Battlestar Galactica: "Daybreak" - Part 1

In the writers’ room, we spent the first day [of breaking that episode] in a lot of difficulty, a lot of frustration. We sort of knew what the plot was, we knew the action story, we knew the plot of the finale. We spent that whole first day just struggling with the mechanics of the plot, how you got from A to B. We were spinning our wheels. I went home and I was in the shower and I had this “Duh” moment – the show was never about that. That’s not why I love the show. It’s not about the plot.

I went into the writers’ room the next day and wrote on the big dry-erase board, “It’s the characters, stupid,” and the writers laughed and we all sat back and said, “Who gives a [expletive] about the plot? Let’s just talk about these characters.”
-- Ron Moore

So, there you have it, everyone who has been wondering:

What the hell do a crotchety old man, a baby-shower, and a pigeon have to do with the survival of the human/cylon races? Anyone?
-- Hack&Slash

Of course, the problem with Ron Moore's take on things is that all the big questions most of us have are "plot" questions, not "character" questions. Most viewers think they know these characters pretty well already. What we don't know, at least I don't, is who is manipulating things behind the scenes - if anyone? What is that Opera house vision that Roslin, Athena and Caprica-6 had been sharing all about? Who or what brought Starbuck back to life? etc..

One possible meaning of focusing on the characters rather than the plot is that we may not get any explanation for many of the things we want answers too. Remember when Bill Adama told Roslin, in "Six of One," about her drug induced hallucinations giving her clues to finding Earth, "You're afraid you may not be the dying leader you thought you were. Or that your death may be as meaningless as everyone else's." Also recall the episode called "Faith."

In "Faith," Roslin was in the hospital next to another cancer patient, Emily. Emily listened to Baltar on the radio talking about life after death. Emily had some dream or visionary experience that got her believing in Baltar's afterlife. After being told about this, Roslin has her own dream, finding Emily and herself on a boat, then, looking towards shore they see their dead friends and family (where her sisters there). I pointed out in my review that how you interpreted that episode depended on how hip you were to why people had such dreams.

There is something called "Dream Incorporation" where a sound from reality is heard in our dream and incorporated in some way. If you thought about the things Roslin must have heard as she dreamed then you had some huge clues. When she woke up, Baltar was still preaching about the river and the afterlife, so she was hearing that while dreaming. And Emily was gone when she woke and that meant Roslin must have heard of her death while asleep.

You have to wonder why the writers would include these skeptic's clues that point to the dream as being an induced wish-fulfillment fantasy. Why do that when Roslin lives in a world where she also has had seemigly paranormal shared dreams with Caprica-6 and Athena in the Opera house? And she found Earth too.

Maybe Roslin's Opera house visions are just another side of her escape from meaninglessness and Ron Moore is an existentialist. But, but... how could her crazy visions be shared with Athena and Caprica-6? How could she really find Earth?

I don't know. But is that the real test of a vision, that you can't figure out where some bit of correct information slipped in? Or figure out why others share your vision? Maybe the Opera house vision is ultimately meaningless? Maybe it is essentially a delusion shared with some Cylons because Roslin got a dose of Athena's and Hera's Cylon blood that allowed her to plug into the projection psychology of those Cylons.

I bring this up because I don't see how that Opera house vision can mean much now as the final hours approach. They certainly can't get Roslin, Caprica-6 and Athena back to the actual Opera house. So, maybe the Opera house is a Cylon projection they'll share or something purely symbolic? Maybe Roslin really will see Baltar and a 6 taking Hera off just before she and Athena die? Maybe that's all it means? A fuzzy, symbolic glimpse of the future.

That I could live with and even enjoy, but worse, maybe we won't get an answer for how it is Starbuck got resurrected in a new body and viper because some writer thinks that sometimes incredible things happen for no good reason. (That omission I won't forgive them for. How Starbuck came back demands an explanation.)

THE FLASHBACKS:

If you think about it, the flashback scenes early in this episode were some nice little micro-stories all by themselves. Except for maybe Bill Adama being asked to do something he didn't want to do. So, what was it? Was he being sent to that remote space station that was built so that cylons and humans could meet and maintain diplomatic relations? Every year, according to the old miniseries intro, the humans sent an officer, but the Cylons sent no one for over forty years... that is until the day of the attack. What would it add if Adama had sat there waiting? Was the intro to the miniseries a lie and they sent a cylon to meet Adama, but Adama never said anything?

