Farley: Human-Cylon Alliance is Impractical and Irresponsible
Robert Farley makes the case against the Cylon-Human alliance, arguing “that Vice President Zarek and Lieutenant Gaeta were correct to resist the Adama-Roslin military-political clique.”
I tend to agree on the policy merits. However, I think Farley is too quick to leap from policy agreement to endorsement of the Zarek/Gaeta coup. One could argue that, yes, since the very survival of the human race is called into question by this policy decision that one shouldn’t be bound by the law. However, the circumstances of post-genocide humanity are such that one could make that case regarding essentially every policy dispute. Nor am I by any means convinced that the anti-cylon faction had seriously exhausted the legal means available to them to try to fight this policy.
Second, I think Farley is too optimistic about the possibility of humans and cylons going their separate ways. The level of distrust and past bad acts is simply too high. If humanity rejects alliance with the rebel cylons, it seems likely to me that the cylon will conclude that humanity intends to destroy them. If so, they’ll try to destroy humanity. Meaning that humanity really may have no choice but to destroy the cylons. Nobody likes the security dilemma, but there it is, and it has been ever since the initial signing of the Armistice.
74 Responses to “Farley: Human-Cylon Alliance is Impractical and Irresponsible”
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February 11th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
get to the point! who’s the lady holding the gun?
February 11th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
get to the point! who’s the lady holding the gun?
It’s impossible to say from that photo, beyond that it’s a character played by Grace Park.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Thanks for the spoiler alert, douchebag! Geez. Some of us are still on early season 4.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Grace Park is the only thing that almost makes me want to pick up BSG.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Leave it up to Yglesias to be a War Hawk. Your hawkishness is fracking insane. We have to support Roslin/Adama in the truce with the Cylons. Their FTL engines will allow the remnants of Humanity to outrun the Brother Cavil led Anti-Human Cylon faction. Or did you just start watching during Season 4? Seriously I call into question Yglesias Geek cred on this one.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
From the outfit, it’s either Boomer, or more likely, Athena.
The problem I had with the coup (other than all the killing) is that it started over what was basically a military decision. The use of the Cylon FTL technology. Since Earth is a bust, and I’m assuming that they’re running low on fuel, being able to triple the jump range of the fleet is a no brainer.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Nor am I by any means convinced that the anti-cylon faction had seriously exhausted the legal means available to them to try to fight this policy.
Do you watch the show? Adama sent marines in to force the fleet to obey his orders after the council rebuffed him. Then he arrested the acting president (with orders to shoot to kill if Zarek resisted).
And, of course, this isn’t the first time he’s arrested a president or put a gun to someone’s head to get his way.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
I’ve always viewed the Cylon alliance as kind of like the U.S./UK alliance with the Soviet Union in World War II. An alliance can just be convenient at the time it doesn’t mean that the two sides have to be BFFs.
By the way, why are all the female Cylons beautiful women while almost all of the male Cylons come as handsome as Dean Stockwell?
February 11th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
As much as I like Adama & Roslyn, they are benevolent dictators. the quorum was a joke, so I don’t think there was much policy to discuss since Adama/Roslyn could overrule them by arguing it was a fleet security.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Do you watch the show? Adama sent marines in to force the fleet to obey his orders after the council rebuffed him. Then he arrested the acting president (with orders to shoot to kill if Zarek resisted).
I might ask the same question.
Zarek wasn’t acting President, under the Articles of Colonization the Vice President is basically just the 2nd in line and has no real authority outside of conducting quorum meetings. Roslyn was still President, just because she wasn’t showing up for work doesn’t mean Zarek gets to declare himself President.
Zarek was overstepping his authority and usurping power from President Roslyn. Admiral Adama was well within his authority to arrest someone basically committing treason. He should have airlocked him before he had the chance to team up with Gaeta.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
As always, you guys miss the MAJOR ISSUE — the MYSTERY that must be solved in order to find the way forward:
With all their powers, why didn’t the Ceylons design better looking Skanks?
February 11th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
The alliance is really the less bad option from both sides, as long as the Cylons and Humans are apart they each fear what the other might do, as long as they are together they are co dependant.
And also remember there is a 3rd group, the Cylons have split, so it is really the Humans and 1 group of Cylons vs the other group, so the WW II analogy holds as well.
