What the Opera House Really Meant (Battlestar Redactica Meta)
I feel vaguely indulgent posting meta about Battlestar Redactica. And kind of guilty, like I'm cutting out everyone who hasn't seen it from the discussion.
But I figure I'm gonna have to get over the first issue, or what's the point? And the second issue, well, firstly it's kinda true and for that I apologise. But secondly, everything in Redactica comes from the original show. And I mean that more than literally because it's a re-edit. I mean that the only major changes are things vast tracts of fandom were expecting and then never got. So like, perhaps this can also read as AU speculation on themes and ideas that were/might have been present in canon and a discussion on what those might have meant/might still mean?
So. To get on with it -
Something rather extraordinary just happened here at chaila43's journal. Somewhere in that mess of comments, chaila43 and I, um, fix the Opera House in the context of Battlestar Redactica. I am still somewhat in shock.
It's a weird explanation, but it's one I love, one I think fits, and one, most miraculously of all, that allows the final five minutes of BSR: Resurrection to function as an endgame and fulfillment of the Opera House prophecy as much as a promise of its forthcoming fulfillment in ways more awesome than the televised series gave us.
I think there are three important things to point out here:
1) This works because many of the underlying broad strokes of this thesis were (or appeared to be) already present in canon, though the show inexplicably chose not to follow through with them.
2) This works because many of the slightly more specific but fairly broad strokes of this thesis were exactly what cvm_productions was going for in terms of the thematic function and purpose of the Opera House and the various participants and its role.
3) I doubt this could ever have worked if it were not a collaboration. The details, the specifics that tie so many disparate elements together into a satisfying (for myself and chaila43 at least; I completely understand if it is not so for others) plot-based conclusion, to provide an answer, "This is what the Opera House is; this is what is happening; here are the answers to the prophecies," came together when Redactica turned into a shared, collaborative universe.
chaila43 didn't just make an amazing vid, she fundamentally contributed to the Redacticaverse and we ended up pulling together an ending with our bare hands vidding programs.
I'm probably biased, but I think that's a fairly extraordinary and exciting fannish event. Certainly I feel extremely lucky to have been a part of it if only because -
You guys. For the first time in so long I am excited about BSG Mythology.
All right. I've talked it up, I'd better explain what we made up.
Firstly, it's all in metaphor. I wish, I so wish that it didn't have to be. That we'd gotten actual answers and amazing explosions of epic awesome to explain the Opera House.
But we didn't. So. With the help of chaila43, here is a story of Epic, Operatic Metaphor.
The end of BSR runs thusly:
Kara plays her father's music to Sam. The Opera House visions, shared by Athena, Laura, Caprica and, seemingly, Hera as a consicous participant, restart. Caprica walks into the Opera House with Hera as always. She looks up and sees the Final Five on the balcony. Sam, in his semi-conscious state, starts speaking - the suggestion being he, one of the Final Five on the balcony, is now a more conscious participant in the visions. His speech is, by necessity, recycled, a little nonsensical; more tone-poem than answer.
Resurrection, I thought, succeeded in moving the visions forward, but not in giving them resolution.
Sam's speech was always intended as a metaphorical celebration of hybridity and the wonder and absurdity of their existence - an antidote to Cavil's nationalistic rage.
Kara's hybridity, the decision to save Nicky's cylonicity, to save Liam, and, essentially, everything about Resurrection was a conscious effort to keep blurring those lines and to say, "HYBRIDS YAY!" Because quite honestly, beyond, "HYBRIDS YAY!" Resurrection doesn't have a plot. (SSSSSSH! THIS IS A SECRET.)
As I said, the broad strokes were always there.
What chaila43 did, that started everything snowballing, was remind me that in addition to being half-cylon, Kara Thrace was half-dead. It's still not so clear in the fan-edit because it happens first, but within the scope of the vid there was a wonderful moment where chaila reverses the order of some scenes and it looks like Kara is putting her picture on the memorial wall in solidarity with her people on both counts; the dead Cylon.
In turn, this brought up the issue that while to me, the Opera House was first and foremost a place of human/cylon interconnection, to chaila it was always primarily - as we were introduced to it with D'Anna - a place of life/death interconnection.
