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Nov. 15th, 2006 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenLast night's House needs to win an Emmy for everyone, even stupid Robert Sean Leonard and stupid Wilson. There are special awards we can give to just the episode, right? It was so good, probably one of the best I've seen. Hugh Laurie is always amazing, but last night he almost made ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
feiran and I cry (that's not hyperbole, that's truth). John Laroquette was the patient-of-the-week sorta, and he was FANTASTIC. Last time I saw him, it was on Night Court, so I was blown away with what he did here. Wow. Just wow, wow, wow.
As I catch up with shows I missed while I was in San Francisco, I'm going to post metas on them. Since I'd seen Battlestar Galactica before I left, I actually hand-wrote a meta treatise on my feelings about the episode. I don't have it with me, so I'll see if I can recreate it.
Okay, first and foremost, I call BULLSHIT on that ending. Helo's freaking out--his legitimate concern that his actions would have serious repercussions--was credible and real and actually scared me that he was correct to worry. This show found its footing again when they offed Ellen Tigh. They blew Jammer out an airlock in the first five minutes of an episode. Helo could die. Especially with all the stupid crap he was spouting ("The Cylons tried to live with us on New Caprica"? HOLY FUCK, I thought Roslin was gonna airlock him right the fuck there, I would have thrown the lock with her). It would have been the HARD CHOICE to kill someone as lovable as Helo, something which I expect this show to be willing to do.
And...nothing. I say again, BULLSHIT, sirs and madams. Adama not willing to kill Helo, fine, I buy it. He never felt the whole wipe-out-the-Cylons-the-cowardly-way plan that Lee came up with (oh Gods, so much to say about that Adama-Adama stuff; maybe another time), and he wasn't going to let Helo take the fall for something that he scapegoated Roslin on the responsibility for in the first place (I totally buy him making her make him do it; he's the warrior, he takes no pride in killing what cannot defend itself, which is why his anger is so righteous against the Cylons because they killed without considering that point of honor). He kept Helo alive when he and the Chief killed that rapist officer from Pegasus, so he's not going to space Helo like Roslin's itching to do (she and Zarek need never to speak of this, or it will happen).
I don't buy Roslin letting him off. I just don't. She'll make Helo pay for this or else I will stay royally pissed at this show the way I did when they didn't let Roslin die of her cancer. I don't believe for a second that Helo will not be immediately targeted by people with no authority (or, at least, not the supreme authority enjoyed by Adama and Roslin), much as he was for falling in love with Athena in the first place, but this is way, way worse. Bringing home a pregnant Cylon that you won't let people kill is ONE Cylon humanity must tolerate. Preventing the whole of Cylon kind from being destroyed when they are still itching to kill (they did engage the Galactica when she jumped to find them, so they're still spoiling for a fight) and are trying to find your Holy Grail before you do? NO ONE IS GOING TO FORGIVE YOU, KARL AGATHON. He is so dead. And they would have done better, been braver, to kill him now than to assume he'll sweat it out every episode like Baltar. Helo has self-righteousness on his side, but he doesn't have Baltar's self-delusion; whenever someone runs afoul of the Cylons and doesn't come back (the pilots who died on the sabotaged mission, for example), it is on his head. He will eventually die so much on the inside, it won't matter.
And he's wrong about Athena having been a person before being with him. He assumes that Athena was not 100% with the Cylon when they said, "Go forth and multiply among the humans." She signed on for that. Only when she was isolated, physically and emotionally changed by being with Helo, did she renounce her heritage. But you can't do that for every Cylon. Assume the best, assume a 100% conversion rate for Cylons introduced into the human population. You need them to be immersed, surrounded by humans who would love them, care for them, and treat them well. I dare you to find more than a few thousand of the survivors who'd do that, and most of them are on Galactica, where respect can be bought with service and sweat (which is why they like Athena--she is willing to fight as they do, fight for, with, beside them).