As for the babes vs Dean Stockwell question, well duh obviously the Cylons were made by men:-)
February 11th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
I mean –when the Israelis want to seduce devout Muslim boys into the fires of Hell, who do they send?
http://www.cleveland.com/people/index.ssf/2009/02/sports_illustrated_cover_girl.html
February 11th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Since Earth is a bust, and I’m assuming that they’re running low on fuel, being able to triple the jump range of the fleet is a no brainer.
Unless you think the Cylons are actually putting a bomb in your FTL.
I think the essential point of this post is right. The solution of “exterminate the brutes” has been tried, and it failed. The solution of “enslave them, benevolently” has been tried and failed–on both sides. The solution of “live separately in the same universe” has been tried, and it failed.
All that’s left is “learn to live with each other.” And frankly, I can’t see a better opportunity for that than by starting with a rump cylon gang who are hunted by their own kind.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Speaking of spoilers, how does Ellen get reborn? I thought the resurrections were over. Has to be a flashback right?
February 11th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
The Even Bigger Issue is: Why are Galactica’s Marines such sad, hapless pussies, and why is their ballistic armor so completely worthless? (such that Kara Thrace can take out a handful with pistol chest shots at a distance?)
February 11th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Matt, you Cylon hater, you.
This series is getting a little irritating. Doesn’t anybody stop to think, after finding Cylons were earth people 2,000 years ago, that they just might have come first? Life-or-death conundrums are just being shelved while relatively minor crap is being acted out.
Where’s Patrick Macnee when you need him?
February 11th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Zarek was overstepping his authority and usurping power from President Roslyn.
No he wasn’t. You can disagree with my claim that he was “acting president”, but he was hardly usurping power from a woman who had repeatedly declared that she would no longer serve. All he did was make a pretty good case to the quorum on an urgent issue and they voted in his favor. That isn’t treason and I find it odd that you argue Adama would have been within his authority to toss him out an airlock even if it had been.
I know it’s a TV show and Adama and Roslyn are the good guys. But that’s only because the writers say they are, not because the things they do are fundamentally noble and right.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
By the way, why are all the female Cylons beautiful women while almost all of the male Cylons come as handsome as Dean Stockwell?
In part because the humanoid Cylons were designed to mate with humans.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
The argument would make sense if the proposed alliance was with the main group of cylons, but it isn’t – it’s with a rogue group that the main cylons want to destroy as well.
The rogue cylons have as much a vested interest in the continued survival of the humans as the humans do, and are indeed in a situation where their continued survival is even more threatened than humanity’s. At least human beings know they can reproduce with confidence, apparently cylon-cylon reproduction has only successfully happened once.
It’s obvious that their objectives and needs dovetail, and together they increase their odds of survival. Any attempt to deny this is merely hatred of the cylons themselves, which can definitively be called racism. The Gaeta contingent is essentially the KKK in its early days. Zarek is just power hungry, he doesn’t seem to espouse any sort of ideal except as politically convenient.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
There is that, but it still doesn’t prevent the decision to install the drives from being a military one.
Probably a flashback. The resurrection itself isn’t an issue, since she was killed well before the hub was destroyed. Probably been banging the guy from Quantum Leap ever since.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Speaking of spoilers, how does Ellen get reborn? I thought the resurrections were over. Has to be a flashback right?
***SPOILERS***
Two possible explanations:
(A) Since Ellen was in fact killed before the resurrection hub was destroyed (she dies on New Caprica, the hub isn’t destroyed until months later), she could be resurrected through the hub.
(B) Members of the “Final Five” have some other means of being resurrected, so the timing issue is irrelevant anyway. We have, after all, never seen one of them revived before, so we do not know where/how it happens.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
I need to type faster….
February 11th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
We must keep in mind, we have essentially the population of a very, small town with the military resources probably close to those of an entire planet. The idea that they should not be under permanent martial law until they resolve the threat of extermination is very silly.
I love democracy, but I really would rather entrust the continued survival of the human race to a commander of a carrier group chosen from the flawed but functional military of the pre-annihilated race rather than someone who has the ability to be elected mayor of Dover Delaware.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Just require the peacable religious cylons to sign loyalty oaths, that should solve it.
I’m still hoping it turns out eveyone’s a Cylon.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
As always, you guys miss the MAJOR ISSUE — the MYSTERY that must be solved in order to find the way forward: With all their powers, why didn’t the Cylons design better looking Skanks?
Um….maybe because the human cylons were designed to INFILTRATE humanity? As any spymaster knows, you don’t send lingerie models out to do clandestine work. You send nondescript people who can blend in.
