Spaced Ranger said:

... was this shot ever in color? Was this originally some kind of B&W test that they thought was too good not to use and "toned" it (RGB-contrast manipulation) to give it some color?

After some thought, I'm thinking it probably wasn't a B&W test. More likely the original negative was lost or destroyed and all they had left was the B&W dailies print of that shot. If this actually was the case, could I duplicate this scenario (you had to ask?) and would it prove my extrapolation?

First, I took an original screencap from this thread (saved before Imageshack's reorganization wiped out most of our pictures) and de-saturated it to B&W ..

original screencap de-saturated

Next -- how to color this with a one-time application to apply throughout the whole shot?
Ever notice in the original shot (see below) how there is odd coloring that splashes the walls? How about those elevator doorways ... same color as the child's skin? It was because the three primary colors, which compose even B&W film, were independently altered to accent differently parts of the (luminance only) spectrum with target colors ..

Is it really that easy? Well ... yes ... if you don't count all the twiddling that goes on to strengthen a color over here but not over there.

So let's see what we get ... surely not a color picture? YES, and a pretty good one at that ..

B&W screencap colorized

Now is that amazing or what! (I added special processing of 2 stationary strips, but those also are one-time applications.)

Finally, am I right about this whole scenario? Let's compare this to what they actually did ..

original US laserdisc screencap

Well, wat-da-ya-know. We must give George's boys their due credit on this one. They really saved the day with good ol' fashion ingenuity. And knowing this should help with any restoration of faded film.