Shauschka’s Weblog

For those of you not in the know, as well as seeing the recreation of Doctor Who, the 21^st Century brought the “re-imagining” of old, rather rubbishy sci-fi classic “Battlestar Galactica”. Far from being what it was (to be fair I never actually watched more than ten minutes of what appeared to be jingoistic “Star Trek” rip-off) it has morphed into a complex and engaging political thriller, arguing about the war on terror, governance by religion, terrorism (and imprisonment without trial/government sanctioned torture) undemocratic elections, the lot. The fact it happens to have a ruddy big space ship is beside the point, large sections seem pretty “soapy”; i.e. who is Kara fracking at this moment in time? In essence, there are no aliens, only evil (to a given definition of “evil”, for their motives seem fair, they were placed in servitude for their entire existence) robots, called Cylons for reasons unknown. There are no laser guns or stuff; the human population are not Jedi Knights but survivors of a nuclear holocaust, led by a former secretary for education and an aging Admiralty Commander, protected solely by the Galactica of the title, a complete rust bucket of a battleship that had been destined for decommissioning. The characters are rounded individuals with motives, ideals, morals (or lack of) desires, emotions: the writing is perfect. What many people have been wondering about in the Galactica fan-base (we are not geeks, but intelligent individuals who are interested in contemporary politics) is who is and who isn’t a Cylon. Basically, there are several varieties of robot: mechanoid (made of metal with a single sweeping red eye, guns for arms, that kind of thing, originally soldiers working for the humans), bio-mechanoids (metal skin, organic innards such as the animalistic “Raider” space craft), humanoid-mechanoid (the “Basestar” capitol ships, with metal armour, organic innards and a human shaped thing controlling it) and humanoid (a.k.a skinjobs) who come in 12 flavours. Essentially we know who 7 of them are at the end of series 2 and by the end of series 3 we know who all but one of them is. The ultimate humanoid one. The thing is, many humanoids think they ARE human; they live normal lives until they snap, blowing themselves up or shooting someone for example. Many people have tried going through, ruling out who can’t be Cylon, for example, we are fairly sure Cally isn’t because, although cute, she isn’t interesting enough. Kara and Gaius are far too human to be Cylon (everyone who is never had any vices, such as excessive alcohol consumption, making love, drugs, power, etc). It is not possible to cut out rounded characters, for example, my favourite, Tyrrel turned out to be one of the last five and he was such a deep character. I was thinking about it the other day; Galactica likes to deal with symbolism and religion so: Is it possible it’s Roslin or Adama senior (President and Admiral). I mean, that they have this will they/won’t they relationship thing going on and say, the ultimate Cylon plan (that we never get told what it is) is the unification of beliefs? Roslin seemed to react very well to the Cylon stem cell experiment…Adama has a past (his dad) and a present and a future (his son). He seems to have a perfectly explicable back-story which is provable with documentary evidence, whereas characters like Sharon have very vague pasts. Roslin has neither parents nor children. She has suddenly arrived, unelected into a position of power from being a forgettable school teacher. He is the father of the fleet, she the mother (I know this is a bit mystic, but what part of Galactica isn’t?) he the elder god and she the new… see what I mean? When they kiss or whatever (say I love you or something) then they will find Earth. Or paradise, or whatever…