Heart of the City by Steenz for December 03, 2011

The Geneva Conventions deal with crimes against humanity, not crimes against elvenkind, so Santa has a loophole…

my kids have clued in that mall santas are nor real but they stey still believe in the ‘real one’ – this year our mall santa was really good – so they were confused whether he was the real one or not. :)

Didn’t realize that Dean’s a Doctor Who fan.

I’ve read RUR, but it’s a play and not a novel. And I dispute that Rachel, other than having had the experimental memory implant, was a more technologically-advanced model than any other Nexus 6. Again, the idea that Rachel might not be susceptible to the same limitations as Roy, Pris and Zhora (and possibly Deckard himself) undercuts the underlying metaphor of the whole movie. If not, why DID Scott excise any reference to her supposed lack of mortality from the Director’s Cut(s)? Since Deckard had seen Rachel’s file after testing her, wouldn’t he have known that she wouldn’t die after four years? Wouldn’t he have told her, when she shows up at his apartment asking about her incept date?

It is the inevitability of death which gives meaning to life. Whether it’s the biblical three-score-and-ten years, or the Replicants’ four years, it’s all too brief and there’s nothing to be done about it except to live life fully while you can, and to love whom you love while you can.

If Rachel doesn’t have the four-year lifespan limit, it renders meaningless Gaff’s final line (“too bad she won’t live…”). If Tyrell Corp. could create Replicants without the four-year lifespan limit, it renders meaningless Dr. Tyrell’s whole “facts of life” conversation with Roy.

I disagree. The voiceover is non-canonical, as it was insisted upon by the studio. Neither the Compromise Cut nor the Director’s Cut not the Final Cut makes reference to Rachel having anything other than the normal four-year Replicant lifespan , and the words “Nexus 7” are never spoken in ANY version.

When Rachel is in Deckard’s apartment and Deckard relates Rachel’s memory of the baby spiders, she asks him what her incept date was and he said “I didn’t notice”, he’s clearly lying; his voice breaks and he can’t look her in the eye. Deckard knows the details of the memories that were implanted, but he takes no notice of salient information such as her incept date and lifespan?

(On a side note, all versions other than the 1982 release at least raise the possibility that Deckard is himself a Replicant – a question to which I have my own answer, but I won’t insist upon it. Gaff may know what Deckard dreams; so Gaff has seen Deckard’s file, but he hasn’t seen Rachel’s?)

The return of Roy and his crew to earth was desperate, but it was not “suicidal”; they wanted MORE life, not less. But Tyrell made it very clear that there was nothing to be done; there’s no way around the four-year limit to Replicant life. “You were built the best that we could build you.” Besides, if Tyrell could (let alone did) design a Nexus 7 which could live beyond four years, why would he bother trying to reverse the decay of the Nexus 6? Roy had no more chance of Tyrell granting him (or any Replicant) an extension beyond his four years than we would have if we demanded immortality from the gods. That is the central metaphor I referred to above.

Finally, in no version of the film that Scott approved was there even room for an explanation that Rachel is any sort of “special case.” In all three of Scott’s versions, the last shot of the film is Rachel and Deckard bolting from the Bradbury and finding Gaff’s unicorn. The footage of the car speeding through the forest, which is where the deus ex machina happily-ever-after voice-over is heard, wasn’t even shot for Blade Runner; it was unused footage from The Shining.

It’s simply an inferior movie if Rachel lives beyond four years. From Deckard’s standpoint, it makes more sense for him NOT to tell Rachel what her birthdate is anyway; what would be the point? She may have six months left, she may have three years and six months, but it won’t be long, so they have to make the most of it…just like anybody else.

Final final note:

In EVERY version, Bryant has to inform Deckard that Nexus 6’s have a four-year lifespan, so it’s clearly not something that was a factor in any other Replicant line Deckard has ever had to deal with. Bryant is the one who refers to it as a "fail-safe, but then Bryant is an idiot. Since Tyrell (sole manufacturer and distributor of the Nexus 6) has been expending so much effort trying to reverse the accellerated decrepitude, does it make any sense that he would have installed it in the first place, if there were any other option?

Cruel but necessary.