“Day of the Robot”
An historic first: February 8, 1974
“Day of the Robot”. Written by Del Reisman (teleplay) & Harold Livingston (story). Directed by Leslie H. Martinson. Harve Bennett, 1974.
VIEW CONTEXT: WPLG Channel 10 (Miami) • ABC
VIEW DATE: February 8,1974
AWARD: First Face-reveal Shock. This is the second scariest episode, after Bigfoot. It was the first time I saw the “under the face, a computer” effect. And the sickening sounds—the wheezing, squealing, like twisted or heat stressed metal. That is what fucked me up as a child.
This episode is important because it is the first person revealed to be actually robot through the face falling off. The first such moment in general was Harlan Ellison’s “Demon with a Glass Hand” episode from The Outer Limits (October 17, 1964). But that was via chest (or, if you like, via the hand if we took the hand as basic rather than as an appendage which is how the protagonist himself grasps the situation at the beginning, thereby misleading us.
Although Sixy aired 160 days before the release of Westworld, the “Behind the Face, the Computer” moment did not arrive until episode four. Still, I had not yet seen Westworld, so this moment is the one linked with my first BTFTC trauma.
This little shocker appears at the intro, at 03:28.
Consider: The history that had to have occurred in order for a scene like to be a normal event. Humans must make television, and then “shows” which act like views out from someone else’s head, and then a culture of physicalism. Only then could this GIF of something amazing—a plastic face tumbling down a hill—exist.
There it is! The first “Behind the Face, the Computer” scene on television.
“Huh. That’s not my friend.”
Sixy is seriously traumatized here. Lee Major’s finest acting moment. Normally, he maintains quaalude face no matter what happens.
First computer circuit face scene in television history:
First “Behind the Face, the Computer” scene in television history: