Talk:Replicant

Deckard is a Replicant

I have moved the Deckard is a Replicant section the the Blade Runner article vaceituno 02:51, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't get the reference Blake-type in: ...is something of a Blake-type character... 2005-03-22 User:Hlangeveld

I think that needs to be explained better AND for whoever wrote it to link it to a disambiguous page. I am removing that line. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 138.25.13.246 (talk • contribs) .

I have disambiged the line and reinserted it. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 06:12, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Are Replicants 'physically' human?

meaning, are they biologically based on manipulated human DNA and NOT manufactured synthetic copies of human biology? The film doesn't explain this in detail, and the Wiki page for this reflects that to large extent, only referencing "inspirations" for the term Replicant itself.

I guess a good analogy to Replicant manufacturing would be the very cheesy sendup of this year's "The Island", where mad scientists took donor DNA and manufactured them into fully grown adults, but m>mb vcbgnjkl39.8.110|contribs]]) .

Yes they are physically human as standard physical tests cannot easily detect them. However, to what extent they are copied from other humans, or re-engineered from scratch is up in the air. It may be premature to believe they are cloned from human; however even if that were the case it would likely just be the aethetics (exterior) that was copied. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 06:12, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I actually felt that Replicants are entirely artificial: no "donor" human DNA was originally used. Currently, scientists can actually create certain viruses like polio, entirely from scratch (simply nucleotides created in the lab), but they're a while from using it on anything advanced as a bacteria. Still, I think the Replicants were "designed" in a lab, a "bio chemical machine", and not based on human stuff.

Hmmm, that's how it is with the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica. They have DNA, but it wasn't copied from pre-existing people. Noneofyourbusiness 02:06, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Note , in Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep, the >Androids< , that P. Dick uses, are classic prose science fiction Androids. Those are synthetic humans, total wet ware. I don't notice that Dick ever mentions any 'metal' mechanical aspect about them. My impression from the films as that the Replicants are Androids, classic science fiction ones, even if Ridley Scott chose to call them Replicants. aajacksoniv (talk) 01:33, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Systems Malfunction

I'm removing the odd "Systems Malfunction" quote in the "Replicants in popular culture" because it seems to be from a home brew RPG thats run on a college campus and not from any form of Pop culture what so ever. In addition it seems to be of excessive length and has nothing to do with the subject except the world "replicant". If it pops up again, please be kind enough to remove it. PsyckoSama 19:55, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Tissue Sample?

I wondered, if replicants can put thier hands in freezing or boiling liquids without injury, wouldn't a tissue sample be easier to detect them? It still may not, as an ice cube broken into pieces and put in a boiling water will melt faster than one whole ice cube put in it, so a small sample might still boil or freeze. The snare 03:05, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

nexus-7 WTF?

this is not the film's plot! intro says nexus-6 replicants are on the run. if Rachael is a nexus-7 so is Deckard. Cliché Online 12:12, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

True. Nexus-7 is not mentioned in the plot. There are hints that that may be so but certainly not strong enough to merit mention in the main article. If Deckerd is Nexus he is likely a 5 or a 7 since he is distinctly weaker than the Nexus 6. He and Rachel also have brown eyes while the Nexus 6 all have blue eyes. Or isn't that important? Who knows? Etc. Etc. Etc. One can speculate endlessly since, like a large number of thematic elements in the film, the state of Nexus art is vaguely hinted at and never stated firmly. These allusions also contradict one another at certain points. As the above writer pointed out there isn't even a mention of a Nexus-7 in the entire film. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.174.58.92 (talk) 14:43, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

not immortal

"may not have a preset lifespan (i.e., they could be immortal)", no there is a difference between an unrestricted lifespan and immortality. immortality does not exist especially for a machine who depends on maintenance, like a human depends on surgery. Cliché Online 12:16, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

SOFIXIT. I'm not much of a Blade Runner fan myself, or else I would. superluser_tc 2007 August 22, 00:31 (UTC)

Umm...humans do not depend on surgery... - 24.23.37.62 (talk) 17:02, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Obscure Reference

