Dr. David Bowman
Background
Dr. David "Dave" Bowman is the commander of the Jupiter Mission. He is an amateur artist.
During the events of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) played by Keir Dullea
During the Jupiter Mission, Dr. Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole are flying the Discovery 1 spacecraft to Jupiter. HAL 9000 asks Dr. Bowman if he has had second thoughts about the mission and mentions that it heard rumors about something being dug up on the moon. HAL tells Dr. Bowman that he has picked up a fault in the AE35 Unit. Dr. Bowman and Dr. Poole contact Mission Controller and he okays them going to fix the AE35 Unit. Dr. Bowman goes out in a pod and replaces the old AE35 Unit with a new one. He and Dr. Poole discover that nothing was wrong with the old unit, which HAL can't explain. They contact Mission Controller who tells them HAL is in error and they didn't detect any fault in the unit. After the transmission, HAL asks them if they are concerned about the information and HAL blames the problem on human error. HAL then reiterates that no HAL unit has ever made an error. Dr. Bowman asks Dr. Poole if he can help him fix a transmitter problem in one of the pods and and they go inside the pod. They turn off the communication system within the pod and then discuss what they should do about HAL. Dr. Poole tells Dr. Bowman he thinks something is off about HAL and they decide to put the AE35 Unit back in to test if it does in fact break. They then decide if it doesn't break and HAL is malfunctioning then they must disconnect him from the spaceship controls. Dr. Bowman wonders how HAL will take being disconnected. Dr. Poole takes a pod out to return the original AE35 Unit. As he is working on the unit, he goes spinning into space. Dr. Bowman gets into another pod and goes after Dr. Poole and HAL tells him he doesn't know what happened. Dr. Bowman retrieves Dr. Poole's body. He returns with Poole's body, but HAL refuses to open the pod bay doors to the spaceship and accuses Dr. Bowman of trying to jeopardize the mission by disconnecting HAL. Dr. Bowman is forced to abandon Dr. Poole's body in order to open the emergency doors. He manages to make it back into the spaceship and systematically turns off HAL's higher functions as HAL pleads with him to stop and tells Dr. Bowman that he is afraid. A prerecorded briefing from Dr. Heywood Floyd appears which relays the information about the finding of the Monolith on the moon that relayed a powerful signal to Jupiter. As Dr. Bowman arrives at Jupiter, a Monolith is floating near Jupiter space. Dr. Bowman takes a pod towards the Monolith and as he nears it, is transported through space and time in a stargate. He wakes up in the pod staring at a richly decorated room. He then watches as an image of himself ages quickly until he dies of old age. He is then reborn as the Star Child and sent back to Earth.
