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A Blade Runner Unit,[1] Replicant Detection Unit,[2] or Rep-Detect,[3] was a police unit organized to hunt and kill fugitive replicants on Earth, referred to as "retiring" them. As of 2019, Rep-Detect operatives, colloquially known as Blade Runners, would employ the Voight-Kampff test to identify replicants.
History[]
One Blade Runner unit was employed by the Los Angeles Police Department, founded in 2009 after Detective Cal Moreaux killed Nia Moreaux, a prototype Nexus-5 who "awakened" other replicants and recruited them into a group of revolutionaries. For his actions, Cal Moreaux was made the city's first Blade Runner. Despite the public being told that the group was primarily operated by the LAPD itself, calls about rogue replicants were actually handled by Tyrell Corporation executive Ilora Stahl's office.[4]
In 2015, Tyrell sent Blade Runners to Japan to protect their replicant patent due to a rise in bootleg replicants produced by companies such as Cheshire.[5]
Divisions operated under Captains Harry Bryant[1] and Lydia Wojciech[6] as of November 2019, by which month Rick Deckard had quit the job.[1] For a portion of that month, Bryant was away on sick leave, with Edison Guzza taking over his duties.[3]
After a group of replicants hijacked an Off-world transport and escaped to Earth, Dave Holden was assigned to test new Tyrell Corporation employees to find the replicants among them. He was shot while administering the Voight-Kampff test to the Nexus-6 Leon Kowalski.[1]
After this incident, Bryant sent Gaff to retrieve Deckard to return to the job and retire the escaped replicants.[1] Also active with the unit during this time were Crystal Steele, Ray McCoy,[3] Aahna Ashina,[7] and Lelas.[6]
Following the Blackout in 2022, some Blade Runner units separated from law enforcement entities and were instead hired by private parties. Such was the case in London.[8]
The LAPD unit first experimented with the inclusion of Nexus-9 replicants among their ranks. The Wallace Corporation provided the LAPD with Luv to serve as the first replicant Blade Runner.[9]
By 2049, the LAPD unit commonly employed the use of Nexus-9 replicants such as K and operated under Lieutenant Joshi until her death.[10]
Behind the scenes[]
The term "Blade Runner" originates not from any works by Philip K. Dick but from a little known 1974 novel by Alan E. Nourse, The Bladerunner. In this novel, Bladerunners (the term is one word in this novel) are black market medical suppliers for underground physicians. The term appears to refer to the scalpel blade; a picture of a medical scalpel is prominently on the book cover illustration. William S. Burroughs penned a story treatment for a film adaptation of Nourse's novel and this eventually was published instead as a novella, Blade Runner (a movie). The term came into use for the film Blade Runner when Ridley Scott disliked Deckard's job title being "bounty hunter." Screenwriter Hampton Fancher, who owned a copy of Blade Runner (a movie), suggested the term "Blade Runner," which Scott approved. The film rights to Nourse and Burroughs' works were purchased to allow the term's use.
Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human states that the term "Blade Runner" was derived from the German phrase, "bleib ruhig," meaning, "remain calm."
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Blade Runner – all versions
- ↑ Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game – Core Rules
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Blade Runner (1997 game)
- ↑ Blade Runner Origins #12
- ↑ Blade Runner: Tokyo Nexus #1
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Blade Runner 2019 #3
- ↑ Blade Runner 2019 #1
- ↑ Blade Runner 2019 #7
- ↑ Blade Runner 2039 #1
- ↑ Blade Runner 2049