During the introduction to the BBC interview, when the announcer says 'left on its half-billion-mile voyage towards Jupiter', the word 'Jupiter' is clearly not what he is saying. It is possible this sequence was filmed at a point in production when the Discovery's destination was Saturn rather than Jupiter, and had to be re-dubbed later.
Before attempting to re-enter the ship from the pod, Bowman takes a deep breath. Arthur C. Clarke later remarked in an interview that this was inaccurate. He ought to have exhaled, as the vacuum of space would have damaged his lungs had they been full of air.
After Dave deactivates HAL, Dr Heywood Floyd delivers his pre-recorded message to the crew. However, his name is misspelt on the television screen as "Haywood" Floyd.
The bone Moon-Watcher uses to strike the rival ape is a femur (thigh bone), as shown by the sideways-projecting "arm" terminating in a ball. However, the bone shown spinning through the air is a tibia (the principal bone of the lower leg), identifiable by its blunt ends.
During the scene in which Dr Floyd speaks with Russian scientists on board the space station, the action is filmed from two distinct angles. In every shot from one viewpoint one of the seated women has her legs crossed, while in every shot from the other viewpoint she has them uncrossed.
Inside the Pan Am lunar shuttle, the Clavius Moon Base is shown approaching through the cockpit’s observation window in a manner reminiscent of an aeroplane on final approach. In the subsequent cut we see the craft’s exterior, with the cockpit pitched straight up toward the pitch-black sky as it settles onto its undercarriage beneath the vehicle. If the ship were descending under reverse-thrust engines, the pilots could not actually witness the Clavius approach from the cockpit — they would only be looking at the sky directly overhead, which would appear relatively still from their vantage point.
When Dave Bowman climbs into HAL's logic centre to deactivate him, the seal on his suit's left hand gives way and the glove comes away from the suit because of the swinging motion. The glove is re-attached once he has entered the logic centre.
Aboard the shuttle bound for the monolith, Dr Floyd is presented with topographical maps of the excavation; the charts show a pronounced bowl‑shaped depression surrounding the site, a detail one of the scientists also mentions to him. Yet in the scenes at the dig site the ground appears largely flat, with only scattered boulders and small mounds here and there.
During the BBC interview the interviewer points out that the pauses caused by the Discovery's distance from Earth had been edited out. Yet throughout the conversation the astronauts remain almost motionless — behaviour that would be unlikely if they were actually waiting seven minutes between each question and reply.
After Dave Bowman retrieves his meal from the food slot, two of the containers on his tray rearrange themselves. When he first takes the tray there is a dark red container at the far left with a greyish one beside it; by the time he walks over to the table to eat, the red and grey containers have swapped positions of their own accord.
During Dr Floyd's discussion with the Soviet scientists aboard the space station, two of the women's coats, draped over the backs of their chairs, vanish, reappear and then vanish again (in one instance a coat seems to have slipped behind a chair).
As Dave disables HAL, he bypasses Memory Terminal bank 1 and moves on to IV-3 Logic Terminal bank 6; despite this, MT-1 ejects while LT/3-6 remains flush.
On the space station, Dr Floyd agrees to accompany his host into the Howard Johnson's restaurant after making a call home. But when he steps out of the telephone box he sets off in the opposite direction to the restaurant and unexpectedly comes across the Russian scientists.
While Bowman is disconnecting HAL in the logic centre he turns a key and the matching transparent plastic module slides free. However, if he omits the No. 1 module in one sequence and then operates the key for a higher number in the following sequence, the No. 1 module from the earlier sequence is released.
Twenty-five minutes into the film, in the shuttle's cockpit transporting Dr Floyd to the space station, there are three screens between the two pilots and IBM is clearly visible above the centre screen. In subsequent shots, as they prepare to dock, IBM has mysteriously disappeared from those same three screens.
The amount of food changes on two occasions while Bowman and Poole are eating.
During the docking sequence, from the spacecraft's point of view the craft and the station appear to be rotating at the same rate. However, in the exterior long shot that frames them both, their rotations are clearly at markedly different speeds.
In the rotating-room sequence aboard the Aries Moon Shuttle, the actress took the lift up from the passenger deck below. She walked along a curved floor until she was inverted from her original position, then she entered the corridor on the left. According to the published ship designs, the Aries flight deck was meant to be perpendicular to the passenger deck. The rotating set, however, turned too far and the actress walked into the wrong passageway. The set should have rotated only 90 degrees, which would have had her walking up onto the ceiling walkway.
