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 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.