Saturday, February 26, 2005
Flesh and Bone
This week’s episode of the new Battlestar Galactica is about religion. We’ve already gotten a fair amount of religion in the scenes where Baltar (an atheist) talks philosophy with his hallucination of Number Six, the hot blonde nymphomaniac Cylon.
But via this week’s otherwise poorly done episode, we get a full dose of religion as “Starbuck” interrogates a Cylon prisoner.
Ron Moore thinks it’s really funny to make the Cylons devout observers of a religion that seems very much like Christianity, while the Colonials are more secular and their religion is a polytheistic one reminiscent of pre-Christian ancient Rome.
The original Battlestar Galactica was also about religion, and you may want to read some of my previous posts such as Mormon influences in “The Living Legend” and All I need to know about Mormonism I learned from Battlestar Galactica.
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A lot of this episode makes no sense. Why is a Viper pilot assigned to interrogate a Cylon? Shouldn’t some sort of scientist be doing this? Why jettison the Cylon at the end? Wouldn’t it be wiser to keep it around for study? People accuse the old Battlestar Galactic of not making sense, but at least back then they were smart enough to keep their captured Cylons around for scientific investigation.
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I was surpised to discover that Baltar really does have a working Cylon detector. Up until now, we were given every indication to believe that his Cylon detector was a lot of BS. But what is Baltar going to do now that he has learned that “Boomer” is a Cylon? I guess what Baltar does is up to the writers. His duty is to test the detector on a few humans to make sure that it’s really working, and then inform Commander Adama that “Boomer” is a Cylon. But if the writers want to make Baltar into a more despicable sort of person, they will have him keep the knowledge to himself to use to his own advantage. I’m suspecting the latter will happen.
1) It disturbs me that the show is seemingly jabbing Christianity. Not a definate jab yet, but dangerously close. I wish the Sci-Fi writers won't go there.
2) Where is the show going? It's OK to watch, but it has zero value to see the re-reuns. Unlike fun shows - like the ever faithful Stargate - where re-runs can still be entertaining.
3) Is it me, or is BSG too similar to our own life? The wardrobes are too similar - the suits and ties bug me to no end. The technology is high, but they use WWII strategy boards on deck? How come they can jump to another galaxy, but get staticy radios? They have peanut butter on another planet? Cool!
4) Stop saying "Frack".
Just my rants. I am unfortunately hooked on the show, but loyalty is fading after each disappointing episode. Though the last one was cool when they invaded the Cylon fuel depot.
As for BSG being very similar, that's kind of the intent, because they want people to focus more on the characters, not the things around them. Personally, I'm glad that they're going with some very realistic looking uniforms.
I don't see the colonists' religion as polytheistic in the Roman way, at least not fundamentally. On the surface it does appear that way, but one of the things he's insisted on is keeping some of the Mormon elements, e.g. that the gods were one day just like us and that we're the product of their going through the same events thousands of years ago.
Ron Moore has talked about the reason for having fighter pilots doing things they don't normally do. Have you read his blog? It's very good. The main reason is that they don't have enough people for everyone to do only what their primary specialty is. Adama has Starbuck do things because of her natural abilities as much as her trained ones. We saw that later in the season when he needed a plan for attacking the Cylon fuel facility.
They've already got a captured dead guy of the same Cylon model. They showed him in this episode. Roslin may simply not have thought about the possibility of needing another. She may also have been influenced by her dream, thinking she needed to fulfill it if it was from the gods.
Baltar's Cylon detector was designed by Number 6. Remember when she told him she needed a certain element from the nuke he asked for? She for some reason wanted him to be able to detect Cylons, because she helped him make a detector. I was surprised by this too, but what her purposes are is still unclear.
What Baltar did do is interesting. Number 6 convinced him he shouldn't tell her, because she said the stealth programming might lead her to kill him. Later, though, when she was suicidal, he seemed to be encouraging her to kill herself because he thought that was the morally right thing to do. Number 6 told him the programming wouldn't allow it, and it didn't. She barely damaged her face. Still, I think that's a good sign that he does have some moral conviction. I don't think his hiding it had anything to do with his own agenda except that it was self-preservation.
Unixstud: The Cylons were robots who are now destroying their former owners. They did it by nuking their biggest cities and wiping out all resistance. They seem to have some other agenda, but whatever it is must be consistent with doing evil things. They're not just slaves fighting for their freedom from pagan aggressors. They even believe in the gods themselves. They just think they're subordinate to God.
I agree that it's not as much fun to watch after you've seen later ones, but I have seen most of the episodes a few times, and it takes a few watches for me not to want to see it again for a while.
One reason for low technology is to avoid computer networks. Another is because space requires certain things. Static in radios is one of them. A third is simply storytelling technique. We can identify more with them if the only ways they're ahead of us technologically are ways that the storytelling requires, and intergalactic space travel requires some things we don't have. Given where this is probably going, there's even a reasonable explanation for this. If they only maintained some of the technology of the gods when they made their exodus, it explains why some of their technology isn't as advanced. This is also an older battlestar about to be retired, and they only have what was onboard during the attack or what was at the depot they stopped at in the miniseries.
I don't swear at all, but that's one of the reasons I like 'frak'. It's not really a swear, but you can achieve the same effect.