Guess who caught up with her television?

[trinityvixen]

I watch last Friday's Battlestar Galactica and was hurting for poor Daddy Adama at the same time as I was blown away, yet again, by just how awesome Laura Roslin is. When you think she's at her most cunning, most evisceratingly awesome, she manages to one-up your expectations. It's beyond description how powerful and controlled Mary McDonell's performance is. She makes an award a punishment, and you believe it. Wow.

The rest of the plot, meh. I am glad that they didn't make Bulldog a Cylon, as that would both ruin the five remaining model question and make yet another new entry into the robot, which they've done well before, but I'm through with, thanks (D'Anna and Cavil were brilliant, don't get me wrong, but you can't do it every time and still have dramatic tension). I don't buy Adama feeling like the attacks were his fault for what he did, though I do buy his feeling guilty for shooting down his own man. How weird was it that he and Lee are at this point in their relationship after all their shit that Lee is feeling so badly for his dad that he makes excuses for him? That's fucked up right there.

Speaking of fucked up, D'Anna-Three is officially the newest, craziest Cylon ever. Not only did she have sex with Baltar and Caprica, but she is the second Cylon to have committed suicide (and the only one to do so and regenerate, Gina having perished far from a resurrection ship). That's significant. The sin of suicide was sacred to Gina after all but her faith was stripped from her, so I have to believe that D'Anna getting the centurion to put a bullet through her head is going to wake some powerful shit amongst the skin jobs. She started it with her words in the resurrection bath, babbling about the beauty between life and death (and, wow, she's in Baltar's crazy opera house in her dreams--is his crazy an STD or what?).

But think of the sins of rejection of God's will that each of the individualized Cylons have introduced. Boomer introduced the sin of verbal, spiritual rejection of God in her defiance of Cylon mindset, her determination to remain earthly in her desires and feelings. Caprica commits the sin of murder, the destruction of what is God's creation. Three combines the two into a double sacrilege whilst causing the not-completely-sentient centurion to sin as well. Den of iniquity, that basestar. Also? The courage of Three--bravery beyond what we'd seen from any Cylon so far. She chose death, decided upon it as an experiment. She accepted the very real possibility of pain upon pain, as Cavil had experienced after his third regeneration, accepted that the dissociation might be made greater with her shuffling the mortal coil and all that.

This way--sin--is the means to finally introducing a measure of "humanity" (loosely defined here as an understanding of individuality, loyalty to fellow creatures, and free will) to the Cylon. It allows them to be different, really and truly, because the experiences of Boomer, Caprica, and D'Anna are different enough that they won't translate over a download to the point where they could share with all the eights, sixes, and threes. "If you had ever experienced love," Caprica says, and, of course, Three had not and could not understand. Until more is described about the sharing of memories among the individual characters in each model class, I'd hazard a guess that none can experience exactly what his brother or her sister does without going through the same for his/herself. Which would mean that however many separate units can be carved out of each model class, that many will have to go through insanity or love (or are those terms redundant?) before the whole of the Cylon can change and become Cylons. End meta.

Only real nitpick, aside from the fact that the main story was less interesting than the shit going down between Bill and Saul (or Starbuck and Tigh--best friends foh-evahs!)? Roslin taking Helo's hand at the ceremony. Man, she's classy. I'd be kicking his stupid ass in the shins.

Comments

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Balthar = irresistible pimp daddy of the Cylon lay-dees.

eeeeech.

As for your meta, I think the writers are taking an end run here by (almost) never showing us any cylon of the 3/6/Boomer lines who isn't the reincarnation of one of those. I feel like logically, if the downloading process and data-distribution process is not exact and widespread, that every individual of the model line should become massively different anyway due to different experiences -- of course we don't really know what Cylon society is like from the inside, aside from the Headspace!Balthar episode, but there's something fishy going on where we have the characters we've given names to, and they're standing out and representing individuals to us, but against a backdrop of every other model from their model lines.

I guess what I'm saying is that the other 6es are scenery. Of course they have no personality -- not because they *couldn't* or *don't* but because the writers never show us their characters. It's entirely possible that they *do* have the same level of differentiation (though not as prompted by the unpredictability of meeting an actual human, especially a[n apparently] sexy human like Balthar) as in the character-individuals. We just wouldn't know, because every time we see a 6 who talks for more than 2 seconds, it's Caprica!Six.

