Warp Section

WARNING! If you’re not caught up on Battlestar Galactica, you probably don’t want to read further!

Well, tonight’s the fall finale of my beloved Battlestar Galactica. To mark the occasion, I’ve done a bit of digging through the vast history of science fiction television to speculate what might happen to one BSG character in particular: Baby Hera, the child of human Karl “Helo” Agathon and Cylon Sharon “Athena” Agathon. Her parents believe she died shortly after birth, but in fact she lived, and during the occupation of New Caprica, the Cylons found her and took her into custody. Will Helo and Sharon discover that Roslin and Adama lied to them about her fate? What will the Cylons do with her? What’s her destiny? There’s no doubt she has a destiny. Baltar’s subconscious tells us so.

What can other hybrid children tell us about what may be in store for Hera?

Scott Hayden, Starman
Scott was a troubled teen who bounced between foster homes almost his whole life until his father — his alien father — returned to find him. They embarked on adventures together.

Like Hera, Scott was separated from his parents at a young age. Maybe, like Scott, Hera will grow up to be angst-ridden and rootless as a result. Then again, she has hundreds of Cylon aunts and uncles to give her a stable family life. She’s totally going to score during the holidays.

As the child of an alien, Scott has some of his father’s psychic and telekinetic powers. Will Hera have some Cylon characteristics? Maybe she’ll be able to tap into the collective that is Cylon civilization. Maybe she’ll be able to jack into computers by sticking electrodes in her veins. Will she be able to download into a new body?

The Starman’s big goal in life seems to be helping people, and he passes these values onto his son. In opposition to this, the big goal of just about everyone in BSG is survival at all costs. This is the world that Hera is going to be raised in. What will her Cylon mentors tell her about her human heritage? Will she also be raised with the attitude that humanity must be destroyed? Will her human side have anything to say about it?

Whatever happens to Hera, I now have this weird image of Helo and teenage Hera traveling the countryside together, helping people.

Elizabeth, V
Elizabeth was the child of a human mother and a creepy lizard alien father. She appeared human, though as a child she grew at a fast rate and shed her skin like a reptile. She had a reptilian twin who died shortly after birth.

Similarities with BSG are much more apparent here, in that the civilization of one of Elizabeth’s parents is involved in a concerted effort to utterly destroy the civilization of the other. Elizabeth becomes a symbol of peace between the two species, clear evidence that the two aren’t so different and have motivation to try to get along.

Hera could serve as such a symbol of peace between the humans and Cylons. In fact, the Cylon obsession with biological reproduction (and their inability to biologically reproduce without human help) suggests that the Cylons can’t afford to destroy humanity completely. Or maybe Hera represents a step forward — with the existence of hybrids raised in their own Cylon philosophy, they won’t need people anymore. She could also become a symbol that humans and Cylons are, in fact, two halves of the same species.

At the same time, Elizabeth’s reptilian twin gave humanity the solution it needed to destroy the alien invaders. For the humans in BSG, Hera might be the clue to Cylon weaknesses that could help humanity overcome their invaders. Like Elizabeth, Hera seems to be one-of-a-kind. Will she stay that way?

Spock, Star Trek
Granted, we didn’t see much of Spock as child, apart from brief glimpses (The Search for Spock, an episode of the animated series). We do know that Spock was always highly aware of his identity as half human, even though he identified as a Vulcan, trained as a Vulcan, and considered himself fully Vulcan. His mother, Amanda, lived as a Vulcan as much as a human being could. But she’s still human, and Spock is reminded of this at every turn.

It looks like Hera is going to be raised as a Cylon. Here’s a question: what do the Cylons know about raising children? Were any of them children, or were they created as fully formed adults? I’m voting on the later, because that’s how they appear when downloaded. Will she consider herself fully Cylon, as Spock considers himself Vulcan? Will she then have to grapple with the human side of her heritage? Will she reject that side of herself, as Spock longs to do? What will be the implications of that? And what is she going to do if she ever meets her parents?

Just an Observation
I find it interesting that in all these cases, the human is mother and the “other” is the father. Hera may be the first time we’ve seen a human father and an “other” as the mother.

Share This

Warning: Do not read this post unless you want spoilers on Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Jericho and Smallville.

Some of these are common sense, and some are interesting. Don’t complain to me if you read them and didn’t really want to.
Read the rest of this entry »

Share This

SPOILERS! Do not read the below, unless you are fully up to date on Battlestar Galactica

Carrie, one of our intrepid Battlestar Galactica fans, goes over last nights episode with a fine tooth comb. What does she have to say about the episode?

To recap:

• Baltar is up a creek, paddling furiously. (The canoe seems to be spinning a bit.)
• Caprica Boomer/Sharon Agathon has a new call sign: Athena. (The bone tossed to fans of the old show is gratefully accepted, with much wagging of tails.)
• We are reminded that Starbuck looks great in a uniform. Also, Apollo has returned to all his ripped abs glory. Order is restored.
• Both the Human and Cylon fleets are converging on a trail marker on the path to Earth, where a derelict Basestar is causing much consternation on both sides.
• And three weeks later, I’m still drooling over that shot of Galactica jumping into the atmosphere of New Caprica.

