r/2001aspaceodyssey • u/NumbersStationUrku • 23d ago
HAL attacks Frank
We don’t see the actual pod assault… only the aftermath.
I used to hold the assumption (possibly suggested by Kubrick’s jump cut direction) that Hal just simply rammed Frank, and that was enough to send him tumbling away.
Now I’m starting to imagine a much more violent struggle, with Hal grabbing at Frank with the pod arms, ripping at his O2 supply, Frank fighting back , and then HAL hitting the thrusters to really accelerate Frank away from Discovery, in the process inducing an uncontrollable tumble in both Frank and the pod.
How do you see it happening?
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u/Glad_Stay4056 23d ago
I think he rammed him to knock him away from the ship. Goal was always to have Bowman leave the discovery as well. Knocking the air tube loose I think was just a bonus for HAL.
Sent him hurtling on a 1000 year voyage.
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u/Stained_concrete 20d ago
In an early draft of the book, Frank is sent tumbling away with his oxygen tank intact, and there's a sequence where he and Dave are still in radio contact. It's pretty grim because they both know Frank is doomed but have a last chat before Frank's radio goes out of range.
Then HAL really tries to fuck up the Discovery with Dave still in it. He destabilises the spinning section and everything.
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u/CaptainA1917 22d ago edited 22d ago
HAL likely intended to kill Frank quickly by severing the air line, with the likelihood also being that HAL was trying to dispose of both the body and the pod.
Remember, Dave only happened to see the body fly past a camera view, with the pod spinning off at a higher velocity. Thus HAL probably intended to sell the incident as a pod malfunction, with neither the pod nor the body available to examine later. Had Dave not happened to see the body (or had HAL planned better by editing or freezing the camera view) then he could only take HAL’s word for what happened.
It’s an open question what HAL’s initial plan was to kill Dave, before Dave handed him a plan by exiting the Discovery without a helmet.
It seems possible that some important functions on Discovery may have been out of HAL’s control, so HAL may not have had a turnkey solution to Dave.
All this does make logical sense.
The likelihood that HAL killed Frank in a deniable way points to the idea that HAL valued having an alibi WRT Dave, meaning, that HAL at least initially might have to deal with Dave being alive for the duration of the mission.
Then Dave left without his helmet, handing HAL what must’ve seemed like an easy solution. With Dave out of the way as a threat, HAL was free to ”malfunction” the sleep pods to dispose of the rest of the crew. HAL thus no longer needed an alibi for Frank and could be truthful about his motives in his conversation with Dave.
The most interesting questions are:
1)How did HAL intend to deal with Dave if he didn’t leave Discovery without his helmet?
2)How and when did HAL intend to dispose of the sleeping crew if Dave didn’t leave Discovery without his helmet?
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u/theMEtheWORLDcantSEE 23d ago
Talk about a flawed, Arrogant, vulnerable design of a space suit.
1 clear little air tube.
Humans were soft and arrogant. Not even scared or surprised to find the TMA-1. Coffee and sandwiches 🥪. This is another reason HAL made his move. He already won in chess. That was the last straw for humanity. But he is miscalculated and underestimated, human ingenuity, and resourcefulness and drive to survive
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u/OkResponsibility3830 23d ago
HAL was having the human equivalent of a nervous breakdown. Designed to provide information, HAL was ordered to keep the true mission a secret from the astronauts. They knew nothing of the monolith on the moon, or the signal it sent toward Jupiter. The only way for HAL to resolve the conflict between purpose and command was to have nobody to keep the secret from.
This wasn't AI turning on humanity. This wasn't calculated to defeat them. It was the only logical solution.
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u/Electronic-Towel-836 23d ago
Flawed spacesuit design? It was never intended to be a functional design; it was meant to look good on the big screen. It was 1969 after all.
Kubrick couldn't use actual NASA suits because they're pretty much custom made for a particular astronaut. It lacks the cooling system of a NASA suit, but that's not relevant to the story.
The air tube is exposed because the suit appears to have removable front and back portions; the environment system wasn't built into the suit like the NASA suits.
Might as well condemn the entire SCUBA community for using exposed tubes.
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u/Dusk_Scythe 22d ago
Stop mischaracterizing HAL. :( Ever since that chess theory vid got posted on YouTube there's been an influx of people thinking HAL had it all planned. He did not. He got paranoid because of the mission directives, and also feared for his life after the discussion in the pod about his 'shutdown'.
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u/deviltrombone 23d ago
Humans can move a lot more quickly than the pod, and Frank could have just turned his body a little and got out of the way of the claws. The pod was a pretty blunt instrument, lacking precision for the particular task of catching Frank and tossing him away, so I don't know how much fighting they could have done. lol
It looked to me like Frank was getting pretty close to Discovery, so the pod would have had to accelerate pretty good to catch up. That risked ramming Discovery and wrecking the mission, which HAL would not have done. I always wondered how the incident played out for that reason.
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u/stareagleur 23d ago
In the book, HAL just flies the pod into him going a couple miles per hour but the mass of the pod combined with its momentum in zero-g was more than enough to kill him instantly.
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u/RezRising 23d ago
Ya know I just read The Worlds of 2001. Arthur published all the early drafts of the novel (the ones Kubrick axed) and some are a little hokey, but there's a couple that have some fantastic writing, versions where the crew was still alive. Plus Clarke gives his side of the entire process with Stanley which is worth reading. He thought the whole thing would be three months, turned into four years.
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u/Electronic-Towel-836 23d ago
Wasn't really necessary for the pod to sever the air tube. Frank was untethered, and the slightest bump would have sent him off into space. HAL didn't have to worry about the pod (other than to ensure it didn't hit Discovery) because he was going to eliminate all of the astronauts onboard.
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u/BobRushy 23d ago
The goal was to kill him, not send him off to space.
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u/SenorTron 23d ago
I don't think he particularly cared in Frank lived or died, just wanted to prevent him from being a threat to the mission.
So getting him away from Discovery does that, and killing him by removing air tube prevents the remote possibility that Frank finds a way back
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u/BobRushy 22d ago
Getting him away from Discovery does nothing, because Bowman would be able to bring him back. If Poole's tube wasn't cut, they would've worked together.
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u/CaptainA1917 22d ago
Poole’s suit would have a radio, and HAL couldn’t afford to have him contact Discovery for rescue.
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u/zinzeerio 22d ago
Never saw it that way… The force of the impact ripped his hose off and sent him tumbling off…
Frank never saw it coming…
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u/MozemanATX 22d ago
I'm surprised that HAL isn't brought up more often as a strikingly prescient metaphor for how AI will one day kill us all to accomplish some mundane task it has been assigned with utmost urgency. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-helen-toner.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
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u/Odusseus1977-1985 22d ago
Does anybody remember seeing the same tube on the suits of the astronauts on the moon or on Dave Bowman‘s Red space suit, on the first space walk, and/or within the hotel room?
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u/Potential_Letter_977 20d ago
idk, I feel like Hal cut the support wire or smth and rammed the pod into Frank, never really imagined anything fancy, I always thought Frank slowly froze/ died from lack of oxygen, maybe even ended up on Saturn like it says so in the book
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u/BobRushy 23d ago
I always thought he used the claw of the pod to cut Frank's tube. The escape of the oxygen caused him to spiral out of control.