This article states: "In the end, Roy is something of a Blake-type character in the film" Now there's an obscure reference that will leave millions (okay, dozens - don't think many will ever see this article) scratching their heads...perhaps it should be deleted or clarified. At the very least, "Blake-type" should be "Blake-like." Jmdeur (talk) 13:57, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

It's not that confusing as it was wiki-linked for reference. That said, it is pure unsourced OR and is therefore deletable anyway. magnius (talk) 14:01, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Replicant definition

The 2007 four-hour edition has this as a screen crawl:

"REPLICANT\rep'-li-cant\n. biologically produced synthetic human with paraphysical capabilities [also (slang) rep, skin-job, tit-job (fem.)] adj. having skin/flesh culture. "See also robot (antique), android (obsolete), nexus (generic).

Sponsion (talk) 19:38, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

    *****

David Peoples discussed replication of DNA with his daughter at UCLA and the word replicant came out of that conversation. Stated by David Peoples in the fourth DVD in this set.

Sponsion (talk) 19:38, 11 April 2010 (UTC) Sponsion (talk) 22:10, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

    *****

New American Dictionary In the Workprint, the familiar opening crawl was not used, but an excerpt from a 2016 edition of the "New American Dictionary": "REPLICANT\rep'-li-cant\n. See also ROBOT (antique): ANDROID (obsolete): NEXUS (generic): Synthetic human, with paraphysical capabilities, having skin/flesh culture. Also: Rep, skin job (slang): Off-world use: Combat, high risk industrial deepspace probe. On-world use prohibited. Specifications and quantities — information classified. New American Dictionary. Copyright © 2016." The New American Dictionary excerpt was replaced by the opening crawl, as the previews indicated the audience might experience problems comprehending the story otherwise.

http://brmovie.com/Encyclopedia/IJKLMNO.HTML#New%20American%20Dictionary

Sponsion (talk) 19:38, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Original research

"The dream may not be uniquely Deckard's, as the unicorn does appear in J.F. Sebastian house. As J.F. designed the "brain" of the Nexus-6 (and other) replicants, one could take the opinion that the unicorn dreams are a "personal touch" added to some or all Nexus-6 (and above) "brains." Since we are not privy to the dreams of the other replicants, this is unknown - however it does add weight to the argument. From this one could also spectulate that Gaff himself is a replicant and may share in the same imbedded memory."

Isn't this section just a random opinion? It probably should go. Also, I don't think there's any evidence anyone could be aware of dreams that a replicant has had after leaving the factory. --Mujokan (talk) 18:38, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree anything that is unsourced in this section needs to go. 67.8.72.12 (talk) 13:25, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

--

Ditto. While there are reasons one may speculate that the unicorn dreams have a significance in indicating that Deckerd is a replicant, it is highly speculative. Additionally the section states that J.F. Sebastian designed the Nexus brain which is not the case (see below). The whole section is incorrect at worst and speculative at best. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.174.58.92 (talk) 14:33, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Merger Proposal

This should be in Blade Runner and trimmed to take out all uncited speculations, such as "Was Deckard a replicant?". Yserbius (talk) 15:44, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I would say No to that; The Blade Runner article is already 87 KB long; adding another 12 KB from here isn’t going to be an improvement. But the “Was Deckard..” section has a main article link, so all that should be here is a summary of what’s there; if it needs trimming, that would make sense.Moonraker12 (talk) 11:35, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I say NO too. Wikipedia has many articles which are about various characters or proxies that are of importance in a given film, book, comic, cartoon, etc. Also, a separate article allows for more in depth information which would otherwise bloat the main article.--72.83.137.51 (talk) 07:47, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Could we maybe then append '(Blade Runner)' or something to the end of 'Replicant'? I think it should have some tie back to the movie in the heading. Bubbathemonkey (talk) 08:01, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

No way, the Blade runner article is an FA, if there was a gap it would have been spotted. Part of the documentation on the FA assessment mentions this article and the continuity being continued in this article. If there was a need for it to have been merged it would have been discussed in that one and the following FA nominations. This has been a standalone article since 2002 and unless policy changes whereby all topics on one subject are to be merged into one article then this will more than likely remain a separate article.

