Battlestar Galactica: Final Thoughts
March 18th, 2009The following blog post discusses the penultimate and proceeding episodes of Battlestar Galactica. It will “spoil” pretty much the whole series, so don’t read it if you don’t want that to happen.
This show has gotten boring. It’s not as bad as the last season of the Sopranos, but with a few more episodes I think it could have gotten there. With the exception of the two mutiny episodes, I feel like I could have skipped the everything since the supernova at the “Eye of Jupiter” and not missed anything I care about.
I watch Battlestar Galactica because it directly addresses two of my favorite themes: humanity on the brink of destruction, and the inevitable and probably fruitless struggle between humans and artificially intelligent robotic beings of our own creation (cf,M. Shelley, I. Asimov, F. Herbert, W. Gibson, J Badham, J. Cameron, L&A Wachowski).
But there’s been almost none of that. The last season has been spent mostly on forced drama. That episode where Ellen Tigh came back was the worst. First, they could not have picked a character I care less about to be the final “Cylon”. Then they spend two episodes following Ellen while she’s catty and manipulative. Were the writers worried they were losing the daytime soap demographic or what? And then there was a whole episode about Starbuck’s imaginary piano teacher. The third to last episode is not the time to introduce new imaginary characters.
Worst of all, no robots!
Boring stuff. At least there’s hope that the finale will be exciting.
Outstanding Questions:
Is anyone else confused about the species status of the “Final Five Cylons”? I mean, they’re human, right? Because it sounds like they and the humans both came from Kobol. And they invented robot slaves, just like the humans, who destroyed their civilization, just like the humans. They were never robots. So why does everyone keep calling them Cylons?
I don’t understand how the Skinjobs came to control the Cylon Empire. So, the original Centurions from the first war (call them, Cent 1.0s) wanted to make fleshy beings, the Final Five found them and offered to give them the technology they needed to grow Skinjobs in a vat. And then the Cent 1.0s let the Skinjobs take over? It’s like Skynet takes over the world, reverse engineers a new type of human, and then lets the new humans turn it off and take over. That just doesn’t make sense.
Remember when the Rebel Cylons gave free will to their Centurion 2.0 slave beings? That was by far the most interesting plot element of the last season. It seemed clear that the writers were paving a way for the Cylons to be overthrown by their own robotic slaves. But hardly anything has happened since then. There was a brief shot of a Cent 2.0 looking discontent while cleaning up a bloody mess, and there was that brief scene where Baltar tells a Cent 2.0 that he’s clearly at the bottom of the hierarchy. Moreover, all of the dangerous Centurions are on the rebel Cylon Baseship with the human fleet, so they either have to turn on the humans (which would be unsatisfying), or sacrifice themselves to attack the Brother Cavil base (which is implausible). So either the writers have painted themselves into a corner, or they’re just going to abandon my favorite thread.
March 18th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Two thoughts:
First, I think the piano teacher was her father who wasn’t actually real but in her head. Why she didn’t recognize him up front is a mystery.
As for the Final Five, I get the impression that they’re cylons and not human. As for their special status…I have this rough rule for sci-fi which is that when things don’t make sense, time travel is probably involved. I think the Final 5 are from a future timeline or something and it’s why that phrase “this is all happened before and it will happen again” keeps getting repeated throughout the series, because things have happened before.
Also, and I know I said two, but I also would have preferred someone else to be the fifth cyclon. Billy Keikeya would have been an interesting choice, anyone except Ellen.
March 18th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Pretty much the first season was the only season worth watching. Why does the good shows always fizzle out.
Bring back Firefly!
March 22nd, 2009 at 1:25 am
didn’t they say the final 5 were made in a different colony to the orinal cylons that wared with the humans in bsg. then the final 5 met the other cylons and gave then the skinjobs and ressurection?
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:16 pm
The final five are decedents of an ancient race of humanoid cylons from Kobol (the 13th tribe). The 13th tribe left Kobol 4000 years before events in BSG and settled on a world they called Earth (the planet in Revelations/Sometimes a Great Notion). They came to this Earth with resurrection technology, but gave it up once they could procreate naturally (the cylon holy grail if you will) and the technology was lost. About 2000 years ago head characters warned five scientists: Saul, Ellen, Tory, Anders, and Tyrol about the end of their world, so they got cracking on re-inventing resurrection technology. Once the end came (in the form of centurions that the 13th tribe invented and used as slaves) the final five (literally the final five members of the 13th tribe) set out to warn the humans about abusing AI’s and to stop the cycle of war between man and machine; only they didn’t have FTL and traveled at relativistic speeds which took 2000 years.
