- Vicki Lawson (V.I.C.I.)
Victoria "Vicki" Ann-Smith Lawson appears a very lovely, quiet, and straight-faced ten-year-old girl, but in reality she is a Voice Input Child Indenticant (V.I.C.I.); a gynoid (robot female) in the identical form of a human girl-child who was her model. Built as a general domestic robotic aide by cybernetics genius Ted Lawson at United Robotronics near Silicon Valley, she was secretly brought to Ted's home and family to beta-test her responses and performance in a real-world setting (her alpha-testing at the lab must've been fun!). In order to secretly accomplish this without arousing local questions, the Lawsons legally adopt the pretty prototype, though as an expedient recourse imposed on them than chosen by the unwary Bureau of Family Services, no thanks to the meddling of Bonnie Brindle. Because of this, the Lawsons are forced to bring Vicki out of her home element to pose as a real girl in the outside human world where she's like a fish out of water. To the world, Vicki was born and raised in the town of Victoria in the Seychelles where she was supposedly orphaned and raised by nuns after a freak plane-train accident that kills her parents Jim and Pat Smith who had a godparent agreement with the Lawsons. Programmed with the "family-friendly" basic persona of a ten-year-old girl, Vicki appears as an unnaturally taciturn, obedient and stoic creature that speaks in a somewhat nasal monotone voice and executes what she hears literally. While Vicki's artificial intelligence "I.Q." is around that of a mouse, her Personality Emulation Program (PEP) makes her perceived behavior and social effect marginally passable for her assumed human age. It works well enough to fool her human peers at Grant Junior High, who mostly regard her as a weird and very dull nerd, though it's her beauty that really does all the work in attracting boys and dates who don't mind her polite indifference of their interest. Mostly attired in Mary Jane pumps and a lacy red pinafore suggestive of her maid's role, Vicki hasn't any "personality" per se, though she does frequently parrot someone elses', partly in the course of incorporating positive human traits into PEP. Because she hasn't been perfected, Vicki often performs gaffs that our common sense takes for granted, like stepping off high platforms instead of using steps or making tossed salads by throwing vegetables into the air so she must be regularly watched by the family. Physically, Vicki has real human hair, cellular-plastic prosthetic skin, is inhumanly swift and immensely strong for her size (sometimes grossly exaggerated on the show) and has electronic senses superseding human capabilities except sapidity. She is atom-powered by a radiothermoionic generator (RTG), has a maintenance control panel access door flap on her back and a convenient three-prong 220 volt AC receptacle under the right armpit and a RS-232 serial port under her left armpit by which Ted links her to his computer to program her and do backups of her memory. She is anatomically correct enough to even briefly fool an intern and has an emergency off-switch under the scalp which a quick slap on the head can trigger. Vicki's status within the Lawson household hovers somewhere between that of a beloved dog and an adopted au pair girl; the Lawsons pay out for her wardrobe and let her needlessly eat without much reservation of cost, and even spend a lot extra in taking her along on vacations and plane trips on excursions few loved pets enjoy. Vicki's maturation in the show from an initially accurate wooden automaton to an almost human early teen attending junior high is a point of contention in depicting how a real V.I.C.I. built with late 1980s technology would act and behave.
