I did some tweeting about The Black Hole

I had it on in the background one day. Then I tweeted. Then I tweeted some more. Then I tweeted even more. Here are those words so you (or, you know, I) don’t have to dig them out of twitter on your own. Here goes…

among the things i love about that deeply unscientific movie, the black hole (1979) is that it has an overture that runs for only 2 and a half minutes, but it’s a nicely flamboyant touch on an operatically weird film

i would love to see this in a theatre again… it’s just such a big movie… maybe i’ll sit really close to my tv & wear headphones…

the crew of the palimoino is stunned–stunned!–by the title character on the holograph, and the music wants us to be, but there’s no scale for us…

but is opens up with a pretty good pace, a bit info-dumpy, but not bad, really, and the characters already well defined

the palamino has ‘war heads’! also, i am always impressed that, while esp exists in this world, the only characters who have it are a human and a robot

it’s a pretty good movie, though

they packed a lot into a 98 minute run-time… nonsense science, beautiful cinematography, high school philosophy, some good action, slapstick, buddy movie, possibly the best looking spaceship ever, a passable plot, silly dialogue, and–remarkably–pretty good characterizations

the closing credits are 2 minutes and 32 seconds there were sfx in, oh, i think probably 95% or more of the shots (mostly green screen, i think), but whatever the percent, this is a very sfx-heavy movie the closing credits are 2 minutes and 32 seconds

the trailer is longer than the closing credits

i’m going to post a few tweets just mulling the implied setting of the black hole

the palomino is on a deep space mission… it’s a small ship, big enough for a crew of 5 humans and a floating robot about half the height of a human, but essentially spherical, but it’s fairly tight, and people float around in it the crew was surprised by a massive black hole

but some of the crew has experience of some sort with black holes, because its size and location were a surprise, but also it wasn’t–in itself–surprising, just that it was large, and in an unexpected place so they’re out there doing science, which includes discovering things

and the palomino is armed… seemingly pretty heavily, and using weapons is something they’re ready to do… their first thought on discovering the cygnus was not to figure out what it is, but to get the warheads ready later, when they entered the cygnus, they were armed with

laser guns, including the robot who has laser guns as part of its design (which we’ll see again later) so… why was the palomino armed, why was the crew armed… it appears this is a military mission, with an embedded journalist how long was this mission supposed to take?

the cygnus has been out, or missing, i’m not sure, for 20 years, and it is a fantastically beautiful film creation, and as a fit-for-mission design it’s wow… it’s huge (esp by comparison with the palomino) & appears to be all glass & erector set & fantastically well armed…

it could have blown the palomino “out of the sky” & its airlock are armed it had a huge crew of humans and, apparently, humanoid robots (the robots are seriously armed, too)

what is going on in the outer space of the black hole world? voyages of discovery are amazingly well armed, not just for ship-to-ship (or maybe mining?… yeaaahhh) but also person to person hand weapon combat

about the crew… the human crew… there must have been the scientific crew, and botanical experts (the ship had a huge greenhouse), and (i suppose) military and engineers (though possibly most of the robots were for troops and maintenance)…

one of the robots (an earlier make of the palomino’s robot) was tasked with maintaining biosystems… and was also armed… what the hey, filmmakers?

but let’s talk about tech for a moment the capt of the cygnus is notoriously brilliant and charismatic (he got the cygnus mission off the ground, and the ship seems to be unique) and… after refusing an order to return to earth… invented an energy source that…

… could power humanity’s hope to colonize the galaxy so… what energy did they use to get that huge military greenhouse out to an unknown black hole? and … gravity, many… let’s think about that for a second…

in the movie, the amazing thing is that they cygnus is staying still relative to the black hole, and the palomino is struggling against the black hole’s gravitational pull… but it enters, leaves, and then re-enters the cygnus’s bubble of gravitational calm…

what goes unremarked is that the cygnus has artificial gravity & is designed for it, while the only time the palomino has a meaningful down is when it is docked on the cygnus for repairs the cygnus had artificial gravity when it launched on its mission, at least 20 yrs ago

the palomino is dark from the outside, compact, the crew floats & maybe just has meals ready to eat & armed… the cygnus is a generation older: huge, is all glass and struts, but is robust enough for combat, and grows all the food in an environment with artificial gravity &…

that’s not all! there’s a whole hospital implied on the cygnus… where they do brain surgery on an industrial scale! the captain ignored the recall faced down a mutiny overwhelmed his presumable military crew & turned them into bio-automata on his revolving brain surgery table

now… i’m not suggesting that the captain’s answer to mutiny was a lobotomy turn-table, i think he just used something they had on board for nefarious ends… i think they had a surgical laser turntable for fast medical care because that was cutting-edge when the cygnus launched

it was expected that the crew would be large enough, and injured often enough, that it made sense to have both automated surgery, and to put people on a turn table so they could really maximize surgical through-put… remember…