While Dave is shutting HAL down, the ejected terminals sometimes appear inconsistent from shot to shot: for example, some of the lower-bank terminals are shown ejected in one shot even though they're flush in the surrounding shots. Which bank he's disconnecting also varies between cuts.
While Frank lies on the sunbed listening to his parents' birthday greetings, a cut briefly reveals Dave asleep in his 'sleeping pod', with the sunbed at Dave's head shown empty. Likewise, Dave is not seen inside the pod in the shots where Frank is on the sunbed. The lighting also shifts between these cuts.
When Bowman leaves the craft in the pod, Poole can be seen watching him through the forward viewing window; yet when the scene is shown from inside the craft, Poole is positioned where there are no forward windows - he's in the wrong position.
While Dave steps outside the Discovery in an attempt to retrieve Frank's body, HAL kills the crew in hibernation; a shot of the hangar bay shows the left-hand door ajar. When Dave is back aboard the Discovery and on his way to shut down HAL, that same door is closed.
When Dave shows HAL his sketches and HAL asks for the crew's psychological report, Dave's seating position and the way he holds his sketchpad are inconsistent between shots.
While jogging, Frank suddenly changes direction twice, which becomes apparent if you watch the position of the sunbed he passes. In the first two shots the sunbed is on his right; in the third it is on his left, and in the fourth and final jogging shot it is once again on his right.
While Dr Floyd delivers his speech at the debriefing, his hands alternately rest on and lift away from the lectern.
When elderly Bowman approaches the table in the alien room, a full glass of white wine is set beside the plate. In the subsequent cut, which offers a closer view of the table, the glass suddenly appears at the table’s edge before Bowman knocks it off and it shatters on the floor.
When Dave is nearing the emergency airlock, one can see through the pod's window that the door is labelled "Manual Operation Only", and the unlocking mechanism to the right-hand side of the door is labelled "Manual Lift". In the subsequent shot — an exterior view of the pod as it closes on the airlock — the unlocking mechanism on the right is instead labelled "Manual Operation Only", replacing the earlier "Manual Lift" label.
Just before Bowman departs the ship in the pod, the film shows him and Poole leaving the rotating crew quarters in a continuous spinning shot as they pass out through a hatch. However, in the very next scene they are immediately back inside those same rotating crew quarters.
In long shots of the monolith pit at Tycho the Earth is shown hanging close to the horizon, but Tycho crater lies at 43° south latitude on the Moon, so the Earth should appear roughly midway between the horizon and the zenith.
In the long shots during the journey from the Space Station to Clavius Base on the Moon, the Moon's phase repeatedly shifts, moving backwards and forwards.
As the lunar shuttle descends to the Moon, the Earth appears in the background on four separate occasions. On the first appearance the Earth is illuminated on the right-hand side. The second time — when the men in their suits are on the lunar surface looking up as the shuttle comes in to land — the Earth is lit from the left. On the next two occasions the Earth is again illuminated on the right. Since the Moon orbits the Earth in roughly 28 days, the Earth's phase ought not to change so quickly.
Viewed from space, the Sun appears pure white rather than orange or yellow. Only the Earth's atmosphere causes it to look orange or yellow.
One would expect the Emergency Airlock to normally contain air, allowing any crew member to enter it from inside Discovery either to perform maintenance or to assist someone outside. In the latter case they would don a spacesuit, the inner hatch would be closed, the airlock would be depressurised and the outer hatch opened. As there is no apparent way for Bowman to depressurise the airlock whilst inside the space-pod — and HAL certainly would not do so if requested — Bowman opens the outer hatch using the pod's waldoes. When he does this, the internal air would vent away, which should cause the pod to be briefly buffeted. In addition, as the air expands into vacuum the water vapour would freeze into crystals. None of these effects are shown.
In the opening ape sequences, the skeleton shown is that of a modern human. Apelike proto‑humans with faces and skulls like those depicted would have been considerably more stocky in build. The skeleton displayed is clearly of a modern humanoid.
Throughout many scenes on board spacecraft, red-lit buttons (occasionally flashing) are used to indicate what appear to be routine status displays. Since before the 1960s, yellow and red have been reserved for caution and warning conditions/ranges respectively. Status and information lights are white and cyan respectively.
When David Bowman re-enters Discovery, he uses the pod's right "hand" to turn the manual lift control for the pod-bay door. Whilst this could work with the pod's thrusters counteracting the rotational torque, it would be more efficient if there were a left "handhold" to stabilise the pod around the control rather than causing the pod itself to spin.
The 'Dawn of Man' sequence is set four million years ago, and the apes are not yet bipedal; however, fossil evidence suggests human ancestors were already walking upright by that time.