Unless of course we’re talking about honeypots like Tricia Helfer (AKA #6) who was sent to seduce Baltar. The rest of the cylon women though, infiltrated into normal human jobs where being too extraordinarily hot might have been a handicap.
Of course since cylons don’t breed like humans, there’s no particular reason to think that hotness conveys any sort of advantage in cylon society. So no particular internal reason to breed extraordinarily hot cylon women.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
In part because the humanoid Cylons were designed to mate with humans.
I realize that it’s useful to have Cylons be all seductive, that’s how Number Six they got the defense codes from Baltar in the first place, but were they actually intended to reproduce with humans? Because when it was revealed that Athena was pregnant by Helo, everyone was all surprised and wanted to keep Hera to themselves.
That reminds me of Tyrol’s and Cally’s child, who seemed like a Cylon-hyman hybrid but apparently isn’t, which seemed like a cop-out to me. In addition to all the other mind-blowing stuff about the final five, there was also the fact that his child with Cally must be half-Cylon. So doesn’t that mean Hera isn’t unique and special and important? Does that give an ace in the hole, a bargaining chip, to whoever figures out the kid’s nature first? Is there any chance of Cottle figuring it all out? Et cetera. But no, it seems that there’s nothing special about the kid after all, because it wasn’t Tyrol’s. Oh well.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
(B) Members of the “Final Five” have some other means of being resurrected, so the timing issue is irrelevant anyway. We have, after all, never seen one of them revived before, so we do not know where/how it happens.
Hell, we don’t even know if it happens. For all we know, Ellen won’t be seen again except in flashbacks or in visions no one but Saul can see (which, actually, already has happened), like Baltar’s HeadSix and Six’s HeadBaltar.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
DUDE, some of us are waiting for the series to end we can watch the whole thing on a dvd box set in a marathon session, ok? don’t give away spoilers.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Unless you think the Cylons are actually putting a bomb in your FTL.
Doesn’t have to be a bomb to be deadly. Could just be some sort of clandestine “subspace tracking device” of the sort the wraith use in Stargate Atlantis to track ships across the galaxy. Or some sort of hidden control code that could allow the cylons to control human ships remotely when they chose to. Or even just some sort of listening device. Either way, not things you want on a human ship if the war starts again.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Interestingly, the spoilers in Matt’s point wouldn’t even make the shortlist of shocking revelations and plot developments from season 4.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Human survivor count – Season 1 – episode 1 – 49,998
Human survivor count – Season 4 – episode 16 – 39,603
it seems to me that going it alone is what is impractical
February 11th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
I think the writers already gave their opinion of military rule when they did the Pegasus episodes.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
By the way, why are all the female Cylons beautiful women while almost all of the male Cylons come as handsome as Dean Stockwell?
How soon we forget Simon, and Leoben, crazy messianic mystic that he is.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Even if long term separate coexistence is impossible for humans and Cylons, I’m not convinced that means the only sensible options are either Final Showdown or Full Reconciliation. Cavil is still more of a threat to both sides than they are to each other if separated. If they’re together, then the friendly Cylon’s biggest threat is the Battlestar’s superior firepower, and if the Cylons put FTL drives on all the ships, the human’s biggest threat would be the possibility of sabotage. They might actually find it easier to cooperate with distance between them, at least in the short run.
There was a lot of awesome stuff in Blood on the Scales but one thing that really annoyed me was how hard they worked to moot the dilemmas of Disquiet and Oath. Zarek is evil (and strangely lacking in political astuteness–there’s no way what he did to the Quorum was a forced move given the Quorum’s demonstrated vulnerability to political pressure and most of the ships siding with Gaeta over Roslin), Gaeta is crazy, and oh Tyrol’s discovery probably means there’s no choice but cooperation with Cylons now.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Your reasoning here is painfully similar to the kind of thinking you find abhorrent in the Israeli-Palestinian mess. The Cylon can’t be trusted because they’re a different culture, and the humans can’t be trusted because of . . . democracy, apparently. Gimme a break. They will learn to live together, or die together. And if they can’t learn to live together, they will more or less deserve it.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
No he wasn’t. You can disagree with my claim that he was “acting president”, but he was hardly usurping power from a woman who had repeatedly declared that she would no longer serve.
I doubt she told Tom Zarek that. He was attempting to take control of the Political branch of the Colonial fleet. Something he had no right to do. He put the whole fleet at risk ordering the Tillium Refinery ship to hide. He saw a power vacuum and attempted to fill it. There was no noble ideal in his plan.