Do the frakkin math, people. Because survival is all about the maths. Say that in order to truly immerse the Cylon, you have to have a saturation of 20 people, bare minimum. Out of 2-3000 that might managed that, you get maybe 100 Cylons who can make the Athenian transition. Assume no one will try to kill them (they'll have to live on Galactica because I wouldn't wager they're safe anywhere else, not with how willing some humans were to kill other humans over the New Caprica shit). That's 100. How many Cylon are there? Of the human models, assume equal distribution, so say maybe 10-20,000 per model (guesstimate based on basestar/resurrection ship size)--75,000 to 150,000 or so to find 100 out of, a conversion rate of 0.13-0.06%. For that to work, you have to assume no further hostilities against mankind that would diminish the numbers willing to comingle with Cylon agents. So, the 100 assumes thirty different impossibilities and unliklihoods before even acknowledging that the probably millions of raiders and centurions (who are going to do--what, exactly, about this conversion stuff?) will cock it all up royal. For the presumption of attaining 100, Helo damns 40,000 and embraces the genocide of the human race. I can't frakkin' believe it.
And frak it all, IT IS NOT GENOCIDE. That is a human projection, the kind they are best capable of, onto the Cylon. Genocide versus extermination (where are the Daleks when I need them?), that's the real comparison. It is genocide to kill something that can think for itself, fine, if you want to define it that way. It is becoming like the Cylon to kill as they do? NOT TRUE. Because you don't think as the Cylon do. The Cylon do not think as we do. They aren't a unit of devisive elements pulling in different directions. We see them fight over whether to leave the sick basestar, but Three says "JUMP" and they all make like frogs without it having ever been about her being in charge. Boomer and Caprica are rogue elements, incalculable to Cylon maths. When the Cylon attacked, they attacked with every model, every raider, every basestar saying, "Yes, this is what we have determined to be right." The model that did not? Boomer, and that was because she hadn't been allowed her Cylon right to know herself. Caprica mourned Gaius only after, she did not mourn the destruction of the world from whence came her name. You cannot apply human concepts to them. There are no innocents, no civilians, no disengaged among the Cylon. Those 100 who might convert, who might believe as Athena does, as Caprica did, and as Boomer can never decide if she does? They're not there. They could be, sure, just as an inmate might find God in prison. Does that mean his past crime is erased? Not at all.
That's an apt metaphor, I guess, because what if that criminal were on death row? Does his potential to find God save him from death? Hopefully, no matter what your feeling on the death penalty, you will say, "no," here. Regardless of punishment expected, the price of justice, the penalty cannot be waived for the change. You pay for your mistakes. The Cylon agree they were wrong to attempt to exterminate humanity. They wish to make amends. They then procede to make an utter mess of it and still wind up killing and killing and killing. How have they changed except to say they are not unaffected by it. Fantastic, you're affected. You are still killing Duck's wife, threatening Cally's, going to execute the ex-President and ex-Vice President of the Colonies, you engage in hostile actions with the human military, you torture Baltar, you kidnap Hera.
Would it have sucked if they wiped out the Cylon? Yes. Is it, morally speaking wrong? Not as much as the show tried to make a case for. For once, Lee and I were in complete agreement. He's a soldier again, and he knows that the Cylons are soldiers. They are all, as one, as parts, even as "persons" soldiers. They kill as a unit, they slaughter as a matter of course, and they never veer from their path. He didn't have to be on the ground to see that; he's actually worked it out just fine. Much as he respects "Karl's wife," he sees that she, too, is a soldier. The one Cylon humanity tolerates is a soldier (true, she cannot walk off the ship and expect to be trusted; Galactica is her only hope of survival, but still, she chose to be the soldier Adama needed, and she remains so even at the threat of being the last of her kind, even at the notion of pulling the proverbial trigger herself, and ooooh, I want to compare her to the Doctor now, but I'm going to shut up before I run away on a tangent).
The Cylon are not people. They don't act it, they don't have the crises of self-discovery, self-identification that humans do when they are not around humans. The answer, obviously, is to put them at the saturation point for humans and integrate. That's the divine solution. The realistic solution is "There can be only one." The Cylon, for all their talk, haven't worked out a way not to just kill, kill, kill, and the humans were never really into the other thing either (again, Athena being the exception). The Cylon are warriors, soldiers--always and to a model. You kill no innocents if you wipe them out. If it is wrong to disrespect their strength and power by killing them with a disease, all right, I confess, that's wrong and that is genocide. However, to entirely wipe them out through other methods? That is not. When I say killing all Cylons is not genocide, that's what I mean. Killing them this way, you can make a case for it, but it's still more workable than the other, and I don't fault anyone for seeing it as the easier option. That is human. And something that the Cylon, with their short disagreement and then immediate reprogramming, cannot understand on their own. Since working them to a point where they could is practicaly infeasible, it's not genocide so much as reluctant slaughter to get rid of them the other way.