(At about 1:00:00) On the control panel for hibernating crew members, "hypothalamus stimulation" is misspelt as "hyperthalamus stimulation." However, the word "hypothalamus" is spelt correctly beneath the button screen for Emergency Revival Procedures, under Item 2 on the left.
During Dr Heywood Floyd's briefing at the Moon base, he and those present move as though they were walking on Earth, despite the briefing taking place on the Moon.
In the zero-gravity corridor of the Discovery, Bowman and Poole are depicted physically climbing an access ladder between the pod bay and the flight deck/computer area. Such movement would be unnecessary in a weightless environment.
In exterior shots of the spacecraft, the starfield appears to drift slowly past. In reality, because the stars lie at such vast distances, any movement would be imperceptible unless the ship (and camera) were rotating or following a markedly curved course. A course to Jupiter would be curved, but not enough to produce apparent motion in the background.
When Bowman pivots the pod so that its door points at the Emergency airlock, the craft is shown edging nearer to the opening. In reality that translation could not occur, because there are no thrusters positioned to produce such movement. He would need to let the pod complete a 180° rotation and only then fire the forward-pointing thrusters to drive the pod backwards towards the door.
In external shots, stars are depicted drifting across the background of Capricorn One to convey motion. However, because the craft's speed is negligible compared with the vast separations between stars, the starfield would not alter during its journey, and Capricorn One would appear motionless unless another nearby physical object provided a reference point.
When the spacecraft is approaching the rotating space station, the station appears to be turning anticlockwise from the pilot’s viewpoint. Yet when seen from the opposite side it is still shown turning anticlockwise. This is an error — if it turns anticlockwise when viewed from one side, it should appear to turn clockwise when seen from the other.
In the lunar-bus scene that concludes with Floyd and the others poised to pour coffee from a jug, gravity is clearly intended, even though the vessel is some sort of rocket-propelled craft travelling through a vacuum — fuel considerations would require either a suborbital or orbital flight, during which the cabin would be weightless.
HAL's spoken announcement of his chess move as "Q-B3", given the position shown on the screen, is made from Frank's perspective. This is commonly seen as an error, because in descriptive chess notation the rank is stated from the point of view of the player making the move — it should therefore be Q-B6. HAL's mistakes can be interpreted either as script errors or as indicators of his internal conflict, since he is meant to be infallible. However, Stanley Kubrick had a deep fascination with chess and frequently incorporated chess games and references into his films; given his meticulous attention to detail, it is more likely that the discrepancy was intentional rather than a mere oversight.
When the astronauts on the Moon are shown walking towards the unearthed sentinel, they move in an ordinary, Earth-like way. The Moon's gravity is only one-sixth that of Earth, so one would expect them to display a slight 'bounce' while walking — as was observed during the later Apollo Moon landings.
It's quite possible that a 'moon-walk' bounce is inevitable for walking on the Moon. However, the principal reason for that bounce was the stiffness of the suits when pressurised, which prevented the astronauts from bending their knees sufficiently to take a more conventional stride. They quickly discovered that the 'lope' they adopted was both comfortable and efficient. The suits portrayed in 2001 were substantially different and may have allowed a more natural gait.
At the end of the film, Dave takes the last remaining pod to get a closer look at the enormous monolith. The hangar bay door that opens is the one in the centre. That central bay belonged to the pod that killed Frank and had drifted off into space. The bay door to the left (from an external perspective, looking at the Discovery) was associated with the pod Dave used to recover Frank’s body. That pod was rendered useless when Dave’s explosive re‑entry into the Discovery occurred, so the only pod that should have been left would have been the one at the right‑hand bay rather than the centre.
However, although two pods were lost, nothing shown suggests Dave did not use the remaining pod at some point prior to the finale; he may have docked it in the central bay for any number of reasons. It is also possible he retrieved the drifting pod remotely, or fetched it using the remaining pod.
At the start of the film, when one of the small pod craft is descending onto the Moon, dust can be seen rising from the landing area. Such rising is normally attributed to collisions between dust particles and air molecules, but because the Moon lacks an atmosphere, the dust would not behave in the same way and would instead be thrown outwards in all directions.
However, as we learnt from the Apollo missions, the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) did indeed stir up lunar dust (something Buzz Aldrin remarked upon moments before the Eagle touched down). The plume-like motion was produced by the LEM's engine exhaust gases, not by air on the Moon, and the dust was disturbed enough to create a concern about visibility.
