Battlestar Galactica

Rewatch

• this is a show about faith.
• Not many scifi really focus on faith, feature faith, or even have faith in the background.

List of Cylons that I can remember:

1. Leoben
2. pr dude
3. boomer
4. six
5. dean stockwell
6. lucy lawless - reporter
7. tigh
8. tigh wife
9. prez aide
10. surfer dude
11. Chief right?
12. Simon, the token black dude

Baltar’s journey/titles

• scientist genius
• betrayer of humanity
• cylon expert
• instrument of god
• caprica representative
• vice president
• Guardian/Protector of god’s new children

Themes

• Military vs Civilian Government
• Faith
  • God vs Gods
• Man vs Machine vs hybrid
  • They cylon’s belief that mankind’s true nature (according to Six) is that it’s brutal, savage, barbaric, etc.
• Something about “All of this happened before and all of it will happen again”

Notes

Season 1

• s01e03

  • goes into the idea of democracy and being free people who choose their government and leader, not just have one sworn in without their input. It’s convenient that elections are technically due in a year, so if they maintain their original laws, they have to follow that path.. otherwise you have to upend what society is and make something new.
  • what does one do about leadership and democracy, especially when a crisis happens? How does one reconcile the slowness of group leadership and the necessity of speed in a crisis?
  • reminds me, or makes me want to look up crisis communication in corps.. that has some sort of group leadership embedded in it right?
  • Also there’s the idea about rebellion and violence.. can you protest violently successfully?

• s01e07?

  • Leoben sitting with Starbuck for first time and “recognizing” her.
  • Also keep in mind that so far she’s the only one to know how to use the cylon raider.

• s01e09

  • Baltar knows Ellen fans Boomer are cylons by episode 9… But passes everyone because it’s “easier that way”.. And when mind 6 asks, he says “I’ll never tell”… Why on both counts?

• s01e10 maybe… Didn’t take long for Baltar to accept that “I am an instrument of God”.

• s01e11/13

  • time and again, military acts like a bully that’s above the law. How Apollo and Starbuck threaten the guy with the gun, say there’s no law and they’re his executioners… or when apollo fights with the zarek supporter.
    • in s01e13, Adama (rightly) disagrees with Rosalyn on her convincing Starbuck to change missions, and yes it does put a small handful of soldiers at risk on Kobol.. but him jumping to “I’m terminating your presidency” smacks of military overreach and out of bounds honestly. They just want to be a military dictatorship using the pretense of whatever’s handy to get their way, no consequences, no boundaries, no oversight.
      • What clarifies this is how he balks and hangs up when she mentions the press have been recording every minute of their conversation. Military sees any accountability to anyone but themselves as inconvenience at best and a major obstacle that should be discarded, at the worst.

Season 2

• S02e01/02

  • Mind 6 telling Baltar that he’ll be the protector of God’s new children… and talking about how this is the future.
  • “Is this the shape of things to come?” Adama asking Baltar in his dream
  • The general tentpoles of Cylon ideology/plan is basically God, and having hybrid children… while also completely wiping out the humans, right?

• S02e06

  • Not been capturing these moments, but it’s underrated how firm Rosalin can be, and how no nonsense she is. Helo begs her not to kill Sharon when they first board, and she says, “Sure, we’ll put her in the brig, unharmed.” As soon as he relents, “Throw that thing out the airlock.”
  • Adama is very consistent about how he uses people and his relationship with them. Especially in one-to-one conversations, he’s willing to give a chance for them to speak their mind by saying their first name “Speak your mind, Dee” or when he calls Apollo as Lee or Son, or Tyrol/Chief. Then they say something that’s hard to hear and it’s a very quick “That’ll be all petty officer/captain/chief. You may leave now.” It’s using the veneer of military to cut things off, but just comes off as condescending every time.
    • At least here, with Dee, she’s the only one to stand up to him, “You asked to talk to me, sir.” and even gives him an “order”.. “It’s time to heal the wounds, commander.” And it works.. he hears her.
  • Throughline? The quiet strength on display with characters like Dee, and I suppose the president? Is hers quiet or loud? Or neither?

