The Outcast, Season 4

[Davey]

Well, besides seeing this as another episode with a minimum of cast (I presume to save money) as the last one, Harmony, I can't believe they left the female replicator "alive." "She" was just a machine and could present some danger, and they are leaving her alive at the end of the episode as if it were human. Makes absolutely no sense at all....The one about Harmony seemed like a low budget throwaway episode.....
Anyway in Outcast, the idea of leaving a replicator around on Earth makes no sense. What if someone noticed her construction under the skin, or the fact that she never ate, drank, went to the bathroom or slept?!!

[Xaeden]

Anyway in Outcast, the idea of leaving a replicator around on Earth makes no sense. What if someone noticed her construction under the skin, or the fact that she never ate, drank, went to the bathroom or slept?!!

There is not a replicator walking around on Earth. Did you miss the last 30 seconds of the episode? They deactivated her nanites and uploaded her consciousness into a virtual world to make her think she is in the real world. If you missed that part you probably also missed the part where John returns to his family home to see his brother one last time.

[Davey]

Thank you. I didn't really understand the context of those last 30 seconds using the virtual machine they found on that old ship. But why would they bother to preserve her consciousness instead of destroying her like F R.A.N.?

[Xaeden]

There was a brief debate about it. Carter argued that the stripped down programming that Mckay left Fran with was still sufficient to give her a base level of self-awareness, while Mckay essentially argued that she wasn't fully sapient.* He then ended his argument by saying it didn't matter because they had no other choice but to use her, which she later confirmed was what she wanted when Mckay interacted with her on the way to Asura (she saw it as fulfilling her purpose).

The replicator from "Outcast," on the other hand, was fully sapient, had a strong desire to live, and there was ultimately a second option available to them. Had there not been because the Aurora virtual reality technology didn't exist or if they needed to sacrifice her to take out all other replicators, chances are they wouldn't have let her live either.

*These terms are often confused, so very briefly: There are a range of Earth animals who have self-awareness and are therefore considered "sentient." Dolphins are one example. Humans, though, are the only ones who are sapient, meaning they can think and reason. Fran does not appear to be at that level because she was following her programming, which told her that her purpose was to sacrifice herself.