Orphan Black: Parts Developed in an Unusual Manner

The number one reason to own a sister is for TV suggestions. Take some time out and give your sissy some cookies, you’ll be amazed at what you’ll find. I spent the weekend holed up with mine, marathoning a 10 hour season of Orphan Black. Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany) is just walking around one night and suddenly, BAM! She sees herself jump in front of a train. After some investigation, Sarah discovers that her look alike has about 75,000 ways to fix her cash flow problems. Solution: obviously to assume Elizabeth “Beth” Childs’ identity, steal the money, and disappear into the horizon. Problem: everything under sun, but the biggest one is that there are seven (and maybe more) other girls that look exactly like she and Beth. The women are all clones, genetically identical, but vastly individual.

The show is a crazy, suspenseful thriller, a tad turtle-speed sometimes, but very good. My only thing is, what’s Sarah’s problem, really? Do you have any idea what I would do, who I would kill, to have a flock of people that look just like me? I would get so much sleep. In my head, I’m envisioning robots that look like me, but that has nothing to do with anything. Sarah’s clones give her so much grief, and we don’t know who the original is yet, so they’re not even “Sarah’s” clones.

Imagine being a clone. That would suck, huh? I think, in America, to even mention the word “clone” is like dousing yourself with gasoline, then lighting a match. Orphan Black uses cloning as the basis for their story, but they haven’t delved into the why part yet. I think everyone knows the benefits of cloning (basically harvesting your own supply of backup organs and BOOM, there you go! Your very own blood type right there in case you need a transfusion). But I think what connected me to the show was the point of view being from the clones and not regular, two-people-made-me-not-inside-of-a-lab humans. What if I was a clone? What if I knew a person that was a clone? What if cloning became widespread, and clones were just walking around outside? How would we interact with one another? I feel like we’d be douchebags to them, and probably make them wear numbers or something. Humans have this habit of categorizing and subjugating things. There has to be a movie or a book that depicts something like this happening. I can name a couple, but those are all robots or that awful District 9 movie.

Anyway, the concept of cloning is interesting, but I have to admit, it also terrifies me. Yes, I am one of those people. I don’t care about the creation of human beings being morally wrong, but I do care about the ethics of creating an organism for the specific purpose of taking from them. Beth and Sarah aren’t any less human because they were genetically engineered. I’m afraid of the slippery slope. Brave New World did a number on me, but then again, so did A Tale of Two Cities (I should just stop reading. My imagination is too dangerous). I’m not ignorant of all of the innovative and wondrous things that cloning could bring forth, but I do worry about the world after cancer’s gone, after there’s a cure for AIDS, after there’s nothing left to take us out but ourselves. Oh well, I can’t answer any of that. Probably be dead by then anyway. But not before the new season of Orphan Black airs on April 19.

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