As I saw stated somewhere, the Cyborgs managed to end the entire bloody and drawn-out war in a week. That'd probably take a pretty high death-toll.
They "Routed the enemy" in a week. A routed enemy is one who flees in disorderly panic. In other words when the enemy saw what these robots could do they dropped their guns and ran.
Genocide is a... contested term. At the risk of pulling a Godwin, not every single Jewish person, homosexual or gypsy died as a result of the Holocaust, but it would still be classed as a genocide by many, even most people. The International Criminal Court defines it as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group"; it doesn't have to involve the literal extermination of every single member of the group in question, but a fairly significant number of them.
And like WWRU says, in order for the enemy to 'see what these robots could do', given that this is a galactic war we're talking about by inference that probably involved killing a lot of people. Jex himself certainly seems to indicate so; in his discussion about his people's religious beliefs, he mentions how they believe they have to carry those they have wronged or killed in such a way that suggests he's talking about more than just the people he converted into robots. And, of course, there's the whole parallel being constructed between himself and the Doctor, a man who has committed a genocide (several, in fact). The episode certainly seems to provide plenty of room for the interpretation that Jex is responsible for, if not a genocide, then a lot of deaths at very least.
Edited by DoctorNemesis
Genocide is a... contested term. At the risk of pulling a Godwin, not every single Jewish person, homosexual or gypsy died as a result of the Holocaust, but it would still be classed as a genocide by many, even most people. The International Criminal Court defines it as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group"; it doesn't have to involve the literal extermination of every single member of the group in question, but a fairly significant number of them.
And like WWRU says, in order for the enemy to 'see what these robots could do', given that this is a galactic war we're talking about by inference that probably involved killing a lot of people. Jex himself certainly seems to indicate so; in his discussion about his people's religious beliefs, he mentions how they believe they have to carry those they have wronged or killed in such a way that suggests he's talking about more than just the people he converted into robots. And, of course, there's the whole parallel being constructed between himself and the Doctor, a man who has committed a genocide (several, in fact). The episode certainly seems to provide plenty of room for the interpretation that Jex is responsible for, if not a genocide, then a lot of deaths at very least.
Edited by DoctorNemesis
Either way it's largely irrelevant. His guilt stems from what he did to his own people, which is where the comparison to the Doctor comes in.
The fact that the robots were programmed to avoid unnecessary casualties is just a distraction.
Why are people saying that Jex committed genocide? What he did was to create an overwhelming force that scattered the enemy, nothing says there were no survivors. His crime was to take a few of his own people and turn them into monsters.
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