Friday, June 13, 2008

You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!

Did the ending of "Revelations," the mid-season finale of the 4th season of Battlestar Galactica (last episodes will air in 2009 after a hiatus), remind you of anything?



It reminded me of Adama's speech in the very beginning, in the miniseries, when he asked, "does humanity deserve to survive?" There was a hint there that even after the genocide and the Cylon war that there would still be something human beings were in some sort of denial about, something in their nature and the inevitable consequences of their thought processes and their resulting acts. Here on this nuclear ravaged version of Earth they will probably confront whatever "original sin" they had also stained Earth with.

Hopefully the sin will be more original than the past cliché "sins of humanity" scifi writers want to accuse us of, you know, eating from the tree of knowledge (wanting to know things man was not meant to know), building towers to heaven (getting too close to God-like), wanting to bugger angels...

As I pointed out in my post about Galactica falling into the old "machines destroy their makers cliché". The Frankenstein, golems and Rossum's Universal Robots were just the tip of the iceberg. Here is another example of machines pissed off at humanity that I now think might hit closer to home:



You know who makes those machines possible:



Scientists make those machines possible:



A quick recap, the Cylons, now lead by D'Anna, took Roslin, Baltar and the others aboard the battered rebel basestar hostage to bargain the four hidden Cylons on the Galactica out of hiding. Tory uses the President's medication as an excuse to go to the basestar and join up with her "brothers and sisters," even telling Roslin "she doesn't take orders from her anymore," but the other three remain anonymous.

Colonel Tigh then admits to Admiral Adama that he is a Cylon and offers himself as a hostage. They can now threaten to airlock him. Adama tells Tigh to "get his damn, dirty Cylon paws off of me" and then has a psychological break down and even punches a mirror, making his fist bleed... Did that remind you of anything?



It reminded me of Willard (Martin Sheen) in Apocalypse Now and I think it has close to the same meaning. Willard also punched his fist into a mirror, destroying himself symbolically.

Lee, while Tigh is in the airlock, gets Tigh to rat out Sam and Tyrol, and I suspect Tory too. There is a melodramatic standard old standoff with Tigh in an airlock on Galactica, waiting to be sucked out into the vacuum of space, and the Cylons aiming nuclear weapons at the Colonial ships. Anybody tries anything, and everybody dies. It's resolved when Starbuck learns that her old Viper is now pointing the way to Earth. She stops Lee from airlocking Tigh and then everyone decides they'll go to Earth together, as one big happy family, not as enemies.

They all jump to Earth and have a celebration. Then they discover that the planet is a radioactive shit-hole. There's no animal or plant life to be seen, except maybe a few weeds growing among the rubble. Nobody feels like celebrating now (though there is one person with a smile on their face) as the camera sweeps over a matte painting of the devastated ruins.

So... What happened to Earth? Who blew it up? And why?

We probably did, us "undeserving of existence" humans, it's our not-so "original sin" if they can't come up with something better over the break.

No comments: