Good episode - unltimately preciatable and disappointing though. Having Zarek kill teh quormum strips away all teh authority of the mutineers and amrginalizes their (compelling) argument that allaince with the Cylons shoudl not be possible. With Zarek and Gaeta dead - who is goign to amke teh case now? Lee? Kelly? And who would possibly listen? No - I think this whole story line has run its course and that the grand theme of this show is goign to be a message of tolerance and accomodation with others.

Too abd they had started with the premise of an overarching threat to huaminty's survival as a species. In the end, we will al just get along.

Copied with permission of the author from another BSG discussion:

"The writers fail to give voice to the anger – they criminalize it.

The writers are tying too hard to make the rebel Cylons into sympathetic characters, but how can you make #6 a sympathetic character when she was the main model in hacking the defense network in the first place? I didn’t even give a crud when she was getting tortured aboard Pegasus. She knew what she did due to the resurrection process, and can’t possibly think that she would be treated with kid gloves by the colonials. "

Totally agreeed - and very well said by the original poster IMO

Is every Model #6 privy to the thoughts of all other Model #6? Do all 8s think the same -- no, they do not, as we learned prior to the Cylon Civil War. Can cylons feel regret? Why not.

The idea that all cylons are bad people is the same as saying all Muslins are bad people or all Russians are bad people. Can't the cylons grow and eveolve, as a species or individual, to want to change, to help the humans? I still haven't seen Razor, so I don't know if the #6 the Pegasus had was the same one, but all I have to say is any person who feels it is okay to **** and torture someone (or something) is some frakker I'd don't want to be associated with. When I learned that about the Pegasus crew back in season 2 I lost so much respect for them.

On a completely different note, I was checking out Edward James Olmos on imdb.com today, and he's going to be in a movie called Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. Interesting. Apparently, the final episodes are not the end.

Jeesh, Stag Lord. You must've been cheering for them to tear apart Data in that one episode of Star Trek where the scientists considered him Federation property.

I don't know what show you've been watching, but the one I've watched has shades of grey. ~You and George W. and his buddy Cheney... only seeing the world in black and white.

Its certainly a nuanced show and there are some shades of grey.

But when you start with the premise that one position advocates and implements the complete annhilation of the other, that "shade of grey" deepens pretty quickly and pretty deeply.

There can be no defense of the Cylons. They implemented genocide on a nearly entire scale. Whatever their reasons, there can be no accomodation with such a foe, anymore than there could have been accomodations with Nazi Germany. As the show has evolved, the writers seem to have become more and more fond of their Cylon creations, and they ahve tried to soften the viewers attitudes towards them. Ultimatley, this is the failure of plausability for me in this creation. No matter what, I can only understand the positions of men like Gaeta and Kelly, who lost almost everything and sacrificed what little they had left, only to see their leaders sell them out and compromise their valus in the end.

As such, i reject the writer's message and find their theme far more simplistic and cliched than many critics give ti credit for. But they would have been much bolder to face the bleak possibility of thiorty some odd thousand humans trying desparetaly to restart a race in the face of an openly hostile universe. Much more existential and mature, IMO.

Really, no defense of the cylons? No defense for Saul, or Anders, or Chief? People who never knew they were cylons, but because they are they need to be killed. No offense, but that is also a form of Genocide.

We also do not know what reasons the cylons had for nuking Caprica (and the other colonies? I can't quite remember) in the first place. Both sides were at war with each other, in some semblance of detente and not actually peace.

Who made the decision to annihilate the humans? Did all the cylons agree? Was it the destruction of the humans that made individual cylons begin to question the actions of the cylon community as a whole?

If a group of Nazi soldiers and German citizens suddenly decided that what Hitler and his followers were doing was wrong, should the Allies just kill all these people when they come to switch side and offer their help? If a high ranking leader of Al Quada had some sort of "revelation" and wanted to turn evidence against the organization and point to Bin Laden, should we torture and abuse this individual because of what he and his group have done in the past?

Tywin Lannister put it pretty bluntly. "Joffrey, when your enemies defy you, you must serve them steel and fire. When they go to their knees, however, you must help them back to their feet. Elsewise no man will ever bend the knee to you."

Nice response, JJ.

I can see perhaps sparing Tigh, Chief, Anders - all of whom fougth loyally and hard for humanity before they learned their nature, and who are trying to hang on to their humanity at the moment. However, to leave them in postions of auhtority, to extend the rights of colonists to them, arguably even to allow them their freedom - well this is a different issue and one that Adama certainly needed to explore in greater depth and with greater time. He deserved the mutiny - his actions left Gaeda and his supporters with no choice.