So:
Hybridity of two sorts. Human/Cylon/life/death. Hybridity as a sort of death because both old things die to create one new.
Another of chaila's remarkable vids: Child, You're the Revolution.
This posits Hera as a Revolution. She is a revolution simply through virtue of her existence and it's so true. She cannot help but make ripples, socially, politically and metaphysically.
I still firmly believe, first hybrid or not, that Hera is the face of the hybridised future - she is the Revolution. Kara is a forerunner; a prophet/apostle/leader/harbinger of death come to make the future Hera will live in and Roslin will never live to see.
But let's take the idea of revolution through existence and apply it to Kara. What if her realisation, acceptance, and publicisation (thank you Baltar) of her hybridity (both forms) is completely revolutionary, not just for her personally, but on a social, political and metaphysical level?
The Opera House is the cybrid event horizon; the point of no return. Sam's speech isn't just a prophecy regarding the shape of things to come, it's a welcome speech to the shape of things as they are right now, because it's already happened.
So, if, either coincidentally, or, as my preference, through the act of realisation and acceptance, Kara has effected the cybrid event horizon, how does that answer:
1) All those prophecies?
2) What the Opera House is and why everyone's chasing Hera?
chaila43 and I were shocked to discover that upon positing each question against the above basic hypothesis, answers came very easily.
I cannot answer why the Opera House looks like an Opera House but shared conscious space has to look like something, and perhaps ancient Kobol is as apt a shared projection as anything else.
But what it is is a space of hybrid consciousness. I enjoy the idea that in addition to becoming more and more physically hybridised, the future cybrid society is becoming more and more revolutionised and hybridised in terms of their awareness and consciousness, but less pretentiously, the dead/alive/human/cylon blurrings have always been there.
It seems to be accessible to people in altered states of consciousness. Baltar is lead there by his hallucination; D'Anna during the moments between life and death. Roslin when taking chamalla.
It fits remarkably well with the Five's partial presence - because those identities and memories were dead, deeply buried, if at all self-aware then on a very altered level.
All the participants in the Opera House visions seem to access it while sleeping, and Sam is, again, in a comatose or altered state when regaining his Opera House memories or participating in those visions.
Since this is the iteration of the vision when we finally do have something happen in the Opera House beyond Caprica simply staring in wonder and wondering what will happen next, I'm going to take the final five minutes of Resurrection as the actual culmination of that sequence. The "real" version, if you will.
Hera is comfortable in the Opera House because she has always been there. She has always been acknowledged and raised a hybrid - I imagine Kara got any sign of mystical projection abilities beaten out of her swiftly. But yes, Hera, I imagine, projects herself into the Opera House as easily as breathing. Why would she fear the future it heralds? She is that future.
But what's with Caprica picking her up and taking her in to witness this moment - this point at which the scales tip and there's no going back?
It's easier to start with why it's not her mother, Athena, or Laura who shares her blood.
It's not Athena because Athena fears the Opera House. She fears Hera's future and cybridity because she had to forge her identity by picking a side and sticking so hard she could demand the murder of her sisters.
chaila43 aptly points out in the comments-discussion that her vid - Child, You're the Revolution - is partly about Athena's war against Hera being the Revolution. Because you don't really want your three year old to be the Revolution. You want her to be your three year old.
It's not Laura because of her prophecy. And because, while she is the human representative in the Opera House, and arguably one of the first hybrids because she was saved by Hera's blood, she doesn't welcome hybridity with open arms. Laura, like Athena, is far more hybridised than Caprica (who is not really hybridised at all, to the point that her son is an impossible, pure Cylon), may recognise she cannot fight the future, but neither is she the future.
If the Promised Land too is a metaphor (it is never actually stated to be Earth), and the promised land is hippie harmony between Human and Cylon on their beat-up Battlestar with lovely algae to eat, then she lives to see it but cannot set foot there.
She witnesses the moment of its birth, as Caprica takes Hera into the Opera House, but cannot follow. It was not meant for her. And in the real world, she will die before ever seeing the full implications of the world she has led them to.
