Robert A. Heinlein and Issac Asimov were old army buddies that had a friendly rivalry their entire science fiction writing careers. Heinlein was a best selling author years before Asimov, but Asimov was a genius and his stories were often thought of as better written and thought out. Heinlein was quick to realize that the core audience for his work was horny young men, so almost all of his stories had at least a mild sexual element. Asimov was more of a thinker than a lover, thus his most lasting works involve his famed Three Laws of Robotics. But Heinlein didn’t like the Three Laws, maybe he was just jealous that he didn’t think of them. He has little snide remarks directed at Asimov through many of his works. Including Jerry was a Man.
In this 3rd installment of ABC’s Masters of Science Fiction we find Anne Heche and Malcolm McDowell involved in the fate of a subhuman mine sweeper. Jerry is less Asimov robot and more Brave New World slave. He is not human, but he looks and acts sort of human. Anne Heche finds herself oddly attracted to the vacant faced, cigarette addicted drone and takes him home with her. Since her boyfriend is a vacant faced dimwit, the attraction is not all that surprising.
During a trail to prove that the subhuman Jerry, is in fact, the human Jerry, Malcolm McDowell says that some people thought the future would be all about robots, but they were wrong. The future is all about genetics. Jerry is proven human by the fact that he likes candy and he wants to live. This decision means that all the mindless slaves of the world are now free to live out their meaningless lives-instead of being turned into dog food. This will be a burden to society, but Anne doesn’t care about all that. She just wanted to save Jerry, who ends up smoking a cigarette in her bed at the end of the episode.
This was the best of the series so far, but that isn’t really saying all that much. There is something not quite right about this show and I can’t put my finger on it. The effects are good. The stories are good, if not great. The actors are all people I have heard of and like. But it still feels like a High School Drama production.
The promos for next week’s finial episode said it was the season finale, which implies that there may be another season at some point. I hope that there will, because even though it is not great science fiction, it is at least new science fiction.
