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BSG 2.13–18: two to download
Sep. 30th, 2006 09:05 amDownloaded
More than once cylons have told humans that they can’t die, that their consciousness will always be transferred to another body. The implication was that death has lost its sting for these robot children of humanity. Some doubt was thrown on that conclusion when PegasusSix begged to be released from her serial immortality but that seemed a special case. Similarly, when Sharon explained the re-incarnated rage felt by the raider Scar it seemed a reaction the human models were above – for herself she described death as a learning experience.
This episode begins by revealing the actuality of rebirth and it’s not pretty. Human-like cylon models post-date the first war, none of them can be more than forty years old. Unlike the raiders their lifestyle seems unlikely to put them in mortal peril, how many of them have actually died. Was CapricaSix’s serene confidence in the face of death born of faith rather than memory? It seems not so much a learning as a tempering experience, the pain of it setting the two heroes apart from their kind in a way mere celebrity never could.
The connection between mortality and individual identity is fascinating but probably not the whole story. These days parents of identical twins are advised to resist the temptation to dress their children alike but twin identity has a certain fluidity even when this advice is heeded. How much more so if the number sharing your face were not one but many and instead of being the exception proving the rule of individuality, uniformity were the rule. To fulfill their missions the heroes of the cylons have had to live in a world of unique individuals and more than that to learn to love one of those unknowable others. Human poets speak of drowning in love as if it involved a loss of individual identity but you can’t lose what you’ve never had.
A more direct factor messing with the identity of the reborn Six is the presence of a GhostGaius to match the GhostSix who haunts his corporeal counterpart. Dramatically it’s a brilliant device, quite unexpected and yet so obvious once revealed. The in-story causes are still shrouded in mystery, however, I like the idea that Six's dual consciousness might be a glitch in the uploading process caused by extreme radiation and/or Gaius’s proximity in the moment. Baltar’s condition is less explicable in fact now that the blast has been shown to be lethal shouldn’t he be dead? Maybe “duck and cover” works better than we’d thought.
The B story deals with the effects of a birth rather than a rebirth, the alien child of a robot and a spaceman and still managed to make it feel real. Poor Sharon.
( Epiphanies -The Captain's Hand )
More than once cylons have told humans that they can’t die, that their consciousness will always be transferred to another body. The implication was that death has lost its sting for these robot children of humanity. Some doubt was thrown on that conclusion when PegasusSix begged to be released from her serial immortality but that seemed a special case. Similarly, when Sharon explained the re-incarnated rage felt by the raider Scar it seemed a reaction the human models were above – for herself she described death as a learning experience.
This episode begins by revealing the actuality of rebirth and it’s not pretty. Human-like cylon models post-date the first war, none of them can be more than forty years old. Unlike the raiders their lifestyle seems unlikely to put them in mortal peril, how many of them have actually died. Was CapricaSix’s serene confidence in the face of death born of faith rather than memory? It seems not so much a learning as a tempering experience, the pain of it setting the two heroes apart from their kind in a way mere celebrity never could.
The connection between mortality and individual identity is fascinating but probably not the whole story. These days parents of identical twins are advised to resist the temptation to dress their children alike but twin identity has a certain fluidity even when this advice is heeded. How much more so if the number sharing your face were not one but many and instead of being the exception proving the rule of individuality, uniformity were the rule. To fulfill their missions the heroes of the cylons have had to live in a world of unique individuals and more than that to learn to love one of those unknowable others. Human poets speak of drowning in love as if it involved a loss of individual identity but you can’t lose what you’ve never had.
A more direct factor messing with the identity of the reborn Six is the presence of a GhostGaius to match the GhostSix who haunts his corporeal counterpart. Dramatically it’s a brilliant device, quite unexpected and yet so obvious once revealed. The in-story causes are still shrouded in mystery, however, I like the idea that Six's dual consciousness might be a glitch in the uploading process caused by extreme radiation and/or Gaius’s proximity in the moment. Baltar’s condition is less explicable in fact now that the blast has been shown to be lethal shouldn’t he be dead? Maybe “duck and cover” works better than we’d thought.
The B story deals with the effects of a birth rather than a rebirth, the alien child of a robot and a spaceman and still managed to make it feel real. Poor Sharon.
( Epiphanies -The Captain's Hand )