Every other flashback may have been nothing more than a little self-contained micro-story not really meant to plug into the big picture. Yet, I can't help trying to do just that. I will be disappointed if those flashbacks are just pointless little micro-stories. For example, Roslin gave her sister a baby shower and then woke up to some police knocking at her door. They had come to tell her that her father and sisters were killed by a drunk driver. It was a touching and effective scene, you could feel the gut punch that caused Roslin to get a little crazy and walk out into a fountain and just stand there. But what did I really learn about Roslin, after three seasons of watching her, that I didn't already know? Will her sisters show up in some later vision? Was that story meant just to underline the fact that other events in Roslin's life were drawing her to the edge of insanity?

We saw Gaius Baltar living a life of limos and pretty women, drinking with Caprica-6 and about ready to get it on when Baltar gets a phone call. Turns out that Baltar's dad has stabbed his nurse in the hand with a table knife. Baltar calls off the sex to deal with the crisis. He yells at his dad and we learn this is the third nurse his dad has scarred off. So, Baltar is selfish and belittling towards his dad? Is this really a new side of Baltar? Did we need to see that for some reason? Then we learn that Caprica-6 had helped out Baltar's dad. Baltar would have forgotten her if she hadn't done something like that.

How are any of those stories going to be relevant to the ending? I can't tell you, but I hope they have some relevance beyond being nice little micro-stories stuck in for no other reason.

BALTAR'S CHOICES:

After the flashbacks there was a bit more coherence as far as putting together the end-game, or "plot," of this final 3 hours. It is still character-centric rather than plot-centric though. For example, Lee Adama posed a great character question for Baltar. Apollo asked Baltar if he had ever done anything selfless. Baltar stared at him a moment and then said, "I wouldn't trust me either." Yet Baltar has done some selfless stuff, minor as it was. Remember that old lady back on Caprica in the very first shows? Boomer and Helo had to raffle off seats on the Raptor that would get people off the bombed planet, Caprica. An old lady asked Baltar to read her number. Baltar could have switched tickets. Baltar could have easily stolen a seat on that raptor. He would have been stuck on Caprica had not Helo executed a greater act of selflessness by giving his seat to Baltar.

What Baltar can't do, I think, is brag about such a little thing or even personally align with Apollo's philosophy that selflessness is this great thing by which to determine who is the best leader. And yet by answering that question honestly rather than just lying to Apollo, as Apollo almost begged him too, he was being selfless and trustworthy. Nice paradox. In spite of all Baltar's selfishness, there are limits to it.

The question gets asked again of Baltar when Bill Adama asks everyone to decide to go or not go on a suicide mission by asking them to step to one side of a tape line. Of course, Baltar stays on the side of the tape for those who want to stay behind, but there is a part of him that seems to want to go. He keeps looking over at Caprica-6 during Adama's speech and then as others start deciding which side of the line they want to be on he looks like he wants to go, but can't.

EXPOSITION DUMPS:

Something I may have been wrong about is Sam Anders doing another exposition dump. They snuck their way around his exposition dump by having him reveal whatever he revealed off screen to Starbuck and Bill Adama alone. I almost wish for the exposition dump instead. We're going to have to either get an exposition dump or very few questions answered. There's no time left for the characters to play detective and figure things out slowly.

Again, the choices here are character-centric, Adama's decision to talk to Anders starts with a conversation between Adama and Hot Dog near the memorial wall. Hot Dog dropped some pictures he had taken off the wall and he tells Adama that the only pictures left are people who no longer have anyone to care about them. Looking at the wall of fallen shipmates, Adama sees a picture of Athena and Hera, he takes the picture and heads right over to Anders' goo-tub where he finds Starbuck.

Adama and Starbuck come out of the goo-tub room with knowledge of where Hera is, which is where the Cylon colony is. A Raptor is sent ahead to explore the area and they find a black hole guarding the colony with only one safe point to jump in. Thus the plot actually does move forward.

A lot of side-shows they seemed to have set up now look like they won't happen. For example, it now seems the long-term effects of giving Baltar's balcubines those big guns isn't going to be a fight with the "sons of Aries," but to fight Cylons.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I don't see how they can wrap it all up in the last two hours, especially if those last two hours are mostly a big action packed space battle. I don't think, like a lot of others, that we will get answers to every single lingering question. But, in the final analysis, my speculations on where they are going have not been good. Nor has anyone else's that I've been reading.