I am deleting the merge tag as no further dicussion sine December 2010 and consensus is to not merge. Chaosdruid (talk) 16:54, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Finally removed the merge tag. It's been so long that consensus has been agreed upon, not to merge. SarahStierch (talk) 07:49, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

JF Sebastian...

The section discussing whether or not Deckard is a replicant states that JF Sebastian designed the replicant's brains. That is not the case although I do not have exact references. I believe he says that he does "biomechanics".

The eye designer explicitly states that Tyrell is the big genius. He tells Roy that it is Tyrell who designed the Nexus 6 brain. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.174.58.92 (talk) 14:28, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe he ever said he designed their brains. He tells them there's some of him in them, and I am suspicious about the literalness in this; given his Methuselah syndrome, they could have used his glandular issues to accelerate the decrepitude of the Replicants by including his DNA in their construction. Given that he doesn't know much about biomechanics, this seems a bit plausible. That is just suspicion and is not canonical fact though (and since the character he replaces is a chicken head that is incapable of holding or working in such a job, we cannot use the books as a reference). All we know is that he does genetic design work.

Subjugator (talk) 11:47, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Four year lifespan

The page has what, as far as I can tell, is flatly incorrect information therein about what Eldon Tyrell says to Roy Batty about the four year lifespan.

"Tyrell explains that the reason Nexus-6 replicants do not live longer is not due to some sort of kill switch, but because they physically cannot—the result of the superhuman capabilities engineered into them."

This is incorrect. It could be correctly written to say, "Tyrell explains that biological entities cannot have their lives extended after their genetic code is established."

The problem is not that they cannot have their lives extended during original manufacture, but that it cannot be changed after inception. This is stated explicitly when he notes that DNA cannot be modified once it is established (I paraphrase). He follows up by saying that attempts to cause mutation within a living entity lead to viruses so deadly they killed the patient while still on the table.

This position is backed up by Bryant's commentary that they deliberately built in the failsafe of a four year lifespan.

Thoughts?

Subjugator (talk) 21:40, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Assembly

It's never explicitly stated that the eyes are created separately then assembled. The eyes that Chew had in his lab may have just been tissue samples used grown separately to "compile" the genetic code and see how it came out.

There are a lot of passages, some others mentioned in this talk page, where the article gives incorrect or speculative information. 184.174.132.176 (talk) 07:03, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

My edit

I did a pretty large edit just now to address some of the above complaints, mostly to remove OR and speculation. I didn't get all of it but removed speculation and some trivia. Most edits are probably self explanatory; here are some notes on specifics about some removals:

• Statements about the Nexus 6 units exceeding their designers’ mental capacity or understanding their own construction at the same level as Dr. Tyrell are speculation
• Statement that the limited lifespan is the result of their superhuman capabilities is only implied, at best; speculation
• Mentions of names present only in the book but not in the film have been removed; this article is about replicants in the film, not androids in the book
• Removed excess detail about “Mary” from early screenplay versions; this is mildly interesting but is trivia in the context of the film, and in any case is not part of the film
• Removed reference to the term in Battlestar Galactica, as this article isn’t about that series.
• Removed original research speculating on the meanings of the letters and numbers in the replicants’ serial numbers. This is trivial and the source is an archived link that doesn’t discuss the serial numbers.
• Removed a paragraph analyzing the emotional ranges of the different replicants. OR.
• Removed OR speculating that the raw oyster and boiled dog questions were what made Deckard realize she was a replicant, and why. We don’t know that; all we know is that this was the last question.
• Stopped calling him “Rick” except when discussing the book’s protagonist
• Removed a couple of sentences jumping to conclusions about what Ridley Scott thinks about Nexus 7 units
• Removed OR analysis about possible robotic components

I think it is important to distinguish the canon of what is actually in the film from speculation from other authors and retconning that takes place based on Ridley Scott's comments, and I have tried to do this. Tarcil (talk) 18:49, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

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