Moon & others of its ilk.

2010_2_09 Moon
I saw “Moon” a couple of nights ago, a syfy indie directed by Duncan Jones and starring Sam Rockwell, along with the voice of Kevin Spacey who plays a computer named Gerty, a distant cousin of HAL. “Moon” is derivative but not too bad; at least it kept my interest up, thanks to Sam Rockwell’s performance. What was it about? I was asking myself that during the first hour of the film, although I had my suspicions. Rockwell plays Sam, an astronaut manning a space station on the moon all by himself. His tour of duty was for three years and we meet Sam as he has 2 weeks to go before he goes home to Tess, his beautiful blond wife, who at this point he misses terribly. For three years? All by his lonesome? I don’t think so. That would not be wise or possible. He had to be a clone or a droid. Suddenly there were two Sams and I knew I was right.
Several years ago I read the novel THE EXPERIMENT by John Darton; it was a story about a secret colony of clones off the coast of South Carolina that were created by greedy scientists to be available to rich folks who might need an organ transplant, at which time a clone would be sacrificed to obtain the organ. The clones had no innate knowledge of what their fate was going to be. It was essentially a farm of clones whose innards were to be harvested to keep other people alive who could afford such private and clandestine services. I also thought of “Blade Runner” and its idea of the “replicants,” who were slaves invented by some genius at a huge corporation; they were short-lived near-perfect droids used for “off-world projects.” Several had escaped and tried to see if they might live longer. The “blade runner” was a futuristic cop whose job it was to “retire” the replicants, a code word for killing them. The other night I also saw “Surrogates,” the latest Bruce Willis vehicle, which just came out on DVD. It is a variation on the theme of human-like substitute beings of a robotic nature that do the work of the world while the person they represent is home wired to them and speaking and acting through their surrogates. Another mad genius (James Cromwell) had invented them but it turns out to be what he considers a bad idea. Exit surrogates!
Both in “Moon” and “Blade Runner” the Directors made use of fake photographs to fool the clones and replicants that they represented personal memories back on planet Earth. Both droids invest quite of bit of emotion in the pictures, which are like a raft they hold on to. Sam knows he is at some kind of breaking point when he sees a dark haired woman sitting in one of the rooms in the space station. Shortly afterwards he goes out on a Mission to check a machine that chews up moon rocks for some kind of commercial purpose. Exactly what is hard to figure out? Blinded by light and a dirty window he runs into the machine and passes out. When he wakes up Gerty tells him he hurt himself and that he should stay in bed. Gerty, who like HAL controls everything on the base, was obviously in a position to wake up another clone to go get the injured Sam. In fact, from this point on he begins to physically deteriorate. Then his replica steps out and the two start an uncertain relationship, but they both eventually figure out what is going on and who and what they are. They eventually find a hidden room, which in essence is a sleeping morgue full of dozens of drawers of Sam Rockwell clones. A rescue mission is on the way to the moon station, not to take Sam home but to activate another clone and to terminate Sam’s value to the company. The two Sams make a deal, the dying Sam will stay and the newly awakened Sam will take a space pod back to Earth, leaving just as the rescue mission lands on the moon to live out his days outside corporate control.