Sunday, April 6, 2014

Beyond Westworld

 

westworld

In 1973 the movie Westworld was released on the big screen. Written and directed by Michael Crichton it deals with a theme common to a lot of his books and movies, technology run amok. In this case it is a western themed amusement park populated by life-like robots. You can guess where this goes. This is quite a good movie, especially Yul Brynner’s robot gunslinger character. In 1976 the movie was followed up with the much weaker sequel, Futureworld.

In the November 1979 (Issue 28) or Starlog there is an article about the just completed pilot for a TV spinoff of these movies called Beyond Westworld. The series would follow the story of the Security Chief of the company who created the robots as he peruses an evil scientist who want to use the robots to take over the world. This project actually made it to the screen, but didn’t last long, it ended after only five episodes had been produced. For anyone who is interested you can watch four of the episodes on Youtube.

Episode 1: Westworld Destroyed

Episode2: My Brother’s Keeper

Episode 3: Sound of Terror

Episode 5: Takeover