Leonard Nimoy plays a cocky attorney who comes out of retirement to defend a robot accused of robo-murder, in this awesome scene from an episode of the 1996 Outer Limits revival. In the bursting-at-the-seams genre of “robots on trial and defending their humanity,” the “I Robot” episode is a stand-out, largely due to Nimoy’s attorney character coming up with weirdly brilliant maneuvers to save the robot — and then turning around and insulting his poor “mannequin” client. And he totally deserves the neck-wringing he almost gets here. But what makes this episode — directed by Nimoy’s son Adam — truly great is the final plot twist. (Spoilers ahead.)
It turns out the robo-client actually did kill its creator. But it wasn’t Adam the robot’s fault, because the military was trying to turn the poor peaceful Adam into a fighting bot. And the supposedly saintly creator, Dr. Link, was in danger of losing his defense contractor funding because Adam was rejecting his kill-bot programming. So Dr. Link was going to erase Adam’s hard-earned personality to make him able to kill, and Adam killed Dr. Link in self defense. And then repressed the memory. Or something. Usually in a show like this, the robot is innocent and it’s all a wackay misunderstanding.
“I, Robot” is a remake of an episode of the same title from the 1963 Outer Limits series. Leonard Nimoy played a reporter in the original 1963 version. Anyway, without having seen the original version, I have a feeling Nimoy’s bitchy version of the attorney is way better than the original, played by Howard Da Silva (who did voice-overs for the American airings of Doctor Who stories in the 1970s.)
