Great Scott! Why Couldn't I Think of This?

September 23, 2017 3:18 AM

It must be a sign of me getting old, but I found my Googling ability faltering a little. [DISCLAIMER: This is going to be one of those SF-related trivia questions.]

While engaged with a distant acquaintance over Ridley Scott films, I struggled to remember a character from one of his movies. Because of my MeFi tagname, the acquaintance pointed out that one of the members of the original Alien was an android, which led me respond that the character was likely a shout-out to one of Scott's other characters, at which point my mind blanked out.

Help me here...in one of his pictures, there was someone who was regarded as "just one of the bunch", even though they were clearly in distress, but not in the way anyone wanted to accept. It's not David in Prometheus, since I remember the picture was out around the time of either Legend or before Blade Runner, but I forgot. Who could I be thinking of?

posted by Smart Dalek to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

You're not talking about the interpretation of Blade Runner where Deckard is a replicant, are you?
posted by Etrigan at 4:34 AM on September 23, 2017

Response by poster: No, it was earlier than that...if I remember correctly, the character in the movie wore or grew a beard.
posted by Smart Dalek at 5:23 AM on September 23, 2017

The only movies that Scott directed before Blade Runner were Alien and the Duelists. You must be misremembering somehow.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 5:39 AM on September 23, 2017

Ah, Pater, but there was his first film, a short: Boy and Bicycle (1965).
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:58 AM on September 23, 2017

Could you be thinking of Pinback in "Dark Star"? Though directed by John Carpenter, it was written by and starring Dan O'Bannon who later co-created the story for "Alien" and wrote the screenplay for the movie.
posted by Petersondub at 11:53 AM on September 24, 2017