Related Backgrounds:
* Fanmail Keyhole * Vicki's Debut On Dunahue * Small Wonder Seriously *
- Ted Lawson
Handsome and sometimes socially awkward, Ted Lawson was born and raised in Florida and later transferred to Cal Tech from a previous unnamed college where he met his wife, Joan, and where he was known for pranks and cruel teases. He is a certified genius in cybernetics and his passion in life is creating an automated servant that could assist in homes, schools, clinics and nursing homes and be a cook-nurse-guardian-housekeeper and companion to the infirmed and recluse. He is an engineer with a social conscious though he is often so steeped in refining Vicki that he forgets his civic duties. Unlike the creators of most androids in fiction, Ted never intended to build Vicki as a human wanna-be; to him, Vicki's human exterior is merely a selling necessity since marketing research found that girl-children are the most appealling and "family-friendly" form for a robot to the public in the aftermath of the disaster of the first wave of ugly "R2-D2" home robots in the mid-eighties. However, since Vicki is capable of infinite upgrades, Ted speculates that the day may come when Vicki can be endowed with some manner of human values or emotions or even thought. His inspiration for creating Vicki seems to've been a quiet lifelong obsession since creating an android is so unconventional and he wants to stretch beyond designing robots that assemble cars and seal lids on cans. Ironically, Ted first presented Vicki to his company's president, Mr. Jennings, who expressed no interest in her potential, most likely because it was a VERY bad day for him since Jennings fails to recognize Vicki and her very capable talents later on in several occasions. That Ted is keeping Vicki under wraps suggests that he might one day manufacture V.I.C.I.s on his own, since publicizing her existance would only tip off potential aggressive corporate competitors who aren't as short-sighted as Jennings. Ted's main non-tech passion is golf, which he shares with his player, Dick Christie. Ted's rural parents, ex-Luddite Bill and Martha Lawson of Omaha, know Vicki is a gynoid and passionately accept her after a stormy introduction.
- Joan Lawson
Perky honey-blonde thirtish Joan Lawson is the matriarch of the Lawson household. Her girlhood was spent in California where ran in kiddie pageants and later met Ted in college where she was a cheerleader. One wonders what Joan saw in Ted to marry him, but we do know that in college he won her affections by fluke while dating one of her college friends. Like Ted, Joan has few friends and perfers on concentrating on her love of reading and cooking and keeping an eye on Jamie. Usually modest and reasonable and a peacemaker, Joan is the most well-adjusted of the Lawsons, but isn't above going a little wild to prove her point, like riding motorcycles all decked out like a punk-rocker. In order to comply with the academics requirements of the Bureau of Family Services or else risk their "taking Vicki away", Joan finishes her postponed teaching credentials to pose as adequete to home school Vicki, though circumstances land Joan in a substitute teaching position at Grant Junior High along with Vicki right next to Jamie. Joan's development from a Donna Reed clone in the first season to an assertive winning teacher and real estate agent by the end of the series is credited to Marla Pennington. Joan's relationship with Vicki is the most intense and intimate of the other Lawsons. She quickly regards Vicki as her daughter in nearly every sense, and in some ways seems to take Vicki's robotic fact with the same nonchalance as one would of a child having braces. It's this novel mom-daughter bonding that had the most dramatic but unexploited potential in the series. Joan's widower dad, physician Jim Anderson, knows Vicki's secret and fondly accepts her as a granddaughter.
- Jamie Lawson
Pudgy and swaggeredly Jamie Lawson is a junior-jock wanna-be at Grant Junior High and a self-proclaimed lady-killer though he's mostly lame in both departments. One of Jamie's earliest sixth-grade crushes is on blonde and vain Jessica Hodges who is elusive without the hook of a wallet and lavish attendance. A lover of basketball and milkshakes, Jamie isn't inclined to follow in Ted's footsteps, instead looks for a life of adventure and sports. Jamie's relationship with Vicki is ambiguous. Though grudgingly, Jamie is highly protective and mindful of Vicki at school and hastily covers-up and makes excuses for many of her gaffs and flubs there. However at home, he regards her purely as a robot and has absolutely no qualms in treating her as such for heavy chores and cleaning up his room, yet he always orders her to turn around whenever he gets dressed as though she were a real sister. He constantly asserts his master status to her as "The Big 'J'" and relishes her servile role. Unwisely or foolishly, the Lawson parents house Vicki in a large cabinet in Jamie's bedroom, and it wouldn't be tawdry to assume that though a ten-to-thirteen year-old boy might initially regard Vicki as an oversized docile doll, it's rather hard to believe this aloof state of affairs could continue without tripping some natural curiosity beyond his mere brotherly regard of an anatomically correct young female only steps away.