The choices they've made in this last episode were really baffling. That is good thing, though. It means I could be really surprised when this ends.

All My Cylons ... these are the days of our fives ... As The Galaxy Turns

DEADLOCK comments:
Spoilers ahead:


[The Galactica Blog Carnival is here.]

[FIRST A LITTLE MUSIC, click here to get this week's tune]



The show does not feel like it is coming to an end. We're down to the Final Five episodes and things are still getting complicated in ways that make me feel the show is turning into an old fashioned Soap Opera. With the show closing they continue to weave intricate and convoluted stories, now involving Soap Operaish elements like sex, pregnancy, falling in love and adultery. Ellen Tigh very much seemed to belong in a Soap Opera. You could literally plop the actress into a soap and she'd do great there playing the same character.

This episode featured one clearly standard old fashioned Soap Opera element; Saul Tigh's extramarital affair with Caprica-6 and that bit of cheesy sexual drama that followed. On learning about Tigh’s relationship with the 6, Ellen confronted Caprica about it, even telling Caprica how she and Tigh fracked the minute she got back to Galactica. Ellen then changes her tune and tells Caprica that Tigh loves her, Caprica, more than almost anything else, but then goes on to play a head game on Tigh and Caprica that proves this isn't quite true.

[CAN YOU NAME THIS TUNE? OR TELL ME WHY I CHOSE IT?]

Ellen pretends to vote to for leaving Galactica and Saul insists on staying, even if both Ellen and Caprica-6 go. Thus it is, according to Ellen, revealed that it’s Bill Adama and Galactica that Saul loves more than either Ellen or Caprica-6 or his own baby. Over at cinemablend.com they celebrated Tigh's bromance with his boss using this fan video from youtube:



I say old fashioned soaps because I haven't watched a soap in decades and I understand they've evolved. I'll have to check. But some other old fashioned soapy cliches I can find in Galactica: Amnesia (the Final Five had their memories blocked) previously-unknown children (Ellen only recently learned that the Cylons are in a way her children), siblings and twins (of the evil variety) are there in more abundance on Galactica than you'd ever see on a soap. Established characters come back from the dead to upset and reinvigorate the relationships (a character's death is not necessarily permanent even when you see an on-camera corpse in both soaps and on Galactica). Unexpected calamities disrupt weddings, childbirths, and other major life events with unusual frequency in both soaps and on Galactica.

On the flip side, my sister has told me that science fiction elements started creeping into the soaps back in the 90s. Someone who knows both mediums will have to confirm my speculation about the soap influence on Galactica. And unless there is a soap about an ex-scientist turned cult leader I don't think you'll find anyone like Baltar on the soaps.

Baltar's arc is starting to get scary again. He returned to his harem/cult to find some angry balcubines who were feeling that Baltar and God abandoned them. They are now armed and hoarding food. Gaius is lucky they let him back into his own cult. While on a lower deck to do some trading, Gaius sees how badly some of the people are suffering and decides to become charitable and give away some of the balcubine's food. Those thugs, the Sons of Aries, show up and take what’s left of the food they brought.

Now in danger of losing control of his cult, Head-6 reappears to give Baltar the right words to influence the women and regain control of his cult. Paula seemed to be in charge and Head-6 whispered in Baltar’s ear that, "the sheep have a new shepherd." The plan that Head-6 gives Baltar involves getting more guns and so Gaius talks the Adamas into giving him such guns... Wait! How did he do that again? Crates of guns were delivered to cult quarters and this makes the women happy, especially Paula.

I've been wondering for awhile if Baltar's religion is some form of Cylon Creedocide:

Important Things with Demetri MartinWed 10:30pm / 9:30c

Power - Creedocide

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A hungry religious cult with some big guns... What was Adama thinking? When the food runs out they can start killing each other and solve their food shortage problems by decreasing the demand? Has Adama finally decided that the human race doesn't deserve to survive?