HAL knows that Dave and Frank intended to disconnect him because, "... although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move..." But moments before they raised the plan, when Dave and Frank instructed HAL to rotate the pod — their lips clearly visible to him — HAL did not comply with the request. This is not a continuity error: HAL suspected Dave and Frank were plotting and, not wishing HAL to overhear them, they switched off the communications within the pod. HAL deliberately rotated the POD so he could read their lips and find out what Dave and Frank were planning. HAL did not rotate the pod to make Dave and Frank believe that HAL would be unable to determine what they were saying.
It was claimed that millions of stars would be visible during an EVA. However, in photography a brightly illuminated EVA — with sunlight reflecting off white surfaces — causes the camera's aperture to narrow, so few, if any, stars are captured. This is evident in numerous filmed EVAs on the International Space Station.
When Dave, and later Frank, leave the Discovery to replace the AE-35 unit, neither of them speaks with the crewman who remains inside the ship to monitor the procedure. In reality, however, there would be almost continual radio communication between the two because of the inherent risks involved in performing an EVA.
When concentrating on a mission-critical task, every effort is made to minimise unnecessary radio chatter among all members of the team. This is especially the case during EVAs, and anything that needs to be said should be stated as succinctly as possible. If Frank or Dave had nothing that would be of assistance, the correct procedure would be to remain silent.
In several scenes set on the Moon, the Earth is shown in the background and is consistently portrayed much larger than it would actually appear. Even before the Apollo 8 "Earth rising" photographs of December 1968, the correct perspective could have been worked out with fairly straightforward mathematical calculations.
Nevertheless, cameras can readily distort the perceived distance and size of subjects through the use of zoom, a technique commonly employed in the 1960s. For example, there are numerous genuine photographs showing an enormous Sun on the horizon appearing "near" trees or people, an effect produced entirely by camera positioning and lens choice.
As Dave moves through the ship to disconnect HAL, he passes through electrically operated doors on his way to the chamber housing HAL's memory modules. HAL, however, anticipated Dave's intention to deactivate him and could have overridden the door controls to bar access to those modules.
That said, most electronic doors on space stations — including the I.S.S. — are built with multiple methods of opening for different scenarios, including manual operation. It is likely that Dave used one of these alternate mechanisms to bypass any lockout HAL attempted.
When Dr Floyd takes a sip of liquid food from a container aboard the space station, some of the liquid trickles back down the straw to the base of the container. That wouldn't happen in space, where there is no gravity. However, that assertion isn't necessarily correct. If the straw were sealed to the liquid pouch, drawing the food out would lower the pressure inside the pouch below the cabin pressure and cause it to collapse. When drawing stops, the cabin's air pressure would push the liquid in the straw back into the pouch. But if there were space around the straw for air to enter and equalise the pressure in the pouch, then it would indeed be an error.
In the sequence in which Dr Floyd amusingly studies the zero‑G lavatory instructions, he is shown aboard a rotating space station, where artificial 1 g gravity is established in earlier scenes, so this would not appear to be a problem.
That would be accurate if Dr Floyd were still on the station, but at this stage in the narrative he is travelling in the lunar shuttle and is weightless, which explains the presence of a zero‑G lavatory.
Although Jupiter is a gas giant incapable of supporting life, one might assume that Dave Bowman could not have landed there, let alone survived, as the images in the film's final scenes appear to indicate. In fact, Bowman did not land on Jupiter in those closing moments. Instead, the monolith served as a kind of wormhole or gateway to another location.
When astronaut Dave Bowman enters HAL's memory vault, although he is fully suited, his left glove is entirely detached, clearly revealing his bare arm. Update: Dave had put on the green helmet and gloves from the suit inside the emergency airlock. While he dressed in these to protect against HAL decompressing the ship, his overriding priority was to disconnect HAL, so he did not attend to every last detail. Had HAL actually decompressed the ship, Dave could have finished properly sealing them.
When Bowman conducts the EVA to replace the AE-35 unit, Discovery's aerial can be seen rotating. Under normal conditions the aerial is aimed at Earth and, unless the spacecraft itself is manoeuvring, the aerial would remain stationary. However, the mechanism that controls the aerial's orientation is the AE-35 unit — the very unit being replaced. While Bowman is swapping the AE-35s, the aerial would be without hardware control, and there is also a small but real chance the replacement AE-35 could be faulty. It is therefore plausible that the aerial would first be turned to a default position (facing forwards, away from Earth) and mechanically secured until the new AE-35 has been fitted and tested. The rotation shown in the scene is consistent with this.
When Dr Floyd arrives at the Moonbase and checks in at security, there is a panel that allows a language to be chosen. It offers options such as Dutch and Japanese, yet all the buttons are labelled in English; they ought to have been shown in their respective languages.
