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SHORT CIRCUIT SCREENWRITER SS WILSON REVISITS THE CREATION OF THE ’80S’ MOST BELOVED ROBOT NUMBER 5 – AND THE LEGACY OF A PROTO-AI CLASSIC

-  SIMON BLAND

AI, AND THE QUESTION OF IF man-made creations could ever achieve sentience in a way that puts them on a par with humanity, has been the territory of science fiction authors for many decades. Brian Aldiss explored the theme in his story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long”. So did Isaac Asimov in The Bicentennial Man. And television producers and filmmakers soon got in on the act. Years before devising Data, Gene Roddenberry’s TV pilot The Questor Tapes posed the same question. Blade Runner’s Replicants were so indistinguishable from humans that some weren’t even aware of their own true nature. But for many of a certain generation, it was a family-friendly 1986 movie about a wisecracking robot which first made them ponder what it really means to be alive.

Directed by Saturday Night Fever’s John Badham, Short Circuit is a deep story wrapped in a cosy, Sunday-afternoon-movie coating. It follows a government-built war machine designed to destroy that, through a chance lightning strike, is imbued with independent thought and human-like sentience.

Appalled at discovering its intended purpose, the plucky Number 5 ditches the NOVA lab and embarks on a journey into rural America to find a different meaning from the one it was hard-wired for. After meeting empathic animal-lover Stephanie (Ally Sheedy), the knowledge-hungry bot acquires a new mission: to learn more about life on Earth – all while trying to avoid the detection of its creators Newton (Steve Guttenberg) and Benjamin (Fisher Stevens) and the military brass that desperately wants to disassemble their rogue hardware.