• s02e10

  • Pegasus episode hammers in the bait/switch or rubber band emotions we have about the Cylons. These are the “machines” that wiped out all of humanity.. billions and billions dead.
    • And they continue to hunt them
    • And they use their women as baby farms
    • And they hide in plain sight
  • BUT, they also have individuals that are in love with humans.. and afraid of humans.. and feel and bleed and want to survive and live and exist.
  • This episode sees the implications of rape and abuse and torture and past few episodes you’ve seen sharon just want to live and help and love and have her baby.
  • So where do we stand with them?
  • Actually, it’s interesting how the two cylons we’re most involved with at this point, are the two that prove to be the most juxtaposing/polarizing. Six starts the extinction, while also being an angel of love/god and the face of Pegasus’s torture. Sharon tries to sabotage the ship and assassinate Adama, but also purely loves Helo and wants to live and have their baby.

• S02e12

  • Adama asks Sharon why the cylons hate humanity. And she’s like, maybe hate isn’t the right word.
  • Then she reminds him of his speech in the 1st episode and about how humans kill each other all the time and “Humanity never asked itself why it deserves to survive”… maybe you don’t.
  • So is that cylons saying they’re God’s tool to replace humanity with another race because they haven’t learned anything.. they still kill each other for greed and jealousy and spite etc.?
  • I mean, we even have that in the Quran about God being able to replace us at a moment’s notice basically.

• S02e14

  • It’s easy to dismiss the black market purveyors, especially when they add the child-sex-trafficking angle to really lay it on extra thick how evil they are.. but right up to that point, did they have a point?
  • Are they a release valve? A way to provide to the people when the powers that be can’t/won’t? When there’s strict rationing and people still need food and medicine, what’s to be done if the state can’t/won’t provide?
  • And lee basically changes the management and says the state will look the other way as long as specific rules are followed (no murder, child stuff, holding back meds).. so benevolent dictator stuff allows for the black market to continue.
    • Can’t there be a better way? Something official? Something sanctioned or so on? A gap is there, and needs to be filled, and i’m not saying one entity needs to do it all, but a “shady” ownership seems… well, shady? No better way?

• S02e18

  • What’s the point of the angels? Baltar Angel shows up first in this episode, two full seasons after Six Angel.
  • They’re obviously guides.. and even though they’re only attached to two people amongst the dozens of “main” actors in this story.. I have to assume they meaningfully guide the fates of humanity and cylons towards the inevitable end result that’s destined. Everything that Baltar becomes is in no small part due to the nudging by his angel. Same for Caprica Six I assume.
  • This is also episode where cylons meet Anders and they obviously don’t know he’s a cylon.
    • I imagine there’s an explanation for why cylons know there are 12 models, but five of them are completely unknown to them. I worry it’s not a great explanation and just services the grand plot twist of who the five are.

• S02e19

  • Cavil is outright talking to Chief about his fear of being a cylon.. And Cavil is the only of the 7 models who knows the 5.

• S02e20

  • Cavil: “We became what we beheld.. we became you.”
    • They’re admitting to mistakes around chasing the fleet and occupying the colonies (while being holier than thou about it, saying how they’re better than humans because they’re not stubborn).
    • They say Capirca Six and Sharon are the ones that turned the tide on that.
  • Cavil claims they’re leaving humanity alone.. also talks of how they’re machines, shouldn’t be acting like humans at all, that was misguided, and how there’s no god.
    • One of the biggest aspects of the cylons was the whole one true god thing.. or was that just a faction?

Season 3

• S03e01

  • Setting up the factions within cylons..
    • Cavil is, as we saw earlier, not religious at all.. but sees using god as a tool for the humans just as much for the cylons. He wants action, results, and is firmly machine-first.
    • Sharon/Caprica 6 are about integrating.. about God, about not being butchers, about coming to peace with humans somehow.

