The Questor Tapes

The Questor Tapes (1974)

Project Questor is brainchild of the genius Dr. Vaslovik: he developed plans to build an android super-human. Although he's disappeared and half of his programming tape was erased in the attempt to decode it, his former colleagues continue the project and finally succeed. But Vaslovik seems to have installed a secret program in Questor's brain: He flees and starts to search for Vaslovik. Since half of his knowledge is missing, he needs the help of Jerry Robinson, who's now under suspect of having stolen the android.

Date of release
1974-01-23
TMDB
5.9 / 10 (22)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
Science Fiction, TV Movie
Director
Richard A. Colla

Casting

Interesting facts

The Questor Tapes is a 1974 American made-for-television sci-fi drama film about an android with incomplete memory tapes who is searching for his creator and his purpose. Conceived by Gene Roddenberry, who is credited as executive consultant, the script is credited to Roddenberry and fellow Star Trek alumnus Gene L. Coon. The pilot was directed by Richard Colla.

Production

The Questor Tapes was a pilot for a television series. A 13-episode go-ahead was given for the series before the television movie was aired, with both Foxworth and Farrell having signed to reprise their roles. Joining the actors behind the scenes were producers Michael Rhodes and Earl Booth and story editor Larry Alexander. The green-lighted series was slated for Friday nights at 10 p.m.

Conflict between Roddenberry and both Universal and NBC over the content of the proposed series doomed it, most notably ignoring the revelation at the end of the TV movie and eliminating the key character of Jerry Robinson. These changes were too much for Roddenberry, who abandoned the project. No episodes were produced.

The Questor Tapes was one of a series of television movies in which Roddenberry was involved, which also included Genesis II, Planet Earth, Strange New World and Spectre. All were intended as pilots; none led to a series.

Originally Leonard Nimoy was asked to play Questor. He posed in makeup for production photos and agreed to do the weekly series if picked up. However, Roddenberry hired Robert Foxworth. Mike Farrell was cast as Jerry Robinson.

The music for The Questor Tapes was scored by Gil Mellé, who was a jazz musician as well as a saxophonist, composer, and also noted as a painter. (Some of his music for The Questor Tapes was later repurposed as the theme music for the TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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