Revisiting D.A.R.Y.L. Part IV

It is the last line of professor Rebecca West’s study that catches my attention: “As in many fairy tales, in Pinocchio too it is the overcoming of obstacles that pushes the tale forward, so that the hero or heroine may be rewarded with the happy ending…In order to understand better the qualities that make of the puppet's tale something much more complex than a simple fairy tale-like story of goodness and obedience rewarded…” Pinocchio achieves his humanity, i.e., his transformation from a marionette to a flesh-and-blood boy through redeeming himself of his selfishness. The preadolescent android “D.A.R.Y.L.”, as the audience bears witness, achieves his humanity by transcending into the normality of childhood emotion and experience. He becomes simply Daryl Richardson, 10-year-old adoptee. This is achieved by the middle of the movie, rather than the end. It is at that middle point of the film that Daryl’s creator the essential “Geppetto” of the story a government scientist named Dr. Jeffrey Stewart enters the picture. He, along with his colleague, Dr. Ellen Lamb arrives as Daryl’s “parents,” come to reclaim their missing amnesiac child from Joyce and Andy Richardson, who have by come to love the boy as though he were their own.

It is at this point, once Daryl is returned to the laboratory from which he was conceived that the truth of Daryl’s origin—he was designed for military purposes by the Pentagon—are finally revealed, in case any in the audience haven’t already suspected this from the get-go. Apparently, the driver from the beginning of the story was Dr. Stewart’s other colleague, Dr. Mulligan. Mulligan had begun to feel sympathy for the robot-child and had absconded with him in an attempt to free him from captivity. Dr. Stewart eventually develops the same sentimental feelings, upon his fascination with Daryl’s newfound emotions. But the android’s transformation from plaid automaton to average All-American boy does not sit well from the typically jaundiced-looking military brass, which immediately schedule Daryl for termination. With Dr. Lamb’s secret collusion, Dr. Stewart and Daryl make a break for it, initiating the action-adventure themed final stage of the movie. This involves the usual car chases, (which Daryl is prepared for via his Atari game expertise), and even a nod to the 1982 Clint Eastwood actioner Firefox, where Daryl commandeers a stealth fighter jet. But all that is nonessential to the story’s significance as a Pinocchio derivative. Dr. Stewart displays his essence as Daryl’s own Geppetto in the film’s most poignant scene, when as he lays dying from a policeman-inflicted gunshot wound he tells Daryl, “Remember, you are a real person…” He then with his last breath, follows with “…I only wish…” and then passes away before completing the statement. Perhaps he meant to say he only wished Daryl were his son. Unlike Geppetto, he doesn’t get that chance.

If there is a Blue Fairy character to the story, it is presented in Dr. Lamb, the last surviving scientist responsible for Daryl’s creation. As Daryl has seemingly drowned, after ejecting from his destroyed fighter jet and landing in a river, Dr. Lamb revives him with an electric charge to the microchip that serves as his brain. This is the final act of Daryl’s transcendence. He then makes a joyous reunion with the Richardson and Fox families.