• s03e09

  • Boxing episode
  • I didn’t know that the original aired version was 25 minutes shorter than what I watched now.
    • Does that explain why I didn’t mind it as much? Even though I still hate the lee starbuck stuff all the same.
    • Adama fought chief as penance for his failure at keeping them all together and blames himself. Always blames himself for everything
    • Things seem to make sense overall and everyone’s actions make sense. From what I’m reading about the differences, a lot was not spelled out, a lot was implied, and Dee for example came off as being oblivious more in aired version.

• S03e11

  • Is Chief hearing things from now? on algae planet?
  • In scripture, they consider the final five to be five priests devoted to the One Whose Name Cannot Be Spoken.
  • What is the point of the five? Adama knew Saul for 30 years. Saul says he’s been in the force for 40 years.. The cylons made skin jobs that early on? If not earlier? And the first war with cylons was right at that time too wasnt it? 40 years? Even if that’s just fake memory, Adama knows Saul for 30, so cylons already had skin jobs??
  • Over and over, 13th colony seems to be human and cylon?

• S03e12

  • “You… Forgive me, I had no idea.” Is D’anna talking about having met Sam? She didn’t really interact with Chief, XO, aide, or Ellen as much right?

• S03e16*

  • The class consciousness episode
  • Baltar has written a book from jail about the fleet aristocracy and underclass.. mainly to revamp his image and distract people from his crimes, but still strikes a true chord all the same.
  • Chief, having already been a union chief, doesn’t need much of a push to be radicalized further.. especially when he’s put in charge of getting the fuel mining ship up and running again and sees the condition of the people living there.
  • Adama and Roslin just want things to run because the fleet has survival on its mind at all times.. but in the meantime that becomes a debilitating excuse for letting people’s rights slide right out the airlock. Slave labor, racism against certain tribes, inherited jobs, etc.

• S03e17

  • Starbuck “dies” here.
  • The end scene where Adama smashes up his model sailing ship was improvised by Edward James Olmos and was not part of the original script. According to writers Bradley Thompson and David Weddle, Olmos informed episode director Michael Nankin that he was intending to do this, but unlike Nankin, was unaware that the model was not an inexpensive prop built for the production. At the time of filming, only Nankin and the cameramen knew Olmos was going to smash the model. According to Ron Moore, it was a very expensive museum-quality model worth several hundred thousand dollars that was being rented for the production. It was insured, according to Moore.

• S03e18

  • Lee discovering his law side.. and intro of the romo lampkin character.

• S03e19*

  • The whole final five music thing lasts from this episode to the next.. so, slow burn at least, not bad.
  • Also the beginning of Baltar the Prophet.
  • Also the trial, and Lee resigning and becoming a citizen and a lawyer basically.
  • There’s been a constant showing of Lee as always believing in the system, and wanting to uphold the law, regardless of where it lands, and having “integrity” etc.
    • He won’t cheat even though he already did once on New Caprica, so there’s that too.
    • Dee leaves him in this episode because of his defense of baltar, and he keeps saying he has to believe in the system and the system demands a fair trial for baltar.. and Dee is talking about how the system is broken and needs to be rebuilt.
    • As much as one wants to admire Lee for his dedication, and I also agree that Adama and Roslin have shown time and time again they’re willing to bend things if they don’t like what’s happening (the strike, the rigging of the election, etc etc) so they don’t exactly have solid footing, but still.. throughout the trial they’re barely able to do anything beyond show the witnesses aren’t objective (who could ever be). Nothing in the trial is about defending Baltar as much as it is about getting him off on technicalities (like Adama the judge being already inclined towards guilty verdict).
      • The system itself that allows the law to operate thusly isn’t exactly serving justice.. but I’ll still admit it is trying to protect people from being unfairly punished because of personal feelings. In another case that would be fine, but here.. it’s being used to protect a person who did doom his people, right?
      • This does get a bit iffy, doesn’t it? We know from history that Baltar is self-serving first and foremost. He didn’t intend for the genocide but he unknowingly helped. And here, he chose to surrender in order to save himself (there’s no guarantee that if he refused, they’d have had killed everyone.. I assume just him really, they can get another leader).
      • Everything he did on New Caprica was first to survive for himself.. when they give him the death warrants, he refuses to sign until they put a gun to his head, and he signs it.
      • What’s the judgement then, on that? What does the law have to say about being forced by the enemy to do evil things in order to self-preserve?
      • It’s all colored because we know he’s just a piece of shit, but if Roslin were at the helm, safe to say she’d just die first right? What about someone else, like Gaeta?
      • (Continuation in next episode)

