Epic space battles + philosophy and ethics + human drama + Cylons = KICKASS TELEVISION
On this week’s episode, Tracie shares her Deep Thoughts about the 2004-2009 reboot of Battlestar Galactica. She tells Emily how she got sucked into the show and resurfaced weeks later, a la Portlandia, how the story undercut its own feminist bona fides by resorting to misogynistic tropes, and why the monotheism of the skinjobs is so durn fascinating to our resident Torah scholar.
Join us as we talk about the big questions and little dramas of one of the best television shows of all time. So say we all!
Content warning: References to in-universe rape, war crimes, childhood neglect and abuse, and suicide.
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
Mentioned in this episode:
Battlestar Galactica on Portlandia
Top 100 Shows of All Time: #18 Battlestar Galactica
Akhenaten, Nefertiti & Aten: From Many Gods to One
Chauvinist Pigs in Space: Why Battlestar Galactica is not so frakking feminist after all
Epic space battles + philosophy and ethics + human drama + Cylons = KICKASS TELEVISION
On this week’s episode, Tracie shares her Deep Thoughts about the 2004-2009 reboot of Battlestar Galactica. She tells Emily how she got sucked into the show and resurfaced weeks later, a la Portlandia, how the story undercut its own feminist bona fides by resorting to misogynistic tropes, and why the monotheism of the skinjobs is so durn fascinating to our resident Torah scholar.
Join us as we talk about the big questions and little dramas of one of the best television shows of all time. So say we all!
Content warning: References to in-universe rape, war crimes, childhood neglect and abuse, and suicide.
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
Mentioned in this episode:
Battlestar Galactica on Portlandia
Top 100 Shows of All Time: #18 Battlestar Galactica
Akhenaten, Nefertiti & Aten: From Many Gods to One
Chauvinist Pigs in Space: Why Battlestar Galactica is not so frakking feminist after all
I'm Tracy Guy Decker and you're listening to Deep Thoughts about Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? Today, I'll be sharing my deep thoughts about Battlestar Galaxica with my sister, emily Guy Birken, and with you. Let's dive in. Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture, what others might deem stupid shit? You know matters. You know it's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come over, think with us as we delve into our deep thoughts About stupid shit.
Speaker 1:This show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our patreon there's a link in the show notes or leave a positive review so others can find us and, of course, share the show with your people. All right, I'm. I know this wasn't like one of your shows the way that it was. What a mine, mm-hmm, but it wasn't not. So tell me what you know or remember about Battlestar Galaxica so With Battlestar Galaxica.
Speaker 2:I cannot relate to the Portlandia skit. They lose their job because they keep one more episode, one more episode. And I think it actually has something to do with the timing of when I saw it. I saw it right after my eldest son was born, not right after I think he was about eight or nine months old. You showed it to me and I was struggling with fiction at the time, at a really hard time, investing and suspending my disbelief in fiction. So I think that's why I didn't get into it the way that you did, because like I would try to get into a bunch of things and I'd just be like you know, this is all made up. I'm gonna blame this on the fact that my child did not sleep for 18 months. It's the first 18 months he was basically just awake Straight, so I was a little sleep deprived, but anyway.
Speaker 2:So what I remember about it? I love the idea of they had the war. They lost, like the humans, and this is what happens next. So it's humans and Psylons. I know it's based on like a 70s TV show. I think that they updated. It has Trisha Helfer, who we've talked before about how she has a cottage industry and playing not quite human characters. Yeah, super sexy ones. Yeah, she's inhumanly beautiful. So I remember I could. I like love to hate Gaius, I think was his name. Yeah, because I remember in the first episode I was like I hope he dies. You're like no, he's the main character, like no. I remember that they had a lot of like by Artemis's moon and by Apollo's.
Speaker 2:Arrow and stuff like that. When they got to the plot point of their being human Cylon hybrids that were created via sex, I Was like I'm out, my my. That was when my sleep deprived brain was just like I'm sorry, that wouldn't work.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Absolutely not. How would that, even biologically, make any sense? So Between that and then I found out, long before the twist came, that this is from the distant past instead of the the future. And that was the other thing, like, because I think I could have Gotten around this one. But the fact that they had so many things about Greek mythology when in my head I was like we know what the history of the creation of these Greek gods were like in in in human history, like I can't.
Speaker 2:I can't do it. I can't do it. So I do feel like I'm not usually so pedantic. I think also because my oldest was still such a small baby in the first episode. Trisha Hulfer's character kills a baby and I was. That was another one where I'm like I think I can do this. So I, as I said, I like I enjoyed it. While I was watching it, I just couldn't suspend my disbelief and it felt that felt more like Something that I was lacking than that it was something that the show was lacking. I think that was. If I had encountered it at a different point in my life, it would not have bothered me like that. So tell me why we are talking about this today, considering I had a meh. I know you had more of more of a positive one.
