Circuitry is thicker than Blood: Spoiler review of "The Ties that Bind"

Again, there was good and bad to this episode. On the bad side, no Baltar and Tory's transition into a full blown monster seemed to abandon the promise made by last week's episode, "Six of One." On the good side, there was an almost shocking, and still very scary, TV death scene made possible only by abandoning that promise. I wouldn't have seen it coming except for the previews and the fact that people over at Galactic Water-cooler interpreted those previews and saw it coming and I, of course, read them and had the shock spoiled.

The major event in this episode was the death of Cally, and except for broadcasting what was going to happen to her in the previews the whole thing was well done. It was the only game that started and finished in this single episode. The other events in this episode were all part of slower moving games that have been going on for awhile and where we see only one or two moves made per episode. By the "slower games" I mean things like the Cylon civil war, Starbuck's quest for Earth and Apollo's involvement in law and politics.

I'll get to the other elements of this episode, like the Cylon civil war, Apollo's new role and what's happening aboard the Demetrius after a bit more of those games have played out. But I will say that Starbuck's and Anders's relationship is getting interesting. I don't know what it means yet. Starbuck might be going insane and they seem to be foreshadowing a mutiny to come, but then, like Tory's tears with Baltar, it's quite possible I'm misreading the clues.

Here's the recap on Cally's death game to see how it's played:


We start with Cally being all strung out, taking some pills, wondering where her husband, Chief Tyrol, is. Then we cut to Tory and Tyrol in a bar. Tory tells Tyrol how she is being flooded with new sensations and how she never liked the taste of ambrosia till now. She's beginning to like her change into a Cylon. Not Tyrol, he says he doesn't like change. It appears Tory is trying to seduce him. She puts her fingers on his elbows. He's stern and resistant to her seductions. Cally enters the bar and sees Tory with her husband. She makes a scene and Tyrol leaves Tory to go back to his wife and try to convince her he's not having an affair with Tory.


Thus part of Tory's potential motive is set up, sexual jealousy.

Cally next finds a note about a meeting in a weapons locker hidden inside the hinge crevice of the door to their apartment. She sneaks out to spy on whoever is in the weapons locker, hiding in some crawl space near-by. She hears her husband, Tory and Tigh talking about being Cylons. They're even clued into the fact that it's possible she might find the note.

After learning this, Cally runs back to their apartment, puts the note back into the crevice, before Tyrol comes home. She tries to pretend she knows nothing when he arrives, keeping her back to her husband as her face plays out the emotions she can't hide. Tyrol promises and promises to love her and be there for her. She can't believe him. She suddenly attacks him with a huge heavy wrench, knocking him out but not killing him.

Then she makes a really stupid, very human, move, torn up by her emotions she heads towards an airlock, apparently planning to commit suicide and take her baby with her. It's heart breaking, the actress does a good job. Then Tory appears and walks into the airlock. Cally shuts the door threatening to take Tory with her.

"Stay away from me!" Cally yells at Tory. "You all used me!"

Tory tries to explain herself, "We didn't know... We're still the same people. We're not evil."

Cally starts to understand, though still suspicious. Tory knows what Cally is planning and says, "Don't do this to your child. Don't do it to yourself."

"What have I done?" Cally begins to change her mind and realize how crazy she's been acting.

Cally gives up the child.

Tory seems to have saved her from her irrational and emotional decision. At this point it's not obvious that Tory will kill Cally unless you saw the previews and even then it's not clear how it will play out. Then, quite suddenly and without warning, Tory whacks Cally with a powerful one armed back hand and sends her flying backwards about ten feet.

From an adjoining, glass walled room next to the airlock Tory holds the child and begins to prepare to eject Cally into space. They look at each other, Tory seems to enjoy this situation, and then Tory pushes the button and -whoosh!- out Cally goes.

I was sympathetic to Cally's suffering and it seemed Tory was, at first, helping her and offering some understanding, but it turns out that Tory was a monster, full of coldblooded deceit. Is her humanity only a convenient lie? I noted in my review of "Six of One" that during Tory's sex scene with Baltar that her emotions didn't connect to any obvious reading of her thoughts. Both Baltar and Tory had secrets that could get them killed and they didn't trust each other with them. But it seemed maybe they could in the future. Tory wasn't telling Baltar she was a Cylon and Baltar wasn't telling her everything either. The scene offered an intense emotional ambiguity, mystery and suspense that keeps me going back to Galactica to see what happens. However, this change in Tory seems to preclude ever learning what Tory's tears meant, if anything. She's long past crying it now seems (or maybe not).

