pacemaker, for
example – so we’re already bio-robots to some extent. And advances
in biotechnology – being able to clone imminently, stem cell research,
artificial intelligence, mood enhancing or personality affecting drugs
– are happening very
quickly, and these concerns are raised in Andromeda.”
It’s this ability
of science fiction to address these issues and their implications in a
plausible way that has led to a popular upsurge of interest in the
genre, Richard thinks. “British science fiction is enjoying a
renaissance,” he says. “The last one was in the Fifties/Sixties with
Cold War paranoia at its height. I think we’ve reached another moment
where we’re at a crossroads and we don’t quite know where we’re
going or what the future is – we don’t quite know where all these
technologies are leading us, we’ve lost the blueprint. Science fiction
allows us to explore the moral and social and human implications of
these decisions.” |
