LIVE WIRE

I AI, AND THE QUESTION OF IF man-made creations could ever achieve sentience in a way that puts them on a par with humanity, has been the territory of science fiction authors for many decades. Brian Aldiss explored the theme in his story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long”. So did Isaac Asimov in The Bicentennial Man. And television producers and filmmakers soon got in on the act. Years before devising Data, Gene Roddenberry’s TV pilot The Questor Tapes posed the same question. Blade Runner’s Replicants were so indistinguishable from humans that some weren’t even aware of their own true nature. But for many of a certain generation, it was a family-friendly 1986 movie about a wisecracking robot which first made them ponder what it really means to be alive.

Directed by ’s John Badham, is a deep story wrapped in a cosy, Sunday-afternoon-movie coating. It follows a government-built war machine