• S03e20*

  • Continuing above thoughts as i watch this:
    • Sigh, and as i keep watching the next episode, Lee is pointing out, what would anyone have done? And why do others get forgiven for mistakes (like military coup by adama, etc.)? He shot down olympic carrier, led a potential mutiny, wanted to leave the new capricans.. all forgiven. Where’s the system and why is it selective? “We make our own laws now, our own justice.”
    • As he says, it’s a case built on shame for what people did on that planet, and guild for those that ran away.. and putting all of that on him, and then wanting to kill him and be rid of it all.
  • The reveal here, as season finale. Almost all the reveals really.. starbuck, final 4 of 5, 13th colony planet..
  • Chief: “Some way out of here” / Sam: “No reason to get excited” / Tigh: “There’s too much confusion” and “There must be some kind of way out of here” / Tory: ""
  • I wish I could remember what I thought was happening when it was happening, when i first watched this episode? I mean, did I suspect them as cylons then?
  • As to Gaius the Prophet, I don’t quite grok why people believe he has healing powers? Like the woman that comes and asks him to heal her child? This just suddenly happens.
  • Lee “Apollo” Adama: Did the defendant make mistakes? Sure. He did. Serious mistakes. But did he actually commit any crimes? Did he commit treason? No. I mean, it was an impossible situation. When the Cylons arrived, what could he possibly do? What could anyone have done? (looking at the audience) Ask yourself, what would you have done? (looking at the judges) What would you have done? If he had refused to surrender, the Cylons would have probably nuked the planet right then and there. So did he appear to cooperate with the Cylons? Sure. So did hundreds of others. What’s the difference between him and them? The President issued a blanket pardon. They were all forgiven, no questions asked. Colonel Tigh. Colonel Tigh used suicide bombers, killed dozens of people. Forgiven. Lieutenant Agathon and Chief Tyrol. They murdered an officer on the Pegasus. Forgiven. The Admiral. The Admiral instigated a military coup d’état against the President. Forgiven. And me? Well, where do I begin? I shot down a civilian passenger ship, the Olympic Carrier. Over a thousand people on board. Forgiven. I raised my weapon to a superior officer, committed an act of mutiny. Forgiven. And then on the very day when Baltar surrendered to those Cylons, I as commander of Pegasus jumped away. I left everybody on that planet, alone, undefended, for months. I even tried to persuade the Admiral never to return, to abandon you all there for good. If I’d had my way nobody would have made it off that planet. I’m the coward. I’m the traitor. I’m forgiven. I’d say we are very forgiving of mistakes. We make our own laws now; our own justice. And we’ve been pretty creative in finding ways to let people off the hook for everything from theft to murder. And we’ve had to be, because…because we’re not a civilization anymore. We are a gang, and we are on the run, and we have to fight to survive. We have to break rules. We have to bend laws. We have to improvise. But not this time, no. Not this time. Not for Gaius Baltar. (looking at Baltar) No, you…you have to die. You have to die, because, well, because we don’t like you very much. Because you’re arrogant. Because you’re weak. Because you’re a coward, and we, the mob, want to throw you out of the airlock, because you didn’t stand up to the Cylons and get yourself killed in the process. That’s justice now. You should have been killed back on New Caprica, but since you had the temerity to live, we’re going to execute you now. That’s justice. […] This case…this case is built on emotion, on anger, bitterness, vengeance. But most of all, it is built on shame. (looking at his father) It’s about the shame of what we did to ourselves back on that planet. It’s about the guilt of those of us who ran away. Who ran away. And we’re trying to dump all that guilt and all that shame on one man and then flush him out the airlock, and hope that just gets rid of it all. So that we could live with ourselves. But that won’t work. That won’t work. That’s not justice; not to me. Not to me.