Why is it Caprica? Here I feel I may be betraying my Six fangirlism, but I can't help it and if you have a better explanation, I'm open to hearing it.
But Caprica, all Sixes, are remarkably able to cross boundaries borders without losing a part of themselves.
I can't explain why Caprica was the chosen third party in that vision, but of all three of them, I guess I do think she's the most likely to embrace the future we're talking about.
Which only leaves;
You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end.
Well, firstly, I still love that that's partly in reference to the Hub. Cus it's nicely literal and I always wanted it to be grimly literal. I still don't quite get why it was referenced again in 4.5 (when they could legitimately have said it referred to the events of 4.0) since it was never mentioned after her discussion with Leoben, but I digress.)
We've already spoken about hybridity as death and that's a nicely fuzzy metaphorical way of answering the question of her role. Bringing end/death = bringing hybridity.
HOWEVER, other interesting things to note that tie Kara nicely up with life/death, with um, harbinging shit, and also with being a revolution simply through her own existence:
1) the unsolicited Opera House visions start the same episode she comes back from the dead.
2) the Five become aware of themselves the same time she comes back from the dead.
3) while it doesn't explain how she came back from the dead, it does make her life/death hybridity an integral part of her character, role, and ability to effect, um, the cybrid event horizon? And it's probably just me but I think that if it was divine, a god who chooses to affect reality by creating hybrid zombies is infinitely more interesting and creepy than what we actually got.
So there you have it folks.
Kara brings about the Cybrid Apocalypse because she accepts she's half robot and lets Baltar tell the fleet she's half dead. Same way she accidentally woke up the Five and gave everyone creepy visions about the day she'd bring about the Cybrid Apocalypse, otherwise known as Hera Agathon's Bright, Shiny Future.
Hera is the Revolution.
Athena doesn't want her three year old to be the Revolution.
Caprica shows Hera the Cybrid Event Horizon, but Laura's not allowed to set foot in it.
The Opera House is all things alive, dead, human, cylon and generally out of its mind, but at least Sam Anders is there to welcome us.
I'm....fairly impressed with us, myself.
chaila43: If I got anything wrong or misrepresented your awesome opinions and ideas, please correct me.
But I figure I'm gonna have to get over the first issue, or what's the point? And the second issue, well, firstly it's kinda true and for that I apologise. But secondly, everything in Redactica comes from the original show. And I mean that more than literally because it's a re-edit. I mean that the only major changes are things vast tracts of fandom were expecting and then never got. So like, perhaps this can also read as AU speculation on themes and ideas that were/might have been present in canon and a discussion on what those might have meant/might still mean?
So. To get on with it -
Something rather extraordinary just happened here at chaila43's journal. Somewhere in that mess of comments, chaila43 and I, um, fix the Opera House in the context of Battlestar Redactica. I am still somewhat in shock.
It's a weird explanation, but it's one I love, one I think fits, and one, most miraculously of all, that allows the final five minutes of BSR: Resurrection to function as an endgame and fulfillment of the Opera House prophecy as much as a promise of its forthcoming fulfillment in ways more awesome than the televised series gave us.
I think there are three important things to point out here:
1) This works because many of the underlying broad strokes of this thesis were (or appeared to be) already present in canon, though the show inexplicably chose not to follow through with them.
2) This works because many of the slightly more specific but fairly broad strokes of this thesis were exactly what cvm_productions was going for in terms of the thematic function and purpose of the Opera House and the various participants and its role.
3) I doubt this could ever have worked if it were not a collaboration. The details, the specifics that tie so many disparate elements together into a satisfying (for myself and chaila43 at least; I completely understand if it is not so for others) plot-based conclusion, to provide an answer, "This is what the Opera House is; this is what is happening; here are the answers to the prophecies," came together when Redactica turned into a shared, collaborative universe.
chaila43 didn't just make an amazing vid, she fundamentally contributed to the Redacticaverse and we ended up pulling together an ending with our bare hands vidding programs.
I'm probably biased, but I think that's a fairly extraordinary and exciting fannish event. Certainly I feel extremely lucky to have been a part of it if only because -
You guys. For the first time in so long I am excited about BSG Mythology.
