It's a boy! It's a Roy! For Blade Runner fans, 8 January 2016 is a date of major significance.

It's the "day of activation" for Roy Batty, one of the most charismatic and significant characters in this landmark movie. He's a replicant, or android – and, although he might not be flesh and blood, he certainly makes us think about what it is to be human. He's arguably the heart and soul of the movie, even more than its putative hero, played by Harrison Ford

Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott, is one of the most influential films of the 1980s, a philosophical science fiction-action work set in the near future that's steeped in a sense of the past, a reflection on memory, identity, emotion, creation and invention that takes place in a dazzling yet downbeat neo-noir urban landscape.

Rutger Hauer as the android with a heart, Roy Batty.

Loosely based on Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, its events begin to unfold in November 2019, in a world in which highly realistic androids, known as replicants, have been built by a company called the Tyrell Corporation.

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A scene from Balde Runner, the future looks grim.







Batty (brilliantly played by Rutger Hauer) is a replicant from the Nexus-6 class, and he's looking for answers to questions about his own past and future: how he was made, and how he can prolong



Batty, one of Deckard's targets, is a rebel with a cause. He and his fellow-androids have been built for dangerous or menial work in places beyond Earth. He has been given superior strength and agility – yet he's only intended to have a four-year lifespan. He wants more from his existence, and he's prepared to go to any lengths in search of it.

Roy confronts Deckard (Harrison Ford) in Blade Runner.

Blade Runner wasn't immediately perceived as a great film by critics, but its reputation has continued to grow.. It is now rightly regarded as a classic. I interviewed Hauer in 2007 about it, and although he clearly appreciated the intensity and impact of the film, he was pretty adamant that it wasn't a depiction of the future – not any more, at least.

"We're already way past it," he told me. "Blade Runner is a romantic movie at heart, exotic and romantic, and its time is behind us." But it's an imagined world, he says, that invites us to reflect on the one we're living in, to think about life and its infinite possibilities.

A central question, one much-debated, is the status of Deckard, the stoic, driven bounty hunter. Could he actually be a replicant too? I asked Hauer his opinion.

The Android Pris' (Daryl Hannah) birthday is next, in February 2016.

"In my mind, if Harrison Ford's character is not a replicant, he certainly behaves like one," he said. "He's a dead man, he has no spirit, he's lost."

Yet, he added, it's still up to the viewer to decide, and that's one of the strengths of the film as far as he is concerned; it leaves space for discussion and debate. "I think it's great for there to be a life between the lines of the film."

More Blade Runner replicant birth dates to come:

1. February 14, 2016 (St Valentine's Day) is the inception date of Pris Stratton, "basic pleasure model" replicant. She is played by Daryl Hannah.

2. June 12, 2016 is the inception date of the murderous Zhora Salome, played by Joanna Cassidy, who has a way with snakes.

3, April 10, 2017 is the inception date of Leon Kowalski, played by Brion James. His interrogation in the early stages of the film reveals a feature that distinguishes replicants from human beings: lack of emotion.