Chambers wrote:
> Mike Raiford wrote:
>> I don't recall the monolith being on the moon... Then again, I have 
>> slept a few times since seeing the movie, so maybe I'm wrong.
> 
> That was actually the whole point of the section between the Apes and 
> Discovery.
> 
> There Russians on the Pan-Am flight were asking Floyd about the 
> possibility of a viral outbreak on the moon-base, because the Americans 
> had closed their base to all visitors.  When he gets to the moon, it's 
> revealed that the virus was a cover story to hide the fact that they had 
> found a monolith on the moon.
> 
> The monolith then sent a radio transmission (remember the astronauts 
> holding their ears in pain? the transmission was picked up on their 
> headsets) to Jupiter.  This directly led to the Discovery mission, which 
> was really supposed to study the Monolith (and HAL was instructed to lie 
> to the Discovery crew about it).

The Discovery mission predated the discovery of the monolith, though, 
which is why they were able to lie about the mission's true intent in 
the first place and get away with it.  In the book, the signal was sent 
to Saturn, later retconned in 2010 etc to Jupiter to match with the 
movie.  A lot of stuff in the movie, particularly at the end, only makes 
sense if you read the book.


--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

Post a reply to this message