Frank Poole

Dr. Frank Poole
Portrayed by	Gary Lockwood
Information
Occupation	Astronaut
Title	Doctor
Nationality	American

Frank Poole is a fictional character from Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series. In Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Poole was portrayed by Gary Lockwood.

Tom Hanks once expressed interest in directing a film version of 3001, in which he would have played Poole.

2001

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Poole is an astronaut aboard the spacecraft Discovery One on the first manned mission to Jupiter (Saturn in the novel). He and Dave Bowman are the only passengers who are not in suspended animation.

Poole and Bowman discuss disconnecting HAL 9000, the ship's computer, after it mistakenly predicts that the AE-35 unit (an electronic unit in the ship's main antenna) is going to fail. They realize that HAL is capable of error, and privately discuss disconnecting him. They believe themselves to be out of HAL's hearing range, but the computer, which can read lips, learns of their plan and resolves to get rid of the threat.

Shortly afterward, Poole begins replacing the AE-35 unit. In an act resembling human desperation, HAL rams Poole with one of the ship's pods, severing his oxygen hose and sending Poole hurtling into space without his oxygen. Bowman, in a second pod, races from the ship to retrieve Poole, but is unable to reach him before Poole runs out of oxygen. Bowman returns to the ship with the body of Poole in the arms of the pod and attempts to gain access by requesting that HAL opens the pod bay doors. HAL refuses to let Bowman return to the ship, uttering the now famous line, "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that." Bowman is forced to use the emergency airlock; this cannot be done with Poole still in the ship's arms as the arms must be used to manually open the airlock. Thus, Bowman abandons his colleague and in order to open the airlock lets go of Poole, sending his corpse into the emptiness of space.

3001

In the novel 3001: The Final Odyssey, Poole's body is discovered after drifting in space for a millennium. Given Poole's exposure to vacuum (he was flash-frozen so his body was fully intact after 1,000 years), the advanced medical technology of the time is able to revive him and Poole is brought back to life. Poole must then contend with the trio of Monoliths that hold sway over our solar system, and what Bowman has become. He also marries a woman named Indra Wallace and has two children, Dawn and Martin.