More Battlestar, Season One Complete

Some thoughts on Battlestar: Galactica, Season 1. First of all, this show continues to disturb me. The moral ambiguity of which I wrote some time back (shortly after starting the series, in fact) continues, though it’s more clear who the “good guys” are—or at least it was until the cliffhanger. One of my friends (jec, who loaned me the series) asked about the significance of the fact that the humans are polytheistic while the Cylons are monotheistic. For a while, I thought it represented the impact of Judaism and Christianity in Europe and Asia Minor, where polytheistic religions gave way to the power of monotheism, even though it took a while. I gave up on this toward the end of these last two episodes because the series seemed to be heading in another direction. Some of this theme remains, however, in the form of the Moses-like Dr. Baltar, whose purpose appears to be to bring the Cylon plan, or God’s will, into fruition.

The symbolism of the Cylon-human “hybrid” has escaped me for the moment, though of course there are various pop-cultural references (The X-Files, Demon Seed) that come to mind. The Cylons, at least the female ones, feel love, as well as other emotions, and the fact that they’re genetically human—or close enough to reproduce with human—indicates something more than the standard alien vs. man trope that is common to the genre. The Cylons are us: they feel the same emotions, they have bone and blood, they can procreate with humans. But they are at the same time something else: born of computers, they are copies of each other. They also appear to be networked somehow.

I’m planning to rent season 2 tomorrow. . . .

Popular Culture and Moral Ambiguity

Battlestar Galactica is a troubling program. I've just started watching the first season upon the recommendation of my friend jec. The moral ambiguity is something one doesn't see too often on network t.v. In the first episode (following the pilot/miniseries), the fleeing humans must decide if (possibly) killing 1300 people to save 47k is the right decision, and the decision must be made in scant seconds before another attack by the Cylons. The show's tone strikes me as somewhat supportive of the moral ambiguity of the war on terror. How many innocents are worth the lives of x citizens?

In the pilot, when Dr. Gaius Baltar fingers a smarmy ass as a Cylon because he's afraid of getting turned in, it's truly abhorent, yet the guy actually turns out to be a Cylon--does this mean that the people we have locked up in Guantanomo actually are terrorists? Or is it even worse?: that since we don't know, we must lock up certain suspected people because their discomfort could mean the safety of many more.

It's interesting to me that pop culture seems to be moving in that direction, with shows like BG, 24, etc.--even Heroes--all inhabiting areas of shadow and uncertainty. Of course, these shows also have (relatively) clearly-defined "good guys" as well, in keeping with the Western tradition of having a protagonist for whom you can cheer.