Oh, and one thing that just struck me, speaking of Willow's morality: The title of the episode.
I, Robot is the book by Isaac Asimov which introduces the three laws of robotics, which have formed the basis of a lot of moral discussion in SF since then - the themepark version is that you need those laws to stop robots going on a killing spree, yet anytime you program something to follow them to the letter, it still somehow leads to killing sprees or worse. It's an enforced morality (see also: Spike's chip).
You Jane is obviously from Tarzan, the man abandoned in the jungle, raised by apes and teaching himself to read from books he found.
Put it together, what do you have? A character taught a fixed set of rules that aren't always applicable and frequently contradict each other, and with no outside guidance has had to make up their own - and often flawed - way of implementing them.
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Date: 2010-09-18 10:20 am (UTC)I, Robot is the book by Isaac Asimov which introduces the three laws of robotics, which have formed the basis of a lot of moral discussion in SF since then - the themepark version is that you need those laws to stop robots going on a killing spree, yet anytime you program something to follow them to the letter, it still somehow leads to killing sprees or worse. It's an enforced morality (see also: Spike's chip).
You Jane is obviously from Tarzan, the man abandoned in the jungle, raised by apes and teaching himself to read from books he found.
Put it together, what do you have? A character taught a fixed set of rules that aren't always applicable and frequently contradict each other, and with no outside guidance has had to make up their own - and often flawed - way of implementing them.