Yet at the same time I don't quite buy that the 3-6-boomer-etc experiences don't translate after downloading. I mean to really make a call on that we'd have to know a lot more than we do about the way active Cylons' information-sharing works, though...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I guess what I'm saying is that the other 6es are scenery. Of course they have no personality -- not because they *couldn't* or *don't* but because the writers never show us their characters. It's entirely possible that they *do* have the same level of differentiation (though not as prompted by the unpredictability of meeting an actual human, especially a[n apparently] sexy human like Balthar) as in the character-individuals. We just wouldn't know, because every time we see a 6 who talks for more than 2 seconds, it's Caprica!Six.

But we do hear from the mouthpiece that there is a consensus. The debate over Baltar rested with the Sixes to determine, undermined in their unity by the presence of an abberrant unit (Caprica). On New Caprica, the sixes we see do not speak as individuals, nor do any of the Cylon. That's where pronouns really get you in this show--how you refer to yourself and others communicates something about you. The Cylon are the Cylon, not Cylons. The Sixes (interesting that they are plural, where the Cylon are not) say they are "we." It's possible, of course, that's just representation at a forum, that use of the we signifies a collective of individuals, but the mirror-image Six nodding along, then the two of them turning displeased eyes upon CapricaSix and saying, "Most of us do"? I doubt they are as individualized as such.

There might be another layer of individuality, too. Caprica, Boomer, and D'Anna-Three have all died and been resurrected. Perhaps it takes that kind of sacrifice to begin to truly identify as self first, Cylon sister/brother second. Look at Leoben--his repeated deaths drove him even more insane and obsessive than he had been. Arguably, he'd been created to be slightly insane, slightly in more tune with the divine, the surest way to get crazy real fast, than any other model save the Hybrid. It's hard to get a read on his going more insane as a result, but the copy that kept coming back to Starbuck was fucked up and only got worse as he went. First, he dies out an airlock and then imprisons Starbuck as his pet. Somewhere over the course of four deaths, he's gotten so used to dying (despite what Cavil describes as being sublime, torturous pain between regenerations) that he spits in the face of it, mocks that thing of beauty Three discovered between states. He returns, pressing Kara not for love but specifically for union--the mention of wanting her to come to bed (sleep with him, either way), of producing a child (product of union) for to tie her closer to him, throttling her when she is about to escape (unity until death). That is fucked up severe.

Then you have Three. The first (again, assuming they don't know that Athena shot another Sharon helping Helo on Caprica) to have been murdered, the first regenerated Cylon to have died via suicide. The first to have been maimed by another (Athena--and, given Three's stated preference for regeneration over healing and her quick recovery from the bullets, I'd say she opted to die again there--three times damned). She wasn't all that stable or upfront to begin with. Now she, unlike any other Three we've been exposed to, has died two-three times. I have to believe the transition of regeneration, for conscious, fully independent (even among the hive) Cylon models is as transformative as their experiences with humans, and the more Cylons who go through it, the more will start to turn. Perhaps that's where individuality will eventually evolve, and humans be damned. It's just that it usually takes interaction with humans to get a Cylon killed in the first.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Also, it just occurred to me --

if Helo'd been really smart, he wouldn't've killed off those Cylons -- he'd've just shielded the room so their signals couldn't get through or something.

The show has yet to address how those signals work though.

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

I'm sure if Helo understood how the Cylon signal(s) worked he would have blocked it. Then again if the humans understood how the signal(s) worked than they would have a pretty sizable weapon to use against the Cylons (whether blocking or planting their own sleeper agent Cylons).

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

No way to know what shielding would have worked--Leoben regenerated across the depths of space, at least an FTL jump away from the resurrection ship. If Helo were really worried about it, he couldn't risk them dying anywhere near Cylon ships, and where the Galactica was was as far as he could guarantee they could get from a basestar before they went to try to find Cylons. He took the best opportunity, I'd say. I think it still makes him a hypocrite, though. In killing them, he takes the action that says the few are expendable for the many. The many of humanity, though, are not worth saving at the risk of the lives of the enemy? Bullshit.