Headhunter's Holosuite Wiki
Register
Advertisement
"The Machine"
Series A for Andromeda
Season 1, Episode 2
A for Andromeda 1x02 001
Air date October 10th, 1961
Writers Fred Hoyle
John Elliot
Director Michael Hayes
Producers Michael Hayes
Norman James
Starring Esmond Knight; Patricia Kneale; Peter Halliday; Noel Johnson; Julie Christie
Episode guide
Previous
"The Message"
Next
"The Miracle"

"The Machine" is the second episode of the British science fiction television series A for Andromeda. It was directed by Michael Hayes with a script written by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot. It first aired on the BBC on October 10th, 1961.

Synopsis[]

At the behest of the Ministry of Defence, Doctor John Fleming goes to the London Institute of Electronics where he is allowed to use their computer resources to decode the subspace messages that he picked up at Bouldershaw Fell. There, he meets a young woman named Christine. Working to translate the code, Fleming theorizes that the signals are actually a mathematical set of instructions, which includes designs for the construction of a larger, more complex computer system. The Ministry gives Fleming permission to begin construction on the computer and they set up a military research center at Thorness in Scotland. The computer is activated and begins to output its first set of instructions.

Meanwhile, Fleming's colleague, Dennis Bridger, sells out to an unscrupulous industrialist named Kaufmann, who represents a company known as Intel.

Cast[]

Actor Role
Peter Halliday Doctor John Fleming
Esmond Knight Professor Ernest Reinhart
Patricia Kneale Judy Adamson
Frank Windsor Dennis Bridger
Noel Johnson J.M. Osborne
Julie Christie Christine
Donald Stewart General Vandenberg
Geoffrey Lewis Doctor Geers
John Hollis Kaufmann
Robert S. Young Commissionaire
Peter Henchie Egon
Frederick Treves Captain Lovell
John Nettleton Harries
Margaret Denyer Mrs. Tate-Allen
Jack Gwillim Air Commodore Watling
Ernest Hare Minister of Science Ratcliff
Brenda Peters Secretary
Anne Hudson Nurse

Notes & Trivia[]

  • The story is told in flashback from the recollection of Professor Ernest Reinhart.
  • This episode marks the television debut of actor John Hollis.

Allusions[]

  • There are no allusions available for this episode at this time. Be the first to add some! Just click on the edit tab under the section heading and start typing. An allusion is an incidental reference made to a character, person, event or other miscellaneous piece of media that can be found somewhere in the episode itself. In most cases, this refers to characters or events from previous episodes.

Bloopers[]

  • There are no bloopers available for this episode at this time. Be the first to add some! Just click on the edit tab under the section heading and start typing. A blooper is any revealing mistake that can be found within the episode that the production crew may have missed during editing. This can range from inconsistent lines of dialogue to visible production equipment in the shot to mis-spoken lines of dialogue, or... dare we say it? A wardrobe malfunction.

Quotes[]

  • There are no quotes available for this episode at this time. Be the first to add some! Just click on the edit tab under the section heading and start typing. The preferred format for quotes is an asterisk, followed by the character's name (bold and hyper-linked), semi-colon then the quote itself (without quotation marks. Quotes should be separated by four elipses (....) unless multiple quotes are used between characters as part of a conversation.

See also[]

External Links[]

Advertisement