what a thoughtful post, this is exactly what i love about BSG and quality sf tv shows. they make you think as hard as the really good stories like the ones by PKD. for me, the dilemma is more than whether or not the Cylons are human-- i think of them as children. not in the sense that they're juvenile or immature like the Blade Runner replicants, but their relationship with all of humanity is like children's with their parents. unlike animals or the robots and appliances we think of as just machines, humans created Cylons essentially to reproduce themselves in a way that would be serviceable. whenever i see this sort of question about how human a robot/alien human in sci-fi is, i think of slavery. in BSG, when the race humans invented became autonomous and rebelled, humans realized they hadn't just invented an extension of themselves, they incorporated whole real people into their society without giving them control over their own lives. the problem for taking revenge on the Cylons seems to be whether humans could forgive themselves for creating such an enemy. war is kind of always like that. so i think the Cylons are as human as they need to be to make the conflict necessary. the empathy stuff is kind of beside the point, because nothing in the Cylons' experience leads them to empathize with humans-- it's not that they're incapable, but the ones who are trying, like Boomer, are just getting the hang of it.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2005-02-28 02:58 am (UTC)for me, the dilemma is more than whether or not the Cylons are human-- i think of them as children. not in the sense that they're juvenile or immature like the Blade Runner replicants, but their relationship with all of humanity is like children's with their parents. unlike animals or the robots and appliances we think of as just machines, humans created Cylons essentially to reproduce themselves in a way that would be serviceable. whenever i see this sort of question about how human a robot/alien human in sci-fi is, i think of slavery. in BSG, when the race humans invented became autonomous and rebelled, humans realized they hadn't just invented an extension of themselves, they incorporated whole real people into their society without giving them control over their own lives. the problem for taking revenge on the Cylons seems to be whether humans could forgive themselves for creating such an enemy. war is kind of always like that. so i think the Cylons are as human as they need to be to make the conflict necessary. the empathy stuff is kind of beside the point, because nothing in the Cylons' experience leads them to empathize with humans-- it's not that they're incapable, but the ones who are trying, like Boomer, are just getting the hang of it.