Whew. That was more than I'd written before. I'm just angry at this episode not-dealing with stuff or conflating certain points of view. There's a serious problem with the way Helo treats the Cylon--and, yes, because he's bias and blinded--and I hate it because it's so tragic. It's giving the enemy humanity, which is so impossible to do (look at how humans treat each other when they are enemies, and see how awful that is) under most circumstances, but he does without question. It's just that, as in all sci-fi set ups with an alien/robot/et al other, we're supposed to be allowed to see them as not like us and therefore not worthy of our consideration as people only they really are let's have a hippie love fest like Star Trek VI when we're through. In this case, though, the Cylon existence and view point are so different that treating them like people IS A HUGE FRAKKIN MISTAKE.
::seethes::
feiran and I cry (that's not hyperbole, that's truth). John Laroquette was the patient-of-the-week sorta, and he was FANTASTIC. Last time I saw him, it was on Night Court, so I was blown away with what he did here. Wow. Just wow, wow, wow.As I catch up with shows I missed while I was in San Francisco, I'm going to post metas on them. Since I'd seen Battlestar Galactica before I left, I actually hand-wrote a meta treatise on my feelings about the episode. I don't have it with me, so I'll see if I can recreate it.
Okay, first and foremost, I call BULLSHIT on that ending. Helo's freaking out--his legitimate concern that his actions would have serious repercussions--was credible and real and actually scared me that he was correct to worry. This show found its footing again when they offed Ellen Tigh. They blew Jammer out an airlock in the first five minutes of an episode. Helo could die. Especially with all the stupid crap he was spouting ("The Cylons tried to live with us on New Caprica"? HOLY FUCK, I thought Roslin was gonna airlock him right the fuck there, I would have thrown the lock with her). It would have been the HARD CHOICE to kill someone as lovable as Helo, something which I expect this show to be willing to do.
And...nothing. I say again, BULLSHIT, sirs and madams. Adama not willing to kill Helo, fine, I buy it. He never felt the whole wipe-out-the-Cylons-the-cowardly-way plan that Lee came up with (oh Gods, so much to say about that Adama-Adama stuff; maybe another time), and he wasn't going to let Helo take the fall for something that he scapegoated Roslin on the responsibility for in the first place (I totally buy him making her make him do it; he's the warrior, he takes no pride in killing what cannot defend itself, which is why his anger is so righteous against the Cylons because they killed without considering that point of honor). He kept Helo alive when he and the Chief killed that rapist officer from Pegasus, so he's not going to space Helo like Roslin's itching to do (she and Zarek need never to speak of this, or it will happen).
I don't buy Roslin letting him off. I just don't. She'll make Helo pay for this or else I will stay royally pissed at this show the way I did when they didn't let Roslin die of her cancer. I don't believe for a second that Helo will not be immediately targeted by people with no authority (or, at least, not the supreme authority enjoyed by Adama and Roslin), much as he was for falling in love with Athena in the first place, but this is way, way worse. Bringing home a pregnant Cylon that you won't let people kill is ONE Cylon humanity must tolerate. Preventing the whole of Cylon kind from being destroyed when they are still itching to kill (they did engage the Galactica when she jumped to find them, so they're still spoiling for a fight) and are trying to find your Holy Grail before you do? NO ONE IS GOING TO FORGIVE YOU, KARL AGATHON. He is so dead. And they would have done better, been braver, to kill him now than to assume he'll sweat it out every episode like Baltar. Helo has self-righteousness on his side, but he doesn't have Baltar's self-delusion; whenever someone runs afoul of the Cylons and doesn't come back (the pilots who died on the sabotaged mission, for example), it is on his head. He will eventually die so much on the inside, it won't matter.
And he's wrong about Athena having been a person before being with him. He assumes that Athena was not 100% with the Cylon when they said, "Go forth and multiply among the humans." She signed on for that. Only when she was isolated, physically and emotionally changed by being with Helo, did she renounce her heritage. But you can't do that for every Cylon. Assume the best, assume a 100% conversion rate for Cylons introduced into the human population. You need them to be immersed, surrounded by humans who would love them, care for them, and treat them well. I dare you to find more than a few thousand of the survivors who'd do that, and most of them are on Galactica, where respect can be bought with service and sweat (which is why they like Athena--she is willing to fight as they do, fight for, with, beside them).