Speaker 1:That Portlandia episode which we will link in the show notes because it's really funny. I lived that like In. So in this Portlandia episode it's like a little comedy sketch and like these two people just they watch, they watch the first episode and then they Don't do anything else, like just stream it and like don't leave their couch and she's that she gets a call like yeah, I've just been fired, but we can watch another one next episode.
Speaker 1:Yeah exactly that was. That was pretty much how I encountered it, and now it was you. You are right, it was based on a 78 show and it so that it started with a mini series in 2003 and then it there were additional series that went through 2009. So I think I started watching it in Maybe 08 or 09, so all but the final season had already been recorded when I started binging it Back, when we still use DVDs. So, and I just was completely not by it, I just adored it. In fact, it's such good TV that, like when I was rewatching the mini series which is sort of the pilot, it's like three-hour pilot in order to prep for today, my wearable was like whoa, your blood pressure is a little up, lady. So, yeah, it's just. I just I just think it's great storytelling and TV and really compelling and I really love it, and so I wanted to like Kind of take a closer look at it, because it hits all the right Buttons for me, and so I wanted us to like take a moment and be like well, okay, what are those buttons and maybe what else is behind it, mm-hmm. So let me do a quick, as quick as I can like recap of it. I feel a little bit like you did with X files with 218. It's not that many, it's more like 70, some Episodes, but there's a lot of plot.
Speaker 1:So I'm gonna miss some stuff, but the basic premise you gave some of it is that, as you say, it's an update from the 78 show, which, in which the Cylons, or these androids that were stainless steel like they, they did not look, they were humanoid shaped, but you can never mistake them for human. So this is an updated version. It's 40 years after a Cylon war and With un, unknowingly, with the help of Gaius Baltar, whom you named, the Cylons who now have developed bodies that look human, that completely pass for human, surprise attack on the colonies of Cobal there are 12, and it's a surprise nuclear attack. So a population of billions is completely wiped out almost instantaneously. The humans who survive it's about 50,000 survived because they were on spaceships in space travel and that's the only reason that they survived, because the 12 planets were destroyed with blanket nuclear bombs.
Speaker 1:And the one military vessel survives the Battlestar Galactica, hence the name of the show, which is ancient, it's from the first Cylon War and in fact, was about to be turned into a museum. That's where we start is like they're decommissioning it and it's being turned into a museum when the war happens. So the thing is the Cylons and their machines and computers, and so they use networked computers to destroy things, and so all of the newer military technology the Cylons are able to completely disable with just a scan. And so the reason that Galactica survives is because it's still using all wired phones and no networked computers. They use computers but no networked, and so they are able to survive this technological threat.
Speaker 1:So the skin jobs, as they call them, the Cylons who look like humans, there are, we learn, only 12 total models. So the same actor will play multiple different Cylons, and we know one of them immediately is Trisha Helfer. And then we meet a few others along the way in this initial three-hour mini-series, and Trisha Helfer tells us through Gaius that and her character doesn't have a name, she's just number six. So number six tells us that some of them may not even realize that they are Cylons. They're like sleeper cells. So they've been given human memories, they believe themselves to be human and they will be activated. So we've got this amazing action space war with big torpedoes and little vipers, which are the smaller planes that go out and shoot things up, and it's really exciting, and I remember the not knowing who is a Cylon aspect of it, because there's one model that is revealed at the end of that first episode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the first time I watched it.
Speaker 2:I was like oh, it hurt, yeah, yeah. But then I also one of the things that interested me because I do love mysteries is I want to know who the Cylons are. I want to know which of these people that I care about is actually a sleeper agent, right? So that was great television.
Speaker 1:And there is one moment where Gaius actually he thinks that a human, a man, is not a Cylon but he's trying to protect himself and so he accuses that guy of being a Cylon. It turns out he actually is, we learn. So there's interesting things like that, and mixed in with this sort of intrigue and big space opera type mega movement, there's also the very real human movement of individual stories, just at the very interpersonal level. So there's a rivalry between Carathrase Starbucks and Colonel Tai, the Exo. Both of them kind of have a problem with alcohol. They're both ornery.
Speaker 1:We see the commander Adama, who is the commander of the Battlestar Galactica. His son shows up, lee. They are estranged because Lee's brother, zack, died in a pilot. He was a pilot of a Viper plane that crashed and Lee blames his dad because his dad said things like you're not really a man until you're behind the, you know, in the cockpit of a Viper, and Zack really shouldn't have been. Opera is Zack's former fiance and we learned that actually she was his flight instructor and shouldn't have passed him, but she did, and so like there's all of this like drama at the human level. Right, the chief is sleeping with one of the officers and they think they're keeping it secret and you know it's, and it's all like intermixed with this giant space opera, and it's just so amazing that you know my blood pressure is going up because I'm enjoying it so much.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's just the first three hours, and then right, and then we get into the series. So, as you said, the war is over and this is what happens next. And so it is four seasons of sort of trying to find hope. That in the very in the beginning, senator Adamus says we're going to go find Earth, which is the 13th colony which is lost. He claims that he knows where it is and it's been passed down through the military hierarchy, the president, who was the secretary of education until everybody died and is now the president. She calls bullshit on him privately. So we know that there is no, that he doesn't actually know how to get to Earth, but he's given, he's given this idea as hope for the people. So presumably they are trying to avoid the silence, trying to find Earth, trying to keep people alive, trying to, you know, save the human race. Basically, they end up finding another planet, which they named New Caprica.