UPDATE:

Ms. SP, Also known as Marie, has a comment below with a link to Maureen Ryan's interview with Jane Espenson. In addition to the comments on Adama giving guns to Baltar's group, Ms Espenson also remarked on the soapy quality of Ellen's scenes:

I never thought of it as soapy, but as emotional. Fights over love probably feel soapy because these are the sorts of stories that were traditionally told about women, while men got workplace stories. Now these two types are just some of the stories we tell, but they're still worth telling. And they don't have to be soapy. I hope the Six/Ellen scene isn't too close to Dolly Parton's song "Jolene," because I suppose that is the danger. I just tried to write an exchange I believed, about emotions as complex as I could muster.

The term "soapy" is subjective. What makes a scene soapy to me isn't quite the same as what makes a scene soapy to someone else. As for Ellen's character, I can now name who she reminded me of: Erica Kane from "All My Children." Erica used to play exactly the same kind of tempestuous head games on people as Ellen did on Saul Tigh and Caprica-6. I only watched a few episodes of that old soap and perhaps what I saw was atypical. Does the comparison ring a bell for anyone else?

A few Pieces of a Puzzle

Battlestar Galactica: No Exit

The Galactica Blog Carnival for this week is posted here.

[CLICK HERE FOR MOOD MUSIC: "Ode to a tub of Cylon Goo"]

The episode, "No Exit," was an exposition dump, but through that method they finally did give us a few good pieces of the puzzle that will be the real history of the Cylons. The constant talking came mostly from Ellen and Anders, who are now recovering their memories, and then Cavil, who explained his "evil" motives in a way not too dissimilar to a comic book villain, or a James Bond villain. All this talk broke one of the rules of good drama called "show, don't tell." It is probably the effect of trying to compress too much back story into too few episodes. Even Bear McCreary noted "... the unusual amount of fast-paced and essential dialog in these two shows left little room for big musical statements."

On the other hand, they had me so hungry for this information with the previous buildup that I didn't mind. However, I think the people who liked the mutiny story might find this episode slow going and curse the fact that there are fans like me who want this stuff. There's a reason that exposition dumps are the bane of science fiction.

We've crossed over into new territory and one of the ways they signaled this was with a new series introduction. The episode began with a new retelling of the history that featured some new Cylon robots that look a lot more like the old ones from the original series. They even put up some new texts, one saying that "this has all happened before."

The episode began with Ellen drinking the poison booze Tigh gave her on New Caprica, she has a psychedelic memory trip and then finds herself waking up in a bathtub full of that Cylon "amniotic" goo. At first she is horrified to find out she is a Cylon, but then a strange calm begins to come over her and she starts acting familiar with her surroundings, even asking one of the chrome toaster models to help her out of the tub.

Ellen was apparently resurrected immediately after her death on New Caprica. Cavil had locked her up and let no one but himself and his pet 8 talk to her. So they have to encapsulate months of time with Ellen and Cavil in mere minutes, starting from her death, through the Cylon civil war, to finding Earth and up to the present.

When Ellen started talking to Cavil she called him "John" and told him that "I named you after my father." She even calls the Cylons "her children." This gives that sex scene between Cavil and Ellen back on New Caprica a whole new twist. Father and Daughter and Mother and Son at the same time, Oedipus and Electra in one frack.

Next we are shown Anders in sick bay with his bald head screwed painfully into a bulky device, called a "head frame" I think, while the doctor starts preparing to drill into his skull. Anders has a bullet in his brain and it has effected his memory blocks. His hidden past is coming back to him. Starbuck is with him when Anders starts rambling, he tells Starbuck to gather the other Cylons because he has begun to remember. We get a lot of additional Cylon info from him and I'm going to have to watch the episode again on Hulu and do an update just to keep all this exposition straight.

What did you get out of Ander's exposition?

There was too much stuff, lots of disconnected bits and pieces. There was something about traveling around at sub-light speed before they invented jump drive to explain how they came from Earth 2,000 years ago without having 2,000 years worth of memories. They had a ship in orbit around Earth to upload their memories and then they traveled at relativistic speed... somewhere? Time slowed down for them as thousands of years passed for the rest of the universe. Ah, yes Einstein's time dilation effect. I wonder if they'll give us a starbow in any flash-back scenes?

There was information about all of the Final Five Cylons being involved in some project to recreate the resurrection technology. They all worked in the same research facility. They didn't invent resurrection technology, they re-invented it. Ellen made an intuitive leap that brought the resurrection system back online. Tyrol and Tory were lovers, they lived together and were madly in love, planning to get married. Ellen liked the beach and the water. Tigh and Ellen were married.

