[G-Bear]

Forbidden Planet is one of my favorites, and I re-watch it regularly. And the Id monster trying to attack the spaceship is one of the best scenes ever. However, the movie does kind of fall apart at the end, like the writers wanted to just get it over with.

First off: Towards the end, when the Id monster is coming to the house, and Morpheus tells Robbie to kill it, Robbie knows that the monster and Morpheus are one and the same. The conflict slags down all the robot’s circuits. A robot that only someone with a boosted intelligence, like Morpheus, could build. Yet, 24 hours later, after Morpheus is dead, Robbie is clanking along perfectly, and even flying the spaceship home.

Secondly: As the Id monster is breaking into the house, Morpheus, Altaira, and the Captain run into the Krell lab. Now, we’ll ignore the idea that the lab, where Krell young are brought to be tested, is ALSO the monitoring point for the planetary power supply for the thought-creation machine. But, more importantly, after they closed and locked the triple-layer Krell metal blast door, (on the childrens schoolroom?) the Id monster begins melting through the door. So, how did Altaira and the Captain escape, afterwards? With the door welded shut?

But now comes the biggie: After Morpheus realizes HE is the Id monster, and that humans are not ready for the knowledge of the Krell, he instructs the Captain to initiate a Planetary Self Destruct System!

WHOA!!!!

Even assuming a rational race would construct a Planetary Self Destruct System, (not f&%king likely) would they place the initiator in a schoolroom where their children go?

More importantly, how did an alien researcher, who by his own admission, had only discovered a few, small parts of the Krell’s technology, know where to find the PSDS initiator, and how to operate it? Isn’t that the sort of information you want to keep hidden from all but a select few?

One other thing: When the Captain wanted to radio home for instructions, they removed an important part of the space drive to do so. Then the Id monster came and wrecked said important part. The engineering Chief said he didn’t think it could be repaired in the field, and then the Chief was killed. Who got the space ship put back together in time to get outside of the 100 million mile blast radius of the PSDS? The Captain was off chasing Altaira, the Chief was dead, and the XO was also killed by the Id monster when it was attacking the ship.

Maybe it was the cook? At least he was smart enough to get Robbie to make up some “real Kansas City bourbon!”

(N.B., they don’t make bourbon here in Kansas City!)

[Steely Tom]

Incredibly good fault analysis. You are truly a master of the lore of Forbidden Planet, and are worthy to gaze upon the face of the Gorgon.

The cook was played by Earl Holliman, who later appeared as the boss of Angie Dickenson's character Pepper Anderson in the underrated TV series Police Woman.

[Swordmaker]

I too, noticed all those extremely large holes in movie logic. . . but it's called a willing suspension of disbelief. One other I noticed was that it was in just one night that the Monsters from the ID arose and killed all the Krell off. . . there were no precursors to give these masters of genius mind power warning that they had somehow created within their own minds Frankensteinian dream monsters that were going rise up and destroy themselves and their entire species. Yet in the movie, the Monster from the ID of Dr. Morpheus (ah, what a hint "Morpheus = "son of the Roman God of Sleep") did only minor damage before attempting to doing major damage. How could the super intelligent Krell miss the warning signs? What was the trigger that set them at each others' throats? Did they have an equivalent of the NFL taking knees?

Finally what member of the Krell race survived to record this catastrophic event?