Mar 9, 2021
Out of the Unknown: Sucker Bait (1.7, BBC, 1965)
"What are you thinking about?"
"That I might die. I've never been conscious of my own death before. Now I am. And I'm thinking, if I do die, there's so many things... so many things in the universe that I'll never learn. Never know."
#Out of the Unknown#Sucker bait#isaac asimov#Single play#Meade Roberts#Naomi Capon#Clive Endersby#John Meillon#Bill Nagy#David Knight#Burt Kwouk#Roger Croucher#Tenniel Evans#David Sumner#Peter Diamond#John McArdle#Keith Peacock#Tim Condren#Billy Dean#Adrian Drotsky#Fred Haggerty#We're back in space! And back in the hands of one of the grand old men of Sci fi Mr Isaac Asimov. As with the previous Asimov story there's#A theme here on the dangers of over specialised fields within academia: all the scientists on an exploratory mission are too honed in on#Their own narrow field to work out why a previous colony died out. All except young mnemonic agent Mark; a human computer who remembers#Everything and thus has vast stores of knowledge to draw upon. The central mystery and solution are actually p straight forward; the#Problem is that they're buried under layers and layers of awkward exposition and meaningless techno babble. This is the most dialogue heavy#Play yet and it's to the detriment of p much everything else unfortunately. Much too wordy and inactive and full of ponderous conversations#About technology and physics. Too much science fact not enough science fiction. Endersby is brittle and difficult as Mark but then that's#Kind of the point. A more modern adaptation would probably play on some idea of comparing the mnemonic to a developmental disorder (whether#That could be done tactfully idk). Nice to see old fave Tenniel Evans pop up as a grumpy science type. Not the strongest ep tbh