What Measure Is a Non-Human?/Live-Action TV: Difference between revisions
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(As described in the main trope page, robots who have personalities and are main characters are treated as people. This isn't a subversion, it's the way the trope normally plays out.) |
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* [[Monster of the Week|The more human-like mutants of the week]] on ''[[The X-Files]]'' tend to get the harsher treatment, being portrayed as instinctive killing machines (or animalistic predators), to be stopped by any means necessary. However, earlier in the series, this had yet to be established. Eugene Tooms (the liver-eating, hibernating, contortionist mutant from Season 1) was supposedly rehabilitated and released back into society. Similarly, Flukeman from early Season 2 was committed to a psychiatric institution for observation, despite being a radioactively created fusion of Primate and flatworm DNA. In both of these instances Mulder argued that the creatures did not deserve the same legal treatment that a human serial killer would, because he did not see them as human. Later episodes focused more on ordinary humans with strange gifts or victims of unusual circumstance (many of whom killed by accident) rather than the traditional "mutants." Later in the series, a brain-eating humanoid creature [[Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?|tried living like a human]], but ultimately failed (proving Mulder's point). At least he got a sympathetic POV. Interestingly, in the episode featuring a severely inbred family as a [[Monster of the Week]], this doesn't get brought up, implying that the monstrous Peacock Clan is more "human" than (presumably) human-derived mutants like Tooms. |
* [[Monster of the Week|The more human-like mutants of the week]] on ''[[The X-Files]]'' tend to get the harsher treatment, being portrayed as instinctive killing machines (or animalistic predators), to be stopped by any means necessary. However, earlier in the series, this had yet to be established. Eugene Tooms (the liver-eating, hibernating, contortionist mutant from Season 1) was supposedly rehabilitated and released back into society. Similarly, Flukeman from early Season 2 was committed to a psychiatric institution for observation, despite being a radioactively created fusion of Primate and flatworm DNA. In both of these instances Mulder argued that the creatures did not deserve the same legal treatment that a human serial killer would, because he did not see them as human. Later episodes focused more on ordinary humans with strange gifts or victims of unusual circumstance (many of whom killed by accident) rather than the traditional "mutants." Later in the series, a brain-eating humanoid creature [[Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?|tried living like a human]], but ultimately failed (proving Mulder's point). At least he got a sympathetic POV. Interestingly, in the episode featuring a severely inbred family as a [[Monster of the Week]], this doesn't get brought up, implying that the monstrous Peacock Clan is more "human" than (presumably) human-derived mutants like Tooms. |
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* The show ''[[Eureka]]'' typically puts one of the main characters in mortal peril as part of the Disaster of the Week; when Andy, the android deputy sherrif, is the one in danger, the situation is given exactly no less weight or gravitas. The show doesn't make light of things just because the character is a robot, and all the other characters are just as worried and working just as hard to fix things as if one of the humans were in danger. |
* The show ''[[Eureka]]'' typically puts one of the main characters in mortal peril as part of the Disaster of the Week; when Andy, the android deputy sherrif, is the one in danger, the situation is given exactly no less weight or gravitas. The show doesn't make light of things just because the character is a robot, and all the other characters are just as worried and working just as hard to fix things as if one of the humans were in danger. |
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* ''[[The Tomorrow People]]'' have a barrier in their mind that keeps them from (knowingly) killing. In the second story of the original series, a captive boy says that he could kill Jedikiah by sending him into magma because Jedikiah is a robot so it doesn't count as killing. |
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