I can't defend Zarek any longer. he proved to be a sociopath. I still feel that Kelly speaks for me - i wouldn't be able to follow Adama as long as Tigh was CO either. And I certainly wouldn't wnat Cylons on my ships, playing with my FTL drives. I am really hoping Lee can still make this argument throughout the final six episodes.

I like your WWII analogy very muhc. Let me say that, as with BSG, i would accept the defectors guardedly, and use what i could for them - but I certainly would not give them access to any of my technology, plans, or material for a long time. In a war of survivial, you can't afford to tkae this kind of chance. Again, Adama and (now) Roslin are bringing the enemies in too closely, too quickly.

As for what the reasons were for the attack on the colonies - it wasn't really explained. There had been peace between the humans and the robots for some tiem before the start of the show, though it was a guarded peace and the human represntative at the peace cofnerence always sat there alone, until the day Six showed up and killed him. But no reason can justify genocide, and the Cylons condemned themsleves with their action.

Can you forgive a few individuals? Maybe. Can you forgive the race as a whole? Impossible - anymore than the Native Americans can ever forgive their conquerors.

I'm not trying to argue that Gaeta was wrong, or Kelly. People have a right to their opinion (even if it is wrong lol). But I guess I just don't accept that everyone from a society or race must pay the price for what the leaders/majority of that people or race have done. Call it racism or sexism or speciesiem or whatever, I can't accept that. I may not trust the cylons entirely (heck, the webisodes taught us that), but I have no doubt about the loyalties of Athena, or Saul, who are sided with the humans. Chief seems the most conflicted ("I am a cylon, but I am -- no, was -- a human. what am I? Who am I?), and really is he running around Galactica to help Adama or the cylons? I'm still pretty much pro-Chief, even more so because he looks (and acts) like a good friend of mine, but still.

Besides, outside of SoI&F, War Against the Chtorr and BSG very few works of fiction get me excited to the level of posting like this. Or having discussions like this one.

Exactly. It is a testament to the depth of the show. i quibble with the wrtiers here and there, and I suspect I will be disappointed in the final theme of the storyline, but it is certainly better than everything else on TV these days.

And I still don't trust the number eight model nor do I trust the Tigh thing. Though it is pretty bad ass. Madkasel was saying Dirty Harry could take lessons form him, and I suspect the King isn't far off.

Well, Tigh sure is acting strange, frakking #6 and getting all goo goo over baby time. And with "Helen" coming back, that is sure going to mess things up there.

The writing is getting pretty tight now, and in many ways I wish they weren't ending the series. Tie up some of the lose ends, sure, but keep it going somehow. I've done some minor searching about "BSG: The Plan" and it looks like that will actuall be more about the cylons and what their initial "plan" was, which will be interesting to watch (though, perhaps should have come out BEFORE the series ends, if you know what I mean). And the proposed Caprica series, I might give it a try, but since BSG has made little attempt to draw us into the histroy of Caprica and the humans (unlike Martin, with events like the Tourney at Harrnenhall) I don't see it having the same sort of appeal for me.

Stag Lord said:

I disagree with the lack of explanation for the attack of the colonies - I think it has been pretty well explained, but never directly. In the episode that Bulldog comes back, we learned that it was the humans who first broke the treaty, thereby demonstrating to the Cylons that the human race could not be trusted to maintain the peace. There was also a moment on New Caprica when Gaius asked the Cylons to pack up and leave the humans alone, and one of the Cylons (the Deana I think) told Gaius that the humans would all tell their children to hate the Cylons, and that someday, generations later, the humans would return to space to hunt down and destroy the Cylons. Granted, that was in the context of a post-attack strike, but I think it reveals the Cylons' true motivation for the attack: fear that they will be destroyed by humanity, who have shown themselves to be too dangerous.

There is also some hinting in the new episodes that Earth was entirely populated by Cylons, but the entire civilization was destroyed by humans. I'm not sure how that ties in with the motivation for the attack on the colonies, but its certainly possible it could have played a significant role.

But the Cylons wouldn't know that the humans wiped out Earth - they had no idea about where it was or what happened there either.

And maybe the humans broke the turce at some point - though that is never shown in the mini series, but were they actually practicing genocide?