When Dave (Keir Dullea) lifts the access hatch to allow himself to lobotomise HAL, he is supposed to be sealed in an airtight spacesuit. Yet as his left hand slides by, the glove separates from the sleeve, laying bare his wrist.
Update: In fact, Dave dons the suit’s green helmet and gloves inside the emergency airlock. Although he put these on as a precaution against HAL depressurising the ship, his immediate priority was to disconnect HAL, so he didn’t dot every i and cross every t. Had HAL actually depressurised the vessel, Dave could have finished sealing them properly. It’s also worth noting that he originally left the ship without his helmet and gloves, which—admittedly surprisingly—suggests a lack of fastidiousness on his part.
When Dave removes the pod to swap out the antenna module, the platform supporting the pod slides out from the ship. For a moment stars are visible through the platform before they disappear — a small compositing error.
As HAL kills Frank, Dave is focused on a control panel when he is startled and immediately looks up. Frank's body then flashes across the CM-4 monitor. The sequence of those two moments seems reversed: Dave can't react to the sight of Frank's body until it actually appears.
When Dave Bowman goes to rescue Frank Poole, he refers to the third pod as "G". It is reasonable to assume that the pods would be labelled "A", "B" and "C" from left to right.
The narrator of the audio-description track mispronounces "Kubrick". The name should be pronounced "KOO-brick", rather than "KYOO-brick".
When the Moon monolith, buried for millions of years, is struck by sunlight it sends a signal to Jupiter, alerting its creators that humanity has reached the stage of space travel. However, because unfiltered sunlight on the Moon is so destructive, even without knowledge of the imminent transmission the humans would almost certainly have constructed a shelter around the excavation to shield any discovery from direct sunlight.
The epidemic narrative could be readily dismissed by anyone equipped with a powerful telescope, such as the Russians. They could inspect the region in question and would have no difficulty spotting the brightly lit monolith site. In fact, by that time telescopes existed that would have been capable of visually resolving the monolith itself.
Had Dave not asked HAL to swivel the pod back into place while he and Frank were discussing his disconnection, HAL would not have become aware of their plan. In the script, the sole purpose of that manoeuvre was to allow HAL to lip-read and thus discover it.
Electronic failures are inherently random and can only be anticipated statistically. It would have been unreasonable to expect HAL to produce an infallible prediction of the AE-35 unit's failure. Moreover, any fault HAL supposedly forewarned about would need to be very specific, for example "The backup battery will be exhausted" or "a stack overflow will corrupt the programme memory". Instead, the crew are shown tracing the entire design in search of a fault that has not yet occurred.
When Dave blasts his way into the emergency hatch using the explosive bolts and the pod's internal pressure, the pod appears to remain stationary; in reality it would have been sent tumbling off into space.
When the lunar shuttle touches down, it throws up whorls of dust. In the vacuum of space those particles would disperse in straight lines, just as occurred with the actual Apollo Lunar Modules.
As an Earth Shuttle air hostess steps into the passenger cabin and makes her way towards Heywood Floyd, she stumbles along the aisle. The manner of her misstep makes it clear that she is not weightless.
Aboard the space station, immediately after Dr. Floyd passes through security and before he meets the Russians, he and another man are strolling along the station's curved floor. Their bodies' alignment ought to be radial to the floor's curvature, making them appear to lean forward in the shot, but instead they are positioned perpendicular to the frame's orientation: they look as if they are walking downhill rather than along the bottom of the curved floor.
The people and props in the Clavius meeting hall, together with the moon bus heading for TMA-1, move about and remain at rest under a level of gravity that indicates they are on Earth. Lunar gravity is one-sixth of Earth's.
During the scene where Poole and Bowman watch the BBC 12 interview, the right-hand flat-screen runs marginally ahead by about two frames. This results from both displays showing rear‑projected film clips from two separate projectors. If it had been a genuine video feed, the screens would have been completely synchronised.
(At 01:48 – DVD special edition) As Dave operates the switches in the pod just before entering via the emergency airlock, his sleeves hang down from his arms; they ought to be weightless.
On one of the computer monitors in Bowman's pod (visible in the widescreen version only), surface scratches and a fairly obvious film-edit splice can be seen, revealing that the computer graphics are in fact rear-projected film clips. The same scratched section of animation appears in two or three subsequent shots of the pod's control panel.
On the space shuttle transporting Dr Floyd to the lunar base, the flight attendant is depicted taking small, measured steps with deliberate pauses because of the low-gravity conditions and the specialised footwear she wears. Yet when the pilot comes over to chat with Dr Floyd, he walks in a completely Earth-like manner — which is accurate, as the actor was actually on Earth.
