BSG 1.11-13 Awakenings
In S4 of Angel there was an episode (Awakening) that began quite rationally but gradually grew more and more fantastical. Never quite crossed the line into out and out nonsense but began to feel weirdly off from the third act in and ended with the hotel basement echoing to the maniacal laughter of Angel’s alter-ego Angelus - the entire episode had been a dream designed to lure the eponymous hero into a state of perfect happiness and thus to lose his soul.
A day or two after watching the final disc of the BSG S1 DVD collection I’m still waiting for the laughter to start. But I have no idea which of the characters has lost their soul.
Colonial day
So it begins quite rationally on a luxury liner called Cloud Nine. A biodome protecting a fantasy world of manicured lawns and constant sunshine, in stark contrast to the claustrophobic settings of the series so far. Gone the fluorescent-lit corridors and windowless rooms of Galactica. Gone the radioactive ghost world of an occupied Caprica where it was always either raining, just stopped raining or just about to rain. (Somewhere in Cheshire then.)
Continuity holds in that the apparent profligacy of maintaining Cloud Versailles while on the run can be justified by having found enough trillium to fuel the next millennium in the episode preceding. In any case the economic/political issues are more abstract than mere accountancy.
Until now the only civilian we’ve really encountered has been Ellen Tigh and how skewed this perspective was. What is this civilisation and is it worth saving? If Ellen is its true representative, a Maria Braun for the 12 colonies, maybe not. There’s a strong indication that while our eyes have been focussed on the military and White House personel the civilians have assumed crash position and blindly carry on as if nothing had changed. But what else could they do?
Enter Tom Zarek the visionary terroist. It’s odd that his great crime is always described as blowing up a government building. Was there anyone in there, or are we supposed to think architecture more important than human lives to this society? Or are there meta reasons, not wanting to make the connection to 9/11 too explicit?
Reakpolitik
To avert the possibility of Zarek winning the VP vote Roslin dumps her boring old advisor and invites Gaius to stand. Better the devil she knows but although she knows he seconded Zarek’s nomination she really doesn’t know him at all. Zarek only blew up a building he didn’t let an entire civilisation be wiped out and he doesn’t (as far as we know) have a Cylon fanatic sharing his brain.
Zarek is tainted by his past explosions, the suspicion that he may have ordered an assassination attempt and that he talks a noble game but is only interested in power. He does give good talk as he once again reminds the Roslin/Adama camp that they seem to have forgotten about the democratic niceties, in this case electing a vice-president. So this is their taint. Although both seem to be working for the good of humanity neither of them were actually elected to their positions and paternalism/maternalism has such potential to devolve into benign dictatorship. Equally telling is Zarek’s later point that maintaining the old order means the same people always have to clean up after the party for the same minimum wage.
Red King dreaming
I said these episodes reminded me of Awakening. The first hint of that came as the post-election party started. I think it was the fairy lights, discordantly tacky given the occasion. Party was all the-camera-has-been-drinking then the teaser for the finale played positively hallucinogenic. I thought it was the previews at first but suitably disorientated the real fun began with the first act.
So with hindsight the off aspect of Awakening. was that in Angel’s dreams everyone plays his cartoon hero version of themselves. Not everyone does here. Lee is heroically idealistic as he refuses to arrest the president but he’s done that before. His father heroically sends in the troops to section their leader but again had just cause. He only married a civil rights lawyer, it’s not bred in bone as it is for the son. I really like how mothers are important in this series. None more so than Kara’s and Roslin plays that to perfection to convince her to fly off on a quest for the religiously insane.
“All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.” And they think the Cylons are slaves to the program? A red queen instead of a king? Is all this Roslin’s dream? It makes the kind of sense that doesn’t. She’s dying and the promise of earth is an impossible lie, eliminate the impossible and all you have left is the truth, the way, the life. Although I have never understood why Earth would be a safe haven.