Speaker 1:Things don't go so well. They find that there actually is another ship that survived, the Pegasus, that made different choices Because of President Rosalind. The Galactica chooses to call to say this war is over and now their job is to protect the species. The Pegasus made a different choice. They abandoned any civilians they were with and are just sort of like out to like, make whatever trouble they can, and just, they're just sort of I don't even know what word to use they're just surviving. But mercilessly, they eventually find Earth which is a total nuclear wasteland, because what happened to, not from ages ago, not recently, not the recent nuclear holocaust that happened on the 12 colonies, but it seems to be like tens of thousands of years ago, earth was destroyed in a similar sort of thing. Eventually, they make it to a planet which it turns out is ours, which they name Earth, and they send all of their technology into the sun in order to avoid a repeat of sort of creating artificial intelligence that will then destroy them. And they settle here. So a few Cylon, what's the remainder of the human race from Cobol? And the natives on this planet answer Mingle and become us. So, as you say, it is a ancient prehistory as opposed to future history.
Speaker 1:So that's my in expert recap of Battlestar Galaxica, and so now I want to dig into some of the things that interest me about it. I have a few things that I want to talk about. I want to start, as we often do, with thinking about like is this or how is this feminist? There's actually a lot of conversation contemporaneous to its release about this, where different media outlets were calling it deeply feminist, and they were really excited, and I understand why. I mean in part because, like so, in the original 78 show, starbucks was a character played by a dude I mean, it was 70s sci-fi, so, of course and so making Starbucks into a woman, like, felt like a big symbol and it was.
Speaker 2:And Katie Sackoff is who plays Starbucks, right, and she is, I mean she, as I recall she plays Starbucks is pretty badass, oh, totally badass, and yeah, I mean like that's.
Speaker 1:Total badass. Also deeply traumatized, but like the finest fighter, the finest pilot in the fleet, yeah, and a survivor of childhood trauma, it becomes clear. And the actor who played Starbucks the first time around, whose name I don't know and maybe wouldn't say anyway, but he went on record as saying like how they were destroying this amazing thing.
Speaker 2:Because how dare they can't See me. I just had an eye roll so big it made my head roll.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so you know, so, so the you know, the initial release of this show like really pissed off some stuff. The right people, Exactly, exactly, exactly. And we see, we do see when, like Rosalind, Laura Rosalind, who is president throughout the whole show, except for the first, you know, 20 minutes when she's secretary of education, she is incredible. I mean, she's like a really powerful character, not in an exceptionalist way, not in a not like other girls way, just in a like deeply competent, human, empathetic. She's, oh, part of the human drama, that's part. She has just learned she has cancer. Cancer, yeah, yeah, and it's terminal.
Speaker 2:I remember what I remember from watching it was when she became like, when it became clear that she was president and she was like 35th down or something like 34.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she says that, or maybe it's 43rd. I'm being dyslexic. It's either 34th or 4th or 43rd.
Speaker 2:But I mean, like just the number of people who had to have died. And I can remember because, like they show you that she got the cancer diagnosis beforehand, I think, yeah, and anyway, I just remember, in part because I had, until very recently, been a teacher and she is a teacher and if I were in a situation like that I'd be like thank you, but no, thank you can be the next person in line. And the fact that she took on the presidency and was like this is mine and I will do a damned good job of it and see if I don't, like I mean, watch me. I remember being really, really impressed with that and surprised, just because it's not how I would have reacted, and I just I really liked that. I liked that about her character.
Speaker 1:It's. That whole sequence is, frankly gorgeous. She's, you know. She says to I don't remember who, but one of the characters asks her like where are you in line? Like before they realize, and she's like 34th, maybe it's actually after, and she says whatever the number is, she said I knew all 33. We served together. I've known, you know. And she explains how she made it, why she was in the cabinet, how she always talked about leaving politics but she just couldn't say no to the president.
Speaker 1:And then there's this like so she takes charge and she is leading, and there's a guy who's like a PR guy, and when Lea Dama Apollo is his call name, who is the son of the commander sort of shows up because he's their military escort, and there's this PR guy who's like oh, I'm so glad you're here, you need to take over. And Lee is like why is there something wrong with your pilot? And he says no, but he's not, he's not calling the shots. Lee sees her and how she's commanding the room and making good choices, and he looks at this guy and says ladies in charge. So so there are these moments that are just beautiful and and do feel, if not feminist, at least feminist affirming.
