History Headscratchers / Moon

** GERTY can erase the smiley faces from the bathroom wall; why can't he "reset" the village too? Maybe the original Sam expressed an interest in woodworking, so the company figured a good way to pacify the clones would be to keep wood on hand [[ADateWithRosiePalms (no, not like that)]] so the clones could keep up that hobby.

* GERTY is a robot. Judging a robot, pre-programmed and with limited sentience, is ridiculous. When asked why he told Sam about the clones, he answered "Helping you is what I do." (also note how often he uses the word "help" in conversations. He helped clone 5 and 6 because they explicitly asked him for help. The previous clones never knew the truth, so they never tried to find out more, to escape or even question GERTY about the truth. If they had, GERTY would have helped.

*** Maybe the satellite is needed for other things, for example communicating with other places on the Moon. If not jammed locally, Sam could detect the satellite signal with a [[MacGyvering self-made]] antenna.

** Except that only applies ''on Earth'', where paying salaries and benefits is the costliest thing about employing someone to work for you. In space, any such expense is going to be negligible compared to the '''vastly''' greater expense of assembling, operating, and maintaining an artificial habitat with breathable air, tolerable temperatures, radiation shielding, hydroponic food production, waste recycling, and all the other hundreds of things necessary to maintain ''any'' living human, clone or otherwise. If they're capable of autonomously constructing a lunar mining operation, why not just give GERTY an actual ''body'' that can undertake the work of a man, and save themselves all that initial expense ''as well as'' the costs of food shipments, ''plus'' those of regularly replacing their workers by whatever means? Why waste their resources on creating clones they can exploit like organic robots, when plain old ''in''organic robots are infinitely better-suited to the Moon in the first place?

* While the movie itself is fairly understandable, it bugs me how the clones degenerate at a pace roughly equal to the Original Sam's contract. If you're the head of a giant corporation, what would you rather have: The clones still generally thriving when they step into the Nuke-A-Clone, or one that is [[CloneDegeneration practically falling apart on the way to it]]? Sure, you could say that Gerty would clean up the mess in the event that a clone didn't quite reach the Nuke-A-Clone, but that is more work than you would need. Set the lifespan at around 4 or 5 years, fry them early, and you don't have to worry about it.

* Secondly, after the crash, why did Gerty give New Sam the memories of those events? Give the new clone memories that there was always one car, one suit, and that he just started his contract. By somehow downloading the most recent memories from Old Sam to New Sam, it eventually causes the plot of the movie to happen because New Sam has a reason to go out there.
** Possibly Gerty doesn't understand the concept of lying. When Sam asks about the clone Gerty changes the subject, but whenever he's asked a direct question he can't wriggle out of, Gerty tells the truth. It's possible that none of the clones had ever had a serious accident, so Gerty had never learned that he needed to hide the truth.
*** Or Gerty only has one set of memories to implant. Not a huge stretch if we figure that there were never supposed to be two Sams running around. Given that Sams I and II are actually VI and VII or something like that, the system has been running fine for over a decade, so we can forgive the company for not planning for that contingency.

** Or each clone is awoken much like the second was on screen. Gerty tells Sam that he's had an accident and suffered amnesia, so he assumes he had forgotten building some of the town... which starts to wear thin after 90% of it was built, counting for several years worth of effort.
** Gerty can erase the smiley faces from the bathroom wall; why can't he "reset" the village too? Maybe the original Sam expressed an interest in woodworking, so the company figured a good way to pacify the clones would be to keep wood on hand [[ADateWithRosiePalms (no, not like that)]] so the clones could keep up that hobby.

** Two things. 1)Remember the tests Gerty was running. Perhaps one of the earlier clones failed? and 2) It's possible that Original!Sam was never sent to the station anyway.

** Gerty explains that each clone is tested after awakening, because imperfections in the cloning process might lead to mental instability. One of the clones might have been found defective and scrapped immediately.

Gerty. (one) Gerty is a robot. Programmed to help work the base, programmed to watch the clones. Why didn't they wipe Gerty every time there was a new clone? Gerty has ''no need'' for memories of previous clones -- and further, ''no need'' to know the password necessary to unlock the videologs. (Just giving him/her/it access to those for only itself? Or, just ask for permission form base! Why were those even ''kept''?) (two) The video conversation really bugged me. WHY?!? Why are they ''playing the video'' to the robot, instead of just Gerty jacking in to some plug? Do they ''want'' to get seen?

The connection itself -- they physically blocked the signal, investing time and resources into setting up huge towers on the moon, as opposed to, say, putting two lines of code in there to just not even try and instead just say "No signal, sorry". And, you could make it password-bypass-able if you ''really need'' the sweet little chats with Gerty.

*** Except just about all the base looks to be fairly autonomous already. There's very little that it seems Gerty couldn't do on his own. Is there really a lot Sam can do that a cheap robot can't?

** perhaps the clones are made to degenerate so that they will wish to go home to Earth and recover, and thus voluntarily get in the tube. GERTY talks about how they have to test the clones for mental stability, and WordOfGod states that the 3-year term of the contract was decided as the perfect amount of time someone would be willing to work on the moon. So if the contract period is meant to motivate clones that come out less happy with the work they're doing, perhaps the degeneration stops clones who are only happy to stick around, which I guess just threatens the whole ritualized process they've set up. And maybe they somehow figured out that after three years of work, a clone is more likely to start exploring more and may find out the whole clone scheme.

* So, all things set aside, how did the Sam that arrived back to earth escape out of the facility the transport is directed too? I mean, wouldn't that be under some kind of company supervision?