After class the other night, I watched (okay, here I must admit to being rather a nerd) Battlestar Galactic with my boyfriend.  For those of you who haven’t seen the 2004 series (which differs somewhat from the original):  Mankind created the Cylons as slaves, but the Cylons developed sentience.  The Cylons, angry after years of servitude and fearful that their creators might destroy them now that they are sentient, decide to strike first and destroy the humans.  This summary is simplistic at best; the problems between the humans and the Cylons are compounded by religious differences (the Cylons are monotheistic, while the humans believe in a pantheon of gods), grievances from the long war, desires to prove themselves, and more.  Significantly, (and why the show reminded me so strikingly of our discussion in class) during the war, the Cylons evolve from their original form:

 To a model which looks virtually indistinguishable from humans:

However, unlike humans, the Cylons are limited by only a set number of human-like appearances, multiple copies of the same model being possible, both male and female.

What all this builds up to, in a round about way, is that not only do the Cylons illustrate the Uncanny Valley (some humans, overlooking the war and the differences, develop feelings for the humanistic Cylons, even fall in love and start families with them), but the Cylons bring into question what it means to be human.  More than just in appearance, the Cylons are almost indistinguishable from mankind.  Like humans, the Cylons have religious beliefs, emotions, a respect for life (even though they themselves can be reloaded into new bodies like a computer program might be moved from one computer to another), ability to suffer pain, desires to reproduce and have offspring, ability to dream, and more.  In fact, the Cylons are so similar to humans that they have even developed traits that, while we should like to call “inhuman,” the show more than clearly demonstrates are all too human.  Both the Cylons and the humans make use of torture, though one of the first instances of it in the series is the humans is the humans raping and beating a female Cylon.  Further, neither the humans nor their creations are opposed to suicide bombings, terrorism, and murder (even murdering their own people not simply as acts of war).  The humans, when speaking of these acts committed by the Cylons call them “inhuman,” yet when their own people do it, one must admit that it is all too human.  The humans simply argue that their use of such tactics are out of the necessity of war, yet the Cylons could as easily claim the same.  The Cylons are so indistinguishable from their creators that they possess both mankind’s best and worst characteristics.

In spite of this, the humans abhor the Cylons, calling them “monstrous” and “inhuman,” yet when it comes to putting one’s finger on just what makes them different from the humans it is hard.  Is simply declaring it is because they are not us–our creations–enough?  Perhaps it is because they make us all too aware of the inhuman aspects of humanity that we wish to distance ourselves from them.  As we have discussed in class, the line between us and technology (or us and them) is uncertain and shifting at best being so dependant on how one defines technology and it brings into question our identity as humans.

In one of the most recent episodes I’ve seen a doctor emerges from a medical tent, covered in blood.  A Cylon approaches him and, indicating the blood, asks if it is Cylon or human as “it all looks the same.” This is a perfect summation for my argument:  There is almost no difference between the Cylons and the humans, indistinguishable from each other even by members of the same race. Simply by existing, the Cylons bring into question how we differentiate between human and inhuman.  The same question that is approached through Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in discussion of monstrosity: Is it possible that humans can be less “human,” more “monstrous,” than their creations?  Both the Cylons and Frankenstein’s Wretch would readily answer  yes; humanity can be inhuman and the inhuman can be far more humane, at times.