GR's Andromeda's Androids -- Humanity Issues?

[FalTorPan]

I've never watched more than a few minutes of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda series, but my understanding is that there were a couple of android main characters -- "Rommie" and "Doyle" -- and I would imagine that there were scattered guest-star characters who were androids as well.

Did any of these characters ever have Pinnochio/Data/Bicentennial Man moments, wishing that he or she was human instead of a robot? Did any of them have Blade Runner/A. I. moments, with the robo-characters or human characters wondering what makes one a human or a machine?

Just wondering. The themes have been done to death, but I still get a kick out of those stories.

 

[Christopher]

Oh, on the contrary. Rommie was very happy to be an AI. However, there were episodes that touched on the issue of AI rights and equality, and the android avatar Rommie did become increasingly distinct from the starship Andromeda's AI and somewhat more emotional. And there were explorations of the differences of human/organic nature and AI nature, the symbiosis between the two, without getting into the species-chauvinist nonsense about AIs wishing they were human.

 

[Mysterion]

So. What do you do with a self-aware starship when it is time to decommission the vessel? Retire the AI to some ground job? Move the AI to a new ship? Turn it off when you take the ship apart?

 

[MNM]

So. What do you do with a self-aware starship when it is time to decommission the vessel? Retire the AI to some ground job? Move the AI to a new ship? Turn it off when you take the ship apart?

The series showed that AI's could be switched from ship to ship.

 

[nx1701g]

^ Makes you wonder if they simply reassign the AI how it would handle going from say a ship of the line to a transport or something like that. Would it see it as a demotion or something along those lines?

 

[MNM]

^^I think going from the AIs we saw, they, on the whole, would most definitely bitch about it.

 

[nx1701g]

^ Probably right. I'm remembering too that a good many of them had... issues.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I think the AIs on "Andromeda" would consider being human a step down - and they'd be pretty much right. Nor did they struggle with any sense of not being "fully" anything. They had and acknowledged their emotions as well.

And Lexa Doig is hot.

 

[Jack Bauer]

Michael Shanks is one lucky bastard. ^^^