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shadowkatWhen I was in college, we had a great deal of fun trying to figure out the song "All Along The Watchtower" - which is a classic Jimi Hendrix single written by Bob Dylan. Everyone pretended to know what it meant, no one really did. It was one of those songs you just sort of got intuitively.
The BSG Finale didn't surprise me.
The final five cylons are pretty obvious if you look at the thematic structure of the series. Each episode this season has focused on "who the enemy is", "an attempt to blame or point fingers at someone who has caused a set group of characters a great deal of pain and anguish", "scape-goating", "prejudice", "vengeance" and the desire to "punish" someone. When people are threatened - they tend to pick a "scapegoat" and they blame the scapegoat for all their ills.
Refusing to take responsibility for them. It becomes an "us" vs. "them" mentality.
And oh yes, the cylon's refrain - "all this has happened before and will happen again".
The theme? Humans are their own gods, their own creators, and their own destroyers. Caught in a vicious cycle of creating and destroying.
Several episodes in BSG S3 focused on this theme, to the point sometimes of being almost didactic. Two of them were Helo (Karl Agathon) centric episodes with Helo playing the voice of reason or morality.
1. Roslyn and Adama decided to use a virus to kill the cylons. Helio stopped them.
2. A Doctor is busy killing Sagitarians because they are different and don't want meds. Helio steps up and gets the others to stop him.
Then we have two episodes that deal with secondary characters. 1) The Passage - focuses on Kat, and how Kat was smuggling things across borders way before the war, and she did not know what she was smuggling most of the time. That was why Kara was so pissed with her. It wasn't drugs Kara accuses Kat of smuggling and is upset with her about - it was cylons. How long, she asks her. And Kat doesn't know. It could have been decades before the war. The Passage is partly a metaphor for another rough passage or escape route: The underground railroad, the climb over the Berlin wall. And it refers back to "Black Market" where we are told children have been traded through the colonies at different points. 2) The episode about the mine workers - refers to the idea of moving kids about as well. It also refers to classism. And metriocracy or aristrocratic class - pointing out how Adamas and Rosylnn's were above it all.
That many of the working class did not know their parents and were separated from them. A theme that is a common thread in the series - it arises in the first episodes - with Hera separated from her parents and taken to the cylons then smuggled back aboard the Galatica.
It is also referred to with Callie and Cheif - when they fear they are going to die in the one episode where they are both trapped, and Callie asks that her son not be raised by pilots and have a normal civilian life...away from parents who know them.
Next episodes dealing with child abuse - Adama and his wife how they handled their kids. Kara and her mother - it is hinted throughout the Kara episode that a) we have no idea how her mother got Kara, b) who the father was. Just that the mother had Kara between wars and in the jungles or near the fighting. We also have Kara, Leoben and Cacey - a set-up that reminds Kara a bit too much of her home life.
The other theme arising - is vengeance. Self-hatred. And Guilt. Kara, Tigh, Anders, Torres, and Tyrol all want to punish the cylons. They have all been tortured by them. All lost something. All are bitter about it. And at least four of them were active in spacing people who assisted the cylons. They also all felt abandoned by Adama and son, as well as guilty for staying on new Caprica under cylon rule and for following Baltar down there. All hate Baltar with a vengeance.
Anders and Saul Tigh are responsible for the resistance movement on New Caprica. They engineer the suicide bombings. And it is Anders who tells Tigh about Ellen and that Tigh must kill her. While it is Tigh who tells Anders they must space people - or Ellen died in vain.
Meanwhile - in contrast, we have Baltar who wants desperately to be cylon, who thinks of them as gods, and feels if he is one - then he hasn't betrayed his own people.
And oh yes, the eye of Jupiter or the eye of the storm - of destiny. Two people really click with it - Kara Thrace and Chief Tyrol. Both are almost killed on New Caprica due to their close proximity to it when the cylons come down to the planet. Both figure it out at different points.
Flip over to the cylons - where Three has figured out there are a Final Five and has fallen in love with HEra, much as her counter-part Laura Rosylyn did. And like Roslyn is a sick leader. She finds the final five, but dies because of it. Her words: "If only I'd known. I'm so sorry. Things would have been different." And the cylons view that they are better than the humans. Just as the humans believe they are better than the cylons.
I knew that in order to fit the theme - "our enemy is us" - the final five cylons have to be the humans who were the *most* devoted to defeating them. The most vocal about it.