Speaker 1:And then I'm reading some of the commentary and looking at it as a whole and there are some deeply troubling things as well. So, for instance, that other military ship that we meet, the Pegasus, as a number six, that's Trisha Helfers Cylon, they have one as prisoner and the commander is an admiral, a woman of the Pegasus, and she is explicitly intentionally using rape as a torture of this Cylon prisoner and others threaten it for other At this stage. There's a Cylon we know she's a Cylon at this point and she has she's in a romantic relationship with a human and actually has kind of sort of defected, and Pegasus folks threaten rape of her. I mean it's used just casually in this way. It feels I mean, you recoiled just now that listeners can't see, and that's kind of the point. And also, do we really need that? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting. So like they are using this as a way to indicate how different the choices the Pegasus makes are yes and something. So I never really watched Game of Thrones. My husband yeah.
Speaker 1:I haven't seen it either. I don't know anything about it. I haven't seen it either, I don't know anything about it.
Speaker 2:My husband watched it, honestly, first season, and I was in the room for it. So I like caught pieces of it and I've seen the conversation about it and there is a lot of rape and stuff like that and people will like, oh, it's historically accurate. I'm like it's fantasy, like historically accurate. For what you know, there's no such thing as Dothraki, there's no such thing as a Khaleesi, there's no such thing as dragons. So why does there have to be such thing as rape as a war crime? Yeah, and so that's the thing that I'm thinking about, like couldn't they have come up with something that was Cylon specific torture that they could have done to number six? That doesn't have any similar component in the real world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that is a valid question. But later there is another moment where Kali is married to the chief and they have a kid together and then we discover that the chief is a Cylon and she freaks out and she goes into an airlock with her son and it seems clear she's gonna kill herself and her son. And then she doesn't get the chance because somebody else then comes and kills her and does it whatever. But like even the way we talk about, like how hysterical she was and like it's a common on postpartum depression, like that's big. You discover that your husband is actually a robot enemy and so your kid might be too, and like what do you do? Like it just felt like they kind of the way that the show talked about it felt dismissive of what it was the character was actually going through.
Speaker 1:There were other moments like that. As you know, there's a this show is gonna have to have some content warnings. There's a character who dies by suicide. That again it like a female character who dies by suicide after she's had, like, a date with her estranged husband, and in the storytelling in the moment while I was watching it it was devastating, but it also like had this deep poignancy and now, looking back on it, I'm questioning the choices. You know that they, that they did this to this woman character in the midst of all these other things.
Speaker 2:So something that this is resonating for me is in our bonus episode about the monster at the end of this book. We went ridiculously deep for a 15 page book about Grover, yeah, but I ended up talking quite a bit about what I feel like authors owe to their characters. Yeah, and how a trope that really bothers me is is when, all of a sudden, an author will give a whole bunch of backstory about a character who they then immediately kill off, and it's a shortcut to raising the stakes, and it feels like using rape as a war crime is a similar kind of shortcut to raising the stakes, and so this is solving a problem that the writers have not solving the characters problems are necessarily serving the story, and it's we lean on the things that we know when we solve those kinds of problems. When we are like you know, when we have an absence of imagination, where we go is what we're just living in, and that is that like, oh well, you know rape is devastating, so you know we'll threaten that.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, well, like, this is about postpartum psychosis, is a postpartum depression. So let's, let's lean on that Rather than treating these characters as fully formed creatures, even as they're doing awful things to each other deserve better. Yeah, yeah, the story deserves better. We deserves more imagination than that. Deserves more creativity than that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that might, that might be right.
Speaker 2:And, like you know, as I, as people are saying like it's just fiction which I know, if you're listening to this podcast, you don't feel that way. But it just kind of continues to reify down and down and down and down the fact that people are going to say like, oh well, you know, it's historically accurate, that's what happens during war. It's historically accurate, that's that's what happened to. You know girls who are sold off to the, to the you know other kingdom son, and it's like but why? That's a failure of imagination. Just because it happened that way doesn't mean it has to happen that way in our stories. And by having it happen that way in our stories, we again get another generation of people saying like, oh well, that's how it happens. And so we get people like you know someone I went to high school with who was just like Well, yeah, it's natural, girls do this and guys do that. And it's like, no, it's not natural cultural.
Speaker 1:So fascinating that you went there because it's such a meta on Battlestar Galaxia, because a through line like what we see over and over and over again in the storytelling is that this happens over and over and over again. The point that they make with when they discover Earth and it's destroyed is that this sequence of events of a culture creating an artificial, an artificial intelligence, an artificial race in order to be their servants, and then those servants rising up and destroying their parents, slash masters is something that happens again and again and again and again. That is the kind of underlying mythos of Battlestar Galactica. And the question at the very end, in the very last episode, when we see sort of an angelic, gaius Baltar and number six, they aren't seen by the humans around them, but they're walking down a street in a city in contemporary well, contemporary, then, 2009 Earth and looking around at sort of images of more and more advanced artificial intelligence and human like machines. And the question, ultimately, that they're asking is we've seen this before. Does it have to end the way it's ended in the past?
Speaker 1:I'm really feeling the resonance of the metaphor in terms of the storytelling choices as well. Right, because if we always tell the stories the same way. Then we actually start to say things like this is what a story must have, and is that in fact accurate? I mean, we've been taught to be satisfied with those things, but does that mean we can't be satisfied with other things? Such an interesting question to me, especially as it's like layered in with this, like destruction of the servants slash children. Destroying the masters slash parents.
