One of the things that I think makes Tears In The Rain work so well is the combination of concrete imagery, and the lack of explanation of what's going in.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off (the) shoulder of Orion.
What are attack ships? Why are they at Orion? (Leave out the fact that the shoulder of Orion doesn't really make sense in the context of the constellation). It's easy to imagine ships on fire (I like to think of the end of Starcraft Campaign 1), but we get the mystery of where/why exactly they are).
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.
Glitter is doing some heavy lifting here, and is a great verb. Why are more lasers not glittery? What is a C-beam? A non-laser beam at or near the speed of light? What is the Tannhäuser Gate. Bonus points for opera reference. I've talked about this before, but even before I started doing this blog I've always loved references to classic writing, mythology, etc. in sci-fi and fantasy. I like to think it's a big FTL gate. Do they have FTL in blade runner? Presumably, if they can get attack ships to Betelgeuse.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Tears in the rain is perhaps the least mysterious imagery in the speech, but (even without Batty literally sitting in the rain) it speaks to his character. Can't have a KILL DROID showing tears, but of course a human would cry.
Maybe I'll just make this a Blade Runner blog for a while. I haven't reread Androids in years...
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