Litmus

[teachlikeroslin]

After the awesomeness that was You Can't Go Home Again, it's understandable that the following episode wouldn't measure up to that level of execution. Litmus is an episode I always forget about. I mean always. I was trying to figure out which episodes I still had to review for the first season and came up an episode short. I went to IMDB to look

Comments

Tribunal & hubris

[anonymous]

What did you think of the tribunal and the actions of Sergeant Hadrian? It made sense to have an independent tribunal but why use someone of such low rank and the person responsible for securing the explosives?

Seemed odd to use her.

A key theme throughout the series, at least so far, is the destructive power of hubris-- which plays out in the central Frankensteinian/Promethean themes of 'playing god' and creating life/stealing fire, only to have it come back to kill you.

In Sergeant Hadrian's case we see hubris on a more basic level. She just turns into a jerk.

Btw, Adama doesn't have this tragic flaw, which is why he rocks. And he's edged out Picard as my favorite SciFi captain.

-DAS

Re: Tribunal & hubris

[anonymous]

To be more specific, it seems they should've used someone with legal training, independence, and higher rank- like an equivalent of a JAG lawyer.

Re: Tribunal & hubris

[teachlikeroslin]

Yeah, you caught me. I didn't talk about the tribunal because I found it all too Law & Order and a little boring. But I was also confused as to why Adama granted Hadrian so much power. I don't know too much about military ranks, but the Chief was all snide towards her because she was a sergeant and Crashdown even had more power than her, and he's a refugee newbie

Re: Tribunal & hubris

[anonymous]

Yes, right now Adama is my favorite. He's smart and clever and incredibly rational, but also emotional (as evidenced by his all out effort to rescue starbuck).

I hate to keep relating stuff to star trek but... he embodies the tete a tete relationship of Kirk and Spock in some sense. Okay I won't do that again. Except to repeat he's cooler than Picard and the cylons are cooler than the Borg. Phweeew.

Lastly, you mention the cylons are like terrorists. I see that clearly. But could the cylons not also signify early Christians? And the humans are the polytheistic pagans? Maybe we'll get to that possibility in the coming episodes. [ie. the torture scene with Starbuck and No2 struck me as somewhat passion-like.]

Thanks, great stuff.

DAS

Re: Tribunal & hubris

[teachlikeroslin]

I've never watched Star Trek so I can only nod my head to your comments like I know what you're talking about.

BSG is definitely meant to be an allegory of the modern world but I think you could definitely interpret the cylons as being representations of early Christians. I mean, I think it goes back to one of the main themes of the show (and the name of this blog): All this has happened before and this will happen again. We never learn our lessons about religious fanaticism. It's been a while but I remember reading stories from the Old Testament where the Hebrews just went all out homicidal, destroying entire villages and towns of non-Hebrews because their god told them they could. Then you have early Christians or the Christians of the crusades. Then you have the Arab sweep across the Middle East and North Africa and modern day terrorism by Islamic fundamentalists.

At this point in the series, the cylons could probably represent a lot of different groups through history.

Re: Tribunal & hubris

[anonymous]

All true. I think we could specifically hone the allegory more tightly to Christianity infiltrating and exterminating Hellenistic (or Roman I suppose) paganism. Don't we see starbuck worshiping an icon of Aphrodite? I'll have to think about this a bit more.

I wonder if those "Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy" books are worth looking at.

Re: Tribunal & hubris

[teachlikeroslin]

You're probably right. Honestly, I've never really thought about the context of this show outside the intention of it being an allegory for modern times but this is why comments are awesome because now you have me thinking about it in a totally new way.

Re: Tribunal & hubris

[domsisti]

I sometimes read too far into these things. The show is rich with allegory. And as you said- the historical stuff is simply repeated anyway.

I like to think about the possibility that we- actual humans- are more like the cylons than the humans.