…there are hints that the cygnus was on a military mission (possibly alongside “subordinate” to the captain’s mission of exploration) & in any case the cygnus & its (at least robot) crew was heavily armed there is never a hint of a breath of a rumor that there are space aliens

so who are this missions expecting to run into who will be hostile enough that they have to be blown out of the sky (even little ole palomino had war heads) + be ready to take them on, face to face cowboy style? galactic colonization is still a distant dream because only…

(i have a possible answer, but it’s only speculation, and can’t be supported from the narrative: space commies actually, there’s no real evidence the missions are usa missions specifically, but perhaps there are nation-states sponsoring “public/private space exploration”… and the hostilities between them reflect the real world concerns of the film-makers… after all both 2001 a space odyssey and planet of the apes hinged in their own ways on usa/ussr tensions & 1978-1979 were … not great years for the relationship)

… only the cygnus has an energy souce capable of sustaining that kind of mission.. and it was created after the ship launched

let’s look at the final bit of world building in the black hole that i’m going to bring up (probably) esp in the black hole, esp appears to be limited to telepathy, and it appears to be accepted as normal by the palomino crew but the captain of the cygnus appeared surprised…

when he realized it was being used though not surprised that it existed… who has esp? 1 member of the palomino crew-a civilian with military connections-who is connected to the ship’s robot i don’t know if i have ever seen this anywhere else in sf world-building…

it’s more like a psychic can-phone than telepathy as i usually encounter it

why does the palomino have a human/robot psychic duo? is esp a natural thing, or is it actually some sort of tech? the movie offers no explanation but what is the effect of this esp, and how does it slot in with the other things i’ve been on about here? the human & robot…

they don’t have to be close to each other, not line of sight… the distance is at least roughly the length of the cygnus, and through the structural latticework & all the airlocks (and there are a lot of air locks on the cygnus) but the communication is clear, and complex

the robot is able to send complete aphoristic quotations, and convey nuanced messages… basically, they’re talking to each other this is accepted by the palomino crew, but is seen as such a threat by the cygnus’s capt that he puts her on his lobotomy turntable rather than…

…rather than letting the palomino go-like he seemed keen to let them do-he had to zap her brain… cygnus’s captain is presented as paranoid, so we can’t read too much into his actions at any point so let’s back up & revisit the question of why the palomino has a psychic duo

like the other things i’ve considered in this thread, i think we’re back to considering the military aspects of what’s going on the human psychic is, as far as we can tell, a civilian, but has the esp link with the robot… which is pretty heavily armed… we see lasers…

we see electromagnetic zappers on its surface, it has at least one drill that has offensive utility (even it it isn’t the primary use) the robot appears to be full autonomous (willful, even) but if needs arose, would the human be able to command, or even fully control the robot?

esp control of the robot is speculation beyond what we see on screen, of course but the abilities of an ai-enabled functionally telepathic floating roughly spherical robot about a meter in diameter are pretty extensive even before you get to its weaponry

the military guys (and the others in the palomino’s crew) seem pretty okay with an esp person & an esp robot (possibly because the esp is limited to the two-way communication we actually see)… but also two of them are active-duty military & the others are pretty pragmatic…

… so the palomino crew might be selected into the program because they’re okay with esp people/robots or they’ve accepted that this is a mission with a heavy military overtone & this is no more troubling than war heads on the ship or laser guns in the closet in case…

they need to get into some hot & heavy laser blastin’ which they do almost immediately upon encountering the first signs of life on their mission so a telepathic flying robot they can send to check things out seems as natural as air

so there you go without laying it on thick, it looks like the world of the black hole is a fairly xenophobic one where-even with no evidence of life out there-even missions of exploration are kitted out for combat & combat is always vying for first on the menu of options…

final thought… did the cygnus use humanoid robots, real insects, or robot insects in the greenhouse for pollination?

So there you go. Space commies and psychic robots. I might write that game…