Resurrection technology is also "organic memory transfer" and it's ancient and came from Kobol. It fell out of use after they started to procreate. Wait! Stop there. Why would people give up on immortality in order to have babies? I wouldn't do that. That does not make sense as a stand alone statement. Were there laws and over population problems leading to the repression of the technology? Was it done for religious reasons, like George Bush restricting embryonic stem cell research?

More weirdly, it was the robots, the centurions that evolved the concept of a single loving God.

The information coming from the Ellen and Cavil dialog was more coherent and one thing I did get was the motivation for Cavil. Cavil was the villain from the start, he turned on the final five, blocked access to their memories and then introduced them into colonial civilization. His motivation is worthy of one of the great comic book villains. "I am a machine," said Cavil. He hates his humanity and he has vision of a better kind of existence as a machine. He found sleep to be unproductive and he got rid of his need for it.

He gave a great super-villain speech about watching a supernova, calling it "the moment of creation," and how he wished he could see it with something better than the pathetic and ridiculous eyes Ellen had given him. Cavil wants to feel the solar wind, to smell dark matter and to be more than human.



Human eyes are indeed limited in the spectrum of light they see. They are mere gelatinous orbs to Cavil. But in a way we can "see" in the full spectrum of light when we use scientific instruments. And that's what Cavil wants for eyes in order to see supernovas:



That raises a question... why can't Cavil do that himself? Why can't he upload into a machine of his choice and become the kind of machine he wants to be? He could, in theory, upload into anything from a basestar to a robocop/terminator type machine to a Cylon heavy raider with some tweaking of the technology. (Maybe some versions of Cavil already have?) It's not unrealistic that he is currently limited somehow, he needs Ellen's help just for recreating the resurrection technology that the rebels have destroyed. But if becoming a machine is his goal, why not strive for it? Considering the fact that Battlestar Galactica producer Ron Moore is now working on a "backdoor pilot" for Fox called Virtuality it's within his bag of tricks to do something with that.

Cylons already download their minds into other humaniod bodies, and that should imply what a lot of SF already does, uploading into computers and machines. We're already working in that direction... check out project Blue Brain.

I think this means a prediction is in order, and that Cavil will eventually figure out how to upload into a big machine, like a basestar, and become a real monster. If knowing he could be so much more is what drives him, expect him to try it.

Ellen told Cavil that being human had its advantages, she gave him "free will," thus tossing around that term like it had some concrete meaning. It doesn't. What does she mean by free-will? Are we talking metaphysical free-will, free-will as a legal concept, free-will as a psychological concept, free-will as some aspect of consciousness, or what?

It's also here at this confused metaphysical level where we are in danger of falling into a bad old sci-fi/horror movie cliche. All this talk of "free will" was the horror/sci-fi cliche I feared and wrote about in "Six of One" : The disappointing part.

[CLICK FOR "Horror Movie Cliche" music.]

In a way, Ellen Tigh is our Doctor Frankenstein and Cavil is her monster. The others making up the final five are apparently just a collection of Igors. Will Ellen also be punished by her creation for "going against the laws of nature" and creating a monster. That's what Cavil was suggesting... except our concept about "going against the laws of nature" has undergone a dramatic shift since Mary Shelley Wollstonecraft wrote Frankenstein. In Cavil's mind that nature now includes some kind of "machine nature" that is ill defined. Cavil talks about "Justice" and the Cylons being the "slaves of humanity," but can I really enslave something that has no "free-will"? Can I enslave my computer? My toaster? What would happen if I set my toaster free?

Again, we get back to the bane of science fiction, expository lumps that are needed to clarify concepts like "free-will." What does that term mean to the Galactica writers? I'm not sure. Right now it's just an ambiguous bit of Galactica technobabble.

I'm going to wrap this up without talking too much about another major plot point introduced in this episode; there was apparently a Model Seven, Daniel, that Cavil killed. Cavil corrupted his DNA or something. Also, towards the end Cavil's pet 8 has a falling out with Cavil (finally saw a newer shiny thing?) and when Cavil threatened to extract the information he needed from Ellen through brain surgery, the 8 took Ellen away on a Raptor and flew her to the fleet.