That isn’t treason and I find it odd that you argue Adama would have been within his authority to toss him out an airlock even if it had been.
I think trying to overthrow the legitimate authority can easily be called treason. Right or wrong he committed treason, which Adama as the chief law enforcement official in the Fleet would have been right to execute him.
Considering the limited supplies of the Colonial Fleet they shouldn’t keep a treasonous terrorist alive. Lest he find some way to cause strife and discord ending with a full scale rebellion. You only need to fast forward 2 episodes to see that Zarek’s plans involved the murder of a lot of innocent people to secure his power.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
No, the Cylon can’t be trusted because they murdered tens of billions of humans in a preemptive strike. It’s amazing to me how many people just gloss over this. It’s like, the Cylons are cooperating with us now…bygones!
I was rooting for Gaeta all the way, even though I knew he would lose. And, as usual, Adama has learned nothing from what has transpired.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
The phrase “flawed but functional” is doing a lot of work there. Remember, the military leadership was decimated as much as the civilian leadership. Part of the reason the Galactica survived the genocide was that it was too low-tech for its systems to be overriden by the Cylons, and part of the reason Adama commanded it was because he had botched some kind of assignment on the border of Cylon-controlled space. He was the military equivalent of, well, the mayor of Dover.
Oy. Spoiler warnings for a few days to give people a chance to see it after recording or watch it on the network’s Web site are one thing, but this is asking a lot. Bad news, but it takes months from the end of a season for DVDs to come out, and people are going to talk about TV episodes long before then. If you really want to avoid spoilers, then how about just skipping to the next post when you see the word “Cylon”? Otherwise, you’re going to get spoiled.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I would think they have to be reborn somehow. After all, they were killed on Earth a long time ago. I think we saw her being reborn in “Scenes from next episode”. However, those scenes are almost universally deceptive, often in a very cheesey way. Obviously, they can’t be reborn in the typical way. I would think that some of the others would notice that there were a few unfamiliar dormant bodies in some of those tanks.
My bet is that they can choose to some extent where they get reborn to. Possibly even residing in humans or other cylons for a while if they wish.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
“Part of the reason the Galactica survived the genocide was that it was too low-tech for its systems to be overriden by the Cylons, and part of the reason Adama commanded it”
That’s dead right: heck, IIRC the attack came during the
ceremony marking the conversion of Galactica into a museum
ship. Adama was at the end of the line; and Tigh, as an
habitual drunk, was no great shakes either, and held his
rank only thanks to his friendship with Adama.
On the military side, Starbuck is the only one with really
exceptional gifts – as a pilot and a tacticisn (Hand of God) -
but she’s totally fraked-up. And on the civilian side,
Baltar is the exceptional one, though equally flawed.
As for Zarek, I don’t see him particularly as “evil” – but
he’s a populist demagogue, an opportunist, and a believer
that the ends justify the means. He doesn’t take pleasure
in the use of violence, he just views it as necessary and
appropriate in a high-stakes situation. IIRC Adama and Roslyn
were willing to commit genocide by spreading the Cylon
plague to the resurrection ship: no one’s hands are clean.
February 11th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
razib,
don’t read a comments thread on BSG then.
moron.
February 11th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
You don’t need to read this comments thread in order to be spoiled — it’s right there in the title of the post. Furthermore, “skipping to the next post when you see the word ‘Cylon’” involves some magically linear and psychically selective reading perception, as the word “Cylon” here appears right in between “Human” and “Alliance.”
February 11th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Human survivor count – Season 1 – episode 1 – 49,998
Human survivor count – Season 4 – episode 16 – 39,603
it seems to me that going it alone is what is impractical
But, they weren’t “going it alone”. They were getting continually shot at by Cylon base ships.
February 11th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Farley is right, and you’re being ridiculous, Matt. The only cylons who are offering an armistice are the rebels. They’re military power is extremely limited, otherwise they wouldn’t be hiding with the human fleet. So peace with the rebel cyclon gets you a promise that they won’t try to destroy the human race, but they probably can’t destroy Galactica, much less the human race in any event. The rest are going to try to destroy humanity in any event – if anything, siding with the rebels against them kills any hope you might have of peaceful negotiation with them.