Do the frakkin math, people. Because survival is all about the maths. Say that in order to truly immerse the Cylon, you have to have a saturation of 20 people, bare minimum. Out of 2-3000 that might managed that, you get maybe 100 Cylons who can make the Athenian transition. Assume no one will try to kill them (they'll have to live on Galactica because I wouldn't wager they're safe anywhere else, not with how willing some humans were to kill other humans over the New Caprica shit). That's 100. How many Cylon are there? Of the human models, assume equal distribution, so say maybe 10-20,000 per model (guesstimate based on basestar/resurrection ship size)--75,000 to 150,000 or so to find 100 out of, a conversion rate of 0.13-0.06%. For that to work, you have to assume no further hostilities against mankind that would diminish the numbers willing to comingle with Cylon agents. So, the 100 assumes thirty different impossibilities and unliklihoods before even acknowledging that the probably millions of raiders and centurions (who are going to do--what, exactly, about this conversion stuff?) will cock it all up royal. For the presumption of attaining 100, Helo damns 40,000 and embraces the genocide of the human race. I can't frakkin' believe it.
And frak it all, IT IS NOT GENOCIDE. That is a human projection, the kind they are best capable of, onto the Cylon. Genocide versus extermination (where are the Daleks when I need them?), that's the real comparison. It is genocide to kill something that can think for itself, fine, if you want to define it that way. It is becoming like the Cylon to kill as they do? NOT TRUE. Because you don't think as the Cylon do. The Cylon do not think as we do. They aren't a unit of devisive elements pulling in different directions. We see them fight over whether to leave the sick basestar, but Three says "JUMP" and they all make like frogs without it having ever been about her being in charge. Boomer and Caprica are rogue elements, incalculable to Cylon maths. When the Cylon attacked, they attacked with every model, every raider, every basestar saying, "Yes, this is what we have determined to be right." The model that did not? Boomer, and that was because she hadn't been allowed her Cylon right to know herself. Caprica mourned Gaius only after, she did not mourn the destruction of the world from whence came her name. You cannot apply human concepts to them. There are no innocents, no civilians, no disengaged among the Cylon. Those 100 who might convert, who might believe as Athena does, as Caprica did, and as Boomer can never decide if she does? They're not there. They could be, sure, just as an inmate might find God in prison. Does that mean his past crime is erased? Not at all.
That's an apt metaphor, I guess, because what if that criminal were on death row? Does his potential to find God save him from death? Hopefully, no matter what your feeling on the death penalty, you will say, "no," here. Regardless of punishment expected, the price of justice, the penalty cannot be waived for the change. You pay for your mistakes. The Cylon agree they were wrong to attempt to exterminate humanity. They wish to make amends. They then procede to make an utter mess of it and still wind up killing and killing and killing. How have they changed except to say they are not unaffected by it. Fantastic, you're affected. You are still killing Duck's wife, threatening Cally's, going to execute the ex-President and ex-Vice President of the Colonies, you engage in hostile actions with the human military, you torture Baltar, you kidnap Hera.
Would it have sucked if they wiped out the Cylon? Yes. Is it, morally speaking wrong? Not as much as the show tried to make a case for. For once, Lee and I were in complete agreement. He's a soldier again, and he knows that the Cylons are soldiers. They are all, as one, as parts, even as "persons" soldiers. They kill as a unit, they slaughter as a matter of course, and they never veer from their path. He didn't have to be on the ground to see that; he's actually worked it out just fine. Much as he respects "Karl's wife," he sees that she, too, is a soldier. The one Cylon humanity tolerates is a soldier (true, she cannot walk off the ship and expect to be trusted; Galactica is her only hope of survival, but still, she chose to be the soldier Adama needed, and she remains so even at the threat of being the last of her kind, even at the notion of pulling the proverbial trigger herself, and ooooh, I want to compare her to the Doctor now, but I'm going to shut up before I run away on a tangent).
The Cylon are not people. They don't act it, they don't have the crises of self-discovery, self-identification that humans do when they are not around humans. The answer, obviously, is to put them at the saturation point for humans and integrate. That's the divine solution. The realistic solution is "There can be only one." The Cylon, for all their talk, haven't worked out a way not to just kill, kill, kill, and the humans were never really into the other thing either (again, Athena being the exception). The Cylon are warriors, soldiers--always and to a model. You kill no innocents if you wipe them out. If it is wrong to disrespect their strength and power by killing them with a disease, all right, I confess, that's wrong and that is genocide. However, to entirely wipe them out through other methods? That is not. When I say killing all Cylons is not genocide, that's what I mean. Killing them this way, you can make a case for it, but it's still more workable than the other, and I don't fault anyone for seeing it as the easier option. That is human. And something that the Cylon, with their short disagreement and then immediate reprogramming, cannot understand on their own. Since working them to a point where they could is practicaly infeasible, it's not genocide so much as reluctant slaughter to get rid of them the other way.
