Andy – What Happens When an Android Carer Becomes Self-Aware?

Although the subject of robots becoming self-aware is something that we are all a little overused to right now (especially with Ann Droid, courtesy of the BBC), having watched Andy, I felt I had to share it for several reasons.  Created by Black Elk Productions, It tells the story of Anne Malone.  Elderly, with a husband in a care home and a son, Nick, who is too busy to be around much, Anne has recently had an accident.  Nick provides her with a carer who turns out, much to Anne’s surprise, to be an android.  Hastily named Andy, the two form something of a bond but things quickly go awry and events quickly spiral out of the control of both human and android.  To say much more would provide you with too many spoilers, so watch the short and discover what happens.

What is quite remarkable about this is that Anne is played by Jane Merrow, who also wrote the screenplay.  I have to say here that it felt like there was a feature-length project crying to get out of this short, as sometimes there seem to be not so much gaps but sleight of hand going on, plot wise.  Anne’s neighbour, Pamela (played by Beverly Hills) is criminally underused, but does manage to get both quirkiness and friskiness across in the short time she is on screen.  I would have liked to have seen more of her, perhaps an attempt to seduce Andy would have made for great comedic relief.   Plus, Andy’s first foray to the farmer’s market with Anne is a little baffling – that such an advanced AI robot could malfunction so badly in terms of interacting with humans!

Regardless, this short does come across as a complete whole and it is very firmly down to the two leads who are both fantastic in their roles.  I thought the name Jane Merrow was familiar, and a little research quickly allowed me to discover more about the actress who has been professionally active since the sixties.  It might be easier to list what she hasn’t been in, but UK productions she appeared in that you have probably heard of (!) include Danger Man, The Saint, The Prisoner, The Avengers, and UFO.  During her time living in America, Merrow also appeared in Alias Smith and Jones, Cannon, Police Woman, The Six Million Dollar Man, Hart to Hart, Magnum PI, Airwolf and MacGyver. Phew!  And that’s only part of her CV.

Toomorrow (1970): The Lost Olivia Newton-John Sci-Fi Musical That Was Meant to Launch a Trilogy

When I first started to watch this clip from Toomorrow, I initially thought that it was a very cleverly rendered pastiche of late 1960s pop music.  The colours were spot on, the costumes were groovy and the music very much of its time.  Then I had a wait a second moment because the girl singer in the clip looked remarkably like a young, pre-Grease Olivia Netwon-John (or Neutron-Bomb as we would sometimes call her).   Sure enough, a little research (OK, reading the video's information) told me that it was indeed a 21 year old ONJ, from a 1970 science-fiction musical (the first?). It was about a band kidnapped by aliens (a couple pictured below) to save their species… with music. I’m not alone in thinking this was a modern-day, very clever take on the late Sixties.  Many people have commented on this on YouTube, with one saying: was going to comment that this is the most period-accurate sendup I've ever seen... then realized why it's so "accurate".

If anything, that made me scratch my head even more, because being a bit of a science-fiction buff, I might not have been old enough to watch this movie on its first release, but I would almost certainly have caught it later on TV (and it looks harmless enough to be repeated ad infinitum as part of summertime scheduling) or on video release. That was, after all, how I had discovered a number of films, from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Planet of the Apes and Barbarella – I could go on.  There was a treasure trove of films from the late sixties for me to get my teenage paws on.  But not Toomorrow.  I had not even the vaguest recollection of this film – and I would almost certainly have given it a watch had I known of its existence, particularly because of Newton-John’s subsequent global stardom. 

UBTech U1 Robot: Is This the Most Human-Like Humanoid Robot Yet?

Have a guess which of the two people above is a robot.  It’s probably not too difficult to work out which is which – but the UBTech Robotics model on the right is, I must admit, incredibly humanlike.  The company’s new life-sized companion robots were unveiled in late June 2026 and they all appear… young, beautiful and generally quite remarkable to look at.  The range is collectively called the U1 Robot – and for anyone who has ever seen a slice of science-fiction where a robot is placed within a human household (I don’t need to go into the consequences here!), it looks very much like we’re one step closer to that kind of scenario.

At any point in human history, however, we see how new inventions have been very quickly put to unanticipated uses by people.  Give them an alphabet and graffiti follows very quickly – you get where I am going here.  So, while the U1 robot is something of a technological marvel, I shudder to think about a few of the uses it might endure once it gets into some people’s living rooms to offer its emotional support.  I anticipate a robot revolution within a decade, frankly… Perhaps I shouldn’t worry – it is, after all, a lifeless chunk of technology, comprising silicon, 88 servo joints and the (locally stored to ensure privacy) artificial intelligence – and all the other bits and pieces that make it up.

Although the eyes move while conversations are happening between robot and human (and the head moves according to the human’s movement), the lips don’t – and perhaps that isn’t a bad thing. It’s a reminder, after all, that the U1 is a robot and not a person.  There does seem to be a lag in conversations, too – but as this is the first humanlike model the company has launched, we know that this will see improvements over the forthcoming years. After all, how fast did the first mass-produced cars travel?  There have already been over 13,000 orders (and the U1 is not desperately cheap) so this there is certainly a demand for this kind of emotional support.  Watch the video below (and read the comments if you want something a little less diplomatic than the words I have written!).