Friday, November 28, 2008

Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!


These famous words are from The Day the Earth Stood Still. Noticing that a remake is coming out, I was reminded of the demonstration of alien strength in that flick. Klaatu has come to warn us Earthlings to mend our nuclear ways, or our planet is toast. To demonstrate the aliens's awesome power, he arranges to have all machinery on Earth (excluding that in hospitals and suchlike places) stop functioning for half an hour. The aliens don't have to go to the power plants; they have power over all machines: cars, telephones, watches, electric lights. The indwelling spirits of machinery* are in the power of the aliens. Bad-guy aliens, such as those in It Conquered the World, also have this power. Like Klaatu, the ICTW aliens could make exceptions to the general disablement of world machinery; they allowed the cars and jeeps of their Earthling allies to work.
Perhaps my readers can supply other examples of this power.
Please enjoy the picture of my new MacBook Pro.
* Such as Coily the Spring Sprite.

2 comments:

Chuckbert said...

I can't provide any insight.

But there was an episode of "The Twilight Zone" where time stood still for everything except one person (or was it two?). A kid was going to get run over by an inattentive driver. The non-frozen person rigged up something that would engage the car's brakes and save the kid.

What I didn't understand was if time had stopped, wouldn't even the air molecules be stopped? How could the non-frozen person move through the frozen air to manipulate the frozen car (much less move the parts of the car and the brake-rigging stuff)?

Did aliens make time stand still? I JUST DON'T KNOW! It just doesn't make any sense.

Colleen said...

Those aliens have a lot of tricks up their sleeves! No, the frozen time explanation doesn't work. Possibly the aliens (or whoever)managed to stop all the machinery and the biological machinery.