A team of the world's foremost experts is able to build the android despite not understand the components with which they are working — they are only able to follow the instructions and install the parts left by Vaslovik, who has disappeared.
They decide to substitute their own programming, over the objections of Jerry Robinson (Mike Farrell), the only team member who had actually worked with Dr. Vaslovik.
It adds various cosmetic touches to a previously featureless outer skin, transforming itself from an "it" to a "him", and he (Robert Foxworth) then leaves the laboratory to visit Vaslovik's office and archives; it is there that he first identifies himself as "part of Project Questor".
The android seeks out Robinson, whom he forces to accompany him in a search for Vaslovik, with Darrow in pursuit of both, following a minuscule datum in his original programming.
Questor (who becomes more "human" as the story progresses) only knows that it has something to do with an "aquatic vehicle" — a boat — and that if he does not find Vaslovik before the end of a countdown, the nuclear generator in his abdomen will overload and explode.
[4] Just as Questor deciphers the clues and tells Robinson that he knows where Vaslovik is, he is machine gunned by a British soldier in a park, whereupon he returns to the laboratory.
Robinson implants the beacon, and they jet off to Mount Ararat; the "boat" imperative, as Questor had realized just minutes before being shot, had referred to Noah's Ark.
Deciding to sacrifice his own life for Questor's sake, Darrow takes the transmitter and leaves, telling the military commander that not only had Vaslovik gone insane, but also that the android has escaped, and to send in jet fighters when the beacon signal is picked up.
The green-lighted series was slated for Friday nights at 10 p.m. on NBC — the "death slot" where the final season of the original Star Trek had withered.
Conflict between Roddenberry and both Universal and NBC over the content of the proposed series doomed it, most notably ignoring the revelation at the end of the TV movie and eliminating the key character of Jerry Robinson.
[7] The Questor Tapes was one of a series of television movies in which Roddenberry was involved, which also included Genesis II, Planet Earth, Strange New World and Spectre.
In 1968, he co-wrote, with Art Wallace, an episode of Star Trek which also served as a potential spin-off series pilot, "Assignment: Earth".
The music for The Questor Tapes was scored by Gil Mellé, who was a jazz musician as well as a saxophonist, composer, and also noted as a painter.
His most well-known film score was The Andromeda Strain, whose director, Robert Wise, later directed Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
[6][13] In a casino scene situated in a London nightclub, Questor successfully detects weighted ("loaded") dice, and their subsequent realignment in his precise, powerful hand was later duplicated by Data in the second season Star Trek: The Next Generation installment "The Royale".
[14] Another Questor/Data inside joke came from a scene in which Questor discussed the human trait of "negotiating" through sexual activity, informing Robinson, "I am fully functional."
While there is no such activity in The Questor Tapes, in "The Naked Now", an episode of The Next Generation Data also comments, to Tasha Yar, "I am fully functional."