Furthermore, it’s been shown that cylons can have programming they’re not aware of. The rebel cylons might have the humans best interest at heart, but still be tools of the others without knowing it. And the same could be said for the FTL upgrades. Cylons, since they don’t actually know their own minds, can never be trusted. Even when they’re acting in good faith, they might be betraying you without even knowing it. This makes them the worst negotiating partners in history.
February 11th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
But, they weren’t “going it alone”. They were getting continually shot at by Cylon base ships.
And the biggest loss of life by far came from the last attempt to coexist with the Cylon, on New Caprica. The fleet’s lost only a handful of people from infighting and the dangers of space travel.
February 11th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Ok. I want an NBA post to balance this.
February 11th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
“Life-or-death conundrums are just being shelved while relatively minor crap is being acted out.”
My main complaint about season 2 of Terminator as well.
“Where’s Patrick Macnee when you need him?”
Amen! Better the Devil you know!
“The rogue cylons have as much a vested interest in the continued survival of the humans as the humans do, and are indeed in a situation where their continued survival is even more threatened than humanity’s.”
This is exactly Cameron’s little problem, although Josh Friedman has yet to make it clear. I hope Josh has been watching BSG and that he gets the picture.
Josh is going to be at WonderCon here in San Francisco in a couple weeks. I hope to broach the issue with him on the panel.
February 11th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I’m caught up on the episodes, but I agree that putting “Battlestar Spoiler” at the beginning of the title is the bare minimum that any fan of the show owes the readers of his blog, especially when his blog is not about Battlestar (and thus, there is no reasonable expectation that a reader will come across spoilers when reading it).
February 11th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
DUDE, some of us are waiting for the series to end we can watch the whole thing on a dvd box set in a marathon session, ok? don’t give away spoilers.
Look, dude, maybe don’t read the posts? I know watching TV on DVDs is fun, but you can’t expect that no one else will review the show once it’s aired. It’s your responsibility, not the rest of the planet’s because you might buy the DVD box set sometime this summer.
February 11th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Regardless of your opinion of his righteousness, Zarek action against the Q-12 was pretty stupid. Heck, even Palpatine took 20 years to do largely the same thing; Zarek did it in less than 12 hrs, and without a Death Star.
February 11th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
there’s no way what he did to the Quorum was a forced move given the Quorum’s demonstrated vulnerability to political pressure and most of the ships siding with Gaeta over Roslin
I don’t think its at all clear that most of the ships actually were siding with Gaeta. The only contact with Roslin was a static-y broken up transmission that could have come from anybody. Meanwhile, Gaeta was broadcasting from the CIC of Galactica. If you were captain of a ship running from genocidal robots for four years, completely dependent on Galactica’s firepower for survival, who would you go with?
Doesn’t mean they agreed with Gaeta’s politics or that their representatives in the Quorum would have supported Zarek.
February 11th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
I bet that Adama probably had such an intense dislike of networking specifically because of Tigh’s influence in their younger days. I think that “the five” nudged the “humans” who they were in subtle ways toward some desired ends. The coincidences are just too ridiculous to think about otherwise.
I always thought that Saul and Ellen Tigh were an unbelievable couple, dramatically speaking. They really didn’t fit. I had blamed bad writing. Now, it makes sense.
Two Cylons serving on the only battlestar that survives? Out of tens of billions of people? Preposterous, unless they were pushed there. Same for the Presidential successor’s assistant.
Too many coincidences require either an explanation or condemnation of the writing.
February 11th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
No, the Cylon can’t be trusted because they murdered tens of billions of humans in a preemptive strike. It’s amazing to me how many people just gloss over this. It’s like, the Cylons are cooperating with us now…bygones!
This is an important point. How long has it been, within the show’s canon, since the few remaining humans had their homes destroyed and families wiped out? Four years or so?
As much as I like to see Cylons and humans hand-in-hand, skipping through the daisies, there’s no way enough humans in the fleet actually go for any sort of alliance only a couple of years after genocide.
Heck, wasn’t Slobodan Milosevic able to get the Serbs riled up by talking about a battle from over six hundred years ago?
February 11th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
With regards to the Gaeta-Zarak treachery, no one’s yet mentioned that Adama frakked up big time by allowing his marines to become subverted. If there’s one group of dudes on the battlestar that Adama should be assured of 100% loyalty from, it’s his marines.
February 11th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
“Two Cylons serving on the only battlestar that survives? Out of tens of billions of people?”
Njorl, how do we know there weren’t Cylons serving on all the other ships that were destroyed? Since they know they will be resurrected putting Cylons on every ship and then nuking them isn’t a concern.