A more likely dreamer though is Baltar (and his visions are even cheesier than Angel's, a Manilow fan for sure). In a fit of post-election euphoria he seemed to believe he’d escaped but his Six is a vengeful God. She appeared oddly impressed by him showing a suicidal Sharon some understanding. But then they both know things worse than death. (And Sharon has to be the worst shot ever, which bodes well for Adama’s survival). But when push comes to crash, life seems the better option. A vision of Six as a Madonna, all pale blue and buttoned up to the neck, reaches out to save him, show him he’s now exalted above all boy-children, the son and father to the man. Cue insane nativity scene (and at this point I can’t help thinking about the miracle baby in ‘V’ and its little forked tongue) but we don’t get to see the child.
A working class hero is a hard thing to be
I always liked you Chief. Zarek may have talked the talk but the Chief is the real thing. In the aftermath of the crash, when he salutes the donkey officer and goes off to be a lion something clicks. Let Adama’s wound be fatal, let Roslin be taken away and sectioned and Gaius with her. Just keep my hero alive for the whole second series and I’ll download the Lennon back catalogue and make the old socialist’s Lord Comrade Bad Vid to revolutionise them all.
Biology is Destiny
OK this is my grand unified theory of Cylons. Immortality makes you other. How to understand that killing off a civilisation is wrong when death, individuality has no meaning? I think all the Sharons on the ship defending Kobol must have known what the bomb would do to them but (see above) death has no meaning when you always come back from it. And are legion. Also love is the plan. It seems crucially important that Caprica!Sharon has in love conceived a hybrid. So the plan also seems to be recombination, sex, an end to parthogenicity.
One of the triumphs of evolutionary theory is John Maynard Smith’s analysis of why sexual reproduction pre-dominates throughout the animal and plant kingdoms even though it necessarily only gives you half the buck for your bang. Recombination, the genetic re-shuffle effected by sexual reproduction, is costly but in a changing world it provides a long term edge. However, the Cylons almost certainly won’t have gone through suffcient generations for this to evolve. So my theory is that at some point they added something like one of Richard Dawkins’ simulation programmes to their hard drives and made a religion of it. Which would really make any original Koboldian Dawkins want spin to in his unmarked grave.
A day or two after watching the final disc of the BSG S1 DVD collection I’m still waiting for the laughter to start. But I have no idea which of the characters has lost their soul.
Colonial day
So it begins quite rationally on a luxury liner called Cloud Nine. A biodome protecting a fantasy world of manicured lawns and constant sunshine, in stark contrast to the claustrophobic settings of the series so far. Gone the fluorescent-lit corridors and windowless rooms of Galactica. Gone the radioactive ghost world of an occupied Caprica where it was always either raining, just stopped raining or just about to rain. (Somewhere in Cheshire then.)
Continuity holds in that the apparent profligacy of maintaining Cloud Versailles while on the run can be justified by having found enough trillium to fuel the next millennium in the episode preceding. In any case the economic/political issues are more abstract than mere accountancy.
Until now the only civilian we’ve really encountered has been Ellen Tigh and how skewed this perspective was. What is this civilisation and is it worth saving? If Ellen is its true representative, a Maria Braun for the 12 colonies, maybe not. There’s a strong indication that while our eyes have been focussed on the military and White House personel the civilians have assumed crash position and blindly carry on as if nothing had changed. But what else could they do?
Enter Tom Zarek the visionary terroist. It’s odd that his great crime is always described as blowing up a government building. Was there anyone in there, or are we supposed to think architecture more important than human lives to this society? Or are there meta reasons, not wanting to make the connection to 9/11 too explicit?
Reakpolitik
To avert the possibility of Zarek winning the VP vote Roslin dumps her boring old advisor and invites Gaius to stand. Better the devil she knows but although she knows he seconded Zarek’s nomination she really doesn’t know him at all. Zarek only blew up a building he didn’t let an entire civilisation be wiped out and he doesn’t (as far as we know) have a Cylon fanatic sharing his brain.
