Video Throughput: The Science of Forbidden Planet

Burt Likko says:

Among my favorites that you’ve done so far. Particularly strong on your overarching theme of “Get the science right and the story gets better,” and more importantly by pointing out that the story ultimately isn’t so much about the technology as it is about the people experiencing it.

One almost throwaway line I particularly enjoyed in Forbidden Planet was when a member of the crew questions Morbius about the shape of the hallways. Morbius answers back that the doors and halls and windows had as much to do with what the Krell looked like as do human doors and halls and windows. It’s a quick line, but it really gets the viewer thinking that the Krell were organic creatures with bodies, that they approached engineering problems in a way that we can recognize.

That makes me think that if there are tool-building sentient aliens and if we ever come across an artifact of theirs, it could easily have similar solutions to problems that we’ve come up with. Like, there’d be a really good chance that the aliens would use handheld screwdrivers [well, appendage-held] to manually join two different pieces of metal. No matter how advanced their technology is, that’s a super-easy and efficient way of doing that job.Report