Alien, Terminator, and Blade Runner: Programming Synthetic Life

Ash, the synthetic extension of Mother, comes to represent the things we worry about with regard to synthetic life - that while being superior in some ways (memory, longevity, strength, etc.) it can lack the human element for compassion and morality. Ash not only helps introduce the entire crew to the Alien creatures, but brutally attempts to kill Ripley (in a scene reminiscent of a rape). Yet, in the next three installments to the franchise, the two androids that are introduced (Bishop and Annalee Call) both turn out to be more human in terms of morality and compassion than most of the human characters. Bishop not only saves Newt but as he lacks fear (though not the desire to exist as he points out) takes on the dangerous assignment of setting up the antenna link to retrieve the transport ship. Annalee Call's mission is to kill the hybrid Ripley-Alien abomination and to bring down the military apparatus that is trying to use the Aliens as a new weapon. An ironic twist in the third installment shows the human that Bishop was modeled after appearing first to offer to help Ripley, but unlike his synthetic creation, but in reality only lying to her to get her to lower her guard so he can use her and capture the Alien Queen that she carries; the Synthetic copy is more trustworthy than the human original.

In the Terminator series, we are first shown a soulless machine played by Arnold, then in each film that follows, Arnold's machine becomes more and more human (he protects John Conner and his mother in the second film and somehow manages to override his bad reprogramming by the T-X in the third to again save humanity's last hope. It is also interesting in this series that all of the Terminators are played by attractive actors (the T-X by a very beautiful and sexy Kristanna Loken - even though these machines are designed to kill humans and snuff out mankind, there is still an attractiveness to their power and beauty).

In Blade Runner, the renegade "skin jobs" show no remorse in killing, yet Rachel (and Decker, though he doesn't really what he really is) comes across as more human than any of the other humans in the film. The programming appears to be more important than whether the shell was constructed organically or synthetically. When Bukatman asks, "Who Programs You?" and outlines his argument that the subject has "no halo of private protection, not even his own body, to protect him anymore" it make one take pause and reflect on how much affect the images that are invading our bodies (like viruses) everyday via the media have on our society and what type of machines will exist in the future. Will they be programmed to make moral and compassionate decisions, or merely be an extension of some corporate controlled mother ship that maximizes profits without regard to the quality of human life? These films seem to posit the belief that whatever existence humans and machines share in the future will be less determined by the composition of the amazing hardware that will continue to evolve, but by the software that is loaded into it.