Stag Lord said:

It is a valid point. Maybe the programmers who created the skinjobs from Earth programmed an attack on humanity, without telling the skinjobs why they should attack, as revenge for the attack on Earth. Eye for an eye, genocide for genocide.

That's assuming that programming rules them entirely. Look at this way: (something I was contemplating today in regards to older discussions of whether it was possible to "****" a skinjob)

First you have to examine whether the "human" creators would have programmed the Cylons to with the intention of attempting to destroy humanity. Technically possible, but highly unlikely. If not, then the attacks that they've made lead you to a place where you must concede some level of free will to them. Once you've done that, you enter into a certain moral morass where thier actions and choices are equal as valid and weighty as the "humans," if perhaps not exactly moral. Then from there on out it becomes harder and harder to make hard and fast judgement calls on the morality of either sides' actions.

And that's not even really accounting for the theory (that I'm currently subscribing to) that essentially everyone is a Cylon.

Everyone is a Cylon?? What??

See - that's where moral relativism and accomodation leads you.

Stag Lord said:

Well, what IS starbuck now, anyway? What about all the prophecies which state "All this has happened before, and it will all happen again?" Was Earth a cylon colony? Are the humans a creation of Earth's cylons? Will we learn anything tonight when Helen comes back?

What the frak is going to happen?

Yup, it surely seems to be heading that direction pretty hard lately. Granted, with this show, I would not at all be surprised to see them pull something surprising and workable out of nowhere. If so, I would actually be pretty glad, i think.

Kennon said:

Ah, the Arthur C. Clarke scenario -- here are 50 unrelated threads. Watch me tie them all together in the final 10 pages, then start some new ones in the last paragraph.

Hello!

I might be a couple of episodes behind - just seen the one with the 2 part mutiny.

I am disappointed with the last cylon. I was disappointed with the final 4. In fact, they seem like a crazy story thread that is going nowhere, and is only there for some great, but short lived, character conflict.

Liked the mutiny thing, I think it would probably have happened a few seasons back tbh.

If this was Star Trek I would have said the Starbuck thing was a time tunnel nonsense. But it isn't so....I think there has been some cylon cloning thing going on. They have her eggs after all and the planet was inhabited by them. But it is all guesswork.

tamsyn said:

Oh, it's going somewhere!!!

Last night's episode (aired in America) was absolutely mind-blowing. I'm going to need the full week before the next ep to process it all. And watch it at least one more time.

CRAP! I forgot to watch last night!!!

Dang it. I knew going on a date was a bad idea.

Kennon said:

Dude.

Sci Fi is probably replaying it and I'm sure it's on the Internets. Seek it out... you'll need a full week to ponder and work through all the revelations.

How was the date?

Kennon said:

Not it isn't, we need to produce little SF fans to keep the genre alive!

I bet I find the final 5 stuff still boring. It is the least interesting part of the show, and it had so much promise....No, what I meant to say is, it is so improbable. Tigh? Give me a break.

Kennon said:

~ I HOPE IT WAS FRACKING WORTH IT WILL!

heh

ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod!!! that totally makes sense. 13 cylons, 13 colonies. i should have seen that coming. i can't wait to see if they reveal #7. i had no idea how deep brother cavel (john hehehe) was the brains behind all of this scheming. his programming is messed up. Brainwashing the final five (except for ellen) into believeing they are human, dropping them on Earth and giving them a "front row seat to armageddon". trying to show them the frailty and terrible virtues of humanity through the scope of genocide, thats fracked up. i cannot wait until he gets some cold revenge shoved down his throat. anders is in a coma (?) and without him and ellen the other 3 will be out of luck. lee adama... president? boomer runs off with ellen. galactica is falling apart and tyrol wants to put cylon bio material into the ship. bill is drinking a lot and fracking laura. kara still doesn't know what she is (and neither do we). ohmygodicantwaitfornextfriday!sal;kfjalskdjf;lasjkghow;ilure9p83WHTIUHFWUREHIAO.....

i can't remember the last time i was so engrossed in a television show. this is going to be epic!

also, those of you who miss an episode can watch the full episode with limited commercials at www.hulu.com

The Nick-ler said:

The only correction I have to your rundown is that Cavil didn't put them on Earth... he put them in the colonies.

And, too-too cool that the 5 arrived and are the ones who ended the first cylon war. Also interesting that the "one true god" is described as the God of the Centurians. The whole thing about genetic memory implantations was expected by me, and turned out to be pretty cool.

Is Starbuck Daniel? Or Daniel's daughter? MAYBE!