Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock Discussion Thread

Oh. That’s what I forgot to do this week. No recap prepared, but I do have some comments about last week’s indispensable episode tucked below the fold. Along with a semi-spoiler-ific picture. Well, at least it gave me a semi.

Spoiler Policy: Anything from the miniseries and the show up to and including tonight’s episode is fair game; no need to warn or in some way obscure text for anything that comes from that material. However, anything you may have heard about future episodes should be kept to yourself. Thanks.

Most people call me “Ellen.” You can call me MOMMY.

No Exit Remarks:

This was probably the wrong episode to skip, since everyone I’ve talked to has wanted clarification about its many revelations. But here are the big ones:

(1) The series now has a Big Bad: John Cavil, who gets blamed for pretty much everything bad that happened after the First Cylon War. It’s a little late in the game, don’t you think, to introduce the true antagonist (there are like, what, five episodes left?). And it puts the lie to the whole “They have a plan” thing, although who actually took that seriously after Season 3.0? Still, this works and it is deliciously horrible. He has taunted, tortured, and fraked (literally) his parents, the Final Five. Who are actually the First Five. Kinda.

(2) That leads me to the second big point. The Whole Myth Arc is largely explained. My bro asked about it and this is what I sent him via email:

When the colonies left Kobol the humans went off to found the Colonies, and the Thirteenth Tribe (that is, the Cylons) went off to found Earth. All using subluminal ships.

At Earth, the Thirteenth learned to reproduce and so forgot how to resurrect. After a thousand years passed, they built mechanical slaves which eventually rebelled. But the Final Five had just then rediscovered resurrection. They lived through the Genocide of Earth and then traveled in search of the Colonies to warn them not to mess around with mechanical slaves. But they arrived too late. So they cut a deal with the Colonies’ Centurions and everything would have been peachy except that Pinocchio-Cavil decided to teach Gepetto-Ellen a lesson.

He replied: “Fuck.” and “,|,, (oo) ,,|,” which after lot of squinting I discovered is supposed to be him flipping me two birds.

(3) On that note, I loved the episode for its semi-classical references. First, an in-Galacticaverse reference: “All of this has happened before, and blah blah blah.” Indeed. Ellen (and the other four) created Cavil and he rebelled. Just like every created robot does in this series.

Then, the Brothers Grimm meets Pinocchio, as I mentioned above. Not to mention Cain & Abel, er Cavil & Daniel. And did anyone else just about die when Ellen offered Boomer the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil apple? I couldn’t decide if it was a better shout out for Genesis or the Wicked Stepmother. Or both. And finally, the title of the episode itself was a shout out to Sartre. Well done, BSG writers, you kept me well-distracted.

(4) Outstanding issue: the Angels. The word “angel” has only appeared a few times on the show. In this past episode when Anders is being wheeled into surgery he yells at the other Finals to follow the angels or listen to the angels or something. The other time was when HeadSix tells Baltar that she is an Angel of the Lord sent to protect him.

Now that most of the Myth Arc has been demystified (though not what led the colonies to flee Kobol), one of the few questions left is where the Cylon God came from. Ellen said the Colonies’ version of the Centurions came up with it themselves. HeadSix certainly claimed to be an agent of that singular God. There have been three other Angels in the series: Head Baltar (seen by Caprica), Dead Elosha (seen by Roslin during hyperspace jumps), and Hallucination Leoben (seen by Starbuck while she’s preparing to die). That has yet to be explained, but I suspect shortly will be.

Okay, that’s all I got. Discuss.

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~ by Gabriel Malor on February 20, 2009.