BSG 3.07: Pragmatic perversity
One thing this third season has demonstrated is how much better the series works when not restricted to a single location. Throughout the S1 it was able to play the Galactica and Caprica plots off against each other but around the time the Pegasus arrived in mid-S2 that dual (or more) focus was lost and it was all fleet all the time. At least in this respect, the splitting of the fleet into New Capricans and Galaticans and Baltar’s exile subsequent to their being re-united has been nothing but good.
This week the fleet story was dominant and posing the big question of whether cylonicide is justifiable on idealistic or pragmatic grounds. Even more than in Collaborators each character’s position was very clearly grounded in their past history. More so because while reactions to those who worked for the Cylons were clearly foreshadowed by attitudes expressed on New Caprica attitudes to the Cylons and to humanity’s worthiness stretch back much further. Lee and Helo’s respective positions on the personhood of Sharon were highlighted back at the beginning of S2 when her Caprican incarnation returned to the fleet. Roslin, despite her love for and faith in humanity, has been of the attitude that the only good Cylon is an air-locked Cylon since her encounter with Lebonen, while Bill Adama was questioning whether humanity was a race worth saving back in his retirement speech before the bombs fell.
Notably all the participants in the debate, with the possible exception of Roslin, have personal involvements that could be swaying their judgement. Helo loves Sharon, Bill views her as a daughter while Lee may still see her as his father’s killer (he certainly did in their first encounter). Laura has no such personal issues with Sharon, her first Cylon was Lebonen but his mind games with her then seemed to have much the same effect as those the re-incarnated version played had on Kara. The Cylon also enslaved her people and as their leader she doesn’t forgive that.
Personal issues aside the arguments still stand. Contrariwise, Lee and Laura, the two characters who have previously been shown as more idealistic come down on the side of pragmatism- even if the Cylons do count as a people we have to kill them before they kill us. While Helo and Adama for whom morality has had more of a ‘care perspective,’ who appear to base ethical decisions on ‘family’ loyalty rather than abstract principles take the idealistic stance that genocide is wrong. It’s clear that Lee firmly believes that they don’t count and while Roslin may be prepared to countenance the idea, it’s a theoretical proposition to her not something she fears in her gut to be true.
This is a situation where I would have loved to hear Tom Zarek’s perspective. Roslin’s pardon of the collaborators showed I think a belief in humanity’s essential goodness, its ability not to strain the quality of mercy, while Tom (the ex-idealist) had a more cynical view of man’s potential for inhumanity to man. It comes down to this, in the short term annihilating the Cylon race removes one threat to humanity’s survival but man has always been his own worse enemy. In the longer term the more important question may be whether one genocide makes another more likely. We’ve already seen collaborators viewed as less than human, something to be rooted out like a cancer, and the old divisions of race and religion seem just as familiar to this society as to our own. I did wonder why no-one was talking about the possibility of using the disease as a threat or a bargaining counter rather than just using it and hoping that all the Cylon were linked to one resurrection ship. Incomplete genocide is possibly worse than none at all, as the Cylons seem to be finding to their cost.
Back on the basestar the Cylons torture Baltar for information he doesn’t have. This season I’ve found our Gaius somewhat less fascinating that previously. A big part of his appeal was seeing just how low he could go and with the Occupation he finally seemed to have hit bottom. But I also like it in a way I really shouldn’t when Baltar’s being smart and although it was HeadSix telling him to use his polymorphous perversity to beat the pain by getting off on it, this time she did seem to be speaking in her aspect as the voice of his subconscious (thus adding yet another layer to his fervent declaration of belief in ”you”). The idea that being able to separate his mind from his body makes him superior was pure Baltar-the-rationalist, even without the Dawkins-like arguments against the existence of God. Then finally, because as the blood epiphany showed he’s as much an instinctive genius as a rational one, the point that really got through to D’Anna was the climatic declaration of love.