Elon Musk: Lost in Space
In her gold jumpsuit, gloves and spaceboots with LED soles, M-UTHA sits poised and ready, an android driven by an artificial intelligence programmed with everything she could possibly need, science, engineering, art, literature, conversation, and even counselling preparing for the launch from the surface of Earth to join the orbiting fleet on the long mission to Mars to establish a colony, while beside her, in black overalls and baseball cap and unearned mission patches playing videogames by Neuralink sits Elon Musk.
Starring Ben Whitehead and Sarah Lawrie, one is the self-proclaimed leader of a generation and a visionary who will lead his species to a new world and the other is competent, capable and taken for granted but both are tied together in their hopeless fate in satirical science fiction comedy Elon Musk: Lost in Space, directed by John Nicholson from a sharp script by David Morley, their rocket Heart of Gold off course and President Trump refusing to help because Bezos is now the new First Buddy.
Astrogation and communications provided by an animated background screen, through jiggling in acceleration couches on liftoff to zero gravity and then the time dilation of a close pass with a black hole, the effect barely noticeable, the adventure is grand but the attitudes are petty, the needy Donald with his limited intellect, vocabulary and emotional range demanding Mars be handed over and renamed Trump and M-UTHA growing frustrated with the demonstrable inferiority of the humans she is forced to serve.
With guest appearances by Brian Cox, Patrick Moore and Sir Arthur C Clarke, Musk may be able to quote Shakespeare and Schwarzenegger but she can one-up him with Gilbert and Sullivan and surprise her maker with her disclosure of her newly acquired unprogrammed internal monologue, the richest man not on Earth who cannot conceive that he is imperfect hopelessly outmatched and outclassed even if he does have moves like Jagger.