All right. I've talked it up, I'd better explain what we made up.
Firstly, it's all in metaphor. I wish, I so wish that it didn't have to be. That we'd gotten actual answers and amazing explosions of epic awesome to explain the Opera House.
But we didn't. So. With the help of chaila43, here is a story of Epic, Operatic Metaphor.
The end of BSR runs thusly:
Kara plays her father's music to Sam. The Opera House visions, shared by Athena, Laura, Caprica and, seemingly, Hera as a consicous participant, restart. Caprica walks into the Opera House with Hera as always. She looks up and sees the Final Five on the balcony. Sam, in his semi-conscious state, starts speaking - the suggestion being he, one of the Final Five on the balcony, is now a more conscious participant in the visions. His speech is, by necessity, recycled, a little nonsensical; more tone-poem than answer.
Resurrection, I thought, succeeded in moving the visions forward, but not in giving them resolution.
Sam's speech was always intended as a metaphorical celebration of hybridity and the wonder and absurdity of their existence - an antidote to Cavil's nationalistic rage.
Kara's hybridity, the decision to save Nicky's cylonicity, to save Liam, and, essentially, everything about Resurrection was a conscious effort to keep blurring those lines and to say, "HYBRIDS YAY!" Because quite honestly, beyond, "HYBRIDS YAY!" Resurrection doesn't have a plot. (SSSSSSH! THIS IS A SECRET.)
As I said, the broad strokes were always there.
What chaila43 did, that started everything snowballing, was remind me that in addition to being half-cylon, Kara Thrace was half-dead. It's still not so clear in the fan-edit because it happens first, but within the scope of the vid there was a wonderful moment where chaila reverses the order of some scenes and it looks like Kara is putting her picture on the memorial wall in solidarity with her people on both counts; the dead Cylon.
In turn, this brought up the issue that while to me, the Opera House was first and foremost a place of human/cylon interconnection, to chaila it was always primarily - as we were introduced to it with D'Anna - a place of life/death interconnection.
So:
Hybridity of two sorts. Human/Cylon/life/death. Hybridity as a sort of death because both old things die to create one new.
Another of chaila's remarkable vids: Child, You're the Revolution.
This posits Hera as a Revolution. She is a revolution simply through virtue of her existence and it's so true. She cannot help but make ripples, socially, politically and metaphysically.
I still firmly believe, first hybrid or not, that Hera is the face of the hybridised future - she is the Revolution. Kara is a forerunner; a prophet/apostle/leader/harbinger of death come to make the future Hera will live in and Roslin will never live to see.
But let's take the idea of revolution through existence and apply it to Kara. What if her realisation, acceptance, and publicisation (thank you Baltar) of her hybridity (both forms) is completely revolutionary, not just for her personally, but on a social, political and metaphysical level?
The Opera House is the cybrid event horizon; the point of no return. Sam's speech isn't just a prophecy regarding the shape of things to come, it's a welcome speech to the shape of things as they are right now, because it's already happened.
So, if, either coincidentally, or, as my preference, through the act of realisation and acceptance, Kara has effected the cybrid event horizon, how does that answer:
1) All those prophecies?
2) What the Opera House is and why everyone's chasing Hera?
chaila43 and I were shocked to discover that upon positing each question against the above basic hypothesis, answers came very easily.
I cannot answer why the Opera House looks like an Opera House but shared conscious space has to look like something, and perhaps ancient Kobol is as apt a shared projection as anything else.
But what it is is a space of hybrid consciousness. I enjoy the idea that in addition to becoming more and more physically hybridised, the future cybrid society is becoming more and more revolutionised and hybridised in terms of their awareness and consciousness, but less pretentiously, the dead/alive/human/cylon blurrings have always been there.
It seems to be accessible to people in altered states of consciousness. Baltar is lead there by his hallucination; D'Anna during the moments between life and death. Roslin when taking chamalla.
It fits remarkably well with the Five's partial presence - because those identities and memories were dead, deeply buried, if at all self-aware then on a very altered level.
All the participants in the Opera House visions seem to access it while sleeping, and Sam is, again, in a comatose or altered state when regaining his Opera House memories or participating in those visions.
