o communicate with human beings in a manner that resembles their own and a part of the computer's memory enables not just the appropriate tone and inflections but, it emerges, some level of emotion as well. The computer's reasoning in turning on the crew is not explicitly provided and the entire, very eerie, transition is based on HAL's petty emotions. Indeed the computer seems, ironically, to experience the kind of paranoia that would be expected of the men on the voyage who are cooped up in a limited space for such a long time.
The film suggests, however, that HAL's emotions begin with his pride in the computer series' unblemished record of infallibility. This pride, of course, was implanted in HAL by the human beings who made the computers and is reflected in the attitudes of the astronauts and the controller with whom they speak. Thus, cleverly, it becomes clear that it is specifically human pride that is behind the problems on this ship. The ship becomes, therefore, a microcosmic emblem of the world in which human pride can or will have devastating results. But HAL's breakdown is positioned at the center of the film's narrative continuum which seems, in rather mysterious fashion, to treat the question of external assistance in human evolution. The mysterious slab appears among the apes and then seems to lead Dave Bowman to the next step in evolution as he transcends ordinary reality in the closing portion of the film. The next, transcendent, step in human evolution follows, it seems, from the stage where humanity can replicate itself in machines in terms of reasoning and even emotion. The next step, however, leads to the things--spiritual, supernatural, transcendent--that cannot be replicated in machines.
In Bicentennial Man, however, the android Andrew is capable of achieving this level of transcendence. Curiously, however, the film never makes it entirely clear whether Andrew is simply an anomaly--as the manufac...