It seems Ellen will be joining up with the fleet judging by the previews. And Tyrol is back to being Chief, and using Cylon technology help fix the cracks in Galactica's hull. I'll pick up those threads if I need to when the next episode, "Deadlock," airs.

Who's bullshit is this? A new mystery at the heart of BSG

A nephew of mine graduated from college and it was commencement weekend here. As a result, starting last Friday night, the house was crowded with relatives and then through the rest of the weekend my time was taken up with them, (I saw "Iron Man" and went to commencement parties), so I wasn't able to use the normal time slot I'd set aside for blog writing on BSG. And in addition to that, I could only watch one showing of this episode, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," and that while it was talked over by several relatives.

The result is that this is not a coherent review of the episode, instead what I'll do is continue to add to this review by reviewing other reviews that get linked by The Battlestar Galactica Blog Carnival, "So Say We All." That way I can catch up with what happened on this episode later.

Some questions that I'll be trying to answer in the coming week are:

1) Why did Athena shoot Natalie?

I was left really baffled towards the end. What's going on with Athena and her daughter? Why did her daughter fill a notebook with crayon drawings of the blond 6s? Did I miss a clue? And why is Athena so freaked out about it that she shoots the 6 called Natalie, the least blond of the 6s? It has something to do with the Opera House Visions, but what? Does Athena see a 6 and Baltar stealing her daughter in that vision?

2) Who's bullshit was Natalie preaching to the Galacticans?

In this episode Natalie, one of the Cylon 6s, made a speech to the Quorum about the impact that the possibility of death has had on Cylon society. From what I was able to gather she argued that the Cylons had suffered in developing their individual and social identities due to the fact that they didn't have to face death before the civil war. She said something to the effect that, I paraphrase, "In our civil war we watched our people die and we learned that in order for our existence to have any value we needed to have mortality."

I'd like a transcript of that speech because right now my impression is that it's utter bullshit. The question, the new mystery, is just who's bullshit is it? Is this the Galactica writers preaching what they really think, or did they put that bullshit into Natalie's mouth in order to later argue against it?

One clue to the fact that the writers know its bullshit is that Natalie gets shot and thus her whole claim to the value of death is one she'll have to face herself. Would she really rather die? We'll see how she faces death because, judging by the previews, she's not dead yet.

However, this is old and oft repeated bullshit we've been given as a serious philosophical view in hundreds of movies and books for a long, long time. What Natalie said has already been said by fantasy writers like Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Stephen King and so many others, telling us to go gentle into that good night and not rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Natalie's speech seemed to echo the elven sentiment, the realization that a finite life can press the mind toward something meaningful, that death is a blessing, found in Tolkien's Silmarillion: "But to the Atani I will give a new gift."

Those Men with the greatest understanding treated death as the Gift it was originally intended to be, and when their time came gladly gave themselves up to it. We see this, for example, in the earlier Kings of Númenor, and Aragorn also accepted the Gift at the natural end of his life. For most Men, though, the Gift was tainted by Morgoth, and they came to fear it rather than embrace it. This fear reached its peak in the later years of Númenor, where even the long life given to the Númenóreans was not enough, and wise men did all they could to try to escape death altogether. In the end, this desperation led to Númenor's destruction when Ar-Pharazôn led a battle fleet to the Undying Lands, falsely believing that they held the secret of everlasting life.

Views like this show up in a lot of vampire tales, "The Mummy," and "Pirates of the Caribbean" too. The curse of immortality is that one is trapped here, unable to escape and move on. The curse works by shear irony: every worldly thing is given, power, immortality, but it does not satisfy.

However, thinking there is something to move on to, on the other side of Baltar's river, is not accepting death. It's what Ernst Becker would call "The Denial of Death." One of the ways that death shapes our thinking is the lengths some people go to deny it. This makes a few people dangerously delusional. Muslim terrorists apparently flew planes into a couple skyscrapers thinking they would get an immortal life in paradise with 72 virgins.

Natalie's speech was the kind of thing that immature religious people, who actually deny the reality of death, say in order to sound like grown up atheists. Some who say it, as apparently Natalie and Tolkien, actually do think that when they die that they'll really wind up on the other side of Baltar's river hunting ducks with Mike Huckabee.

It’s one thing to say that, "this is how things are, we die and it effects how we view life," but it’s another thing entirely to say "this is how things should be because death is a gift that gives life meaning, value and/or purpose." And that is what Natalie and Tolkien, and many others, seem to be saying.

