There’s one thing about the Manticore Project that didn’t make sense to me: Ok, so the people running the project want to breed genetically enhanced super-soldiers. They also want the X5s to be loyal and obedient. So what do they do? They brutalize the crap out of them! Deny they’re even human, use them as guinea pigs in ongoing research, withold any sort of love or affection, and regiment them to a degree the Spartans might have thought excessively harsh. If the friggin’ NKVD had wanted to raise a bunch of Russian orphans as an elite corp of spies and assassins obedient only to Stalin and Beria, they wouldn’t have been so stupidly ham-fisted about it. Never mind the genetic experimention side of it, the indoctrination side of it was unbelievably mishandled.
Manticore thought they had genetically designed them for obedience, so how they were trained wouldn’t have an adverse affect.
They turn out to have been mistaken.
I thought the Chief Bad Guy Whose Name I Can’t Remember had a minor bit about the whole affair in some episode.
Man, I’m helpful. But I haven’t seen the show since it aired. Later on, didn’t they end up using the X5s as a tool for someone else’s punishment? Like, someone who betrayed the X5s? Wasn’t that how they were generally taught to hunt down people? – Likely reinforce the “what we tell you to do is good, see” thing.
The “for your own good” scenario, and creating hostility and giving it a focus, isn’t the most outlandish means of control envisioned. Seems par for the course in human history. Admittedly, distilling it so it fits in a few minutes of screen time could be bad form. But the show takes place primarily from the perspective of a rebel with whom we’re supposed to sympathize. There were plenty of X5s left carrying on the tradition; I recall that we met at least one still on the government’s side, and [Zack?] had some serious problems adjusting on the outside because he didn’t really give up the value system that was beat into him (as I recall, it has been a while).
I liked that show. It needed better writers, though. The finale showed that it could have been a decent show, the themes were obvious but totally not utilized except in a few key episodes. Plus, J Alba. I mean come on.