Director of BrightBorn Industries
From the television series Orphan Black (2013-2017)
Played by Jessalyn Wanlim
Cho believes herself to be doing good for mankind. As someone who was born with a fatal genetic defect, she does what she can to ensure that it never happens to anyone. The big problem with that is how she goes about it and her ulterior motives for doing so.
[SPOILERS BELOW]
You see, Cho actually does some quite immoral things in the name of her research and shows no remorse about any of it. She creates designer babies and places incredibly high standards on what counts as a success. The ones who aren’t perfect or are deformed get euthanized to cover up her failure. And this applies to many things she oversees. Anything that isn’t perfect is destroyed.
Oh, and about advancing human evolution with her research, turns out that her motive isn’t as benevolent either. Her good intentions are undermined by her ego. One would assume she’d be working with the other researchers to achieve the goal, right? Not Cho. She destroys Cosima’s research on curing diseases in clones and has Kendall incinerated right in front of her to make sure she won’t have a way to find a cure. It’s not enough to help humanity. She wants to be the name that goes down in the history books. She eliminates any competition that would be a threat to that end.
She shows a disturbing lack of empathy towards others when it comes to her research. Killing or blackmailing anyone who is a threat to her plans is perfectly acceptable. When two women escape from a maternity ward and could potentially expose her, she gets assassins to kill them. And part of her plan involves implanting her technology into people so that she can alter her DNA without their consent. And after the incident with Cosima mentioned in the last paragraph, Cho tells her that Delphine is dead just to further rub salt into the wound.
Manipulation is something she’s also good at. Cho is obviously a businesswoman, so being able to put on a friendly face and craft the right words to either draw in sympathy or draw away suspicion comes with the territory. And using her childhood of crippling illness is one thing that garners sympathy. However, she’s also not above blackmailing others. She has Donnie arrested and threatens to have him killed in jail if Allison doesn’t comply. She even implants the idea of killing Susan Duncan into Beth’s head as a way to take over Susan’s position.
However, while she has a pretty good mask, it’s prone to slipping and you can see the callous and selfish monster that she is underneath. She is easily angered by having anything less than perfection and will resort to murder when her plans are in danger. And after her actions are exposed, she basically throws a hissy fit about how her technology won’t be used without her in charge, which basically solidifies the fact that she’s mostly in it for the glory.
Above all, Cho refuses to absolve BrightBorn of any wrongdoings when given the chance. She’s so wrapped up in her ideas that she won’t see anything she has done as wrong.
in light of the recent Orphan Black spinoff pitches, might i suggest: Prochocophine: a sitcom where these four women just live together for absolutely no reason whatsoever & are constantly trying to kill each other, but are all horribly unsuccessful at it. (Cosima doesn’t try to kill anyone, though, she’s just there for no reason & wants to leave.)