The fact that she cried back then helped add to the surprise this time. Yet, I'm disappointed because there's more to it than just the show itself that influenced my desire to see those tears explored. As I noted in my previous review, the scenes sparked an interesting discussion on this Galactica forum.

Some people on the forum started displaying really sexist attitudes saying things like "Are there any women out there who have not poured on the charm (and not, necessarily, gotten on their backs) to try to get their way at some point? It's not unusual. In fact, it's pretty common interpersonal interaction." Alas, nothing in this show contradicts that view and it should be contradicted.

That view misses the point I think. And that's when I began to think I understood what the tears meant in the last episode. They didn't understand what kind of game Tory was really being asked to play by "sleeping with Baltar" and I thought the writers might show us the cost of such deceptions. Frakking someone is not going to get you "darkest secret" information they couldn't torture out of Baltar. They call it sleeping with someone, but it really means playing a risky (for humans) emotional game where you get the other person to trust you so much, make them think you love them, that they'll honestly share secrets that confront with their deepest fears.

People don't open up like that just because they've had sex. Psychologists work long and hard to get there with patients. People open up because they trust you with their lives and darkest secrets. Tory has no problem with such betrayal now it seems, she quickly got Cally's trust, but those tears from the previous show said, yes, maybe, just maybe, she did have a problem with lying to Baltar. And it appears that Head Baltar was wrong when he said that "Tory was fragile" and "handle with care." So far it seems that scene between Baltar and Tory... that moment, lost like tears in the brain -- the brain of screenwriter Michael Taylor.

If Tory hadn't understood that human side of the risk, then Baltar would have more likely figured her out before she figured him out. Now it's apparently Baltar who is in trouble if he continues his relationship with Tory. Besides that, I lost an implied bet with Gooby Rastor over at Galactica Station when I commented on his review of "Six of One."

In the end, it was Tory who made the seemingly "rational," if monstrous, decision to kill Cally while pretending to risk her life to help her. If Tory hadn't done that there would have been no real way to assure herself that Cally wouldn't reveal their secret to other humans. Tory could have asked Cally to keep their secret, trust her husband, and trust her since she was helping, include Cally in Cylon meetings so she knows what they're dealing with. But that probably would have been a mess considering Cally's emotional state.

In the end, if Cally was really going to kill herself and her child, then the net result of all Tory's actions were to save the child (but for what end? Tory risked her life for the child.)

Cally on the other hand was stupidly human. She would, herself, had to have become cold blooded and kept her cool to win the game against the Cylons. She could have, if she were emotionally able, went along with her husband's promises, hugged him, then collected evidence, until she had enough to give to the Doctor, Adama and/or the president. But you know those humans, they're just not all that rational. They often let their feelings tear themselves apart instead of acting rationally.

Even when it came to attacking her husband Cally left the note, the only evidence she had, behind when it was no longer prudent to do so. And if she wanted the Cylons dead, she should have kept hammering at her husband's skull until his brains splattered out. Nothing she did was smart. But, it's like Nietsche said:

"Those who fight monsters should take care that they never become one. For when you stand and look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
-- Frederich Nietsche

And that seems to be the overall theme of the new Battlestar Galactica. How monstrous do the humans have to be? Can they ever find any shared "humanity" with their enemy? Will they ever try?

Maybe they shouldn't. If we keep seeing Cylons lying and taking pleasure in killing people, then how can the writers expect us to sympathize or side with them? Tory happily turned into a monster and that makes me less sure of what to expect from the rest of the Cylons? Some people think humans and Cylons are meant to get together in later shows. Maybe the Cylons are the embodiment of evil? Supposedly they're just not "human" in the same emotional sense. Yet humans have "enjoyed" torturing and killing Cylons (like Starbuck did, and Cain's crew). Could it be that there are just some "bad apples" in both bunches? Or are all Cylon women homicidal sluts?


UPDATE

Was Tory always a monster?

An interesting comment on the water-cooler forum from bkitty:

Tory never was ethical. If she wasn't as a human, why would she be as a cylon?