Zarek is tainted by his past explosions, the suspicion that he may have ordered an assassination attempt and that he talks a noble game but is only interested in power. He does give good talk as he once again reminds the Roslin/Adama camp that they seem to have forgotten about the democratic niceties, in this case electing a vice-president. So this is their taint. Although both seem to be working for the good of humanity neither of them were actually elected to their positions and paternalism/maternalism has such potential to devolve into benign dictatorship. Equally telling is Zarek’s later point that maintaining the old order means the same people always have to clean up after the party for the same minimum wage.
Red King dreaming
I said these episodes reminded me of Awakening. The first hint of that came as the post-election party started. I think it was the fairy lights, discordantly tacky given the occasion. Party was all the-camera-has-been-drinking then the teaser for the finale played positively hallucinogenic. I thought it was the previews at first but suitably disorientated the real fun began with the first act.
So with hindsight the off aspect of Awakening. was that in Angel’s dreams everyone plays his cartoon hero version of themselves. Not everyone does here. Lee is heroically idealistic as he refuses to arrest the president but he’s done that before. His father heroically sends in the troops to section their leader but again had just cause. He only married a civil rights lawyer, it’s not bred in bone as it is for the son. I really like how mothers are important in this series. None more so than Kara’s and Roslin plays that to perfection to convince her to fly off on a quest for the religiously insane.
“All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.” And they think the Cylons are slaves to the program? A red queen instead of a king? Is all this Roslin’s dream? It makes the kind of sense that doesn’t. She’s dying and the promise of earth is an impossible lie, eliminate the impossible and all you have left is the truth, the way, the life. Although I have never understood why Earth would be a safe haven.
A more likely dreamer though is Baltar (and his visions are even cheesier than Angel's, a Manilow fan for sure). In a fit of post-election euphoria he seemed to believe he’d escaped but his Six is a vengeful God. She appeared oddly impressed by him showing a suicidal Sharon some understanding. But then they both know things worse than death. (And Sharon has to be the worst shot ever, which bodes well for Adama’s survival). But when push comes to crash, life seems the better option. A vision of Six as a Madonna, all pale blue and buttoned up to the neck, reaches out to save him, show him he’s now exalted above all boy-children, the son and father to the man. Cue insane nativity scene (and at this point I can’t help thinking about the miracle baby in ‘V’ and its little forked tongue) but we don’t get to see the child.
A working class hero is a hard thing to be
I always liked you Chief. Zarek may have talked the talk but the Chief is the real thing. In the aftermath of the crash, when he salutes the donkey officer and goes off to be a lion something clicks. Let Adama’s wound be fatal, let Roslin be taken away and sectioned and Gaius with her. Just keep my hero alive for the whole second series and I’ll download the Lennon back catalogue and make the old socialist’s Lord Comrade Bad Vid to revolutionise them all.
Biology is Destiny
OK this is my grand unified theory of Cylons. Immortality makes you other. How to understand that killing off a civilisation is wrong when death, individuality has no meaning? I think all the Sharons on the ship defending Kobol must have known what the bomb would do to them but (see above) death has no meaning when you always come back from it. And are legion. Also love is the plan. It seems crucially important that Caprica!Sharon has in love conceived a hybrid. So the plan also seems to be recombination, sex, an end to parthogenicity.
One of the triumphs of evolutionary theory is John Maynard Smith’s analysis of why sexual reproduction pre-dominates throughout the animal and plant kingdoms even though it necessarily only gives you half the buck for your bang. Recombination, the genetic re-shuffle effected by sexual reproduction, is costly but in a changing world it provides a long term edge. However, the Cylons almost certainly won’t have gone through suffcient generations for this to evolve. So my theory is that at some point they added something like one of Richard Dawkins’ simulation programmes to their hard drives and made a religion of it. Which would really make any original Koboldian Dawkins want spin to in his unmarked grave.