Speaker 2:What's interesting is even within that, with the president, where, like telling the story and I know I saw this part and I didn't remember it but where Lisa's ladies got it, ladies take them in charge thinking about the fact that why is sexism still a thing in this story? And he says lady, not woman, or just Secretary of Education's got it, say what her title is or her name. And so that feels good to us because we in, as we're, you know, as we're watching this and you know when it came out originally, 20 years ago, and still to this day is what the world is that we live in, and so we're seeing ourselves reflected. But does the story have to end that way? Does it have to go that way just because it always has?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting. I mean they clearly were trying to move in that direction. So, for instance, sir is the honorific for everyone, regardless of gender, right? So Lee calls President Roslyn. Well, once she becomes president, she's.
Speaker 2:Madam President.
Speaker 1:But before that, yes, sir, that it doesn't matter, and so I feel like that was an effort sort of removing that kind of differentiation. On the other hand, number six number six, trisha Halfer's Cylon is how the Cylinder. She was sleeping with Gaius and he gave her access to the defense mainframe, and that's how and that's why I wanted him to die, right, and he says of her that she's brilliant.
Speaker 1:Like we hear him say that. But what we see out of Trisha Halfer's delivery which was a directorial choice, not an acting choice is great sex appeal. That's pretty much it. She is poured into these dresses that I mean she looks amazing. I'm not suggesting otherwise, but she's poured into these dresses and then poured all over the actor playing Gaius Baltar and like that's it. Like if you could only pick one word to describe her, it wouldn't be brilliant, it would be sexy, yeah, yeah. So I think you know there's a big push-pull there in terms of the feminist question.
Speaker 1:I'm wrapping the feminists in the storytelling up a little bit and, because of your question, built into I think the metaphor of the artificial people servants, students, servants slash children is also I don't think I'm reading too much into it. I think it's an intentional. There is a subtext about adults who have experienced childhood trauma and how that then shows up as kind of perpetuating trauma and we see that through. Like we learn that Kara Thrae's Starbucks was neglected and abused as a child and we see how destructive and self-destructive she is as an adult. She's a badass but makes some really poor choices, like really really poor choices, and we see that with other characters as well and that also becomes kind of a through line for us, which part of the reason it just feels like such good storytelling is because layering that fact into space opera just feels like big and through and exciting in like I don't know in just really resonant ways. That's why I think that aspect of it, that sort of thinking about childhood trauma showing up in adults and the interpersonal things that that makes happen, layered into this post-apocalyptic space opera, is why my blood pressure goes up when I'm watching the show and why it's been named one of the best TV shows of all time by different media outlets and part of the space opera drama Storytelling Peace is something that we got into a little bit when we spoke with Lynette Davis about Anime and her favorite Anime, psychopaths and some of the trade-offs that we make as a society, about trade-offs between safety and freedom and trade-offs or questions about worthiness and prioritizing people, prioritizing different people's safety.
Speaker 1:Even just in the mini-series the pilot mini-series really really hard choices have to be made. So the Cylons are chasing them. If they don't, when they jump faster than light, they can't be, they can't be followed. Not all of the ships in the fleet have faster than light technology, but there are civilians on those other ones. The Cylons are coming and they outgun them by a factor of whatever nth to one, and so do they stay and fight and likely lose everyone, or do they leave and abandon the ships with civilians on them to certain destruction? And they have to make that decision and then a similar decision that a fire breaks out on the Galactica, and so if the fire breaches another part of the ship, it's going to be a disaster. But there's still people, not just men. There's still people there and we need to get them out before we vent out to space. And what do we do? And poises like that have to be made over and over and over again.
Speaker 2:So it's interesting to me that because the intersection of freedom and safety. You said the mini series came out in 2003. Is that right? So pretty soon after 9-11. For sure.
Speaker 1:So actually throughout the series there are very clear. The writers were clearly grappling with some of the issues of a post 9-11 US. So when they are on New Caprica there are folks who are thinking they should try and make peace with what silence there are. The question of how do we deal with the danger is huge. There are questions about democracy that come up.
Speaker 1:So Gaius, who is an antihero if there ever was one, maybe even a villain, I don't know, but he's not actually malicious, he's just Machiavellian, but he's awful. I mean, the guy's awful. He runs for president and President Rosalind does not want this man to be president. He's awful and she's realized not quite how awful, but she's realized that he's awful and will not be good for the colonies which they're still calling themselves. And so she stuffs the ballot and one of our other characters realizes it and intervenes because he's trying to defend democracy, which is a noble thing to do. But Gaius is awful and so the showrunners were grappling with these things. Who can be trusted? There's a small faction of silence who defect and are kind of chilling with the humans and we actually trust them and the answers are like some of them yes and some of them no and yeah, I think that's also part of why it was so compelling was because it was this space opera that was so deeply relevant.