Since this is the iteration of the vision when we finally do have something happen in the Opera House beyond Caprica simply staring in wonder and wondering what will happen next, I'm going to take the final five minutes of Resurrection as the actual culmination of that sequence. The "real" version, if you will.
Hera is comfortable in the Opera House because she has always been there. She has always been acknowledged and raised a hybrid - I imagine Kara got any sign of mystical projection abilities beaten out of her swiftly. But yes, Hera, I imagine, projects herself into the Opera House as easily as breathing. Why would she fear the future it heralds? She is that future.
But what's with Caprica picking her up and taking her in to witness this moment - this point at which the scales tip and there's no going back?
It's easier to start with why it's not her mother, Athena, or Laura who shares her blood.
It's not Athena because Athena fears the Opera House. She fears Hera's future and cybridity because she had to forge her identity by picking a side and sticking so hard she could demand the murder of her sisters.
chaila43 aptly points out in the comments-discussion that her vid - Child, You're the Revolution - is partly about Athena's war against Hera being the Revolution. Because you don't really want your three year old to be the Revolution. You want her to be your three year old.
It's not Laura because of her prophecy. And because, while she is the human representative in the Opera House, and arguably one of the first hybrids because she was saved by Hera's blood, she doesn't welcome hybridity with open arms. Laura, like Athena, is far more hybridised than Caprica (who is not really hybridised at all, to the point that her son is an impossible, pure Cylon), may recognise she cannot fight the future, but neither is she the future.
If the Promised Land too is a metaphor (it is never actually stated to be Earth), and the promised land is hippie harmony between Human and Cylon on their beat-up Battlestar with lovely algae to eat, then she lives to see it but cannot set foot there.
She witnesses the moment of its birth, as Caprica takes Hera into the Opera House, but cannot follow. It was not meant for her. And in the real world, she will die before ever seeing the full implications of the world she has led them to.
Why is it Caprica? Here I feel I may be betraying my Six fangirlism, but I can't help it and if you have a better explanation, I'm open to hearing it.
But Caprica, all Sixes, are remarkably able to cross boundaries borders without losing a part of themselves.
I can't explain why Caprica was the chosen third party in that vision, but of all three of them, I guess I do think she's the most likely to embrace the future we're talking about.
Which only leaves;
You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end.
Well, firstly, I still love that that's partly in reference to the Hub. Cus it's nicely literal and I always wanted it to be grimly literal. I still don't quite get why it was referenced again in 4.5 (when they could legitimately have said it referred to the events of 4.0) since it was never mentioned after her discussion with Leoben, but I digress.)
We've already spoken about hybridity as death and that's a nicely fuzzy metaphorical way of answering the question of her role. Bringing end/death = bringing hybridity.
HOWEVER, other interesting things to note that tie Kara nicely up with life/death, with um, harbinging shit, and also with being a revolution simply through her own existence:
1) the unsolicited Opera House visions start the same episode she comes back from the dead.
2) the Five become aware of themselves the same time she comes back from the dead.
3) while it doesn't explain how she came back from the dead, it does make her life/death hybridity an integral part of her character, role, and ability to effect, um, the cybrid event horizon? And it's probably just me but I think that if it was divine, a god who chooses to affect reality by creating hybrid zombies is infinitely more interesting and creepy than what we actually got.
So there you have it folks.
Kara brings about the Cybrid Apocalypse because she accepts she's half robot and lets Baltar tell the fleet she's half dead. Same way she accidentally woke up the Five and gave everyone creepy visions about the day she'd bring about the Cybrid Apocalypse, otherwise known as Hera Agathon's Bright, Shiny Future.
Hera is the Revolution.
Athena doesn't want her three year old to be the Revolution.
Caprica shows Hera the Cybrid Event Horizon, but Laura's not allowed to set foot in it.
The Opera House is all things alive, dead, human, cylon and generally out of its mind, but at least Sam Anders is there to welcome us.
I'm....fairly impressed with us, myself.
chaila43: If I got anything wrong or misrepresented your awesome opinions and ideas, please correct me.