Electric Sheep Still Missing

I recently bought the director’s cut of Blade Runner. I’m happy with the removal of the original stupid happy ending. The original voice-over never bothered me much, so eliminating it wasn’t a big deal. I can see how some viewers who hadn’t seen it before or read the book could have a harder time understanding what was going on. New scenes play on the Dickian theme of mournful lonely androids who don’t know they are androids, although they violate Dick’s portrayal of Deckard’s character in the book.

Still missing are many of the loopier and more touching elements of Dick’s original book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep:

Robotic Sheep: “The alleged sheep contained an oat-tropic circuit; at the sight of such cereals it would scramble up convincingly and amble over”.

Mrs. Deckard. An android bounty hunter is an interesting idea. (Hunter of androids for bounty payment, as opposed to an android who hunts down criminals for bounty payment, which is also an interesting idea, now that you mention it.) It takes a man like Philip K. Dick to create an android bounty hunter with a strained marriage and a robotic sheep on the roof: a man who gets into arguments with his wife about which electronically induced mood they will dial next. Including but not limited to #888, the desire to watch TV, no matter what’s on it.

Malevolent android talk show hosts with android guests broadcasting 46 hours a day.

Mournful lonely androids with an appetite for golden age SF. “”Mars not as it is, but as it ought to be: with canals, instead of omnipresent dust.”

Android sibling rivalry. How do androids feel about multiple copies of themselves running around? “Happy day! I have a twin sister I never knew about!” Perhaps not.

Divine Intervention. Unless the Edward James Olmos character is a human manifestation of a merciful and omniscient god, which sort of works but probably isn’t what Ridley Scott had in mind.