Zoe Heriot's Advantages
 

For those who don't know Zoe Hariet was a companion of the 2d Doctor. She was introduced at the end of the 5th season in Wheel in Space and left at the end of the 6th season in the final episode of The War Games. She was said to have a computer mind. That's the advantage I want defined. Zoe's fine (if oddly limited) education (Zoe knew all about the sciences but didn't know what a candle was) isn't hard to Stat. Nor is Zoe's flawless memory. But there are traits I don't know how to handle in GURPS.

Zoe can absorb information as fast as a computer. She can glance at the pages of a book and remember everything on those pages. Zoe can collate and sort information as quickly as a computer. Zoe can deliver information at stunning speeds and shift through mounds of data at incredible speeds. Because Zoe is fully human she can use intuition and common sense (the real world kinds) to enhance her abilities.

How would Zoe Hariet's advantages be described in GURPS.

Re: Zoe Hariet's Advantages
 

Perfect recall is obviously the Photographic Memory advantage (Characters p.51, under Eidetic Memory), and Enhanced Time Sense (Characters p.52) grants preternaturally fast perception and thought (you'll be able to read and comprehend a page of text in a single glance, and then analyze that information- with all the human flexibility of your character's skills- in an instant).

For even greater analytic abilities, Powers suggests re-flavoring Oracle as Digital Oracle (Powers p.65), which lets you learn the world's secrets by analyzing "prodigious quantities of unprocessed data" rather than by observing omens.

Also worth noting is Psychometry (Characters p. 78) with the Hypersensory limitation (Powers p. 69), to do the Sherlock Holmes trick of observing a scene and determining roughly what has happened there based on tiny clues that would be meaningless to anyone else.

Is this the sort of thing you're looking for?

Re: Zoe Hariet's Advantages
 

It covers a lot of it. Zoe Hariet is supposed to be able to do anything a computer can do while being fully human. I think your answer helps a lot, thank you. Still, there is something more I can't quite put my finger on.

Re: Zoe Hariet's Advantages
 

Her name is spelled Heriot.

Zoe's abilities are a bit overstated in the show. She is impressive, but not inhumanly so.

I think it is that she is Oblivious. She's not nerdy in the sense of being uncomfortably awkward; she just can't connect people's non-logical actions with motivations. As it's said in the Second Doctor Sourcebook for Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, "Zoe is extremely logical and often seems detached from whatever is happening around her. She is not emotionless, but has trouble relying on her instincts"

She also has a very high Intelligence, Photographic Memory, Lightning Calculator, a very high Mathematics (Pure) score, and very high Computer Operation and Computer Programming scores. Her Tech Level is probably 10, likely with some split-leveling happening there for various fields like computer technology. Her Appearance is probably Beautiful, and she probably has Social Stigma (Minor), though the latter won't affect her in a lot of places she goes with the Doctor. She also appears to have some skill in Judo. I'd say she's also Charitable.

Re: Zoe Hariet's Advantages
 

All of that sounds like the Savant power modifier that I introduced in GURPS Supers and made use of in GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses.

Re: Zoe Hariet's Advantages
 

I don't think this is right. The Savant power modifier alters your personality while you are using the abilities whereas, if I am understanding correctly, the character in question has an "overly-logical" personality all the time irrespective of whether she's making use of her abilities or not.

Re: Zoe Hariet's Advantages
 

Yeah, that makes sense.

Re: Zoe Heriot's Advantages
 

If anyone's still interested, I've found something nice and official. On p.263 of Characters, the AI mentality Meta-Trait ("a computer mind") is made up of Absolute Timing, Digital Mind, Doesn’t Sleep, Intuitive Mathematician, Photographic Memory, and Reprogrammable. You may want to modify this (you'll probably want to drop Doesn't Sleep and Reprogrammable unless she's a literal robot; Digital Mind would make her immune to telepathy but potentially vulnerable to hacking, and I don't know enough about the character to say whether this is appropriate), but if you want a simple answer to what it means to have "the mind of a computer" in GURPS, there it is.

Re: Zoe Heriot's Advantages
 

Zoe is completely human; the exotic traits Digital Mind, Doesn't Sleep, and Reprogrammable are inappropriate.

It's not. She's as susceptible to mental influence as anyone else, and is occasionally so influenced in the show.

As I said, the show overstates Zoe's abilities. She can compute very quickly (Lightning Calculator seems more in tune with what she demonstrates than Intuitive Mathematician, though I could be convinced otherwise). She has trouble comprehending non-logical thinking. But otherwise, she's a perfectly normal human. "Mind of a computer" is hyperbole.

I should have added some level of Mathematical Ability to what I posted earlier.

Re: Zoe Heriot's Advantages
 

She sounds a lot like a Mentat from Dune, so you may want to take a look at some of the attempts to emulate those people have come up with.

Re: Zoe Heriot's Advantages
 

Note that this is a show from an era when the actual abilities of computers were much less clear, and much less well known to the public (and scriptwriters) than they would be today. Indeed, actual [computers] in works of this vintage often fail to function anything like real computers (then or now).

I'd ignore any "like a computer" description in anything written before the mid 1980s, myself. Certainly in a human character, where is usually means a degree of logic computers don't really have anyway, mathematical ability they might or might not depending on programming, and an "emotionlessness" which might be closer but isn't really that much like inanimate objects either. Stat the displayed abilities, they probably have nothing to do with computers.

Re: Zoe Hariet's Advantages
 

If not Very Beautiful. Zoe was one of the most gorgeous of the assistants.

