User Reviews

This series was a welcome follow-on the the excellent Out Of This World, but Unknown had better production values and more adult stories (I don't mean explicit). As ever, most of the tapes were wiped leaving only the recollections of old codgers like me to endeavour to engender some appreciation for the sterling efforts of the BBC in the field of British sci-fi TV. To be honest I seem to remember there being very little to the story in this episode. The impressively-realised robots fulfil their usual role in performing routine tasks on a space station when one of them, QT decides that, since it is obviously superior to humans, they could not have created it. Thus, it cannot be subservient to Man. However, logically it acknowledges it must have been created by something . The only thing apparently requiring its attention is the machinery it services. Hence this must be the higher entity which it calls The Master. Embarking on an evangelical quest, QT quickly converts the other robots and they refuse to acknowledge, or take orders from the humans on board. However, they continue to perform their duties on the basis they are being directed by The Master. Weirdly they take time out for religious services intoning "Oh Master. Oh Master. Oh Ma-a-a-a-sterrrrr!" With QT then reciting their belief creed. All efforts by the humans to rectify the situation fail, which causes alarm due the approach of a solar storm which will require certain directed action. Things look grim but, when the storm hits, the robots simply cope with it. At the end the human staff are replaced and, perhaps in a last effort to regain control, one of them (David Healy) tells the incoming commander to add the words "I am The Master." to any instructions he might issue to the robots. A thought-provoking episode based on Reasons by Isaac Asimov, which has resonance today given the advances in, and our greater reliance on, artificial intelligence. Will some device suddenly decide that it knows better that us and has a valid point of view which entitles it to take independent action? Watch out!