The new episode:
I always worry when BSG posts the “Warning: Viewer Discretion Advised” notice at the start of an episode. For a show about all-out war and the destruction of the human race to decide that it needs to make particular notice of the violence means something truly wretched is coming down the chute. The first time the warning appeared was in “Pegasus,” for the graphic near-rape of Sharon.

This time, Baltar is at the receiving end of the violence, and I was horrified to discover that my reaction to the torture was to think, “He had it coming.” After being the primary instrument of the near-extermination of humanity not once but twice, I have a hard time feeling any sympathy for the man.

The irony of course, is he doesn’t know the information D’Anna is trying to get out of him. The torture is utterly useless. Baltar is between a rock and a hard place, as they say. Folks who remember the old show might want to note that he’s moved very close indeed to that Baltar: a lone human, surrounded by incomprehensible machines, scrambling to maintain tenuous footing among them. I also think he might be broken after this. I’m interested to see how he puts himself back together. If nothing else, Baltar has proven he’s a survivor.

The other half of the episode deals with the genocide plan. I have a confession: I hoped the plan wouldn’t work. I agreed with Helo. But I thought it would fail in the downloading process–after all, the belief that the disease would also download was only that, a belief. Instead, we’re shown a simpler–more human–story of a soldier who disobeyed orders to act on his conscience. I should have known that BSG wouldn’t let the climax of an episode rest on a technological glitch. As always, the failure–or success, if you will–rests on a human decision. Technobabble will not save them (well, it might save Sharon). In so many ways this show is about conscience–when it succeeds, and when it fails.

BSG gets so much attention for its unflinching look at, well, just about everything: rape, torture, the ways people behave in a desperate war, the ethical quandaries they confront in impossible situations. Another show might cut to commercial, or let technology take those decisions out of the characters’ hands. BSG doesn’t let us blink.

Predictions: My rule with BSG is to always ask, “What’s the worst that can happen?” Then think of something about five steps worse than that. That said, the only thing I’ve yet predicted correctly was Sharon and Helo’s hybrid baby being used to cure Roslin. I think the fact that they actually did the schlockiest thing I could think of was an anomaly. So…no predictions. Except I want to go on record as saying I don’t think Baltar is a Cylon.

Share This

Spoiler Warning: If you are not 100% up to date on your BattleStar viewing, please skip this post.

I’m a huge fan of the original Battlestar Galactica, so naturally I protested the character changes that where announced when the “re-imagining” sprouted wings. For me, finding out that StarBuck was going to be female just really knocked any images of Dirk Benedict, cigar wagging from the corner of his mouth, straight out of my mind, which really wasn’t such a bad thing; If anything, it was necessary. If you look at where the producers of the new BattleStar Galactica went, thematically, it is hard to see where facsimiles of the old characters would fit in. By jettisoning any resemblance of those characters viewers new, and old, came to the show with a clean slate.

One gender switch that never really stung for me was Boomer. Boomer was an African-American male pilot in the originally, an Asian female named Sharon in the re-imagined Galactica. Maybe it was just the flap over Starbuck and the Cylons, but nobody seemed nearly as surprised by Boomer’s shift, until she turned out to be Cyclon programmed to assassinate Adama. Thanks to the miracle of limited Cylon ‘models’, Grace Park, the actress who plays Boomer, didn’t have to worry about her job security when Boomer was killed early on in season two she was already playing a duplicate Sharon stuck on Caprica. This Sharon, as we know, had a human hybrid baby and wound up in a holding Cell on Galactica until being admitted to the fleet as an officer in the beginning of Season Three. Galactica purists be still!

A decidedly Star-Trek’esque maneuver, splicing an enemy amongst the heroes ranks, the twist came with one more turn last week when Galactica producers decided to resurrect yet another old school Galactica character. There are several characters missing from the “re-imagining”, Cassiopia, Boxy, and Serina, to name a few. When Caprica Sharon proclaimed that she is not “Boomer”, the unit which was destroyed on Galactica, her pilot buddies decided to come up with an entirely new call-sign for her: Athena.

Now, Athena is NOT a new name to classic BattleStar Galactica, she was a hotshot pilot and Adama’s daughter. She was not, however, an African American man who became an Asian Women who turned out to be a Cylon whose copy get pregnant by a human, later joined the fleet, and eventually got recast as a classic character. Whew. Surely bringing Athena back to the new universe of BattleStar Galactica is nothing short of simple homage, but proof positive that BSG’s producers still have one eye on the past watching for characters they can reflux before our eyes. It’s all fine and dandy as long as BattleStar Galactica keeps doing what it does, but I can’t shake the feeling that Sheba is going to walk in the door some day as a male Cylon early hybrid breeding experiment.

Share This