Just a Machine: Difference between revisions

** [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|The Puppetmaster calls them off their high horses most awesomely.]]

* [[Short Circuit]] has this as its central premise. The robot can't be alive because it's a machine which aren't alive by definition. Never mind that it's now got free will and a sense of self-preservation, it's still just a machine... right?

* In the first ''[[Transformers (film)|Transformers]]'' movie, Agent Simmons seems rather against calling [[Big Bad|Megatron]] by his true name when it is given to him by Sam, preferring to refer to him as the more machine-like moniker; N.B.E.-01. In fact, it is implied this pisses off Megatron himself, with him seemingly being conscious the entire time he was kept frozen by them; first thing he does upon thawing and awakening is [[Incoming Ham|announcing his true name]], before proceeding to slaughter all of the scientists and engineers in the room.

** Galloway refers to Optimus Prime as a "pile of scrap-metal" after his dead body is delivered back to base. And this is even after Optimus managed to verbally own the guy in a debate which featured topics such as [[Humans Are the Real Monsters|human nature]] and whether they could defend themselves against a Decepticon invasion. Then again, Galloway is just a huge [[Jerkass]].

'''John:''' Alright, "it"! But we need "it"! }}

* [[I, Robot (film)|"Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but not you, you are just a machine."]] Subverted, since he is one of the few people who actually see robots as not just machines (and loathes them for it).

 

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* In ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined]]'', many humans have this attitude towards the Cylons, and are clearly wrong, but the near extermination of humanity is bound to breed hatred.

** For bonus points, {{spoiler|in the remake he sacrificed himself saving the prosecuting attorney who had argued against his sapience. In the original, he's destroyed while saving a little girl he'd accidentally injured earlier in the episode.}}

* ''[[Star Trek]]'' in general draws a distinction between the special cases like Data and the Doctor, and the ubiquitous ship computers responsible for getting everything done in the background. Despite the fact that ship computers can pass the Turing Test with ease, act on their own initiative, and occasionally even display signs of emotion, this is never investigated or even mentioned in-story: ship computers are always just-machines and limited to being background elements (this is doubly notable since some of the special case characters, such as the Doctor, ''run on'' a ship computer).

* In ''Terminator: [[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]],'' "it's just a machine" is pretty much a mantra among the characters who have harsher views on robots and AI. When they started going down the [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic]] Christian symbolism route during season 2, there is an FBI agent who frequently reminds people of this, and that they "don't have souls" and as such "can't feel". Sarah Connor and Derek Reese are both quick to remind John that Cameron, the resident Terminator, is exactly this. John, however, feels differently about machines in general and Cameron in particular, due to his experiences with "Uncle Bob". It doesn't help that Cameron is a [[Robot Girl]] who repeatedly saves his life and that he feels indebted to and ends up developing a sort of attraction towards.

'''McKay''': Should never have given it speech. }}

* ''[[Smallville]]'', in the season 7 finale did this in probably the worst way possible:

'''Clark:''' [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|You're not a man]]. }}

** Then Clark kills him with a smile on his face.

* Used in ''[[Mass Effect (video game)|Mass Effect 1]]'' after talking to {{spoiler|[[The Man Behind the Man|Sovereign]]}}. However, {{spoiler|being an [[Eldritch Abomination]] whose race has committed galactic genocide ''many'' times over the course of ''[[Time Abyss|millions of years]]'', it has more than enough room to turn it back on you and call you [[Inverted Trope|Just An Organic]].}}

{{quote|'''{{spoiler|Sovereign}}:''' Organic life is nothing more than a genetic mutation. An accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither, and die. We are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing.}}

** All of this is subverted to Hell in ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' with [[Spaceship Girl|EDI]] (your ship's AI) and {{spoiler|Legion, your geth teammate, who reveals that the geth you've been fighting are a splinter faction.}}

* [[Mega Man Zero]]: For this reason alone, {{spoiler|[[Big Bad|Dr. Weil]]}} started the Elf Wars, which more or less caused a post-[[Colony Drop]] world to become an even more [[Crapsack World]]. And because of this, {{spoiler|he}} is actually directly responsible for almost everything bad that ever happened in the whole series and the rest of the things are indirectly responsible {{spoiler|such as Copy X being made because the original X's body was being used to seal the Dark Elf}}. This is more [[Fantastic Racism]], though, as Reploids are [[Ridiculously-Human Robots]].

* [[Super Robot Wars]]: What Vindel Mauser thought for the overall of Lemon's W-series. Before his [[Retcon]], Axel Almer used to have the same mindset (only maybe more extreme), but after [[Retcon]], [[Unexplained Recovery|he got better]]. Duminuss also utters this to Lamia Loveless if they ever meet in battle, which she vehemently denied.

'''Mayor's aide:''' I guess. Still, it seems so lifelike. }}

** It is worth noting that this gave the Mayor a very nasty [[Kick the Dog]] moment for some...in a ''humor'' comic, much to the surprise of the author.

** The whole Gardener in the Dark plot revolves around this. One of the executives at the company which makes and owns the robots has planned a forced upgrade that will lobotomize them and return them non-sentience. {{spoiler|Mr. Kornada is doing this purely to make an obscene, economy-shattering profit and sees them all as this trope -- even twisting the three laws to get his own robot assistant to help him pull it all off.}} [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|Of course, there's not much indication that he sees ''people'' as much better than objects, either]].

*** When the mayor learns of the update (thought not the motivation behind it), {{spoiler|she gets another [[Kick the Dog]] moment by choosing to do nothing about it to prevent human obsolescence.}}

* There's at least one or two episodes of ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'' all about Cyborg realizing he's "more than just a robot".

* Averted ''hard'' in the ''[[Transformers]]'' metaseries. While some ill-informed fleshlings are so foolish as to refer to Cybertronian life as being "just machines", it is an established fact, proven several times over that Transformers have souls (they call them Sparks, and they have a special container in their chest to hold it), an extant God (Primus, whose sleeping body ''is'' the Transformer homeworld of Cybertron), and an afterlife (the Well of All Sparks, were All are One. It is proven, but nonetheless mysterious). Interestingly none of the above is established for the aforementioned fleshlings - meaning that, given the evidence, it is entirely possible that the machines are more "human" than the humans, by the definitions humans use.

* Invoked in the ''[[The Animatrix]]'' segment ''The Second Renaissance'' in the same way as the [[Outer Limits]] episode mentioned above; Does a robot have rights or can it be scrapped whenever the owner wants to?