Battlestar Galactica grabs its gun and brings in the cat
by Dawson Smith, 2L
Law Weekly
March 24, 2009
MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD, OBVIOUSLY
The re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica began five and a half years ago with some of the boldest television yet crafted. For anyone who hasn't been watching, it's understandable that this may be difficult to believe. A military drama set in space with mysterious plot-twists and religious overtones? Also, robots.
Absolutely none of that interests me in general, so when a friend showed up at my apartment unannounced a few years ago one Saturday morning, sat me down, and popped in the DVD of the miniseries that started it all, I had some trepidations, to say the least. Instead, I was blown away, and I have yet to meet anyone who has given the show a fair chance and not had the same reaction.
Because, you see, for all of the space travel, military pomp, quasi-spiritual mumbo-jumbo, and yes, robots, the show has never really been about any of those things. Like the thematically similar Lost, the show is about people who know they have to work together if they stand any chance of survival, and the personal failings and interpersonal differences that keep them from being able to do so. Every character on the show sincerely believes that what he or she is doing is the right course of action, and most of the time that ensures that the collective whole can't do anything but destroy itself.
In the miniseries, Commander Adama gives a speech during the decomissioning ceremony for Galactica. "When we fought the Cylons," he says, "we did it to save ourselves from extinction, but we never answered the question, 'why?' Why are we, as a people, worth saving? We still commit murder because of greed and spite and jealousy, and we still visit all of our sins upon our children. We refuse to accept responsibility for anything that we've done, like we did with the Cylons. We decided to play God, create life, and when that life turned against us, we comforted ourselves in the knowledge that it really wasn't our fault, not really. You cannot play God and then wash your hands of the things that you've created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things that you've done anymore."
In the broad sense, BSG began as a story about the last remaining remnants of humanity floating through space and searching for a mythical place called "Earth." In the broad sense, it ends with the remaining survivors finding it. In reality, it's about exactly the question Adama asked in that speech. "Why are we, as a people, worth saving?" For much of the series, the honest answer seemed to be, "really no reason at all," but week in and week out we saw these characters, who thought they were doing what was best, surviving on algae and no sunlight with tempers and tensions rising, and we the audience wanted something better for them. In that spirit, I choose to avoid most of my quibbles with the structure and editing of “Daybreak,” last Friday's finale (and I have a few) and instead to focus on our favorite players, then and now.
Boomer/Athena: Grace Park's Number-Eight-Model cylons followed opposite arcs through the show's history. "Boomer" began on Galactica, a sleeper agent who believed herself to be human, risked her life for humanity under Adama's command, and ended season one with a cliffhanger when her programming kicked in just in time for her to shoot the old man twice in the chest. "Athena" began on Caprica, knowing herself to be Cylon, seducing the stranded Lt. Karl "Helo" Agathon, and then getting pregnant by him (the first occurrence of this in Cylon history) after truly falling in love with him.
Where Boomer, once loyal to the fleet, spent the series gradually slipping over to Brother Cavil's extreme Cylon side of the battle, Athena did the reverse, gaining Adama's trust and respect until she became the first openly Cylon member of the fleet. After suffering mistrust and abuse from her colleagues, she is named lieutenant. The finale finds the crew on a rescue mission to the Cylon "colony" (think Mt. Doom) in order to rescue Athena's half-human miracle baby Hera, whom Boomer had kidnapped for experimentation earlier in the season. During the show-stopping battle, Boomer herself seems to have a change of heart brought on by maternal instincts, and snaps Dr. Simon's neck in order to return Hera to her parents. After the exchange is made amidst the surrounding gunfire, Athena shoots and kills Boomer, not because she wants to, but because tactically, she knows she has to. We flash back to Boomer as a rookie pilot, being dressed down by a mildly amused Adama for an unknown mistake, and her promise to make it to him someday, "when it really means something."
Tyrol/Tory: First appearing in the miniseries as an active, loyal, easygoing Non-Com, "Chief" Tyrol has had a harder time of it than any other character on the show. He finds out his girlfriend (Boomer) is a Cylon. His girlfriend then shoots the Commander, then is shot herself by Cally, whom Tyrol would later marry. After undergoing horrible toils during the occupation on New Caprica, he learns that he is one of the "Final Five" cylons, a fact which he must keep secret from Cally, who soon thereafter figures it out anyway and apparently commits suicide. When Boomer returns to Galactica, Tyrol's old feelings for her get the better of him, and he facilitates her escape, leading to her kidnapping of Hera.