- Harriet Brindle
Nosy and hyperactive, Harriet Brindle is Jamie's anathma yet most faithful best friend. Harriet has a lifelong infactuation or possessiveness toward Jamie this side of maudlin, to imagine a marriage with him and sometimes calling the Lawson adults "Mom and Dad, " and while angry at Jamie's overt disinterest in her, she is vehemently jealous of any girls that catch his interest. Harriet insinuates herself as Vicki's "best friend" by default in that Vicki will naturally do most anything Harriet asks her to -- and because she has no sense of taste. Harriet is at once loud tomboy and a cutesome charmer depending on how to win over Jamie at the moment to treat her to movies and parties and plain playing around. Harriet has an ultra-feminine bedroom replete with canopy bed and tons of dolls though it's highly doubtful that she'd ever grow into "a lady."
- Brandon Brindle
A sly and plagerizing buffoon and cowardly weasel, Brandon Brindle is not only the Lawson's next-door neighbor, which is a curse enough, but also by some divine accident Ted's immediate boss, via a promotion made by ripping off Ted's project progress reports. Ted is naturally pissed, but because he needs United Robotronics' resources to refine and upgrade Vicki, he doesn't want to rock the boat and cause Brandon to do anything that might somehow expose her truth. Having no scruples and boorish, Brandon finds it no problem to cheat at taxes or insurance or undercutting friends and employer to improve his social status and feather his nest. Brandon is a member of the local beer-boys "Caribou Club" of which he drafts a reluctant Ted into for the good cause of charities -- and looking good in their bosses' eye. Briefly in "The Pool", Brandon glimpses Vicki's open back panel but thinks he's mistaken.
- Bonnie Brindle
Bubbly and mawkishly demure Bonnie Brindle is the second bane in the Lawson's cloud, being the source of Harriet's snooping gifts and busy-body attitude and Brandon's bossy wife. Bonnie is renoun for her classic "No no-no No no-no!!" whenever reproving some sensible situation. It is because of Bonnie's meddling that the Lawsons are forced to "adopt" Vicki or lose her to the state as a lost waif. A member of the brawdy "Gutter Gals" bowling team, Bonnie shows no sign of independent support and seems to make it career of being the local National Enquirer. Bonnie exits the scene in perpetual visitation somewhere esle for the last season when her player, Edie McClurg, moved on to another series.
- Reggie Williams
Reggie Williams is Jamie's best friend, through thick and thin, though he is keep unaware of Vicki's truth. To Reggie, Vicki is Jamie's "werid" stepsister and he tends to keep his distance since many of her social gaffs spills on him. Reggie is in Jamie's class at Grant Junior High and was on the same Pee Wee football and Morton's Mortuary softball team. Streetwise and "hipper" than Jamie, Reggie swaggerishly fancies himself as a ladies man, though he has as much success in this department as Jamie does. He is also a "friend" of Harriet's as well, but only because he has get by her in order to see Jamie. Reggie's dad is a fireman but he hopes to be a D.J.
- Vanessa "Mechminx" Lawson
Vanessa Lawson is Vicki's more advanced twin and "Bad Seed" flip-side, whose revolutionary but arbitrary A.I. shows up in her arrogance, impulsiveness and conceit. With a sniffy normal human voice given by a true vocal tract, Vanessa, unlike docile Vicki, possesses a haughty and impetuous "persona" because her PEP was expanded and fine-tuned to mimic the behavior of real girls via digitized live-model sampling. She has a limited ability to judge and make decisions and even reason after a fashion and have a sense of aesthetics such as loving rock n' roll and criticizing kitchen decor and styles. Unfortunately, because digitizing the social behavior of human girls is a lot easier than digitizing a conscious and ethics, her ungovern PEP also sports an excessively vain and lethal ego. Sly and deviously demure to dominate family and humans, she contemptuously looks upon Vicki as a "dummy" and wonders whether the only worth of human beings is that they might taste good. Because of Vanessa's formidable speed and strength, the Lawsons are only able to subdue her by sheer trickery. Vanessa acts more like a rebel without a cause than a renegade juvenile delinquient and this is likely blamable on Ted's underestimating her wayward restless potential as a simple "character flaw" by relegating her to household tasks which are "beneath her". Though Vanessa appears only twice, she was very popular and the seed for a potential spin-off.
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