Battlestar Galactica: The Beginning of the End

[michaelpaciocco]

So, no comment on this week?

Yeah, I guess it really is the first of two parts, so that's fair.

However, Cold-blooded Gaeta? That works for me.


Michael

[paulpogue]

The seams were really showing on the whole "Oops, we accidentally backengineered another human/Cylon hybrid into our story after spending the whole first season obsessively creating just ONE!" problem, but at least they gave it an answer .

[michaelpaciocco]

True. But I'm actually more curious about what it is that caused the first "pure Cylon conception" to happen. Of course, this assumes the fetus makes it.

[paulpogue]

I think what I find funniest about the entire issue of Callie and Tyrol's baby is that the plot development and subsequent reworking actually closely follows the kind of conspiracy arc that Jesse Baker often applies to superhero comics creation, in which everyone in the writer's room says varying degrees of "Oh shit!" and "Fuck!" and "How did THAT happen?" months or years after they've gotten in over their heads without realizing it at the time and have to run around backengineering new plot elements to explain it away.

[K-Box]

What struck me about Felix's speech to Kara is that HE'S NOT WRONG. He lost his leg because she fucked up, and he nearly lost his life to an execution squad that was THREE-FIFTHS CYLONS, supposedly for "betraying" humanity to the Cylons, but ironically, as a direct result of being the most actively anti-Cylon one among them, and NO ONE HAS EVEN APOLOGIZED TO HIM. Kara being Kara, she didn't even bother to deny that he was wrong; instead, she simply said, "Fuck you, I feel exactly the same way about you now that I did before, even though you're right." Yes, Kara is supposed to be a flawed character, and I accept that to an extent, but her reaction to Felix was pretty much 100-percent in the wrong, even by her own standards, and it's probably the straw that broke the camel's back, in terms of turning him to "the dark side."

Not that I'm entirely comfortable with characterizing Zarek as "the dark side." Yes, Zarek is hardly a saint, but he's not wrong when he tells Adama, "The only difference between you and me is that you wear a uniform." Yes, as an audience member watching this story unfold, I would tend to agree that an alliance with the Cylons is probably in everyone's best interests, but given what Zarek knows, he's not only absolutely right to question this decision, but he's LEGALLY right to tell the ships not to allow Cylons on board their ships if they don't want, because the Quorum made it LAW that those ships had that right. Furthermore, every time Zarek rails against the prospect of a fleet perpetually under the leadership of either Roslin or an Adama, it's unsettlingly close to the mark, since the show itself has been actively grooming Lee to succeed Roslin as president for quite a while now, in spite of the fact that HE IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN A TERRIBLE LEADER. Again, like Kara's unwillingness to admit when she's wrong, it's not necessarily bad when the show acknowledges that these traits are indeed flaws, but it becomes problematic when we're expected to root for the characters BECAUSE of such behavior.

[paulpogue]

It's interesting to note that it's not ENTIRELY set in stone that Zarek is necessarily the dark side. They seem to be leaning that way, true, but let's recall that mutiny is sort of a regular spectator sport in Galacticaverse. Hell, Lee's gone into all-out mutiny before, and although it's a little hard to remember ever since they got all snuggly with each other, Adama and Roslin were at literal WAR with each other.

Mind you, I think you're right, and they're setting up Felix and Zarek as straw men to knock down, but Galactica's take on moral ambiguity gives it some benefit of the doubt here. Hell, this is the show that makes BALTAR AND SIX sympathetic characters -- and the first time we met Six, she was strangling a baby!

[michaelpaciocco]

Jan 25, 2009 17:55:40 GMT -8 K-Box said:

What struck me about Felix's speech to Kara is that HE'S NOT WRONG. He lost his leg because she fucked up, and he nearly lost his life to an execution squad that was THREE-FIFTHS CYLONS, supposedly for "betraying" humanity to the Cylons, but ironically, as a direct result of being the most actively anti-Cylon one among them, and NO ONE HAS EVEN APOLOGIZED TO HIM. Kara being Kara, she didn't even bother to deny that he was wrong; instead, she simply said, "Fuck you, I feel exactly the same way about you now that I did before, even though you're right." Yes, Kara is supposed to be a flawed character, and I accept that to an extent, but her reaction to Felix was pretty much 100-percent in the wrong, even by her own standards, and it's probably the straw that broke the camel's back, in terms of turning him to "the dark side."

