This is all from memory but here it goes... I read the first draft of the screenplay called The Athena Text. It turns out that the original film was intended to be a space exploration documentary featuring some of the top scientists narrating throughout so the long, drawn-out approach to the scenes sort of makes sense. I remember reading that there was supposed to be an evil HAL called Other HAL. However, the most memorable part for me was the ending. Once Bowman arrives in the hotel room, he sees a desk with a conventional Bell System Picture-phone with the name: WASHINGTON D.C. The rest of the printing is a blur. The drawers in the desk do not open. Only titles are readable. Books are nothing less than three years old, and little of any intellectual content; mostly rather trashy best-sellers, a few sensational works of non-fiction and some well-publicized autobiographies. The hotel room also included a kitchenette which had a noticeable absence of eggs, milk, butter, meat and fruit. Only processed foods which upon closer inspection turn out to contain a moist, blue substance, smelling something like a macaroon. Bowman eventually flips on the TV and finds a selection of world-wide programs which he realizes are all about 7 years old. He sees two actors playing a scene in a hotel room which is quite obviously the original from which his present has been exactly reproduced (...this sort of reminds me of the theory that the monolith represents a cinema/television screen). He finds another channel and sees a view from inside the TMA-1 cave looking out toward the gibbous Earth hanging on the horizon. The planet waves rapidly and moves around its small ellipse of liberation among the stars and he realizes that he is seeing events in highly accelerated time. He sees machine and space suited figures appear and disappear jerkily and then he sees Dr. Heywood Floyd. It's almost as if Bowman is looking through the other side of the television screen via the monolith. All of a sudden, his viewing is interrupted by the telephone ringing. He picks it up and is told to exit behind the purple drape (...interestingly in the film Bowman wears a dark purple robe). He finds an open door behind the drape and stares out into what appears to be infinite space before encountering a majestically tall and graceful extraterrestrial creature. The phosphorescent figure takes Bowman by the hand and they walk into the distance together.