Cylon Says – BSG: The Hub
By Lisa Fary
There are so many things that are bugging me about this. Was this episode supposed to make President Roslin a sympathetic character again? If so, it didn’t work. I used to think Laura Roslin was awesome, but now I just hate her.
I hate her because the very thing she sought to protect and maintain from the beginning, government, now appears to be a sham under her leadership. The decisions are made by her and Admiral Adama and the Quorum of Twelve is largely left out and ignored.
I hate her because her animosity toward Baltar’s one god movement is unreasonable. For her, it’s not about theology – it’s about maintaining her position.
I hate her because she doesn’t use her teacher skills. Her questioning technique of the hybrid was all wrong – she should have approached the hybrid like a student. You can’t badger a student with question after question and expect anything more than a nervous ramble in response. You’re more likely to get something useful if you wait a few seconds and then listen to what the kid has to say.
That brings me to my next point of contention. Why didn’t one of the Cylons, or maybe Baltar, tell Roslin that the hybrid doesn’t really interact or respond to direct questions? That Roslin would have to listen and deduce the meaning? Didn’t Baltar learn that about the hybrid after the exodus from New Caprica, when he was locked in a perpetual threesome with Six and D’Anna aboard the basestar? That would have been a helpful tidbit for her to know.
Another helpful tidbit would have been a backup for the resurrection hub. Now that it’s been destroyed, the Cylons have lost the ability to resurrect. Death is permanent and the playing field between human and Cylon is leveled.
And none of the Cylons thought, “Maybe we should have more than one hub since our existence sorta depends on it.” Or even, “Let’s keep a copy of the plans, just in case.”
See, after Luke Skywalker blew up the Death Star, the Empire just went back to the plans and built another one (and much more quickly than the first time around, I might add). Even George Lucas figured out that the plans for something that important would be saved somewhere; I’d think someone with BSG would have figured that out, too. It doesn’t make sense – particularly for the Cavils who are so insistent that the skin jobs are machines – for them to have no recourse for a destroyed resurrection hub.
However, the Cylons don’t always finish what they start, like whatever it was they had planned for Starbuck’s stolen ovary from season two. They also used to be love-obsessed and believed that they couldn’t procreate without love. That’s not exactly a rational, machine-like thought.
From that Cylon belief to Roslin’s utterance of “I love you” to Admiral Adama, love seems to be an important aspect in the show. If this whole thing comes down to the power of love to save us all, I’m going to puke. Then I’m going to put that puke in a zipper baggie, put that baggie in an envelope, and send it to Ron Moore and David Eick.
I hope it doesn’t come down to that (because, really, that would be a disgusting package), but my faith in the storytelling on BSG is running thin.
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Lisa Fary is a graduate of the English program at Florida State University and holds an advanced degree in Special Education. Her early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl.
Let’s face it: this has been a sloppy show since day one. It’s got more dangling plot threads than Melrose Place; more random left turns than an elderly person on US A1A on a sunday afternoon, and just about as little sense of direction as to where it’s going. And of course it frequently breaks it’s own rules, either out of laziness (“The Cylons Have A Plan”) or just a lack of paying attention to it’s own backstory (“Adama as Commander of the Vaylkirie”). As a result, I wasn’t at all surprised when Tigh knocked up another cylon, despite that being impossible, or the Hybrid responding to direct questions and instructions from Baltar (“Shhhhhhhh!” Which, I have to admit, made me laugh pretty hard).
But the train-wreck-in-progress gave the show an indefineable kind of energy, as though you were watching something that really could come apart at the seams at any moment, so it was hard for me to stop viewing. Now, however, it does seem like Moore and Eick have kind of lost their passion for the story, and it’s lost that “Man, I hope these schizos can keep it together so I can see the end of the story” quality.
I’m glad that BSG took a stab a humor at least.
I’m glad that BSG took a stab at humor at least.
WTF? Guess I will wait!
My theory (which is, I’ll admit, a thin one) is that maybe the Cylons don’t have plans for
the Resurrection ship because it was something built with technology they either never
had or don’t have any longer. Perhaps it was built by someone who knew more than they
do and gave it to them but never told them how to build another one. That could explain
why they only had the one Resurrection ship. Of coures I’m probably just reaching at
straws here, trying to make sense of something that really doesn’t make sense.
@Melissa: I had that thought, too. Like maybe the resurrection hub was something left over from the last time this happened (you know how Leoben kept saying “all of this has happened before”).
@Hoobajoobah: This thing has taken on the air of a an impressionist painting – Moore and Eick are putting dabs out there and if we stand far enough away, our brains will try to make sense of it.
That was the most pretentious thing I’ve written today.
@Melissa- Yeah, I think that’s the case, at least the subjective reasoning behind it. (Objectively, it’s a plot device to wrap things up quickly). They’ve made one or two furtive mentions of “The Programmers,” so I’m assuming The Programmers set up the whole Cylon society, and didn’t give them all their secrets. Of course that throws in a whole ‘nother batch of confusion, doesn’t it? I mean, if someone re-built the Cylons, then they really didn’t evolve, and everything we know about them is a gross misrepresentation of the facts.
@Alpha-Girl- It’s ok, I forgive you. And you’re right, actually, there’s a certain minimalism in all classic TV SF, where it’s *obvious* that Captain Kirk is on a ship made out of plywood, or that Captain Sheridan’s office furniature came from Sears, but we have to kind of squint mentally and agree not to see the cracks in order to see the overall consensual halucination. (And if you ever wondered what the difference between Fen and Danes is, that’s it right there: We agree to overlook the shoddyness, they don’t).
I just hope they stay in impressionism, and don’t make an ill-advised switch to Jackson Polack-styled abstracts. (There: I’ll see your pretention and raise you one!)
God help us if they go the way of the Dadaists (but at least we’ll have something to pee in).
[Laughing] Ok, you win.
Changing the subject slightly here: I’ve poked around online a bit and noticed that in general, most people seem a bit down on this final season of BG, it’s meandering action, squandered logic, and general lack of “The Magic” that it had previously. What’s a little surprising to me is that no one seems to have thought of comparing the new BG’s final season to the final season of another once-beloved SF show that somehow utterly lost “The Magic” in it’s final year. I’m talking about that crappy final season of “Babylon 5″ of course.
I can even make paralells: The most obvious is Baltar’s Culty Love-Nest in the bowels of the ship, which is a close analogue to Byron’s Culty Love-Nest in Brown Sector of Babylon 5. There’s others too, though: former-captain Lee Adama becoming the president just like former-captain Sheridan became the president in B5, etc.
I’m sure it’s mostly just coincidence, not to be taken too seriously, but I think it might be worlt at least a mention. Whadya’ say, Alpha-Girl? Did you want to start an article about the BG4.0/B55.0 similarities? As no one but me seems to have noticed it (Or at least no one who can type), it could be a Pink Raygun exclusive, and I’d much rather you guys have first crack at it than those irritating jackasses over at IO9.
Now that you’ve pointed me in that direction, I’m seeing more an more parallels between the two. I’m reaching for some of them, but others are just blatant. That exploration will be posted shortly.
Kickass! Happy to be of use!