She is drunk on the power of the baseline change she sees in herself. A sober person has reason and social taboos for guidelines to behavior. A drunk person is freed of those inhibitions.

This is Tory as she always was. Uninhibited, she is realizing her terrible potential.

Drunk or sober, a person is accountable for his/her actions. The only difference in decision-making is the amount of personal/social inhibition.

She is who she alway was with NO BRAKES!

I have a feeling she may be "stopped" by one of the others. Possibly Tyrol? He flat out said he doesn't take change well. Once he recovers from the shock, and eventually finds out the truth, what will he do?

This incident makes Chief a wild card.

Was Tory ever a human? If she was Cylon from the beginning that's how they made her, hiding her true identity until they wanted her activated. If she was always Cylon and not replaced by one, then yes, this side of her has always been there. Unlike Boomer, it doesn't seem to bother her. I think she's happy to be playing for the other side now.

Still, trying to steal an election isn't the same as murder. Also, the motives for stealing that election were, supposedly, for the "greater good." And Tigh, another secret Cylon, helped her try to steal it, so maybe there was a "greater evil" behind the good hidden unconsciously in their intent from the beginning. Killing Cally wasn't for any greater (or human) good. It just protects the hidden Cylons.

And a drunk may be deprived of reason, social taboos and inhibitions, but Tory still has plenty of reason and purpose, though certain social taboos, inhibitions and moral sentiments seem to be gone. And that reason and purpose seem to revolve around Cylon goals she wasn't directly informed of, like saving hybrid babies.

Saying a person is accountable for his/her actions assumes there is someone to hold you to account. And who, exactly is going to hold Tory to account? Indeed, from where we sit as viewers, Chief could go either way. You hope, on some level, that he still has some humanity left, but deep down you know you want more scares and conflict. If their problems can be resolved simply by Chief holding onto his humanity, then you'd start getting bored with Galactica.

Nicki Clyne's blog entry on Cally's passing.

My Galactica Pitch:

Baltar's Last Stand

Critics of Baltar's religion are calling his god "the Cylon god," he hears one of his followers praying in her sleep, "Dear god, make me a Cylon like Baltar so that I never have to die," and he learns that the first disciples of his cult heard of the "one true God" concept from a Six back on New Caprica. He thinks that he is being used by the Cylons to lead humanity to a surrender that will make them the religiously brainwashed cattle of the Cylons. He becomes disgusted with himself and thus begins a major transition in his views and character. He no longer wants to be or feels he is a Cylon.

He finally sides fully with humanity.

When his growing cult decide to take over some of the Galactica fleet's smaller ships and jump toward a Cylon fleet to surrender, Baltar himself has secretly sided with a group that wants to blow-up the Cylon resurrection ship. He's on a suicide mission to blow it up.

The above, I think, might be an example of how a high concept pitch is made in Hollywood, but it's probably longer than most and even then doesn't carry everything I'd like it to.

Just in case any Battlestar Galactica producers are reading my blog, a doubtful possibility since searching for "Battlestar Galactica, blog" turns up over 3 million links, I want to pitch this idea that's been evolving on the Galactic Watercooler forum with some input from me.

I observed that the driving force in the choices for who is a Cylon and who isn't was sadomasochism. (After all, this is a show that loves torture scenes. They tortured Leoben in "Flesh and Bone," they tortured one of the Sixes in "Resurrection Ship," they tortured Balter in “Taking a Break from All Your Worries” ...).

The writers will make the most sadistic choice possible. Consider Tigh, the guy who would sacrifice anything to destroy the Cylons learning that he is a Cylon. No other choice could have been as sadistic. So, while all the best clues point to Baltar being a Cylon the choice would be too expected and Baltar even wants to be a Cylon. The factors that weigh against him being a Cylon can be ennumerated thusly:

1) Baltar wants it, thus it has no emotional punch when he discovers he is Cylon.

2) Too many people expect it, thus it would not be a surprise.

3) Baltar doesn't have a good Cylon role to play at present. Saul Tigh, the second in command on Galactica, and Tory Foster, the right hand woman for the president are both in powerful positions to take down and influence Galactica's destiny.

All this weighs against Baltar being a Cylon for dramatic reasons, but not logical ones. It just wouldn't be emotionally effective to reveal Baltar as a Cylon even though so many clues point towards him.