Tory, meanwhile, was a non-entity until she was pegged to replace the fallen Billy as President Roslin's chief aide, and barely more than that until she was revealed as a member of the Final Five herself. Her only notable action has been murdering the suspicious Cally and covering it up, and the revelation of that act in the finale. Tory was the most baldly villainous, machiavellian character on the show, despite limited screen-time, and and when Tyrol learns what she's done, his emotional reaction kills the deal made with the cylons aboard the colony (as well as killing her with his hands around her neck.) In the end, on pre-historic Earth, Tyrol drops himself off in a not-yet-populated Scotland, explaining that he's "tired of people." It's hard to blame him.
Apollo/Starbuck: The miniseries told us that Lee "Apollo" Adama hadn't spoken with his father since his brother's death, but the flashbacks tell us that they weren't on speaking terms before that either. Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, the toughest talker, rawest nerve, and best Viper jock in the fleet, had always been closer to the old man than his own son. There is simply too much to both of these folks to go into here, but suffice it to say that Kara has always explicitly had a "special destiny," and that creator Ronald D. Moore cheated us on it in the finale. Once on Earth, Kara simply tells Lee that her journey is finished, and then, literally, vanishes with no explanation. Moore's official position is that Kara is whatever we want her to be. I think he just couldn't think of anything that would make everything he built up around her make sense, and copped out.
Once on Earth, Apollo himself convinces the survivors to send their ships and technology rocketing towards the sun, in favor of a clean slate and helping with the rise of the native neolithic culture. We're told this, because to show it would've been ludicrous and implausible. These two endings made for the two most sour notes of the finale, by far.
Roslin/Adama: Far better-handled was the inevitable death of President Laura Roslin, who was introduced in the miniseries being diagnosed with cancer. Forty-third in the order of succession during the fall of the colonies, she assumed the role of the presidency with grace, competence, and a willingness to go around the law to do what she needed to on occasion. She beat back her illness every way she could for all of these years, but once they'd landed, she knew her time had just about run out.
Adama, now Admiral, takes her on a raptor flight over the new world she helped lead them to, waxing nostalgic about the cabin they'd planned to build together on New Caprica, when she finally passes. Adama breaks down, puts his wedding ring on her finger, and sets the bird down, determined to "build it right here. It's unclear why he's decided to never see any of the other humans again, but his final shot is a winner, a weary old man in paradise, next to the grave of the woman he'd hoped to share it with.
Baltar/Six: More than anything, "Daybreak" was about the redemption of these two characters, who jointly caused the holocaust on the colonies. In the miniseries, Model Six was the first Cylon we met, a cruel, beautiful woman who blew up the Human/Cylon Armistice Station, snapped an infant's neck in order to better understand it, and took down the colonial defense mainframe so as to make humanity hopelessly vulnerable to annihilation. Dr. Gaius Baltar was the smartest man alive, but also a foolish womanizer, and granted Six access to the mainframe, believing he was just giving her an advantage for her corporate employers in exchange for getting laid.
The flashbacks in the finale show us that Baltar had truly fallen in love with Six, who had won him over by finding a good home for his angry, ailing farmer father and by generally being his match mentally. In light of the finale, Six's deeds take on a new life of their own as well, and even the baby-killing seems like an act of mercy by one with the knowledge of what's about to come. Six knew nothing but the Cylon plan at the time of the fall, and has spent the entirety since coming to a greater understanding of humanity and trying to bridge the gap to them (sometimes disastrously--the New Caprica occupation was her well-intentioned idea.)
Baltar, on the other hand, has spent the whole time reaching towards redemption before his weaselly sense of self-preservation takes over again and again. In "Daybreak," he finally sends his cult/harem off into their own capable, well-armed control and joins the volunteers for the raid on the colony. His sacrifice is enough to make Six proud of him, apparently "the only thing missing," and their now mutual love brings the "Head Six" and "Head Baltar" into both of their visions, instructing them on their way to saving the humans and cylons alike. Six and Baltar finally understand what they are meant to do, rescue Hera, who has run away in the battle, and then talk down Cavil when he takes her hostage. The final gut-punch comes as Baltar, on Earth, realizes that his boyhood knowledge of agriculture will be far more valuable than he expertise in science now.
"Daybreak" is far from perfect, with it's last forty minutes providing an often aggravating capper to everything which preceded it. The last moments are particularly cringe-worthy, akin to ending The Godfather with Michael Corleone turning to the camera and intoning, "See kids? Guns aren't toys!" Nevertheless, our flawed heroes got what counts for a happy ending in these parts, and I'm personally willing to wish away the rest of it.
Warts and all, BSG must now be seen as one of the greatest achievements in television. If any or all of this seems cryptic to you, then I implore you to find a copy of season one and start watching. If nothing else, you'll find out what the title of this article refers to. So say we all.