Also it was 3:-)
February 11th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
I meant 2 of the final 5. There aren’t multiple copies of those. Five of them in a population of 10 billion, and 2 serve on the same ship.
February 12th, 2009 at 2:58 am
It’s 3 if you count Ellen. Not exactly serving, but she was there. Speaking of which, being reborn might be impossible. We still don’t know how they got there from being obliterated. I wonder if they were really Cylons initially, or were transferred in some other, possibly mystical way.
And I do have to say, MY should do something about marking spoiler posts. Had this been a few weeks earlier, it would’ve been spoiled for me, too. Maybe title it “BSG blogging” and put a couple lines on the post and a “more” link to the whole of the post.
One last thing: on with the alliance! Hybrid babies for everyone!
February 12th, 2009 at 5:58 am
Gaeta is a simp who sold out the resistance for some bot-tang
February 12th, 2009 at 9:31 am
People are *way* to sensitive about spoilers these days. Not just here, but generally. It’s just a TV show guys. Learning a detail from a show before you see it is not that big of a deal. And people are going to talk about TV shows once they’ve aired, so if you really care about spoilers just avoid the post. If you see a picture of Sharon, don’t read the post. Even then, you’ve got to be prepared to learn something you haven’t seen yet if you’re not watching it live.
February 13th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Matt,
I don’t think your idea of a no-win scenario is entirely valid. Kind of like James Kirk, I don’t believe in a no-win scenario (or perhaps, I refuse to believe that our choices in life have to be narrowed to win/lose). Sure, it could happen that way, and who knows where the writers will take it? But I see another possibility which all too often I don’t see other people discussing much. I see something much deeper from a philosophical standpoint going on here. What I see in BSG is a modern-day morality play. A lot like Babylon 5, only more violent and more emotionally gritty, but with a similar realization that the two opposing groups are actually related to one another (humans and Mumbari in that case, humans and Cylons in this case), and what that entails for their sense of self, both individually and collectively.
Looking back over the last few seasons, and without the telepathic abilities to see what the writers have in mind for this last season, I feel like this is all “leading somewhere” from a moral/spiritual standpoint. It evokes Antigone and Hamlet and so many other classical tragedies, in which nearly everyone dies or loses something hugely important in their lives, but by doing so those who remain standing come away with a realization that all the fuss and muss wasn’t really necessary in the first place, that our own INDIVIDUAL human failings (which the “skin-job” Cylons have come to realize they share) are what cause us to COLLECTIVELY fail when we allow them to rule our actions.
I watch BSG fascinated, sometimes appalled, by the raw humanity shown in the characters and their struggles with love, hate, courage, fear, joy, anger, and above all their search for “what does all this mean”. The suicide rates they keep referring to (as well as sometimes graphically portray) show how, when the “meaning” question just turns into static and noise, reflect the despondency the survivors feel when nothing makes sense any more. The temptation to grow angry and competitive, to choose conflict over conciliation, is growing with each episode the longer the survivors feel cast adrift. As the last of their species, they feel hope and identity slipping away, and are collectively losing their minds.
So I don’t know what is to come in the final episodes, but I know what I’d like to see. I’d like to see reconciliation between the humans and the Cylons, probably due to some overwhelming discovery (such as their finding that Earth was populated by Cylons, not humans, and learning why that was). I’d like to see the last remnants of the humans and the Cylons coming to grips with the fact that whether mass-produced in a sort of mechanical cloning procedure or through natural birth, these two groups are capable of interbreeding, are both human in every detail except their origination, and have the same hopes, desires, dreams, aspirations, and fallibilities. I’d like to see the last episode be one where, after all the fuss and muss, somebody realizes that yes, it’s all happened before, but THIS time, it doesn’t have to happen again.
Awaiting the “you’re an idealistic goofball” rants…
Visit my blog “Archetypes, Quarks, and Cupcakes” at http://lovelifelightlaughter.blogspot.com/
February 17th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
“This series is getting a little irritating. Doesn’t anybody stop to think, after finding Cylons were earth people 2,000 years ago, that they just might have come first?”
….WE ARE ALL CYLONS! (that’s my theory anyway
February 19th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
It’s a show. I don’t think we’re exactly worried about what was the correct thing to do politically. The show is revealing where the cylons came from, how they came to be. I think the show is exploring what it takes to make you a human. I think the cylons are in some way becoming more and more human.
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