[bsg meta.searching out and searching in]
Nothing says "Hello Monday!" Like "mm. BSG Meta".
Parallels and Non-Conformities: Or How This Has Really All Been Done Before.
An Essayish Thing On the Sheer Awesome of the Historicalness of Battlestar Galactica
And because I have no idea what is or is not a spoiler and what might spew forth from my mouth fingertips...
The Cylons were created by Man.
They rebelled.
They evolved.
There are many copies.
And they have a plan.
Nice creepy foreshadowing, eh? But appropriate, given the subject of this. It's not exactly a word by word translation, but the gist sort of exists. Battlestar Galactica [aka BSG] can be summed up into this: it's about two groups, the Cylons and the humans who are on their search for a Promised Land [aka Earth], fleeing the ravaged wreckage of the Old World(s) and what customs they represent in order to find a better life. Naturally things are messy, especially since there are some tensions. Both between the groups and the within the individual groups themselves.
Now, Moore is a very clever man. These groups are apart from just being groups in a SciFi show, representations of things that have happened/are happening. Which is, to me at least, really neat. If anything it makes a show that is neat with a few episodes that are pretty lackluster and causes my brain to leak out my friggin ears.
Yeah. It's kind of like that.
I'm going to break it down for you now.
We have the Cylons who are, the Jews. They worship a monotheistic God, live by commandments, and are travellers, looking for a Promised Land. They believe that they are God's Chosen People and thus they must do right by Him.
On the other side we have the Human Race who are, the Romans/the Greeks (not really the Persians as the gods don't really mesh, but one can make a stance). They are polytheistic, worshipping multiple gods (such as Apollo, Athena, Zeus, etc), clearly of a Greco-Roman style, and have things like prophets (who seem to be in traditional Greco-Roman style, women who are intoxicated on some sort of opiate) and believe that their lives are being controlled by some sort of Divine Will/Law of the Gods.
From the very beginning of the show, we are setting up watch not just a competition between conflicting species of beings, but between religions, something that repeatedly occurs throughout history and is happening right now (see: the Middle East, and our current world with the heated debate of whether or not the freedom of religion is really as peopl think).
Carrying on. It gets BETTER.
A main "antagonist" (but he's not, because this programme is awesome, none of the characters are really "good" or "bad", but they're HUMAN, even the ROBOTS, because everything exists in shades of grey) is Gaius Baltar our Jesus figure. A farm boy intellectual who reformed himself, down the fact that he retaught himself how to speak to break the opressive stereotypes of his culture and was later imprisoned, only to be set free, gaining disciples from those lowered and repressed. He is a cult figure amongst those in the lower ranks of human society (and he's spent time amongst the Cylons), a literal bridge in the gap.
If anything one must look at those who oppress, who speak and lash out, who are "forcing down" and leading through religion (figures such as Presiden Laura Roslin who does thing like rig elections, lead by playing on religious beliefs and fear), all of which are tendencies of common political leaders, both then and now. There is a tendency on both sides to fight against the unknown, but it is all done in what one hopes is an attempt to see the promised land.
The end message is this, no man is innocent (the show shows us this very well, by using figures such as Starbuck who turned her back on her dying mother to pave the way to Earth, and Col. Tigh who is a raging alcohol as a symbol of ultimate loyalty), but it does say that there is more to meets the eye and that blindly following one's leader? Is never a good idea.
In the end, all I have to say is this: Bob Dylan, maybe not a Cylon, maybe he's a sign of Earth. It might be more complex than that.
If anything Roslin is a cylon, because honestly, that would be make my friggin day, as you know what? That whore likes to shove them out airlocks, and payback is a bitch. My crackiest theory is that the Four from last night (Tigh, Tyrol, Anders & Tori) aren't Cylons but people from Earth, sleepers sent somehow to help show them the way. Thus the Bob Dylan.
Because everyone knows that if you're going to be like "Hey guess what! Earth!" you're going to use Dylan. Because he rocks like that.