Season 4

• S04e01
  • Oh.. I didn’t realize Anders just up and gave an eye-to-eye order and made the raiders retreat. Power established, albeit in moment of survival stress. Or is this the whole giving raiders free will thing?
  • Yeah, see I still have trouble buying the full existence of a cult of baltar so quickly. They lead him to a bulkhead that’s fully set up with all his female followers, candles, drapes, cooking, fully-lived in setting, etc.
    • Nothing established him as a healer up to this point. If anything, he was building himself up to be a man of the people and anti-aristocracy, not spiritual cult leader. Where did this come from?
• S04e03
  • Angel baltar came to baltar specifically to sway him towards tory.. Why?
  • The cylons are fractioning over giving centurions full awareness back (they had inhibited it) and lobotomizing raiders that had gained free will (from Anders right?)
    • Cavil mentions the thing about their programmers having programmed in them the prohibition against talking about the final five… even though things have changed and they do that now. What changed?
• S04e04
  • Tigh seeks out Caprica 6 to understand what it means to be Cylon, and looks for absolution as well for killing Ellen.
• S04e05
  • Painting with a thick brush on how Starbuck is “nuts” and captain ahab obsessed in her manner of trying to find earth.
  • More importantly, you see Helo being Helo.. being a freaking stand-up guy who will have faith in you when all else fails and no one else does. He is that guy isn’t he? He believes in people, especially those that he loves, or are being maligned in some way… usually both.
    • Granted, by end of episode he had to stand up to her and stop. It has been two months.
  • Is it possible that the Angel Baltar in Six’s mind is the one that helped foment the cylon civil war.. just to get some of the cylons to help humans find earth together?
    • The angels have to have a purpose and reason for being inside Baltar and Six.. I assume it’s to get humanity to where it’s supposed to go.
  • it’s hard to tell with Baltar how much is survival and how much is actual belief. He talks to chief about his unconscionable crimes and how he’s being offered a last chance of redemption by accepting his fate, not fighting it. And it seems genuine. I suppose two things can be true.
• S04e06
  • Felix gets a raw deal.. losing his leg just for trying to do the right thing.
  • Series is just exploring people’s relationships with faith, God, gods, belief in something (humanity, purpose, galactica, higher power), etc.
• S04e07
  • Gaeta’s lament is a soft banger indeed
• S04e10
  • “Revelations” was designed to be the final episode of the series, in the event the SAG Writer’s Strike had prevented the series from continuing.
• S04e11
  • Consistently, Adama and Roslin do like to default to being selfish. She can’t face the people waiting at the hangar, can’t say anything, and just says “get me out of here” and they’re all clamoring for anything.. I get it, but this is your one job and you have to talk to the people.
  • They don’t get to just do things as they see fit and fuck over the people from the process… like with the last couple of episodes, just Adama ignoring Zarek as a president outright; deciding what to do unilaterally, etc.
  • Like Lee said, the quorum just resign themselves to the fact they’re at the mercy of these “benevolent” dictators. It’s the flipside of the coin in terms of Pegasus.. both are based on pure luck if you get a good or bad leader, instead of relying on the will of the people.
    • In fact, more often than not they do bad decisions alone and then things get better when they involve others to share in the load of the decision.
    • They have very little trust in humanity to handle things.. for good/bad reasons.
  • Okay, so 13th tribe was all cylon.. and skin jobs to boot as well. Question is, did they have that ability from the get go or evolved into it as did the cylons on the other 12? Also, somehow they had cylons before dispersing, and yet the 12 think they invented cylons after establishing the colonies right? Not before?
    • So most likely there were cylon skin jobs from the get go, and came with the 12, and have been embedded there for thousands of years.
    • And these final five were from this earth cylon colony..
  • Finding Starbuck’s body.. i mean, if it quacks like a duck; she’s a cylon through and through.. they just don’t have all the info. This whole planets was a cylon colony. You’re saying there can’t be more than 12 models? We saw other body types in the flashbacks after all.