Speaker 2:Well, it's also. It sounds like it makes it clear that there's no easy answers, Definitely, and that's something just taking it back to what you're talking about with the how it's showing the perpetuation of trauma. That's also like kind of there's no easy answers, in that like obviously this is not good, but how do you break that cycle when you yourself are dealing with this trauma, when just living is hard enough?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the when there's only 50,000 human beings left. Yeah, the stakes are different. Yeah, I mean not that. It's not that it wouldn't be horrific to deal with having to leave civilians behind or having to deal with, like the people with the venting the fire out, and all of that If there were billions, but it's like the president going like I worked with all 33 of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they make that clear because the president actually has a whiteboard where she keeps the number of souls that they have, and so she'll like erase and like lower, like, so that they very explicitly make that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The stakes are the survival of the species. Yeah, you know, and, and, and, then what? In that moment, when those six are so high, there's an episode where they, they take on abortion. Do they allow abortion when there are only 50,000 human beings at all? Like, does that change the right to an individual's bodily autonomy? No, Well, that. That is actually where Rosalind lands.
Speaker 2:That's good, that's where Rosalind is I?
Speaker 1:hear that, yeah, but it gives her pause.
Speaker 2:It's understandable. It's an understandable thing, but particularly with if there's only 50,000, you're pretty sure you're going to find people who are willing to raise the baby.
Speaker 1:Right and from the mini-sears, from the pilot, she says to Bill Adama who, like before, she has to convince the military guys the war is over and we lost she says that repeatedly because they're like we're at war and she's like no, the war is over, they need to go out and start having babies, like that is.
Speaker 1:She says that from the beginning, like we need to be having babies if the species is going to survive. So when that's like part of her understanding of the mission of the species. The stakes are high. It's not cut and dried and I think you're exactly right. That is something that throughout the showrunners really, really grapple with and in what feels like generative and interesting ways.
Speaker 1:So the other thing I want to talk about and regular listeners to the show may not be surprised that I want to talk about religion in this show. It actually shows up a surprising amount for a space opera, human drama. So, as you mentioned when you were talking about what turned you off, what we think of as the Greek gods are the lords of Kobal. That's the religion. It's a polytheistic religion of the humans from the colonies.
Speaker 1:So we have Apollo and Athena and Artemis and all of the Greek gods, and I actually quite like the way they create some ritual. So instead of like Amen or Amin, they say so, say we all, which is kind of what Amin means, which is kind of I mean, that is really. I love that, I love that and I read and I don't know if this is true, but at least one person reported that there's a scene where William Adama, sort of like, rallies the assembled by, like making them repeat it over and over again until they're like doing it with their full, full voice, and I read that that was actually sort of ad libs, which wow.
Speaker 2:But anyway, if that reminds me of peace, be with you and also with you.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Yes, yes, yes and Amin and yes and Kane Hira its own. May it be. May it be God's will. Yes, exactly, it's great, and like there's a scroll that they hold. That it's. They did a great job of making it believable. So humans are polytheistic looks basically like the Greek pantheon. Cylons are monotheistic. Oh, that is fascinating. Yeah, cylons are monotheistic, and even in the mini series.
Speaker 1:So Dias sees number six, even when she's not there, she talks to him. It's very unclear what's actually happening. I'm putting quotes around the word. Actually, they said he, like he suggests it's just a figment of his imagination. She says, well, maybe I planted a chip in your head while you were sleeping, and like I don't know, but somehow there's some supernatural connection where he is able, he sees, and she's there listening and sort of talking to him and coaching him to do different things and saying God is looking out for you, god is doing this thing, if you do this, god will do that, and then it happens, right, and like, so the thing that she says that God will do then happens. And so there's this really like interesting problematization, like curiosity, like what is happening cosmologically, supernaturally, here. And that's just from the pilot, right.
Speaker 1:So throughout the show. You know, these sort of weird and supernatural things happened. So there was a prophecy that somehow we believe that era Starbucks is the harbinger of death. And that turns out to be true because the humans as a distinct race kind of cease to exist because they intermingle with a few Cylons and the native inhabitants of our earth. And also, like she disappears for a while and then comes back. She thinks she's only been gone for a couple of days, it's actually been several months and then eventually she goes and finds her own dead charred body and it's her. And so in the very end, like she finishes what she's sent to do and then just disappears, she's some sort of guardian angel, maybe in the final like manifestation of her.
Speaker 1:Like it's very unclear and, to be honest, I was unsatisfied with it. When I watched it the first time, I was like I need more. I need like explicit tell me what is happening, which we don't get, which also is appropriate for religious sort of you know, machinations. But I actually don't know what I want to say about it because I'm still just like the more kind of researching it to prepare for today, thinking about fact that the Cylons are monotheistic and the humans are polytheistic and both are our ancestors. I'm not sure what the show runners were trying, so it's made to us and that's not even. I'm not even getting into the fact that there are star coordinates hidden in a Bob Dylan song that the like, the special secret Cylons from before the Cylons like have embedded in their brains. Because that happens.