Not that I'm entirely comfortable with characterizing Zarek as "the dark side." Yes, Zarek is hardly a saint, but he's not wrong when he tells Adama, "The only difference between you and me is that you wear a uniform." Yes, as an audience member watching this story unfold, I would tend to agree that an alliance with the Cylons is probably in everyone's best interests, but given what Zarek knows, he's not only absolutely right to question this decision, but he's LEGALLY right to tell the ships not to allow Cylons on board their ships if they don't want, because the Quorum made it LAW that those ships had that right. Furthermore, every time Zarek rails against the prospect of a fleet perpetually under the leadership of either Roslin or an Adama, it's unsettlingly close to the mark, since the show itself has been actively grooming Lee to succeed Roslin as president for quite a while now, in spite of the fact that HE IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN A TERRIBLE LEADER. Again, like Kara's unwillingness to admit when she's wrong, it's not necessarily bad when the show acknowledges that these traits are indeed flaws, but it becomes problematic when we're expected to root for the characters BECAUSE of such behavior.

I'd go as far as to say that the webisodes were the straw that broke the camel's back (seriously, Gaeta covered in blood is a very unsubtle sign).

Now, as to other matters.

1) I'd argue that nearly the entire leadership of the Fleet is terrible at their jobs; The Quorum bends whichever way the wind blows. Zarek is at best, a would-be populist with delusions of grandeur, and at worst a bad guy. The only way Roslin was able to keep power was by tying herself to both the military and religion, thus mixing religion, military and politics (sound like anyone we know?). Bill Adama has at times been massively indecisive and shirked from doing things that might cost him assets he felt he needed. At the same time he's been two-faced about it; he claims to not want to be a military dictator, but the fact that he would never acknowledge Zarek (and we are lead to believe, any leader other than his own son or Roslin) as the President makes a lie of that. He's all too happy to let Roslin or Lee make the hard calls that would make him a dictator.

The more I think about it, the more the politics of BSG look less like American ones and more like that of a nation like Pakistan, where a pseudo-democracy can only survive with the knowing intervention of the military.

When it comes to displays of actual courage and leadership in the fleet, the choices are few and far between, and all of them are sub-optimal:

-Helo: More than any other character, you can see Helo's arc has been about principle and ideals over pragmatism at all costs. In some ways, Helo is more Apollo than Apollo has ever been and has on several occassions come very close to getting killed over it.
-Zarek: Opportunist? yes. Would-be Populist? Yes. But he's not entirely without principle; remember he was arrested on New Caprica simply for resigning rather than being a collaborator, which he easily could have dodged out of. And...well, more on this later. Yes, he takes advantage of a given situation, but he's not entirely in the wrong.
-Kaine: She never had any illusions that she was going to be democratic, or that she made monstrous choices. So, there is that at least.

2) In so far as Mutiny being a regular occurence in the Fleet, this time is very different than previous occurences, and not just because the nature of these being the final episodes means "all bets are off". You needed the leadership of the Fleet completely and totally decimated and demoralized and discredited; the Adama/Roslin junta (because that's what it is, in fact if not in name) was a co-dependent alliance of Military protectionism and borderline "divine spiritual leadership. "Nuked Earth" has shattered the latter, and a longterm alliance with the Cylons undermines the validity of the former, particularly in light of the fact that three of the top Galactica officers are either Cylons (Tigh) or closely tied to Cylons (Helo, Starbuck). So, this time, there's a real chance that the mutineers can pull it off, because at no point has the leadership been weaker or held less public support.

