The Prologue: Thoughts on the Miniseries
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets, Little Gidding, IV
It is a day of endings, and in ending, we find the beginning. An opportunity for destruction, an opportunity for rebuilding. Tear down and burn off what doesn't work-reduce to a manageable number, a manageable size to restructure humanity for purposes of blending with the Other (although the Other doesn't know it yet, and the humans would be none too happy if they figured it out this soon, but everything in it's own good time, right?)
The stage is set, the play's just begun.
Fire or Fire
All that surrounds us is death.
A kiss begins our tale-a promise. A question of life, followed by the promise-the certainty-of death. The inevitable. A ship is retired, along with its Commander. It crew to be separated, flung about to the far corners of the 12 colonies-new jobs, new assignments, new life. Separate and apart, never together. A politician is given a death sentence-the disease which took her mother is also hers; it will be a much longer and slower conclusion that the sudden end enjoyed by the rest of her family. A young Captain makes a reluctant trip under orders, but he knows he won't be doing this much longer. It's only a day after all. One day. A day of letting go, of saying goodbye.
They never dreamed that the end would be all they had left.
The intolerable shirt of flame
Those who respond best at the end are those who have lived with desolation for days and years too numerous to count. It was all burned off long ago: parents, sisters, a brother, two sons lost, a fiancé, a forbidden attraction, love, purpose, meaning-all gone, all lost long before we got to this moment. So I suppose it's no surprise that those who have lost the most should be best suited to lead us into a world where we have nothing left. The learning curve is vertical, and only those who have made the climb already will be equipped to climb further still.
The girl who lived her life in loss and pain, she is better equipped to handle this than most. A cancer, a living breathing disease is what she is (or at least what she's been told)-she deals death. It is her gift. She fights because she knows nothing else-but today, there is nothing else to do. She gives, she loves, she fights, she sacrifices-little pieces of her heart being sliced out and dissected in the process. This is how we know she's not made entirely of stone. This is why we know she's flesh and blood, but even more than that, more than all of those things, she is fire.
A boy long forgotten-by friends and family alike, and most of all by himself-begins to come into his own. To gain coverts by challenging, to lead by submission, to take the mantle of the military and make it about anything but the military. It's a numbers game, but he's always been good at math. Logic is his religion, and today that's needed even more than prayer. Quick, decisive, brutal. Is it wrong to feel so alive here at the end of all things?
Who then devised this torment?
Love. That's what the cylons would say. Love of a solitary God, who demands perfection and justice (really, it's just a polite way of discussing revenge; the art of making oneself feel better by taking out aggression on those only ever so slightly worse. Humans did an excellent job of making creatures in their own image.)
Love is what the humans would say. Love for each other. For ancient deities and love for sameness. Love for solidarity, as long as we have something to unite against. And most of all, love of ourselves.
How interesting that Love will be the primary topic of discussion in this brave new world. And we'll see, over and over, that neither definition is right. It will be examined and dissembled in ways unimaginable. But that's exactly what this show is, you know. An existential Petri dish, stripped down and laid bare. Against the backdrop of extreme circumstances, for the purpose of taking ideas off the shelf one by one and playing with them. Watching how they react. Poking them with a stick to see if they squirm. Some would call that Fate; some would call it the agenda of a sadistic writer, and maybe it's both of those things. But when it's done well-when it's done well… Well, it becomes something else altogether. Something at once familiar and unrecognizable. A lens with which to examine our own world and our own hearts, strange trappings making it possible to do so. [It used to be that you needed a blue-skinned alien or some muppets to make that happen, but with this show we've turned a corner. In a world eons away, these folks are exactly like us. Therein lies the genius (regardless of the pigeons and poofs that come later-we'll deal with that, but don't let it diminish what came before.)]
The concept of Love is almost as fleeting and as elusive in this universe as Truth or Right. And it almost always comes about when it's not being discussed. The teasing banter of a brig greeting; the awkward hug between father and son at both having survived the day. The prayer for one dead soul among billions. If we talk about it, if we name it, it loses its power. It we try to dwell on it too much, if we try and quantify or define, we lose the moment altogether. That bafflement, that supreme and holy mystery, makes it both torment and perfection.
Love is the unfamiliar Name.
How do you measure loss? How do you rebuild and go on when all you've got left is nothing? By mixing lies and truth (hey, Leoben didn't invent the concept-he just makes more use of it than most.)
Truth: We need a reason to keep on living.
Lie: Earth is that reason. ("I know where it is.")
+++++++++
Lie: "Don't know if you heard about Apollo…"
"Right."
Truth: "…especially that of Lee Adama."
+++++++++++++
Truth: Every look shared between them when he comes back from the dead.
Lie: Every word spoken. (It's all distraction.)
Love doesn't roll off the tongue easily, and if it does, it's probably not the good stuff to begin with. Love is hard, and difficult, fraught with pain, with fear, with hardship. But that's exactly what makes it worthwhile. That's what we learn from this show. That's what we learn from Kara Thrace and Lee Adama.
They don't write songs about the ones that come easy.
The stage is set, the players have their parts. The end is our beginning, and this is going to be one helluva ride. I'm honored to be here with you, Shipper Nation, and I'm so looking forward to where we go from here.