Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-24894325-20160716114325/@comment-24894325-20160717234222

UPD upon relistening.

It really feels as if the author made it a point not to mention any species. At the same time, the Rulers describe themselves as the most powerful and influential from across the galaxy. And later we learn that this is the galaxy seeded by Sanukuma, rather than settled by humans. Why would all powerful people from the galaxy be humans, let alone humans from Earth?
 * There is one use of human. River tells Spritz who pretends to be a robot at the time: "You're more human than everyone else I've met." Note that Spritz is not currently claimed to be human on the Wiki because she is from Karaknid, a pre-contact planet.
 * There is one use of woman, again applied to Spritz, the only one not likely to be human. And it clearly is used to denote gender rather than species.
 * There are many uses of people. But it is applied both to the Rulers and to the natives of manipulated planets, which are pre-contact and, hence, unlikely to be human.

Difficulty. But Bertie's clone blends well with humans of Earth and is contaminated by the saline drones the same way as the human Archie. Well, cloning works on River who is not completely human either. And it is not unheard of for another species to look exactly like humans: Moroks, Peladonians, etc.

This is not the full story yet. There may be a mention that Rulers are human in the last story of the box set. But so far I'm thinking more and more that there is not enough evidence that they are humans and that it doesn't make sense for them to be human.