The Questor Tapes

Premiering on January 23rd 1974, and conceived by Gene Roddenberry — the man behind Star Trek, this was the pilot of a proposed television series which ironically had already been abandoned by NBC even before broadcast. Primarily due to not accepting the network’s demand to remove Mike Farrell’s character, Roddenberry left the project and it eventually faltered. How the series would have played out is open to speculation, but this pilot episode demonstrates a potentially interesting if perhaps slightly incredible concept. The idea must have remained close to Roddenberry’s heart as he later based ‘Data’, the android featured in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation on ‘Questor’. Walter Koenig (Start Trek’s ‘Chekov’) can be seen in a minor role.

Project Questor: an almost complete sentient android, designed by the brilliant but disappeared scientist Emil Vaslovik, activates itself at the Caltech Laboratory in California. Cosmetically modifying itself to look like a Caucasian man, ‘Questor’ (Robert Foxworth) then forces electronics engineer Jerry Robinson (Mike Farrell) — the only colleague of Vaslovik who is part of the research team — to accompany him on a mission to find its creator.

The pair fly to England with only a reference to an ‘aquatic vehicle’ and the address of Trimble Manor from the android’s memory tapes to go on. Locating the manor house in the countryside outside of London, they manage to win the trust of its owner, the sophisticated and beautiful Lady Helena Trimble (Dana Wynter), who confides that she was once an associate and confident of Vaslovik. Additionally, she reveals the secret room in which the genius scientist once worked, hidden behind a false wall in the wine cellar. Inside the room, ‘Questor’ not only gleans information uncovering the fantastical truth behind Vaslovik, but more ominously, the nuclear generator contained in its abdomen is primed to explode in three days unless Vaslovik can be located to disarm it…