Speaker 2:I'm like Emily dot exe has stopped working. What?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, okay, I'm going to wait. Is it Bob Dylan or, all along the watch tower, that's Jimi Hendrix, not Bob Dylan. No.
Speaker 2:Bob Dylan wrote it originally. Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're right, Both of them.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right. Here's my question Is there a like? Do you get the belief system like the mythology of the Cylons God, or is it just there is a reference to their single God?
Speaker 1:In the research that I was doing, like some of the people who are writing about it seem to have like a full like, seem to have a sense that there was sort of a fuller history and even like it predated the generation that we are watching on screen and that there was some sort of like proselytization that brought the Cylons over to the monotheism. I don't know where that came from. I don't recall seeing it. I don't know if that's from like, maybe canon kind of external fiction, or maybe from the 78 series, which sort of feels unlikely to me. But I didn't. I haven't. I have watched not a single episode of the 78 series. Okay, okay. So I don't actually know the answer to the question, but the idea that God has a plan, that God is out there paying attention, cares about us, in those phrases is repeated by the Cylons the Cylons that we know, the skin jobs that we know, and the Cylons how do they view humans in their cosmological framework?
Speaker 2:Just meaning like they kill us all, almost all.
Speaker 1:So I think most of them using.
Speaker 1:Gaius. She is, but she also. She says God loves you and she says she loves Gaius as well. So she claims to love Gaius and on the whole, I mean the Cylons are chasing these last 50,000 because they want to wipe humans out altogether. So on the whole, I would say humans are some sort of pest, though they are also their parents, right, and that is made plain repeatedly. The idea of taking responsibility for one's past actions is another through line as a part of the traumatized people cause trauma kind of through line, like the idea of taking responsibility for what we have done, and there's a certain extent to which the silence are forcing humans to take responsibility for what they did in treating their creations, their children, the way that they did.
Speaker 2:It's interesting just thinking about the theology of the silence, in that they have a God that is separate from the humans that created them.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that God I mean from number six at least Gaius is number six. God pairs and has opinions about human behavior as well. Like it's not the way that we would sort of talk about or even the way that Hebrew scripture talks about. Like you know, so and so prayed to his God as if, like that kind of cultic, god only cares about that cultic people. The way that the silence talk about God is much closer to the way that we contemporary, now that we now contemporaneously.
Speaker 1:I mean to us right now Anyway how we currently now talk about God as sort of the kind of force that's separate from and animating the universe. Number six talks about God, cylon, monotheistic God in that way, yeah.
Speaker 2:That is really fascinating. That's the sort of thing I would love to get, like my rabbi and Erica. I have a friend who's a priest those of you who are listening, hi, erica and like just to just talk about what that would mean, and like Chidi and Agony from the Good Place, if you want a fictional character. I would love to hear his thoughts on it too Well, in particular sense, as you say.
Speaker 1:You know, as we've mentioned, like what we are watching is a moment from the distant, distant past for us. And so the Cylons, who are human's enemy, are the monotheistic God worshipers, but they are also our ancestors. Both are true, and those humans of whom they are enemies are not. I mean, they're also our ancestors. They're not us, Like we sort of think of them as us, but they're not. They are a distinct, yet somehow related human species, and now our ancestors. So there's something like just so well, like everything else in this show, it's not cut and dried, it's not simply a statement that, like this is bad and this is good, it's all mixed up together, which is, I don't know it's. It's. That's what makes a good television.
Speaker 1:I find it deeply fascinating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well, I'm that's. I'm curious what I mean. People loved it. I know people loved it.
Speaker 1:What a bunch of awards it's been listed as, like, one of the top TV shows you know of all time by different like. I think time named it that. And yeah, yeah it is. It is a beloved series, for sure.
Speaker 2:So I mean, and that's, I'm just curious if there's, if there was any pushback to it. I mean, obviously the the guy who played Starbucks in the original was a jerk about it. But just knowing how seriously some people not seriously, I don't mean it's because it's okay to take religion seriously, but knowing how rigidly some people take religion, in our country in particular, I didn't read anything about that.
Speaker 1:My suspicion is no, because you'd have to really be watching in order to like pick up on it. Yeah, you know, like it's not, like it's called Lucifer, for instance, you know? And? And the monotheists are not Christian. Yeah, right, they don't talk about Jesus Christ because it was 150,000 year or 148,000 years before, before any such human by that moniker. So they're not Christian in the traditional sense, and so, and they're not Jewish, they are monotheists. But I think that probably it flew under the radar by the people who are that rigid. Who would be?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm just thinking the. The idea that the Pharaoh, akhenaten, who wanted to only worship the God, aten, which was the, the sun God, and he got rid of all of the other gods, anubis, and the suggestion that he may have been history's first monotheist, is contentious. As I understand it and it's interesting, akhenaten's name was was erased by by the priests after his death, which is like the worst possible thing you could do in ancient Egypt, in Egyptian yeah, in Egyptian Cosmology, cosmology, and because he was a heretic, according to them, because he was like no, aten is the only God, the God of the sun, don't need to worry about any of the rest of them. They're like no, no, we are not. We are not monotheists. Anyway, I just, I didn't know that, I didn't know any of that I.
