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[trinityvixen]

Last 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 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::

Comments

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

Emmys, if memory serves, ARE given for individual episodes.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

No kidding? Awesome, I want House to win then for that one. Because it was awesome.