In “The Outrageous Okona,” the fourth episode of the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Enterprise’s resident android Data attempts to learn the one skill it has previously been ...

The Machine is loud, gross, obnoxious and overbearing. It’s also disarming, quick-witted, fast moving and becomes increasingly funny as it ends up in, of all places, Russia for its payoff scenes.

Billy Bean and His Funny Machine was a UK children’s TV series which was broadcast by the BBC in 1954. It featured a puppet called Billy Bean who operated a large fantastic machine that could produce ...