Speaker 2:You know why. I know that.
Speaker 1:Elizabeth Peters.
Speaker 2:It is a book that you read. I love it. Yeah, so at some point we're going to do a bonus episode about Elizabeth Peters. Elizabeth Peters slash Barbara Michaels and how much of my knowledge about a number of weird and disparate things comes from her books. Love it, love it. So should we. Should we? Uh, you should kind of synthesize.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we should probably do some some summation here.
Speaker 2:So okay, there's, no, there's too much. Let me sum up Exactly.
Speaker 1:Let me sum up. So this TV show is a big, big, beautiful space opera. I didn't even talk about the cinematography which is just gorgeous.
Speaker 1:It used sort of some like like it's kind of shaky, like handcams kind of thing, like in the early 2000s. It's beautiful. So this big, bold, splashy space opera which is layered on top of like really nuanced and interesting interpersonal drama that grapples with the effects of childhood trauma and contemporary trauma, that grappled with what was happening in the world contemporaneously. While it was being made it got pushed back for being feminist, because how dare they recast Starbucks as a woman and also had some like casual misogyny faked in. That on rewatch is problematic. It digs into some of the really hard questions that don't have easy answers, about tradeoffs between, for instance, security and freedom, questions about when resources are finite, who is worthy, what determines worthiness, questions about bodily autonomy when thinking about the greater good and the survival of the species like really really hard questions. Who can be trusted?
Speaker 1:That don't have easy answers and even gets into sort of cosmological questions about the nature of divinity, offer some frankly magical by which I mean not awe-inspiring or sparkly, but kind of outside the realm of physics. So I guess supernatural maybe would be a better word Solutions which in some ways are just doosic ex machina, like a machine of the gods to kind of get us out of a pickle Like wait. We thought that Starbucks was dead, but now she's not, so what are we going to do with her? And, in other ways, are really kind of offering interesting suggestions about how the world may have worked at some point, or asking questions about what if it worked that way.
Speaker 2:Why couldn't there be miracles in a space opera when we'd accept miracles in something that sets Wherever Game of Thrones was set. Yeah, or I'm just like 2,000 years ago in our world or whatever 150,000 years ago, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then I think the last thing that I didn't mention is one of the through lines that feels really really interesting even more so now than it did 20 years ago is sort of the danger of artificial intelligence, but more meta than that sort of the cyclical nature of our dynamic of hierarchy and seeing those who are held down rise up and destroy their former oppressors and then themselves become oppressors.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's ultimately it's with the mask of artificial intelligence in this show, but ultimately the cycle that is being pointed to is the oppressed rising up to overthrow their oppressors and then themselves becoming oppressors. So I think there's some really really interesting things still in this TV show 20 years later. There's also some sort of some of the assumptions that you point out that we've just had for so long that we're like, oh well, that's just how it works, that's accurate, that we're saying about a space opera set 150,000 years ago in a fictional 12 colonies somewhere in space. That really speaks more to us as a culture and where we're allowing our imagination to be limited. What do you want to add? Or what did I forget?
Speaker 2:I don't think there's anything else I want to add. I think the fact that I was not able to suspend my disbelief for this I regret, and also it's in such a way that there's a block, there's a limiting belief in my brain. I can't go back to it Because it sounds fantastic and I did enjoy what I watched, but I hit a wall where I was like I can't believe this. I think that it made me more sympathetic to folks who are like yeah, I just can't get into sci-fi, I just can't get into fantasy.
Speaker 1:That is exactly what I was just going to say. I was just going to say that because science fiction appeals to me so much that sometimes people will say that and I'm like, well, you just haven't given it a try. But I think your experience is actually an important one to remind me that no, actually brains work differently and different brains. It just doesn't work and that has to be okay.
Speaker 2:That has to be okay Next time what are we going to talk about Next time? I am going to be sharing my thoughts and I have a lot of them about Labyrinth, the 1986 movie with David Bowie.
Speaker 1:David Bowie, david Bowie, and those leggings, oh man.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. Yeah, that was a kind of an awkward film for us to love as much as we did, considering I was seven and you were 10 when it came out.
Speaker 1:Man. That was some. That film definitely did some shaping of my sexual orientation. Yes, yes, yes, indeed, indeed. Well, I can't wait to talk about it. See you then. And that we were maybe overthinking that idea. Jake pointed out to us that we had completely missed the negative and potentially harmful stereotypes of Roma people that underlie Robinhood and little John's cross-dressing as fortune tellers in Disney's Robin Hood. We want to hear what you're thinking, but I bet other listeners do too. We have a forum feature on our website at guygirlsmediacom. Come join the conversation. I'll put the link in the show notes. Come on over. Let us know. What did we miss? What surprised you? Did we inspire any deep thoughts for you? Be in touch. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin MacLeod from Incompetekcom. Find full music credits in the show notes. Until next time, remember, upculture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head?