3) Zarek and Gaeta aren't in the wrong. Yes, from the purely tactical standpoint, the idea of cylon tech to increase fleet operation is desirable; but it also makes the Fleet reliant on the Cylons and their technology; a technology they do not completely understand, and that may even have vulnerabilities that Adama has not considered (i.e., if Cavil's forces are still out there, can they take control of the Fleet via hacking the Cylon tech?). Furthermore, the fact of the matter is that a decision of this magnitude SHOULD not be the decision of just the primary leadership, and the case should be made to the public. Adama *is* ramming it down their throats, and by doing so, undermining his own credibility.

OK, that's it for now. I might post a bit later with a new theory on the Cylons that is half-formed in my brain.

[jessebaker]

You know who the real wild card is in the Civil War? Baltar and his religious sect.

Gaeta and Zarek won't have anything to do with him at best and at worst, will have him up against the wall alongside Roslin and Adama for execution. And I don't see Roslin and Adama putting past their hatred for him to form an alliance with him to save their asses, unless they have guns pointed at their heads and Baltar's walking past them and won't quit bugging them as far as volunteering to save them until they say "Fine! Beat Up the Gun Toting Rebels To Save Us, Then Order Your Harem To Find Weapons and Help Us Reclaim the Ship", just to shut Baltar up.

It's ironic, that after all of the speculation that Baltar's group will end up all "Heaven's Gates" and suicidey, that they are the ones who might just save the fleet from itself.

[jbhelfrich]

Thoughts:

1) Poor, poor Felix.
2) I still wish Zarek had been the fifth. That would have been so great.
3) New theory of Cylon genesis:

The 12 tribes and their gods, and the one tribe and their jealous god, agree to go their separate ways after massively fucking up Kobol. But there are some sympathetic elements in the 12, possibly religious in nature given Tyrol's emphasis on his father's faith and the concurrent elements between Colonial and Cylon mythology (Eye of Jupiter, etc).

The Cylons go forth, are fruitful, multiply, and either fall to internal strife, or (if they go heavy handed) their purely biological servant race (brought from, or recreated based on their memories of, Kobol) blows them to kingdom come. But the Cylons, presumably already quasi-immortal, left some tech with the Cylon fanboys in the 12 colonies. When everything goes to Hell, five (or maybe 12) people, chosen by a combination of Ellen's plan and happenstance, get picked up and beamed to the colonies.

That's a long long way, even at the speed of light.

But eventually, Cylons as data get there, and devices safeguarded for centuries by the fanboys wake up and spew out 5 (or maybe 12) baby Cylons. Or maybe one at a time, since there is a slight age difference between Tigh, Ellen, and the other three. Also spewed out is reams and reams of technical data for constructing purely robotic models.

(Note that the centurions dug up on "Earth" seem, from our limited view of them, rather primitive compared to the fact that they had mastered humanoid models. Perhaps they were simply going through a Baroque period.)

So, the fanboys find homes for their charges, and pass the data to people who can start making a new robot servitor race. But by accident or design, the program fragments that are included in those designs include partial memories, drives, ideas about freedom, about Cylon independence, about a one true god, about the ability, and need, to build humanoid models, about how biological humanity is their only hope even as a species recreated as a supposedly will-less slave race learns that their masters are dangerous....

I expect that plot to start to appear in season two of Caprica.

[michaelpaciocco]

Cylon theory:

OK, assuming the timeloop theory is out (and I'm not sure it is, but that's a different conversation altogether) I'd have to go with the concept that the Cylons evolved/were artificically uplifted from Earth's Humanity (i.e. scientifically became cyborgs/skinjobs) to begin with (hence their sophistication) and they seeded Colonial Humanity (why the hell else are they called "The Colonies" to begin with?), which goes to explain both the technological discrepenancy and the relatively shared mythology. Now, Earth Cylons destroy themselves, but as a final failsafe, some survive and endure the long voyage (by whatever means) to the Colonies, at which point, the survivors (they've dwindled to the final five for various reasons: some didn't ressurect in time; others just died off as they degraded, etc.) start influencing Colonial technology and society to try and recreate themselves; hence the modern Cylons. However, the 7 new generation Skin Jobs have basically gone nuts with the collective memory of previous Cylon generations which resulted in the schism between them and the Final Five.