The final five cylons must be people who were busy trying to defeat them and demonstrated the *most* prejudice towards them, because otherwise it would not be *ironic* and it would not further the theme and in BSG like all sciencefiction - theme is king.
Those five are: Sam Anders, Saul Tigh, Torres, Chief Tyrol, and Kara Thrace. (I still think she's the fifth one, which is why she shows up in the end, right after they realize they are cylons. For the same reasons the others are. She is the only cast member if you think about it that fits the pattern and they have to have a lead cast member in that group. And it can't be Roslyn, not because she has cancer, but because she's aristocratic, she's not lower class.)
What do all these characters have in common?
1. Working class.
2. Support - jobs. Not - supporting roles like wife or husband to a lead. Nor lower level support functions. But main support functions - key ones. Such as Presidental Press Secretary (Torres took over from Billy - Pres right hand gal), Cheif of the flight deck, Cheif of Operations and the bridge, Chief of the Resistance Movement, and ...Top Pilot.
3. Hate Cylons with a vengeance - see them as less then human and call them toasters.
4. Have tortured cylons and wanted Baltar dead
That in a nutshell is why they are the final five. The worste possible thing a writer could do to those five characters is make them cylons. Unlike Gaius Baltar - they'd hate it. To them cylons are like cockroachs.
All Along The WatchTower is a song that was written in the 1960s about Racism and the political strife in the world. It's message is more or less the same. We are the Joker and the Thief. We are the means to our own destruction. We are the enemy. We kill and create ourselves.
The BSG Finale didn't surprise me.
The final five cylons are pretty obvious if you look at the thematic structure of the series. Each episode this season has focused on "who the enemy is", "an attempt to blame or point fingers at someone who has caused a set group of characters a great deal of pain and anguish", "scape-goating", "prejudice", "vengeance" and the desire to "punish" someone. When people are threatened - they tend to pick a "scapegoat" and they blame the scapegoat for all their ills.
Refusing to take responsibility for them. It becomes an "us" vs. "them" mentality.
And oh yes, the cylon's refrain - "all this has happened before and will happen again".
The theme? Humans are their own gods, their own creators, and their own destroyers. Caught in a vicious cycle of creating and destroying.
Several episodes in BSG S3 focused on this theme, to the point sometimes of being almost didactic. Two of them were Helo (Karl Agathon) centric episodes with Helo playing the voice of reason or morality.
1. Roslyn and Adama decided to use a virus to kill the cylons. Helio stopped them.
2. A Doctor is busy killing Sagitarians because they are different and don't want meds. Helio steps up and gets the others to stop him.
Then we have two episodes that deal with secondary characters. 1) The Passage - focuses on Kat, and how Kat was smuggling things across borders way before the war, and she did not know what she was smuggling most of the time. That was why Kara was so pissed with her. It wasn't drugs Kara accuses Kat of smuggling and is upset with her about - it was cylons. How long, she asks her. And Kat doesn't know. It could have been decades before the war. The Passage is partly a metaphor for another rough passage or escape route: The underground railroad, the climb over the Berlin wall. And it refers back to "Black Market" where we are told children have been traded through the colonies at different points. 2) The episode about the mine workers - refers to the idea of moving kids about as well. It also refers to classism. And metriocracy or aristrocratic class - pointing out how Adamas and Rosylnn's were above it all.
That many of the working class did not know their parents and were separated from them. A theme that is a common thread in the series - it arises in the first episodes - with Hera separated from her parents and taken to the cylons then smuggled back aboard the Galatica.
It is also referred to with Callie and Cheif - when they fear they are going to die in the one episode where they are both trapped, and Callie asks that her son not be raised by pilots and have a normal civilian life...away from parents who know them.
Next episodes dealing with child abuse - Adama and his wife how they handled their kids. Kara and her mother - it is hinted throughout the Kara episode that a) we have no idea how her mother got Kara, b) who the father was. Just that the mother had Kara between wars and in the jungles or near the fighting. We also have Kara, Leoben and Cacey - a set-up that reminds Kara a bit too much of her home life.
The other theme arising - is vengeance. Self-hatred. And Guilt. Kara, Tigh, Anders, Torres, and Tyrol all want to punish the cylons. They have all been tortured by them. All lost something. All are bitter about it. And at least four of them were active in spacing people who assisted the cylons. They also all felt abandoned by Adama and son, as well as guilty for staying on new Caprica under cylon rule and for following Baltar down there. All hate Baltar with a vengeance.
