Feet of Clay

91

The way the king golem is driven mad by the number of rules in its head reminded many people of a scene in Robocop 2, where Robocop is rendered useless by programming with several, partly conflicting rules. This slightly tenuous connection is reinforced by several further similarities between Dorfl and Robocop.

Never mind Robocop, however: one correspondent has posited that the entire candle factory sequence is a clever amalgam of the endings to both Terminator movies. I will let him explain this to you in his own words — I couldn’t bring myself to paraphrase or edit it down:

“The candle factory itself, with all the candle production lines is reminiscent of the robotics in the automated factory that Reese activates to confuse the Terminator. Throughout the candle factory scene, Carrot is Reese, Angua is Sarah Connor, the king switches between the original T-800 when fighting Carrot and the T-1000 from T2 when fighting Dorfl, who is the ‘good’ Terminator from T2.

Carrot is shot early on and has to be dragged around initially by Angua, much like the injured Reese has to be supported by Sarah. The following fight between Dorfl and the king is similar to the big T2 confrontation between the two Terminators, in which one of the combatants is able to ‘repair’ himself and thus has an advantage. When Dorfl is ‘killed’, his red eyes fade out just like a T-800s, but he is later able to come back to life. The T-800 achieves this by rerouting power through undamaged circuitry; Dorfl does it by getting the words from elsewhere (heart as opposed to head).

In T1, Reese finds a metal bar and tries to fight an opponent he can’t possibly beat — exactly as Carrot does. When Angua finds herself facing the injured king, it is similar to the scene in T1 after Reese’s death, when the torso of the Terminator pulls itself along after the injured Sarah, grabbing at her legs (which the king also does to Angua). Then, Detritus’ shot at the king, which has no effect, is like Sarah’s last stand against the T-1000, when she runs out of ammo just at the crucial point. When it appears that the seemingly invincible king has survived everything and is about to finish the job and kill Carrot, the thought-to-be-dead Dorfl makes a last-gasp interjection which finally kills the king — much like the resurrected Arnie appears just in time to kill the T-1000 in T2. Oh, and finally, the molten tallow that Cheery almost falls into is, of course, the molten metal at the end of T2.”