by Darren Humphries

Created on: August 08, 2007

Cyborgs (part biological, part machine), androids (completely machine, but looking like humans) and replicants (wholly biological, but artificially created humans) have been around for a long time in science fiction and are one of the genre's staples. This article will only look at those cyborgs that look completely human.

Cyborgs are the creation of Mankind (usually) and are bad (usually). They are always stronger, faster or more intelligent than humans. There are, however, marked differences in the manner in which male and female cyborgs have been portrayed throughout the history of screen science fiction.

One of the first male screen cyborgs of note is also one of its most famous, the monster from FRANKENSTEIN (1931). Admittedly, the German creation DER GOLEM got there a good ten years before the good doctor reanimated his composite of dead corpses, but that was little seen outside of its home country for many years. Both of these artificial humans share the same common factors; they are strong, uncontrollable, violent, not very bright and inarticulate. These are perhaps the worst things that men think of themselves and so it is not surprising to find them as the defining characteristics of these early creations, but leap forwards to 1984 and THE TERMINATOR and we find a cyborg that is strong, uncontrollable, violent and inarticulate. The T1000 that appears in the sequel is even less verbose. Only the intelligence factor has changed. Perhaps men feel that they are more intelligent than they used to be.

Across the years that separate DER GOLEM from THE TERMINATOR, the majority of cyborgs have displayed the same strength, violence and uncontrollability as their forbears, and almost all of them have been evil. In ALIEN (1979) one of the crew turns out to be an android willing to do anything to catch a specimen of the creature. Roy Batty and his male colleague from BLADE RUNNER (1982) are only turned aside from their aims by the inconvenience of termination. Dolph Lundgren and Jean Claude Van Damme are reanimated as the ultimate killing machines in UNIVERSAL SOLDIER (1992). Yul Brynner's gunslinger android from WESTWORLD (1973) was determined to gun down its targets despite acid in the face and being set on fire.

Only the Bishop android in ALIENS (1986) and the Arnold Schwarzenegger T100s from the sequels TERMINATOR 2:JUDGMENT DAY (1991) and TERMINATOR 3:RISE OF THE MACHINES (2003) buck this bad guy trend.

Female cyborgs are more interesting and plentiful than their

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>