    • It’s more likely than anything else in this whole show.. we have angels, humans, cylons.. we’ve established those races. She doesn’t fit any of them except cylon.
  • Ellen: “Everything’s in place.. We’ll be reborn again, together.”
    • Sooo, did the five make a resurrection system just for themselves? Or for the 12? Or the 5 made the 12 later?
• S04e12
  • Wow, Hot Dog was the dad of Nicky? Damn… this dude has had a hell of an arc throughout the show. Well, not arc, but he has had a consistent presence.
  • And here we see Baltar back to not giving a shit. He always starts all high on his own fumes of power, but now, as ever, the honeymoon is over and he’s back to being cynical again.
• S04e13
  • Overall, the mutiny makes sense and the show wants us to technically side with Adama/Roslin.. even though Zarek and Gaeta have a point. From their perspective, this is shoddy and suspicious and not including the civilians and government in the conversation just makes it all the more damning.
  • Still, the show will paint it one-sided, hence the immediate killing of Laird by Zarek and Jaffee under Gaeta’s watch. Shortcut method to say that these guys are the bad guys, regardless if they’re actually in the right about this.
• S04e14
  • I dont see how zarek would ever think killing the whole quorum would make any sense or help him get his way.
  • And Roslin.. being all vengeance incarnate when Zarek lies to her that Tigh and Adama are dead. Yeah, that’s not a great look, as cool as it may sound. It’s just more of her benevolent dictator turned military vengeful dictator. Again, reason not to have power in the hands of one person.
• S04e15
  • Cavil says Ellen is their creator.. so the five created the seven then.
  • But there were more than the five on Earth, so the five are the ones that survived (ala Kal-El).
  • They re-invented resurrection. Organic memory transfer was in Kobol originally but fell out of use with procreation. And wait, did the humans on kobol first make these cylons that became the 13th tribe?
  • They were at war with their centurions apparently and that caused their holocaust, so they went to the 12 tribes to try to warn them to be better, travelling at slow speeds for 2000 years, but the first war had already broken out by then.
  • Sooo, these five made a deal with those centurions to stop the war and then they’d help them make new flesh bodies. They made 8 humanoid models with resurrection. And the centurions had a single loving god, so the five thought that would help with the new models to embrace love and mercy. But Cavil was angry and killed the five instead, had them resurrect with false memories and introduced them piece meal.
  • Daniel was the 7th. but John killed him entirely.
  • Cavil did everything that happened in series mainly to torture/make suffer the final five? So that the would eventually return to him and love him for showing them the way of things?
  • Why is John envious, jealous, sadistic, rageful? Just that way I guess.. because he’s what drives everything
• S04e17
  • Tyrol loves Boomer (8), Tigh loves Capirca (6), Cavil (1) had sex with Ellen… just a whole lot of incest in this story, considering who built/created whom.
  • Messengers/Angels (which online says are supposed to be related or for the final five (?)) show up to Caprica, Baltar and now Starbuck (her dad).
    • Starbuck knows the final five song. And so does Hera.
    • Cylon projections works on Baltar.
    • Why isn’t Baltar and Starbuck cylons? How are they not? Why are they specifically singled out to get all these cylon-like abilities?
  • At some point, we have to ask: what the hell is the difference between cylons and humans? They can have sex, breed, share blood, be indistinguishable from each other in every way… and yet they have powers and projection and so on and so on. Just feels like the pointer on the scale shifts wildly around depending on what’s needed for the story.
  • The brand of “Tauron toothpaste” offered as a prize to the pilots is called “Felgercarb,” a word used in the Original Series to mean “shit.” Tauron comes from Taurus the bull. In essence, Kara is offering the pilot who finds a new planet “bullshit toothpaste.”
• S04e19-20
  • It’s so, well, unbelievable that you want me to accept that all the work the two angel messengers did was leading up to Caprica being who she is now, alongside Baltar who he is now.. and somehow these two will help bring about the new humanity?
    • To be fair, they say “You will hold the future of humans and cylons in your hands”.. which naturally means Hera and the opera house etc.
    • Baltar’s challenges and life led to him being this person and Caprica being proud of him etc etc?