I know this is being discussed in the Hari's uploaded consciousness thread, but I thought I'd separate it out....
I can't make any sense of the replacement Cleons pointed out by Brother Dawn. Exactly how does this work? So, they grow Cleons that are each a certain year old from, what? Age 1 to Age 90? and freeze dry each of those 90 Cleons? So that, just in case a Cleon accidentally dies or proves to be a failure they can replace him, no matter the age?
Am I understanding that's how this works?
If I've got it right, then there's this warehouse of Cleons and they can just implant the right memories and mind into the one they need. SO, Problem with Brother Dawn? No problem. Erase damaged Brother Dawn, Roll out Brother Dawn age 17, download the saved mind into him and he's ready to go. No interruption in service.
Now, someone said that these can't be as good as the "grown from birth" types...but that makes no sense. If you're going to replace Brother Dawn with freeze-dried Brother Dawn then he has to be AS GOOD as one grown from birth. OTHERWISE you're going to end up with an inferior Brother Day on the throne and running the Empire! 😱 I presume that whoever created this wacky plan made darn sure that this freeze-dried replacement would be as good as the grown-from-birth sort. I mean, you already got rid of the "grown from birth" Brother Dawn because he wasn't satisfactory. You don't want a problem with the him once he becomes all-powerful Brother Day and is giving orders to, say, firebomb planets.
Which brings us to the question...Why in the world are are the Cleons bothering to bring up future emperors from birth? You could skip all those years of raising a kid, and risking that he'll go wrong or die in an accident, and just bring out the freeze-dried one. Age, whatever, ready to be and do whatever Brother Dawn does when he's of an age to share rulership (does he do anything?).
I mean, if the aim is to have the exact same Cleons over and over again, as close to the original as possible, why risk variants? Just use the freeze-dried ones.
Can anyone explain why they need to do the whole life cycle thing with the baby and the nanny and the life lessons all that when they've got at least 90 Cleons waiting to be used in the Imperial Warehouse?
The way I understood the replacement Cleons is that every time a new Cleon is born, it isn't just one Cleon, but two: one that gets to live a normal imperial life, another one that is put in suspended animation and ages at the normal rate, and remains unconscious all the time unless he's needed for an emergency replacement. That's why we see a replacement Brother Dawn and a replacement Brother Day that are the same age as Brother Dawn and Brother Day.
I think the emergency replacements are somewhat inferior, because what I've seen so far makes me think that downloading a human brain into an AI isn't a very good copy of the original person. The Hari Seldon AI in episode 8 was having trouble behaving close enough to a normal human being in those circumstances, let alone one that likes Gaal.
I don't think that having a somewhat inferior Brother Day is an unsurmountable problem. Brother Dawn, Brother Dusk and Demerzel would compensate for any deficiencies. Demerzel must have been leading the Empire herself after Cleon I died and while Cleon II was only a child.
Brother Dawn is afraid of being killed for not being good enough or close enough to the original, and his emergency replacement being woken up to take his place, but we haven't seen Brother Day's or Brother Dusk's opinion on the issue, so it could well be that his fears are unfounded.
The question of who has the real power, whether the Emperor of Demerzel, is a good one. In the books, Demerzel has the real power, but she resigns because, as a robot, she reaches a point when she finds it too hard to follow the Laws of Robotics (including the Zeroth Law) in her position of First Minister. I'm not sure I find that reason to give up power particularly convincing. So far, we've only seen the Emperor separated from Demerzel to go on his religious pilgrimage, and that doesn't give us any clues on how capable is the Emperor of running the Empire without Demerzel.