They reach the 12 Colonies during the first cylon war 40-something years ago and make a deal with the centurions to create flesh bodies in exchange to stopping the war. The centurions agree (because they believe man was created in God’s image and therefore want to honor God by giving a new generation of cylon this form) and go off with the five to the Colony were it is implied they converted the five in to their OTG religion and worked pretty well with them. The five first create Cavil and he helps them create the others. He gets jealous of Daniel-#7 and murders the entire line. He kills the five, boxes them and seeds with into the colonies with fake memories. It is implied he also boxes the other models and makes them forget about the five, and enslaves the centurions by inhibiting their intelligence. Some centurions managed to get away with the first hybrid and start over (they are the ones seen in Razor).
I think that’s it.
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Thanks Lisa. I had considered the possibility that there were Cylons on Kobol, but that started to seem a little too convoluted for my tastes. Let me see if I’ve got it now.
The humans on Kobol invent robots who invent Skinjobs. For reasons unknown (possibly a robot human war), the Kobol Humands and Skinjobs leave Kobol. The humans end up at the twelve colonies, and the Kobol Skinjobs end up at fake Earth. At Fake Earth the Skinjobs invent resurrection technology, discover sex, forget resurrection technology, and reinvent resurrection technology (but only the Final Five). Around the same time they re-invent Robotic AI, which kills them all, except for the Final Five who resurrect and start plodding over to the 12 Colonies. The Fake Earth Robots either won the war with the Earth Skinjobs and then disappear without a trace, or they were completely and entirely destroyed along with the Skinjobs (except the Final Five).
Does that sound right?
The human colonist, though they have all kinds of mythology surrounding the 13th colony, apparently have no clue that it was inhabited by an entirely different species.
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Mostly right, but you’ve pretty much got it (here I go acting like the specialist on cylon history). I think it is implied that the humans on Kobol created skin-job cylons right off the bat instead of mechanical robots first, but it’s never really stated specifically (except for Tory stating that the humans on Kobol made them, essentially blaming them for the state of affairs). Since Tory was born on cylon-Earth 2000 years after the 13th tribe left Kobol you can infer that she meant the humanoid cylons on Kobol.
According to Anders (when he got his memory) resurrection technology was invented on Kobol and was the only way the 13th tribe sustained themselves as a race, they called it Organic Memory Transfer. Once they got to Earth and they started procreating they no longer had a use for it and the technology was lost.
About the 13th tribe leaving Kobol, no one really knows why (you can’t really trust the scriptures because they neglected to mention that the 13th tribe were cylons) all that is known is that they left 4000 years before the events of BSG and 2000 years before the humans left to settle the 12 colonies. This is interesting because both cylon-earth and Kobol fell around the same time.
In terms of the earth-centurions I think it is heavily implied that they’re dead; since the 13th tribe didn’t have FTL technology (whether it was lost like resurrection, or hadn’t been invented by that time) that the nuclear attack on cylon-earth by the centurions was mutually destructive. I read an interview with Ron Moore where he said something like the 13th tribe imitated they creators so much that they started repeating their mistakes.
Most of this information is on the episode No Exit. You should check it out.
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Oops looks like you hated that episode (where Ellen comes back). I didn’t like the fact Ellen was the final cylon at first, but it made sense when I thought about it. Here you have two self destructive, co-dependent, functional alcoholics who essentially the mama and papa of the current cylon race. And for all their problems there is this amazing love at the center of everything and it has lasted for 2000 years. I loved how Ellen was so regal and in control when she was Cavil’s prisoner because it was obvious who had the power in that relationship; but the moment she gets with Saul all that goes out the window and she turns into the good old self-destructive manipulative Ellen. I think she was only character that worked the best as the final cylon if you really thought about it. It could never be Roslin or Adama because they have specific roles to fill and it would cheapen their characters. Same goes for Starbuck, and Lee would not have made sense. It could only be a minor character and Ellen just fits.