Re: Zoe Hariet's Advantages
 

I'd allow a repackaged version of Very Beautiful. Something like Amazingly Cute. People did react to Zoe's looks but rarely in a sexual way. People wanted to take care of Zoe not seduce her.

Re: Zoe Hariet's Advantages
 

Already covered by the rules: Very Beautiful plus Pitiable. "Pitiable means you are 'cute' instead of 'sexy'" . . . In principle you might combine it with either Androgynous or Impressive; either of those would give her a +4 bonus with all sexual orientations rather than +6 with straight men and lesbians/+2 with gay men and straight women. Whether that fits the audience reaction I leave to your judgment.

Though a point to watch out for is that characters on television are typically played by actors whose Attractiveness exceeds that of the characters! The scripts on Buffy made it clear that Willow Rosenberg was no better than average in looks in the fictional narrative, but Alyson Hannigan is at least Attractive and arguably Beautiful. How attractive does the narrative show Zoe as being, in terms of how in-universe characters respond to her?

(Decades ago a friend and I had visited a nearby convenience store. Two young women were in line ahead of us—and both of us took one look at them and fell silent. And I still remember the encounter now! That's the sort of behavioral response I'd associate with extreme levels of Attractiveness. And the key issue is not how you, in the audience, react, but how the other characters on the screen react.)

Re: Zoe Hariet's Advantages
 

Also known as "Hollywood Ugly" - characters who are meant to be at-best average in appearance but played by actors/actresses who are anything but (largely because it's often tough to get big in the industry if you aren't at least above-average in the looks department). Sometimes attempts are made to make them less attractive, but most of the time it's a case of "Trust me, bro." As you note, you need to pay attention to how other characters react to the character. Generally speaking, this needs to be something where most characters who would be inclined to find the character attractive do so - a single (or maybe a couple) characters romantically pursuing (or at least clearly having a crush on) them isn't definitive - particularly if their interest seems to be more in their personality. Wynn from Noble Dead Saga is a good example - the covers she shows up on depict her as being rather attractive, and she has multiple potential suitors, but Magiere (who explicitly is attractive) typically gets all the attention, and of her two serious suitors one (Chane) is clearly primarily attracted to her mind and the other (Osha) seems to largely be interested in her because a) she's the only non-elven member of their expedition who he can converse with in his native tongue (and the only other one is his mentor who he can't really speak casually with) and b) she's one of the few people who has been genuinely nice to him (he's something of a failure, and not very attractive by human or elven standards, with his face frequently being compared to that of a horse). There's a guardsman who briefly shows some interest, but that appears to be a combination of protective instinct (she probably would qualify for the Pitiable trait), her exotic appearance (she's darker skinned than most people he's encountered), and the fact Magiere is clearly taken. When she's captured and subsequently held prisoner by the guards of a lecherous despot, he shows no interest in her beyond using her as bait for the rest of the party.

Re: Zoe Heriot's Advantages
 

To model super learning speeds. Check out the Accelerated Learning advantage from Social Engineering: Back to School. Level 1 costs 20 points, level 2 costs 40 points and each level doubles points from self study. Effectively, it's a leveled, focused version of ETS.

Alternately, use Wild Talent for a character that always seems to have just the right skill and handwave how they got their proficiency.

If you want house rules, when I was trying to create stats for Data from Star Trek: TNG, I expanded the Accelerated Learning advantage to allow extra levels. Each level halves the time required to gain a character point from self-study, up to a maximum of 20 levels (400 points). At that point, you can instantly learn any skill as long as you have access to suitable study materials.

Combined with regular ETS, Photographic Memory, and the Observation and Speed Reading skills, high levels of Accelerated Learning allow a character to rapidly absorb written data or perfectly mimic an action performed by someone else.

Re: Zoe Heriot's Advantages
 

In general you should ignore the description of how a fictional ability is claimed to work, and just emulate what it demonstrably does in the source material. The described set of abilities is adequately modeled with enhanced time sense, possibly with a limitation if it doesn't function in combat.

Re: Zoe Heriot's Advantages
 

Seriously, no, Zoe doesn't have Enhanced Time Sense. She just knows how to rattle off facts when relevant or when not relevant, she's skilled and talented with computers, and she is skilled and talented at mathematics. She has no exotic origins. She doesn't have "extra time" to think about things; she's only really fast with her areas of training, and she's fast at these because she's skilled and talented, not because she's doing anything superhuman. She doesn't act before others in combat, she isn't especially good at combat defense (though she does know Judo), she isn't immune to projected images, she has no special ability to spot fast-moving objects, she can feel time pressure when she's working on a mental problem.

Re: Zoe Heriot's Advantages
 

I was going with the description above, since I don't actually know the character, and there isn't really another advantage that covers rapid data processing.

Re: Zoe Heriot's Advantages
 

How about Modular Abilities (Skills Only)?

Re: Zoe Heriot's Advantages
 

Since I have access to multiple DVDs of Classic Who, I am somewhat familiar with the character of Zoe. As shown in the classic Second Doctor story
The Invasion, Zoe clearly has both Mathematical Ability and Lightning Calculator. Her difficulties with social interaction suggest she is a high-functioning autistic.

Re: Zoe Heriot's Advantages
 

She's supposed to have had a very sheltered upbringing. Zoe didn't recognize what a candle was or references to common fairy tales. Zoe has had a "Mentat" like training for her education. The only time we get something from Zoe that suggests a normal upbringing is the bit in The Mind Robbers were it's revealed that Zoe read comics and knows some superheroes.

Compared to other companions Zoe might seem a little autistic.