Other Definitions
replicant (dict)
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ReplicantA replicant is primarily a creation of science fiction author Philip K. Dick, in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (later made into the movie Blade Runner (1982)). Created by the Tyrell Corporation (Rosen Corporation in the book) sometime in the twenty-first century. Nexus-6 replicants are androids formed through genetic engineering/biorobotics. They can be equal in intelligence to their human creators, but they lack basic empathy. This makes them incredibly dangerous to humans, and elite bounty hunters (Blade Runners) are paid exorbitant amounts to track down and "retire" (kill) them. Replicants in the film The replicant characters in the film were: Escaped replicants: - Roy Batty ('Roy Baty' in the book) (played by Rutger Hauer)
- Pris (played by Darryl Hannah)
- Zhora (played by Joanna Cassidy)
- Leon (played by Brion James)
- one other who "got fried in an electric field"
- an additional replicant, mentioned once but otherwise unaccounted for
(For additional information on these last two replicants, Hodge and Mary, see Blade Runner Plot Problems.) Other replicants: - Rachael (played by Sean Young) believes that she is Eldon Tyrell's (Rosen's in the book) niece
Was Deckard a replicant? Many commentators believe the central character Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) is depicted as a replicant in the film. They cite his apparently superhuman strength during the fight with Roy Batty (although he didn't do anything necessarily impossible for a human to do), and the scene where Gaff makes a unicorn model, mirroring the unicorn in Deckard's dream (cut from the original film, restored in the Director's Cut). In 2000 the film's director, Ridley Scott, stated publicly that, at least in the film, Deckard was indeed a replicant. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/825641.stm In the book, Rick Deckard (the main character) is at one point tricked into following a replicant, who believes himself to be a police officer, to a faked police station. Deckard then escapes and "retires" some replicants there before returning to his own police station. At that moment the reader is not entirely sure that Deckard himself is not a replicant, just like the other replicants in the faked police station. However, Deckard takes the Voigt-Kampff test and it fails to indicate that he is an android. Čapek's robots Interestingly, the Robots from Karel Čapek's play R.U.R., where the word robot was first used, were not made of metal like those we associate the word with nowadays, but were artificial biological beings, like replicants from Blade Runner. Characteristics Of Replicants Replicants, essentially assembled in factories to be the size of an adult human, are physically indestinguishable from a human without the aid of a Voigt-Kampff test, which gauges emotional responses to questions. As the opening scrawl to the movie explains, there was a Replicant revolt on Earth, and subsequently all Replicants were banned from Earth and only allowed to be used on the Off-World Colonies in space. Many Replicants on Earth tried to hide there blended in with the normal population. Special police taskforces nicknamed "Blade Runner" Units hunted down the Replicants on Earth until none was left. Some years after the ban and subsequent purge, "Blade Runner" is set in Los Angeles in 2019. The developers of the Replicants, namely Tyrell, discovered that the longer a Replicant lived, the more life-experience--memories, essentially--it gained. With more memories, the Replicants developed wills of their own, and personalities; personalities were often unstable. The longer a Replicant lived, the more this progressed. So the developers designed Replicants with a "fail-safe device"; a built-in four-year lifespan. Tyrell developed Rachael as an experimental Replicant: he gave her false memory implants, so she would think she was real. Tyrell said that these memories would act as a "pillow" to cushion her reactions. Normal Replicants aren't very empathetic or "human" in character, and are emotionally unstable, largely because the experiences humans develop over decades they have to squeeze into four years. Thus, Leon who is only two years old is somewhat immature; while Roy Batty, who is already four years old and at the beginning of the film is already feeling the effects of his impending death, is almost entirely human in his emotions. Roy is capable of love, guilt, sorrow, and empathy (although these emotions confuse him to a degree). In the end, Roy is something of a Blake-type character in the film, and almost a hero. He even saves Deckard's life, even though Deckard was sent to kill him. The theatrical cut's voiceover ending said that as an experimental new kind of Replicant, Rachael didn't have the pre-determined four year lifespan, but the Director's Cut did not. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? the Rosen Corporation simply did not know how to manufacture a replicant capable of living longer than four years.
The Replicants was also the name of a Demo crew involved in the Atari ST demoscene
In the anime series Bubblegum Crisis, the character Priss Asagiri leads a band called The Replicants.
Replicant also refers to a chess engine. See Replicant (chess).
In the video game series Mega Man X, there is a race of robots that have both Sentience and Empathy called Reploids, a term remarkably simular to Replicants.
The name "Tyrell Corporation" is probably a homage to the 1974 fictional television series , where the "Mr R.I.N.G." episode features a violent genetic-mechanical hybrid android that develops a survival instinct. To avoid deactivation, the android escapes and collects artifacts and possessions, attempting to become more "human". The manufacturer of the android is the "Tyrell Institute".
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