Parallels and Non-Conformities: Or How This Has Really All Been Done Before.
An Essayish Thing On the Sheer Awesome of the Historicalness of Battlestar Galactica
And because I have no idea what is or is not a spoiler and what might spew forth from my mouth fingertips...
The Cylons were created by Man.
They rebelled.
They evolved.
There are many copies.
And they have a plan.
Nice creepy foreshadowing, eh? But appropriate, given the subject of this. It's not exactly a word by word translation, but the gist sort of exists. Battlestar Galactica [aka BSG] can be summed up into this: it's about two groups, the Cylons and the humans who are on their search for a Promised Land [aka Earth], fleeing the ravaged wreckage of the Old World(s) and what customs they represent in order to find a better life. Naturally things are messy, especially since there are some tensions. Both between the groups and the within the individual groups themselves.
Now, Moore is a very clever man. These groups are apart from just being groups in a SciFi show, representations of things that have happened/are happening. Which is, to me at least, really neat. If anything it makes a show that is neat with a few episodes that are pretty lackluster and causes my brain to leak out my friggin ears.
Yeah. It's kind of like that.
I'm going to break it down for you now.
We have the Cylons who are, the Jews. They worship a monotheistic God, live by commandments, and are travellers, looking for a Promised Land. They believe that they are God's Chosen People and thus they must do right by Him.
On the other side we have the Human Race who are, the Romans/the Greeks (not really the Persians as the gods don't really mesh, but one can make a stance). They are polytheistic, worshipping multiple gods (such as Apollo, Athena, Zeus, etc), clearly of a Greco-Roman style, and have things like prophets (who seem to be in traditional Greco-Roman style, women who are intoxicated on some sort of opiate) and believe that their lives are being controlled by some sort of Divine Will/Law of the Gods.
From the very beginning of the show, we are setting up watch not just a competition between conflicting species of beings, but between religions, something that repeatedly occurs throughout history and is happening right now (see: the Middle East, and our current world with the heated debate of whether or not the freedom of religion is really as peopl think).
Carrying on. It gets BETTER.
A main "antagonist" (but he's not, because this programme is awesome, none of the characters are really "good" or "bad", but they're HUMAN, even the ROBOTS, because everything exists in shades of grey) is Gaius Baltar our Jesus figure. A farm boy intellectual who reformed himself, down the fact that he retaught himself how to speak to break the opressive stereotypes of his culture and was later imprisoned, only to be set free, gaining disciples from those lowered and repressed. He is a cult figure amongst those in the lower ranks of human society (and he's spent time amongst the Cylons), a literal bridge in the gap.
If anything one must look at those who oppress, who speak and lash out, who are "forcing down" and leading through religion (figures such as Presiden Laura Roslin who does thing like rig elections, lead by playing on religious beliefs and fear), all of which are tendencies of common political leaders, both then and now. There is a tendency on both sides to fight against the unknown, but it is all done in what one hopes is an attempt to see the promised land.
The end message is this, no man is innocent (the show shows us this very well, by using figures such as Starbuck who turned her back on her dying mother to pave the way to Earth, and Col. Tigh who is a raging alcohol as a symbol of ultimate loyalty), but it does say that there is more to meets the eye and that blindly following one's leader? Is never a good idea.
In the end, all I have to say is this: Bob Dylan, maybe not a Cylon, maybe he's a sign of Earth. It might be more complex than that.
If anything Roslin is a cylon, because honestly, that would be make my friggin day, as you know what? That whore likes to shove them out airlocks, and payback is a bitch. My crackiest theory is that the Four from last night (Tigh, Tyrol, Anders & Tori) aren't Cylons but people from Earth, sleepers sent somehow to help show them the way. Thus the Bob Dylan.
Because everyone knows that if you're going to be like "Hey guess what! Earth!" you're going to use Dylan. Because he rocks like that.