Hi Spike,
This thread is pretty stale by now, but I just got around to it. (Reading
this list is like drinking from a fire hose.)
I checked the responses from other readers and even did a key-word search on
the IMDB, but didn't find references to 3 stories with a cryonics theme :
One was a story that ran through about six episodes of The Wise Guy: The
'bad guy' was demented, and the discovery that he had his parents in cryonic
suspension in the cellar was used as proof of this. Their defrosting,
treated as a liberation, as part of the resolution of the story. Very
unpleasant.
An episode of the X-files gave it a weird twist (naturally). The deanimated
was dreaming in his dewar and influencing events through psychic powers.
Leave it to the X-files!
The third one was remarkably positive, and I'm surprised that no one
remembered it. On an episode of LA Law a former acquaintance of one of the
lawyers tells him that she is dying of a brain tumor. She wants to be frozen
immediately before the tumor destroys her brain, but the cryonics
organization can't participate in what would be legally regarded as a
suicide. The team took her case and sued to let her be allowed to have
herself frozen, not as a suicide, but as a way to save her life. And they
laid out the premise of cryonics: that it stops the clock for that person so
that current technical capabilities are irrelevant. The judge gave her
permission, but told her to do it immediately because he was fairly certain
he would be overruled on appeal. In the last scene as she's about to be
frozen, she thanks her friend for saving her life. Steven Bochco produced
that series. This episode was so positive and helpful, even proselytizing,
that I wondered if he had taken a personal interest in cryonics. Does anyone
know?
Don Klemencic
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.org [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org] On
Behalf Of Spike Jones
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2001 7:49 PM
To: extropians@extropy.org
Subject: Re: Cryonics on ABC World News Tonight
hal@finney.org wrote:
> I'm not so sure the strangeness of cryonicists is the problem, simply
> because I'll bet most people have never met one, and their exposure to
> them on TV has been limited...Hal
I can think of only four references to cryonics in film/TV:
1) Clarke's 2001
2) 6 Million Dollar Woman
3) Woody Allen's Sleeper
4) Austin Powers
In reference 1, it was only *sorta* cryonics: suspended animation
for the long trip to Saturn.
Reference 2, cryonics was used as an advanced medical procedure,
holding a patient until she could be repaired by robotics. She lost
her most recent memories. Poor Lee Majors.
Refs 3 and 4 were both in goofy comedies, both times where
cryonics was used on a healthy person and used as a time travel
to the future device.
Any others that come to mind? spike
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