Anders and Saul Tigh are responsible for the resistance movement on New Caprica. They engineer the suicide bombings. And it is Anders who tells Tigh about Ellen and that Tigh must kill her. While it is Tigh who tells Anders they must space people - or Ellen died in vain.
Meanwhile - in contrast, we have Baltar who wants desperately to be cylon, who thinks of them as gods, and feels if he is one - then he hasn't betrayed his own people.
And oh yes, the eye of Jupiter or the eye of the storm - of destiny. Two people really click with it - Kara Thrace and Chief Tyrol. Both are almost killed on New Caprica due to their close proximity to it when the cylons come down to the planet. Both figure it out at different points.
Flip over to the cylons - where Three has figured out there are a Final Five and has fallen in love with HEra, much as her counter-part Laura Rosylyn did. And like Roslyn is a sick leader. She finds the final five, but dies because of it. Her words: "If only I'd known. I'm so sorry. Things would have been different." And the cylons view that they are better than the humans. Just as the humans believe they are better than the cylons.
I knew that in order to fit the theme - "our enemy is us" - the final five cylons have to be the humans who were the *most* devoted to defeating them. The most vocal about it.
The final five cylons must be people who were busy trying to defeat them and demonstrated the *most* prejudice towards them, because otherwise it would not be *ironic* and it would not further the theme and in BSG like all sciencefiction - theme is king.
Those five are: Sam Anders, Saul Tigh, Torres, Chief Tyrol, and Kara Thrace. (I still think she's the fifth one, which is why she shows up in the end, right after they realize they are cylons. For the same reasons the others are. She is the only cast member if you think about it that fits the pattern and they have to have a lead cast member in that group. And it can't be Roslyn, not because she has cancer, but because she's aristocratic, she's not lower class.)
What do all these characters have in common?
1. Working class.
2. Support - jobs. Not - supporting roles like wife or husband to a lead. Nor lower level support functions. But main support functions - key ones. Such as Presidental Press Secretary (Torres took over from Billy - Pres right hand gal), Cheif of the flight deck, Cheif of Operations and the bridge, Chief of the Resistance Movement, and ...Top Pilot.
3. Hate Cylons with a vengeance - see them as less then human and call them toasters.
4. Have tortured cylons and wanted Baltar dead
That in a nutshell is why they are the final five. The worste possible thing a writer could do to those five characters is make them cylons. Unlike Gaius Baltar - they'd hate it. To them cylons are like cockroachs.
All Along The WatchTower is a song that was written in the 1960s about Racism and the political strife in the world. It's message is more or less the same. We are the Joker and the Thief. We are the means to our own destruction. We are the enemy. We kill and create ourselves.
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Cavil and Tigh
Date: 2007-04-01 11:53 am (UTC)There may be no accident that Tigh lost his right eye to the one Cylon who may have a secret that the others don't know, the identity and the reason the final five became seperate from the whole. I think that the tearing out of Tigh's eye could be symbolic for the fear that Cavil has regarding humans and perhaps some of his own 'members'. The final five may have been cast out or left because they didn't conform to majority opinions and actions. Then add in the fact that Cavil enjoyed using Ellen knowing her possible fate.
Rufus
Re: Cavil and Tigh
Date: 2007-04-01 01:05 pm (UTC)Plus remember last season - when Chief Tyrol was convinced he was a cylon and Cavil told him he wasn't? Or perhaps they all were? Cavil doesn't believe that humans should be allowed to live. He doesn't believe in "God" either. He was also the most sadistic of the cylons.
So, yeah, I would not be the least surprised if Cavil knew. I think Leoben might also know for that matter. The one's who don't are the Sharons, Sixes, and I think Dorals, and the doctor guy.
What the show is doing a great job with is demonstrating that the gap between the cylons behavior and the humans behavior is not that large. They both torture. They both condemn. They both have the desire to "exterminate" their enemy regardless of who or what they are. And they both love, care for one another, and worship a god or gods. They are basically flip sides of the same coin. It's the great thing about BSG and why it's more interesting than something like Star Wars - there's no clear-cut good guy or bad guy. Just depends on whose side of the fence you are on at any given time. And both sides are capable of horrendous things and wonderful things.