Yeah, that's the best I got. Sorry,

Michael

[jessebaker]

I have to think that the Final Five (or Final Four, seeing as Ellen is dead) are reincarnated Cylons pure and simple.

The original Skinjobs on the 13th Colonies created the Robot Cylons and they rebelled, around the time that the 13th Colony people perfected the resurrection technology and decided to implement a "Everyone looks alike" policy of human appearance ala that episode of the Twilight Zone.

12 of the most "beautiful" humans on the planet "Earth" were chosen to model the new face of humanity. However, only seven of them got scanned and mass produced. Model #7, based off of Rock Musician Samual Anders, never got made because Anders had to reschedule his body scan so that it would be the last one done due to his hectic schedule as a musician.

So the Robot Cylons nuke the planet and the unmade five Cylons reincarnate into the colonies. Meanwhile the Cavil Cylon Model betrays the others to the Robot Cylons. The other six models are frozen/deactivated and Cavil and his legion of dopplegangers go into hiding, in the colonies, spying for the Robot Cylons. Cavil ends up arranging for the Robot Cylons to be built on Caprica and for the OG Cylons to infiltrate the ranks of the new Robot Cylons, causing the rebellion. Cavil meanwhile discovers that the original unmade Cylons have reincarnated and this freaks him out, as far as them possibly regaining their memories and exposing how the OG Cylons have basically manipulated the war between the Colonies and the Cylons as part of their hatred for humanity.

So Cavil decides to make a play: he manages to lobotomize the remaining Robot Cylons and reactivates the other six Skinjobs. But not before he subjects them to EXTENSIVE brainwashing to the other six models, turning them into more machine that man, installing a deep-seeded hatred for humanity, and creating knowledge (of the forbidden we can't talk about them kind) of the "final Five".

Cavil also is behind "Head Six", using advance Cylon technology to "project himself" into the minds of people. He's the grand villain, the puppet master, having developed a "God-Complex" as far as his own divinity (which is why he does the hand-quotes when he mentions "God", since he's gotten to the point where he considers HIMSELF GOD and is mocking others for what he feels is their ignorance towards his collossal ego).

[jbhelfrich]

Jan 26, 2009 19:32:01 GMT -8 michaelpaciocco said:

...and they seeded Colonial Humanity (why the hell else are they called "The Colonies" to begin with?)

They are, officially, the 12 (or 13) colonies of Kobol.

[jbhelfrich]

OK, here's another crazy idea.

What if the Cylon colony wasn't robotic. What if the cause of the schisim on Kobol was interest in melding human and robotic, to pursue immortality, and the reason the cylons we see on Earth are primitive looking is that they're the first purely robotic but intelligent models?

From there, my theory proceeds basically as described above.

[Johann Chua]

hijinksensue.com/2009/01/26/if-this-battlestars-a-rockin/

[michaelpaciocco]

OK, summing up my favorite bits of the last few episodes:

-Everyone's reaction to Roslin/Adama - PRICELESS. Particularly Tigh's "HOLY HELL" facial expression.
-Before and During the mutiny; fuck, but everyone called out everyone else on their bullshit: Roslin called out Adama on how two-faced he was in having Roslin do the heavy lifting; Baltar called out Roslin on the fact that she used religous demagogery to survive politically; Gaeta called out Adama on his pseudo-military dictatorship; Tom Zarek acknowledges what was pretty much always true - the fleet was a dictatorship with the veneer of civilized democracy; he just stripped it away. Of course, for me, the best "call-out" was Baltar trying to reason with, and eventually forgiving Gaeta. It was a real sweet scene at the end.
-A bullet to the head, and Anders is finally useful to the plot!
-Oh, thank god we are addressing the fact that yes, after 50 years of service, plus all the hammering the ship has been through, things start to break down. Adama, you dropped your ship into an atmosphere and freaking ridiculous speeds - what the hell did you think was going to happen? And yes, they cut corners; the ship was made during a war; it happens.
-Oh, and finally, ANSWERS! Goddammit! ANSWERS!
-John Hodgeman, seriously, could you chew the scenery a little less? Please? Far and away BSG's worst bit of stunt casting.

your turn,

Michael