To Be or Not to 01000010 01100101

Replicants are androids with short life spans that are banned from the planet Earth. When spotted, the law states that they are to be "retired," or executed, by a special police task force called the Blade Runners. Rick Deckard is a former superstar of this squad, involuntarily brought out of his hiatus when four rogue replicants are discovered in Los Angeles. He is threatened into taking the case by his superiors, the same way a replicant would be threatened with retirement for not doing their duty.

Over the course of the manhunt, Deckard meets Rachael, whom we soon discover is a replicant as well. Rachael does not know that she is anything other than human. She has memories, feelings, and emotions, just like the man investigating her. During an examination, the girl asks "You know that Voight-Kampf test of yours? Did you ever take that test yourself?" It becomes apparent that the detective has not. She also wonders if any humans have been mistakenly retired. The answer here is also "No." How would a human detective be able to identify one of the androids in a crowd of humans?

When we are taken into Deckard's living quarters, we see a grand piano with old pictures and sheet music on it. Rachael sits down and starts to play a song. She wonders aloud who has the skill, herself, or Tyrell's niece, the basis of her programming. At this stage of the story she knows what she is, that her pictures and memories mean nothing. Rachael silently analyzes the photos next to the music, comparing them to the ones she had. They are clearly too old to be the memories of a man from the year 2019.

The last of the hunted replicants spares Deckard's life in their final confrontation. The exchange is similar to what you'd see between a solider and a senior officer. The Nexus-6 model acts like he is aiding an older, slower model of replicant, showing mercy to a fellow slave. Roy screams "Kinship!" at the moment he grabs the detective's hand, loaning even more credibility to this theory. Upon completion of the mission, detective Gaff even says, "You've done a man's job, sir! I guess you're through, huh?"

It seems that Deckard is the same as Rachael, a replicant with a case of mistaken identity, programmed to believe he is himself human, with memories and emotions. Why would a replicant knowingly be a blade runner, only to kill his own kind? In the end, Deckard is too efficient, too strong, too good at his job to be human. Nothing connects him to his world and he has no past before he was a cop. His humanity is only assumed, with nothing substantial to support it. Rick Deckard is a replicant.

Resources: "Blade Runner: Director's Cut" Blu Ray copy. Original release, 1982. BluRay release 2009.