I’m a 47-year-old man, and this turns me into a puddle of tears every time
TNG S03E18 - The Offspring
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
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I've seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion...
Technically replicants are artificially-manufactured humans rather than being androids, and part of the point of Blade Runner is that there isn't any meaningful inherent difference between replicants and natural humans, despite the characters perceiving one.
I am here for this discussion. Is this tehcnically from the movie or from the novel (which I've only read once and couldn't quite make sense of)?
In the movie, they are super-powered and engineered; whether its wetware or silicone-chips doesn't make much of a difference--their humanity isn't based around their genetic heritage, but that they have memorie, a love for their friends, and a sadness about mortality.
I've not read the novel, but the quote I replied to is from the film, so that's what I'm going off.
Part of the point that the film is making is that humans will treat each other as non-human and non-people based on minor details - replicants are engineered to be stronger, sometimes cleverer, and shorter-lived than natural humans, and no one could reasonably claim that the thing that makes a human a person is their level of physical strength etc., so there's no need to get into what they do have in common with natural humans to see that they're obviously people.
Once it's accepted that they're obviously people, then the film can examine things like how the differences in how society treats them affects them, and how all the reasons given to hunt down replicants are based on them having normal human reactions to the situations they're put in.
That is 100% true, but I also feel like that is a bit of a wasted SF premise if that's as far as it goes. It's not like we don´t have racism in the present and slavery in the past (?) to draw stories from that directly illustrate those points.
On the other hand, it's a way to have that conversation without triggering our mechanisms that we use to defend racism and slavery.
For me, the movie was more about existential issues. What does it mean to be human if we can't be certain we're human? If memories can be implanted, then anchoring ourselves in the past is merely an illusion to mantain a cohesion to our consciousness. But what makes our lives worth living is our connection to each other, the pictures they took of each other demonstrate that. But those pictures are just memories, really (a theme developed on Deckard's piano). And then Batty's final monologue is about his memories, those moments that will be lost like tears in the rain. Even though we know memories can be implanted, we still cling to them?
I don't know, man; this is more like a "Nicolas Cage: Good or Bad?"-situation than "Who's the Boss?"
Edit: Oh, what was that BBC show? Humans? I watched one episode and it was basically, "What if androids were exactly like people, but legally slaves?" Like, OK? I guess if you're just looking for ways to make your slaves white so white people can relate to them.... but it's a pretty nothingburger of a SF premise.
That’s what I’m talking about
The rain dripping down his face… They were the tears of humanity, crying because we couldn’t… Because we didn’t know we should be crying
Because the soul of humanity was already dead… given over to the replicants who are the only ones who could still feel… and that was the greatest of all sins… And for that, they were hunted down and destroyed… when all they wanted was freedom… The freedom to feel
To feel the feelings that we - as humans - no longer could
People forget.
Okay, setting aside for a moment just how extremely damaging it is for a person to be a slave - lacking autonomy even over one's very body, legally unable to provide either consent or negation for anything at all - the system of slavery is even more damaging to the "owner" class. Something about treating others in such a demeaning, dehumanizing manner that hollows our your own soul/spirit (I don't mean here in like a religious sense but rather the core of who we are).
This is what made Star Trek The Next Generation so incredibly amazing. Even people within that very universe - like Doctor Pulaski - refused to see Data as a "person", regardless of the fact that he's definitely not human. So it's not that the Federation upheld whatever bullshit "principles" than few truly followed (c'mon, people broke those principles, and also the rules, on an episode to episode basis!), it's that Picard himself did, personally.
And against the backdrop of the Federation at least striving to live up to those principles too.
But irl, people are much more mundane. Yeah there's types like Putin who would enslave humans - it doesn't matter that they are fully "human", only whether useful or not to his goals - and others such as Bezos or Zuckerberg or Musk or the much less successful Huffman. But then there's also those who simply don't uphold their principles in their own daily lives, thus allowing the system to creep into decay as surely as if it were attacked outright. We needed people more like Picard. But I've never met even one person like that, irl?
Hence it is a fantasy, as much as The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars or Stargate or whatever, it does not correspond to reality.
And yet in its hyper realistic (caricature?) state it all the more reflects the principles that everyday we all live out. Like just because others are racist or misogynistic, does not mean that I have to be, or to go along with such? What would Picard do?
The movie plays with whether they are rightfully being exterminated or not. It seems like they are mostly murdering in self defense with the notable exception of Batty.
I always thought about Deckard being drained of emotions, but you're right--it's most of humanity like that, trapped on a dying world.
Earth has been converted into a capitalist machine that only services the perpetuation of itself
It’s fucking terrifying in its inevitability
Edit: Blade Runner is really a story about hunting down and killing even the slightest glimmer of emotion or hope in the service of relentless and infinitely expanding technofascism
It just occured to me that "Batty" is another word for insane and Philip K Dick had his own run-ins with the mental health system. I've always thought that mental health was largely a construct built around protecting what I schizotypically refer to as The System, but I never thought to incorporate Blade Runner into that mythos. Yeah, maybe Batty sees the system for what it is and therefore must be exterminated.
You might enjoy the writings of Ted Kaczynski aka the Unabomber. From a half-remembered Wikipedia article on his last book: He wrote that competitive capitalism will eventually destroy the planet. Any enterprise that is destructive to the environment will continue despite dooming humanity because to stop would just give another soulless corporate entity the competitive advantage. Humanity is in a race to the very bottom.
Edit: Forgot where I was for a minute. The Bell Riots can't happen soon enough!
I think it’s called The Icarus Effect— that trying to achieve the ultimate understanding of something results in madness. That the closer you get to finally understanding the ultimate truth of something, that once you finally “touch” that ultimate knowledge, it will drive you insane.
Because such knowledge is not meant for mankind. Only the pursuit of it. For it is the pursuit of it which defines us. The struggle.
After all, it’s all about the journey, not the destination.