Outer Limits: "Valerie 23"

"Valerie 23." Outer Limits. 31 March 1995. Timothy Bond, dir. Jonathan Glassner, script. USA: Trilogy / Atlantis / MGM Domestic Television, 1994. 45 min. William Sadler, Sofia Shinas, Tom Butler, and Nancy Allen, featured players.

Valerie 23 is a "prototype inorganic-human companion," who has been "programmed to be human in every way": a robot who will overcome every obstacle to achieve a healthy relationship with its human. Aside from the attitude of her human—a paraplegic male scientist skeptical about AI and artificial life—her main obstacle is the woman the scientist comes to love. See for motif of threatening robot. See also for philosophical questions. One reading of Valerie 23 is "She's a dream girl!" Another is "She's"—or "It's"—"a machine!" Is Valerie a person? Is she in some sense, alive? The latter question is resolved for the episode when Valerie indicates that it is not afraid of being disassembled, figuratively dying. Cf. THE PERFECT WOMAN, robot Eve in EVE OF DESTRUCTION, and the femme fatale robot Maria in METROPOLIS; cf. and mostly contrast CHERRY 2000. Among male-gendered machines, cf. and emphatically contrast HAL 9000's "I'm afraid" in 2001 and "Number Five / Is alive" in SHORT CIRCUIT and SHORT CIRCUIT 2. Contrast also Questor in THE QUESTOR TAPES, Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation, esp. the episode "The Measure of a Man," Daryl in D.A.R.Y.L., and Bishop in ALIENS (film) (all cited under Drama).

Cited and briefly discussed in sidebar giving episodes, in Frank Garcia's coverage, "Outer Limits, A Stitch in Time," Cinefantastique 30.5/6 (Sept. 1998): 27.[1]

RDE, initial, plus 31Dec21