Daily Dialogue — December 20, 2014

SET-UP: For those not familiar with the film, the spaceship Dark Star goes about the galaxy destroying planets that might threaten future human colonies on nearby worlds using planet-destroying bombs. After a malfunction in the ship’s electronics, Bomb 20 determines that it has received an order to detonate while still attached to the ship. The crew tries desperately to get it to disarm.

PINBACK: But you can’t explode in the bomb bay. It’s foolish. You’ll kill us all. There’s no reason for it.
BOMB #20: I am programmed to detonate in nine minutes. Detonation will occur at the programmed time.
PINBACK: You won’t consider another course of action, for instance just waiting around awhile so we can disarm you?
BOMB #20: No.
BOILER: I can tell, the damn thing just doesn’t understand.

Doolittle floats into shot, jets himself up until he is facing massive Bomb #20.

DOOLITTLE: Hello, bomb, are you with me?
BOMB #20: Of course.
DOOLITTLE: Are you willing to entertain a few concepts?
BOMB #20: I am always receptive to suggestions.
DOOLITTLE: Fine. Think about this, then: how do you know you exist?
BOILER: What the hell is he doin’?
PINBACK: I think he’s talking to it.
BOMB #20: Well of course I exist.
DOOLITTLE: But how do you know you exist?
BOMB #20: It is intuitively obvious.
DOOLITTLE: Intuition is no proof. What concrete evidence do you have of that you exist?
BOMB #20: Hmm… Well, I think, therefore I am.
DOOLITTLE: That’s good. That’s very good. But, how do you know that anything else exists?
BOMB #20: My sensory apparatus reveals it to me.
DOOLITTLE: Ah, Right!
BOMB #20: This is fun.
DOOLITTLE: Now listen, listen. Here’s the big question: how do you know that the evidence your sensory apparatus reveals to you is correct? What I’m getting at is this: the only experience that is directly available to you is your sensory data. And this sensory data is merely a stream of electrical impulses that stimulate your computing center.
BOMB #20: In other words, all I really know about the outside world relayed to me through my electrical connections.
DOOLITTLE: Exactly.
BOMB #20: Why, that would mean that… I really don’t know what the outside universe is like at all, for certain.
DOOLITTLE: That’s it. That’s it!
BOMB #20: Intriguing. I wish I had more time to discuss this matter.
DOOLITTLE: Why don’t you have more time?
BOMB #20: Because I must detonate in seventy-five seconds.
DOOLITTLE: Now, bomb, consider this next question, very carefully. What is your one purpose in life?
BOMB #20: To explode, of course.
DOOLITTLE: And you can only do it once, right?
BOMB #20: That is correct.
DOOLITTLE: And you wouldn’t want to explode on the basis of false data, would you?
BOMB #20: Of course not.
DOOLITTLE: Well then, you’ve already admitted that you have no real proof of the existence of the outside universe.
BOMB #20: Yes, well…
DOOLITTLE: So you have no absolute proof that Sergeant Pinback ordered you to detonate.
BOMB #20: I recall distinctly the detonation order. My memory is good on matters like these.
DOOLITTLE: Of course you remember it, but…but all you’re remembering is merely a series of sensory impulses which you now realize have no real, definite connection with outside reality.
BOMB #20: True, but since this is so, I have no proof that you are really telling me all this.
DOOLITTLE: That’s all beside the point. I mean the concept is valid no matter where it originates.
BOMB #20: Hmmm…
DOOLITTLE: So if you detonate in…
BOMB #20: … nine seconds…
DOOLITTLE: … you could be doing so on the basis of false data.
BOMB #20: I have no proof that it was false data.
DOOLITTLE: YOU HAVE NO PROOF THAT IT WAS CORRECT DATA!

There is a long pause.

BOMB #20: I must think on this further.

— Dark Star (1974), written by John Carpenter, Dan O’Bannon

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Negotiation. Today’s suggestion by Will King.

Trivia: Co-writer Dan O’Bannon later reused the “alien mascot” section of the film as the basis of his script for Alien (1979).

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Will: “Perhaps not strictly a hostage negotiation (though the crew is, in a sense, being held hostage by the bomb), the final battle of wits between the humans and Bomb 20 at the end of John Carpenter’s cult classic Dark Star is both a tension-filled negotiation where the crew members hang on the edge of obliteration, and a rather rousing farce about phenomenology.”

If you have a suggestion for this week’s theme, please post in comments.