#god i love robot horror. god i love robots. i was sad about michael earlier now im sad about kitt

[girlwiththegreenhat]

junkyard dog is a spectacular episode but something i wonder about is how exactly they "recreated" kitt as an AI, where they were pulling that data from or if he was truly a New kitt. it's one of my favorite Robot Conundrums, copies and missing data, when does one you Start and another Stop. bonnie even touched on this when they were surveying the damage, she can recreate his body, his code, but she might not be able to recreate kitt as a person.

if they kept copies of his AI that bonnie was updating, then that would make enough sense, it's as easy as copying the data back over. but it would still be a copy, and you wouldn't be able to program a replacement from scratch - that would be starting over. from the sounds of things in the episode, that's exactly what it was. people are more than their "code", you're a culmination of your lived experiences. the experiences of your life all inform your personality. if any person on earth were genetically cloned and born and raised, that person wouldn't act the same as the original person. they would Look identical, but they'd be their own unique person. realistically if bonnie were to program another kitt, he'd effectively be the same as he was in the first episode, a factory reset. sure, michael could teach him everything again, but they can't go through all their old missions and the lessons and experiences they got from them again. there's no way to recreate his life, exactly, beat-for-beat, and so it wouldn't be the same kitt.

it's a silly sci-fi show so of course they're going to scrub over the details, but it makes me wonder... if the "original" kitt died in that pit after all. they can recreate the car, they can copy the data, but it's still a copy at best, and a recreation at worst, with gaps in his memory and personality that were overlooked during the recreation process. every now and again michael brings up something in conversation, an event, a conversation, that kitt doesn't remember. small bits of his personality being different. he's similar, but he isn't the same. how odd must it be to mourn someone who's in front of you

i'm glad they kept the status quo, but it makes me wonder about other writing opportunities they might have explored if every episode weren't self-contained.