However, NickB then offered his theory that the writers will make Baltar find out he's a Cylon only after they get him to accept and embrace his humanity, perhaps after he's made a sacrifice and "betrayed" the Cylons. It would be a nice mindfrak for the audience if after initially thinking Baltar was a Cylon at the beginning of the series (as many people seemed to), then dismissing him as too obvious a choice, it would be a triumph of writing to reveal him as a Cylon, having made him such an obvious initial candidate and then persuaded everyone that he was human.

Nick's theory addressed reversing two of the three points, Baltar wanting it and us expecting it, but he doesn't address how it could be best accomplished.

Adding substance to Nick's theory we can get Tory involved and accomplish the reversing of all 3 points:

Taking point 3: Baltar doesn't have a good Cylon role to play at present.

Baltar's role for the Cylons is to spread their religion.

And Baltar might also begin to embrace his humanity when he hears one of his disciples (who he is sleeping with at the time) praying in her sleep, something like; "God, dear God, please make me a Cylon like Baltar so that I never have to die?"

He discovers that many in his cult believe he can lead them to be accepted by the Cylons and made into Cylons if they please the Cylon God. Once he realizes that they've latched on to his secret wish to be a Cylon, Baltar would be more motivated to dig out what he thinks is his humanity and start to embrace it.

He discovers that the boy who was "miraculously" cured wasn't really all that ill after talking to the doctor and that his cult basically talked themselves into believing it was a miracle. He would also discover that the first women in his cult to adopt the religion first heard about the "one true God" from a Six back on New Caprica. Thus he starts to suspect that the Cylons are manipulating him to lead the religion.

Taking point 1: Baltar wants to be a Cylon.

Baltar begins to get disgusted with the religion and he blames the Cylons.

He goes back to his old atheism and starts wondering if such a religion is a form of psychological tyranny and mind control that is in some sense worse than the police state tactics that the Cylons used on New Caprica. (The basic arguments for that can be found in Nietzsche, Feuerbach, and even Hitchens and Harris.) He shares these doubts with Tory and when she learns that Baltar's disciples want to be Cylons she sees a shared religion as the only peace that is possible between Cylons and humans. So what if it's just a Cylon mainframe, it's god-like in its powers. She would start to more fully embrace what she thinks is her Cylon nature and this Cylon goal. Arguing with with Tory, Baltar says the religion will essentially reduce humanity to the state of being Cylon cattle, they won't be allowed to develop science, but will have to take lying myths as reality, they won't be able to create meaning for their own lives but will have a religious meaning imposed on them.

Tory points out that cattle, like cows, couldn't survive in the wild and that they have pretty good lives compared with their wild cousins. Thus, Baltar begins to figure Tory for a Cylon.

Baltar, now seeing the negative effects of the religion, begins siding more fully with the humanist values that he once preached but didn't really hold to. He starts to speak against the "Cylon God," but has to go against his new love, Tory. She convinces him that it's too late, he's done the damage and his current views no longer matter. His disciples believe in his religion, not in him.

His disciples now plan to steal a few of the smaller ships in the fleet and jump toward a Cylon basestar and surrender to the Cylons instead of following Galactica (towards Earth?). Baltar gains the trust of a group that wants to destroy the resurrection ship flying with the basestar and volunteers to sacrifice his life by flying his scout ship into the basestar and then overloading it's nuclear engine.

He tells his followers that he will go ahead of them just in case the Cylons don't accept them. If they shoot him down, or if there is trouble, they should head back toward Galactica or look for a planet to settle on. They all jump in near the basestar and start broadcasting "We come in peace. We surrender" on all channels. Baltar goes on ahead, escorted by Cylon raiders -- but when he gets near the resurrection ship he darts off course, overloads the engines and rams into the resurrection ship.

Baltar's ship punches through the hull like it was thin cardboard. The resurrection ship turns out to be hollow. It's a decoy. Baltar, being in a spacesuit, ejects from the scout ship before it blows. As he is flying out of the scout ship it blows up and it appears Baltar was too close -- he's hit by a fast flying bit of wreckage from his exploding scout ship.

The next thing Baltar knows, he's waking up in a Cylon resurrection Jacuzzi.

To be continued... maybe?