Death doesn't give life value, meaning or purpose. Life actually has far more than one purpose, value or meaning and they are all up to you. Death does nothing but put a limit on your choices for finding purpose, value and meaning in life. Transhumanists, like Max Moore, call people like Natalie and Tolkien "deathists."

In our world such views line up with the thinking of thanatophiles like Leon Kass and Francis Fukuyama who would argue that radical life extension will cause serious social problems. They might even be right. But avoiding the problems isn't the only factor determining policy. We aren't going to get rid of cars and other technological innovations because of pollution, environmental destruction, and the squandering of natural resources. We are forced to find other solutions that allow us to keep our cars and cell phones and electric lighting. Right or wrong, if people could chose not to die, they would. I would. I say find other solutions to problems caused by those choices because we're solving the biggest problem of all.

The whole purpose of life, to the extent it has one singular purpose, is to avoid death. We don’t seek out death. It comes to us unbidden, and we unwilling participate when we have no remaining alternatives. And because we, in our current state of technology, can not defeat death we invent the suicidal self-destructive and romantic sophistry required to think death is a good thing. However, when talking social policy we're usually talking about other people's death, not our own. Many deathists can be hypocritical about that. Consider people who chose to die in order to end their suffering from cancer and other such incurable conditions, many deathists like Leon Kass don't support Jack Kevorkian.

If choosing not to die were one of the available options, I'd choose it, providing I saw a prospect for some good living ahead. I'd love to have Cylon technology protecting my life and mind. I'd rather be paying for that than for life and health insurance. I'd even give up ever having children for that kind of immortality if we couldn't escape from this planet for the stars and over population became a problem. However, all we can do today is thwart death imperfectly by giving the next generation more tools than we had.

It's not because I'm one hundred percent certain there is nothing coming after death, though this seems the most likely possibility, but rather that I've got zero confidence in people who say there is more. You see, the thing about dying is you only do it once and there’s no changing your mind afterwards. As long as I live death is a possibility even with Cylon technology even though it might get harder to die. So, I wouldn't trust a deathist like Natalie any farther than I could throw the the Great Pyramid of Khufu.

3) Are Starbuck and Helo supposed to be morons?

Starting off this episode there was a big minute or two of drama centered around the fact that the Cylon basestar jumped into the middle of the fleet before the poo-barge did and almost got blown up by the Galactica. They had tried to jump at the same time but the poo-barge had a techno glitch and came in late.

Ummm... Why didn't they have the poo-barge go first and tell them the basestar was coming? Even jumping together would require Helo having that explanation. Why not explain that there is a basestar coming and why you shouldn't shoot at it.

Did I miss something? Was there a good reason they thought they should jump together?


Oh dear, I feel like I missed an important episode because I was so busy and distracted this weekend. More than half the reviews linked at the blog carnival seem to have begun with the word "wow," whereas I probably would have used the semi-word "wha??" and clearly I needed to pay closer attention but I didn't have enough attention to give.

Updates are coming... stay tuned.
UPDATE:

Thanks to a comment from M, and the Battlestar wiki, I now have that transcript of Natalie's speech to the Quorum:

"In our civil war, we've seen death. We watched our people die. Gone forever. As terrible as it was, beyond the reach of the Resurrection Ships, something began to change. We could feel a sense of time. As if each moment held its own significance. We began to realize that for our existence to hold any value it must end. To live meaningful lives we must die, and not return. The one human flaw, that you spend your lifetimes distressing over - mortality - is the one thing...well, it's the one thing that makes you whole."

Some of the arguments in the comments section below have to do with whether this is bullshit, and if not, what does it mean. Note that the two people who are saying it means something, MB and M, don't agree about what it means.

Len Neighbors' blog post on this episode has a nice paragraph on viewing BSG:

The real power of this religious debate as a storyline is that it destroy's the audience's birds' eye view. Up until the middle of season three, we were perched on high like clockmaker gods, watching what had been set into motion, knowing who was what. Sure, there were little mysteries here and there, even some big ones, but none like this. For the first time, we're stuck in the same place the characters are: picking a side to believe in as a matter of faith. We might know what the characters on both sides of the debate are doing and saying, but we don't know what's true, and what's not.