Gort is one of the most well known film robots from the 1950s. (He predates the most well-known robot, Robbie, by about 5 years.) His silent imperviousness, menacing slowness, and awesome disintegration ray make him an intimidating puzzle to the characters that face him. (“Him?” you may be wondering. The gender is apparent from the original script.) Klaatu explains that Gort was created as part of an interplanetary police force, there to ensure “complete elimination of aggression.” Klaatu explains that upon witnessing violence robots like Gort “act automatically against the aggressor,” though this behavior can be overridden. In this role Gort acts more like an independent character than a computer. Still, he is a robot, and dealings with Gort involve three interfaces: voice control, his visor, and something akin to Aldis lamp Morse code.

Voice Control

Gort emerges when Klaatu is wounded by a nervous and hair-triggered soldier. Gort eliminates the immediate threats with his disintegrator ray and seems intent on killing the tank commander when Klaatu issues a command in an alien language, “Gort! Deglet ovrosco!” Immediately after hearing the instruction Gort remains motionless. Gort obeys this order until Klaatu gives him another signal by a light code, discussed below.

Gort is not just keyed to Klaatu’s voice. When Helen approaches Gort, he begins to attack her. When she speaks the words, “Klaatu barada nikto” (Yes, that Klaatu barada nikto) to Gort, he ceases his attack and carries her into the heart of the spaceship, where she is imprisoned and protected until Gort fetches and revives Klaatu. It is clearly just the words that Gort responds to, and not the speaker. This seems like a pretty big security flaw. Can any criminal issue this command and get off scot-free? Learn the Gortian command for “shoot to kill” and suddenly your protector is your assassin? This brings us, as so many things do in sci-fi, to multifactor authentication. I’ll just leave that there.

Visor

Gort’s disintegrator ray emerges from a visor slot on his head. Gort must raise the visor before using the weapon. When armed, a small light illuminates and cyclically scans left and right in the visor space. These two modes, i.e. the visor’s being up and the light, act as increasingly escalated signals to any observers of the seriousness of the situation.

The army intuitively understands the meaning of this signal even having never before experienced it. They all back away in fear, and rightly so. As such the visor acts as a signal of the readiness of a very dangerous weapon.

Aldis signaling

One night Klaatu sneaks from the boarding house back to the spaceship, around which the army has placed guards and a barrier. Klaatu finds a viewing window in the barrier, but Gort is facing away from it. To get Gort’s attention silently, Klaatu uses a flashlight to shine a series of Morse-code-like* signals onto a wall that Gort faces. In response, Gort turns to the source of the light. Klaatu continues to signal Gort directly on his visor. In this way Klaatu reactivates Gort.

This sequence implies that there are a series of channels by which Gort could be signaled, each allowing for a different constraint. Though codes like the Aldis code have a steep learning curve, and might not be recommended for more intermediate users, they clearly have their uses in mission-critical systems that are prone to the chaos of landing on alien worlds.

*It’s not real Morse code since the third “letter” is 8 “dots,” way beyond the maximum 5 defined in Morse.