Whew. That was more than I'd written before. I'm just angry at this episode not-dealing with stuff or conflating certain points of view. There's a serious problem with the way Helo treats the Cylon--and, yes, because he's bias and blinded--and I hate it because it's so tragic. It's giving the enemy humanity, which is so impossible to do (look at how humans treat each other when they are enemies, and see how awful that is) under most circumstances, but he does without question. It's just that, as in all sci-fi set ups with an alien/robot/et al other, we're supposed to be allowed to see them as not like us and therefore not worthy of our consideration as people only they really are let's have a hippie love fest like Star Trek VI when we're through. In this case, though, the Cylon existence and view point are so different that treating them like people IS A HUGE FRAKKIN MISTAKE.
::seethes::
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Date: 2006-11-15 07:32 pm (UTC)Not.
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Date: 2006-11-15 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-15 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-15 09:57 pm (UTC)SPOILER
Date: 2006-11-15 08:19 pm (UTC)1) Athena isn't immune to the virus (or they don't know she is)--when Helo kills the other infected Cylons, Adama has to choose to kill Athena instead. Helo made a big mistake! Adama either refuses to kill her because he's too attached (basically, the rules break down for an individual) or they execute her and find out that the virus acted differently in her because she had a baby...the virus isn't carried to the Cylons (preserving continuity) and Athena died for nothing. Angst! Conflict! They'd have to pick up a new Sharon model in a future episode, of course.
2) The episode plays out exactly as it did, but Athena disagrees with Helo's decision and treats him like a traitor, even though her people didn't die. If she really is a soldier now, and human, there's no way she should be relieved that the mission failed. Her speech meant nothing.
Re: SPOILER
Date: 2006-11-15 09:50 pm (UTC)I think it would be hard if Athena turned Helo in. I think it's actually very human to repudiate your family but not want them to come to harm, even if they're evil.
Time to call you on a few things
Date: 2006-11-15 08:42 pm (UTC)First, I think we can both agree where you pulled those numbers from for your math segment. We both do not have enough data to come up with any kind of realistic projection of cylon turn rates, esp with 5 models unaccounted for. I would say though that there seems to be common elements that would cause a cylon to turn in those limited examples we have to go off of.
Second, even you have to admit that your argument for why killing all cylons is not genocide is weak at best and down right wrong otherwise. The "they don't think like us" or "they are not like us" arguments have been used to justify most if not all genocidal campaigns throughout history. To accept a single case as justified is to accept all cases as justified. You can't say that "it is ok just this once". It doesn't work that way. If you want to kill off all cylons, fine. But don't hide behind niceties and false justifications just so you can sleep at night. It is what it is.
Now for my personal opinion. I think you're wrong when you say Cylons aren't people. As a matter of fact they are children, and very confused ones at that. Cylons are as much victims of humans as humans are of them. The "skin jobs" came about after the human cylon war and were conceived from the horrors of that war. They saw how their infant mechanical forms were hurt by the humans, and thought what if we made it so they can't hurt us again. Even their concept of death was vastly different since their minds can go to a new working body if their current one were damaged (like hair growing back). Many follow a faith that says that death is not the end, but rather a bump in the road, so it's not like the humans are gone.
But like the onset of puberty, love (human love) made some of them grow up. They looked out to the world they created and realized the wrongs they committed (to some extent). They tried to right those wrongs, but fell into old habits (not uncommon in difficult times). Now the cylons are pubescent war orphans following an instinct they inherited from their human ancestors (humans gave birth to the first cylons after all). What makes them dangerous is that their guns are bigger than those of their so called parents (abusive parents at that).
If you had to judge the cylons, you have to remember that they are a reflection of the humans who gave birth to them. Their actions, no matter how good or bad, are what they learned from human nature.
