BSG 2.13–18: two to download
Sep. 30th, 2006 09:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hazelkDownloaded
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
On first viewing Epiphanies seemed like the beginning of a new arc with Roslin no longer the dying leader of prophecy and a corporeal Six out there to cause trouble. With hindsight it was actually the first of a series of character study/MOTW episodes, a little like Potential in Buffy S7 turned out to be.
Paradoxically given that she’s in a coma for most of the episode Laura Roslin is the character under study in Epiphanies. This is achieved through a series of flashbacks, a device that rather overstays it’s welcome later but not yet. These are good flashback, showing you things that flesh out the fragments of Laura’s past, things which are also directly relevant to current events. We see she had an affair with the President but unlike the revelation of Lee’s girlfriend-without-a-face or Kara remembering scenes we’d already watched between her and Anders, this isn’t gratuitous romance but a way of demonstrating how Roslin can never be unaware of the political uses of the personal.
The episode also gives good Baltar as he finally earns his genius corn in a blood inspired epiphany (because it’s always about blood). Speaking of BtVS, I’m sensing a certain resemblance to Spike in this new Gauis. Maybe it’s the way love gives him focus or maybe it’s the narcissism that underlies that love even as he places himself at considerable risk for the object of his affections. But that’s always been the paradox with the good doctor, becoming human makes him more flawed not less.
The MOTW element for this episode is not Baltar, however, but a previously unhinted at, pro-cylon, terrorist peace movement. Like the flashbacks, this is a device that gets badly overused in this part of the season. The big unanswered question of the series is whether humans are a race worth saving but we never get to see what most of what remains of it is like. What do the appeasers, a thriving black market and a revenge driven hostage taker have in common? The one aspect of civilian life that does form a coherent thread is the influence wielded by religion, especially fundamentalist religion. In The Captain’s Hand, it’s the one thing that makes sense of Laura Roslin’s acquiescence to the otherwise nonsensical idea that banning abortion is essential for population growth. Similarly the terrorist movement in Epiphanieswas almost redeemed by their talk of God in the singular, presumably the cylon God or a close relative.
Of the remaining episodes Black Market has one good scene between Lee and Tom Zarek, in which the real life history of the actor playing Zarek makes the indication that Tom is Lee’s future, the future of all true idealists perhaps, especially poignant. Sacrifice was largely perfunctory rather than actively bad but the building up of Billy, the last true civilian, in order to kill him was Whedonesquely effective, all the more so for Roslin’s viscerally acted response to his loss. Scar, the episode with the most traditional monster as MOTW, avoided the civilian issue altogether, its non-protagonists were the other viper pilots made fully three-dimensional. The exploration of Starbuck’s issues was similarly layered and her eulogy at the end when we (and perhaps she) discover that she does remember the names of the dead was deeply affecting.
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
On first viewing Epiphanies seemed like the beginning of a new arc with Roslin no longer the dying leader of prophecy and a corporeal Six out there to cause trouble. With hindsight it was actually the first of a series of character study/MOTW episodes, a little like Potential in Buffy S7 turned out to be.
Paradoxically given that she’s in a coma for most of the episode Laura Roslin is the character under study in Epiphanies. This is achieved through a series of flashbacks, a device that rather overstays it’s welcome later but not yet. These are good flashback, showing you things that flesh out the fragments of Laura’s past, things which are also directly relevant to current events. We see she had an affair with the President but unlike the revelation of Lee’s girlfriend-without-a-face or Kara remembering scenes we’d already watched between her and Anders, this isn’t gratuitous romance but a way of demonstrating how Roslin can never be unaware of the political uses of the personal.
The episode also gives good Baltar as he finally earns his genius corn in a blood inspired epiphany (because it’s always about blood). Speaking of BtVS, I’m sensing a certain resemblance to Spike in this new Gauis. Maybe it’s the way love gives him focus or maybe it’s the narcissism that underlies that love even as he places himself at considerable risk for the object of his affections. But that’s always been the paradox with the good doctor, becoming human makes him more flawed not less.
The MOTW element for this episode is not Baltar, however, but a previously unhinted at, pro-cylon, terrorist peace movement. Like the flashbacks, this is a device that gets badly overused in this part of the season. The big unanswered question of the series is whether humans are a race worth saving but we never get to see what most of what remains of it is like. What do the appeasers, a thriving black market and a revenge driven hostage taker have in common? The one aspect of civilian life that does form a coherent thread is the influence wielded by religion, especially fundamentalist religion. In The Captain’s Hand, it’s the one thing that makes sense of Laura Roslin’s acquiescence to the otherwise nonsensical idea that banning abortion is essential for population growth. Similarly the terrorist movement in Epiphanieswas almost redeemed by their talk of God in the singular, presumably the cylon God or a close relative.
Of the remaining episodes Black Market has one good scene between Lee and Tom Zarek, in which the real life history of the actor playing Zarek makes the indication that Tom is Lee’s future, the future of all true idealists perhaps, especially poignant. Sacrifice was largely perfunctory rather than actively bad but the building up of Billy, the last true civilian, in order to kill him was Whedonesquely effective, all the more so for Roslin’s viscerally acted response to his loss. Scar, the episode with the most traditional monster as MOTW, avoided the civilian issue altogether, its non-protagonists were the other viper pilots made fully three-dimensional. The exploration of Starbuck’s issues was similarly layered and her eulogy at the end when we (and perhaps she) discover that she does remember the names of the dead was deeply affecting.