bsg

[sophiaserpentia]

cowgrrl and i watched BSG 04x11 on Monday night, and then talked about it for probably close to an hour. The show relies to an unhealthy degree on shock value -- it's gotten to the point where you can say, "Try to imagine the most messed up, upside-down, unlikely turn of events," and you'll predict with some accuracy the next point in the main story arc.

However, it is still very good science fiction, and, if possible, has become even more of a tribute to Philip K. Dick (intentionally or otherwise) than before. So at this point i'm going to cut for spoilers --

Ellen Tigh as the 12th Cylon - there's an interesting logic to this. And a megaton of implications.

I confess i didn't see it coming, but i was also convinced that they've been holding out Starbuck as a red herring -- they too obviously WANTED us to think she was the last Cylon.

First, back to New Caprica, where i think the mystery of the "final five" is going to be explicated. When it was revealed that three of the "final five" cylons were Saul Tigh, Tyrol, and Anders -- who had been the leaders of the human resistance -- i began to think that perhaps we're seeing played out an echo of a previous Cylon civil war, a war that ended with the permanent banishment of five models and the rigid enforcement among the other seven of silence on the topic. The enforcers of this code of silence, the self-appointed enforcers of cylon self-preservation, are the Ones.

This casts the reaction of the Ones to the Two-Six-Eight rebellion in a new light. The Ones may not be autocratic despots at all, but frightened preservers of a fragile scheme that began to unravel when De'Anna learned who the "final five" are. Rather than see history repeat itself and the entire Cylon civilization undermined, the Ones decided to betray and murder the Twos, Sixes, and Eights who had questioned his authority.

But, back to New Caprica, where there was a resurrection ship in orbit at the moment Ellen died. If she's a cylon, then she almost certainly ressed on that ship -- which means she's been alive, in some fashion, all this time. What, then, became of her? Here's what i think.

I think a One got to her first and spirited her away before any of the other Cylons saw her. Whether this was a kidnapping or an assignation depends really on how deep things are between the Ellens and the Ones. Was it an accident of chance that Ellen had embarked on an affair with a One on New Caprica -- ostensibly so she could secure Saul's release? Or was it an echo of an ancient love triangle involving One, Ellen, and Saul?

It would be almost trite, in a way, if all of the mayhem and conflict turned out to stem from a 2000 year old love triangle. And that leads us to the other Big Reveal of episode 11: that Cylons lived on Earth 2000 years before the show's setting.

We don't know how far in future -- or past -- this show is set. We don't, now, know which came first, the human or the cylon. We don't know how cylons came to live on Earth 1,960 years before their supposed invention on Caprica (although now it seems unavoidable to surmise that the "invention" of cylons on Caprica was a staged event). We don't know if Earth was a Cylon planet or if the crew of the Galactica would have found human remains had they searched more.

But this is why i say the show has very suddenly become very Phil-Dick-ian, because his speciality was taking the time to create the reality in which his characters lived, and then make it all wibbly-wobbly and pliable.

It does explain a few things which i had previously wondered about. For example -- why did De'Anna fixate on an ancient human temple as the place where the "final five" would be revealed to her? Makes perfect sense if in fact the temple of Jupiter on the algae planet was actually a cylon one.

I think, also, this is going to have something to do with the mysterious cylon-only disease from the ancient Earth probe which was the subject of 03x07. But i don't really know anything more about that.

ETA. What remains to be revealed:

1. Who's been orchestrating numerous events and "coincidences" in such a way as to make it seem like God is guiding things.

2. What's the big deal with Hera?

3. What's really going on with Kara? I think Leoben/Two was expecting her to turn out to be a Cylon, and ran away when he realized the truth was even more inexplicable.