Re: Time to call you on a few things
Date: 2006-11-15 10:14 pm (UTC)Estimates based on clues provided solely within the narrative. When Pegasus and the Laura go to blow up the resurrection ship, Baltar is in the cell with Gina. Chip!Six says that tens of thousands of Cylons are going to die. So, your average resurrection ship should be able to accomodate those numbers. Let's say she only said thousands--we've seen there are more resurrection ships, so they can handle numbers, but still, I'd say the average one must at least accomodate a few tens of thousands if only to be sure of not losing the raiders' consciousnesses. The rest of the numbers are based on gross extrapolation, I grant you. Truthfully, all you need is one person to turn a Cylon--Boomer for the Chief, Athena for Helo, Caprica for Baltar, Leoben for Kara, and, possibly, Three for Baltar as well (definitely Three for Hera). However, to sustain that Cylon, you need support. You need Kara defending Helo. You need Athena appealing to Adama. You have Boomer on her own or Leoben off his rocker, and then they're dead, forgotten, back to Cylon kind.
So, saying "20" for a support network is just a reasonable guess. It's not completely out of nowhere, given human socialization patterns. Athena, the most integrated, enjoys the respect of a fighter squadron, and how many pilots were in the mess tossing names at her until Hotdog's stuck? Maybe forty. Of those, twenty would trust her implicitly, and among their number are some high ups (the Adamas both at this point, Kara, Helo, definitely Anders, don't forget him). They have the advantage, too, of knowing her and trusting her in a life-or-death situation, so even if it's only those few trusting her, they trust her utterly and rely on her. You won't find so happy a situation off of Galactica, so, yes, I'd say twenty is a generous estimate.
As for the other numbers, I did estimate a lot. If you could seed a Cylon every 20 people, you'd get 2000 of them into the Fleet. That's assuming the 38-39,000 survivors of New Caprica would willingly integrate with their former oppressors when they a) have been hunted by them forever, b) didn't do so on New Caprica, and c) have renewed their dislike of them since. Also, at too high a saturation of Cylons in the Fleet, there is the understandble likelihood that the Cylons, being rejected, would consult amongst themselves, and would not fully integrate. That's why I set the saturation point so very far below that maximum of 2k. I don't see the 38,000 non-military types being overly trusting or all that supportive of Cylons wanting a change. As you've said, there are things that you can and can't do in anger, and that is one they definitely can't. At least, not for a very, very longer while than this show will have legs for (unless we skip merrily ahead in time another thirty times).
Saying they're not humans isn't the same as saying they're not people, but they're not, not really
Date: 2006-11-15 10:30 pm (UTC)In that way, I think the show's opening credits are misleading: they evolved, sure, but once. Individuals like Athena and Caprica mutated but were unable to transplant their mutation back to the others. The guiding light of evolution is the spread of genes, the rise of mutations that change the population. The love mutation has changed individuals but left them effectively sterile; the Cylon won't take them; Three would have boxed Boomer, Caprica, and Athena. They are not children, they are just stagnated beings. Children have potential; the Cylon actively supress it.
When I say the Cylon don't think as humans, I mean it, and I know how awful it sounds, but I am not judging them for it. They are as God created them. And, excuse me, but it was very offensive of you to assume I'd be in league with monsters who think that that makes it okay for killing. I understand that saying "Muslims don't think like us; kill all brown people" is terrible, disgusting, and uneducated. What I'm actually saying here is more nuanced, subtle, that the thinking of the Cylon isn't just difference of opinion or outlook or religion--it's a different existence period. They don't die, they respawn. However, they fully know that humans don't and they weren't sending the humans they killed to God, they were killing them so they could not return. That's monstrous, not insane. They are soldiers, all, they don't stop being what they are or what they came from, EXCEPT where they have intimate (note: not necessarily sexual) relationships with humans who change their thinking so they are not Cylon one-of-many to Sharon, a person. Executing the ones who can't make that gap and are determined to stay murderers? It may be a genocide of the ones with the potential to change (and who, circumstances allowing, would), but it's the only option left while the Cylon themselves remain so intractably uniform. Until they accept the radical mutations and experience them to a model, they will reject the aspect of humanity that could save them. Rather like the virus that spread among them, love will change them, cripple their efficiency and cunning and coldness. It will bring them to being people, though. The virus spreading as a metaphor for love and it being rejected by Helo is actually more frightening--the message is that they aren't worthy, and never will be.
Re: Saying they're not humans isn't the same as saying they're not people, but they're not, not real
Date: 2006-11-16 02:40 pm (UTC)Actually my point was that I know you don't really believe such things but were falling into the same logic patterns as people who do. So I was trying to bring you back to yourself.
As for the cylon as soldiers argument, I don't agree. The cylon progenitors (mechanical ones) were soldiers. The "skin jobs" are kids. Though one could make the argument that they are playing soldier in a dysfunctional PTS fashion. Their unity is so thinly veiled, and their inner conflicts show up quite a bit. Watching the episodes where they interact with one another, it isn't hard to see how they act like little kids. Their use of the word love, their affectionate expressions towards raiders as pets (you can really replace the raider with a puppy or kitten and see the same response), even how they argue and come to decisions is more akin to a collection of kids than adults. Look at the example of #3's jump order. They were still trying to decide as a group what to do, but then a loud voice said do something and they did it. Hell even how they treat the hybrid shows a childlike nature with the hybrid being the social reject. Watching cylons is like watching K-4th graders interacting without the presence of an adult.
Once you view the cylon's actions through the same lens as looking at kids, you really begin to see that they are far more human (in body and mind) than the humans of the show give them credit for. I'm not sure I buy the "love is a mutation" line of thought. But as stated before love does change a cylon. If human-cylon hybrids weren't so hard to make I would imagine the cylon threat to go away by simple virtue of becoming parents, which would actually teach them the significance of loss. Fact is that right now the only loss the cylons have faced is having their toys taken away for a time (till they can be replaced).
....damn I got a meeting in a few minutes so I'll have to leave it there for now. I'll get to how the "effectively sterile" comment is undone by the "they are kids" argument later (I hope).
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Date: 2006-11-15 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-15 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-16 12:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-16 12:48 am (UTC)It's possible that the missing five, however, are the upset to that balance. It seemed like Caprica was afraid of those five, or at least reverent as she would be unto her God about them. So, either they're super holy, and thus superior to the cabal of seven, or they're the complete opposite--untouchables, of a Cylon sort.
As for the rest, mah, whatever to the genocide stuff. I half don't agree with me either, that's why this show is good. The Helo stuff, though, that I will stand by. What a whiner.
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Date: 2006-11-16 06:13 am (UTC)The Cylons had the chance to demonstrate that they could change. They had the chance to be something complex and interesting, as I'd been hoping they would throughout season 1 & much of season 2.
They didn't. They showed up, they interacted with people again, but the psycho faction won out and they decided to Kill All Humans (TM). Ok, they're an inexplicably evil and unchangeable malicious force again, and we really have no option left but to kill them. Evil robots, ho-hum.
I fully agree with you that the Cylons are no longer sympathetic or redeemable. But to me, that kills the entire series, because humanity is either boned, or in dire need of coming up with a clever way to kill a vastly overwhelming number of psychopaths. The stakes have been raised such that one side must go. Logically, it'll be the humans, and I hope taht the writers at least have the balls left to do that much, but absent something even more deus ex machina than the average "my plot hobbyhorse says that it has to go this way" episode, the races won't ever coexist in an interesting way, and that was the hope that kept the show from being just vignette after vignette in the Great Space Chase. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the writers will channel all this "God speaks to us!" stuff into some kind of unexpected resolution, but it won't be one I'll buy, because they had their chance and they blew it. They'll require divine intervention to keep this plot from going towards its inevitable conclusion.
Well, maybe we'll still get to find out that Balthar is a Cylon. That'd be cool.
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Date: 2006-11-16 06:22 am (UTC)Next you have the bit you and I both mentioned with the whole Cylon-evolution-stopped-at-the-humanoid-model-upgrade problem. Where I would be appalled at the genocide of robots that think and act, I cannot be appalled at the deaths of robots that walk around self-deluded into believing their regime of genocide, murder (yes, separately), torture, and kidnapping is all right by GOD. That is not all right, and saying it's the sky fairy's will is just weak--as Cavil says, they're covering their existential asses (I notice he wasn't on hand to comment about the infected basestar--that's probably Dean Stockwell being busy, but still, it's noticeable, like Leoben being missing from the government of New Caprica).
It breaks my heart that Helo is ready, as few heroes ever are, to declare the right of his enemy to live, to be confused, to be "human" (not literally, but to have, for lack of a better term, humanity) when the usual trope is to establish an other so that humans might beat up on it as inhuman. In this case, that cliche is sort of turned on its ear according to what's happened because that other really isn't anything like human, with no sympathy or dilemmas to make them so. I hope they fix this, and soon, but I'm as skeptical of a believable resolution as you at this point.
Note, though, I am still willing to watch and write novels about the show. Must be doing something right.