First and foremost Mr. Gaius Balter is the undisputed man. His rant in the bathroom is
the best 30 seconds of the entire series up to this point. His charisma along the way that the spaceships move in a manner reminiscent of pucks on an arcade ice-hockey table are the only real reasons to watch this series. As for who the 12th cylon is, it's not mr. Balthar. If Gaius is a cylon he is the 13th cylon, or the single cylon god.
(as a side note, I fail to see how Starbuck is suddenly the pre-eminent choice for the last Cylon, granted her ship "exploded" in the murky atmosphere of whatever planet that was, but I fail to see why that would qualify her for immediate machine-hood. Also why would the cylons have tried so hard to foster a baby on her if she herself was a Cylon, doesn't that defeat the purpose of their interspecies eugenicism? I would guess that a more reasonable explanation for her fiery disappearance is that the ghost cylon ship she saw was leading her to earth, and the explosion was just some sweet effects to go along with the ride.)Circle (cyclical time)
As for this mono/poly theism debate, my personal guess, is that the end of the series will somehow result in 13 ships heading off to colonize the universe. The human prophesies are correct because the same things keep happening over and over. So to break down, we have a 12 (or 13) part cycle...
- 13 ships for 13 colonies, each with a god, 1 with a super-god-cylon-machine (see below)
- 1 ship lost for earth, 12 ships found humanity
- humanity creates machines
- A machine hits the point where it can improve itself faster than people can (the singularity)
- This machine bootstraps itself into higher and higher heights of machine smartness
- This god-machine creates the 12 cylons, then figure out the cyclical deal and where earth is. At which point it abandons it's cylon children, and books for earth where it can see what happened to it's past self
- The 12 cylons are left with nothing but the memory/knowledge of their 1 god (their creator, this machine)
- The 12 cylons destroy the 12 colonies
- The 12 cylons chase the people of earth through space
- The humans then the cylons find earth
- The cylons and the humans finally are successful in their mating, and a new race is born
- Somehow (probably the work of the sneaky god-cylon) earth is destroyed, and the new human-cylon species is scattered in 13 ships. All cylons and humans are destroyed aside from the 7 functioning cylons, and the 5 remaining cylons (who may be people), and of course the super-god-cylon-machine. These 13 old-timers each take charge of one of the colonies
- repeat, only now instead of humans it's half humans, half cylons and the species has bootstrapped itself up an evolutionary step, using the same process the super-god-cylon-machine used to smarten itself. Wheels inside wheels...
3 comments:
Pretty brilliant post - also consistent with Mormon mythology in which members of the faith are sent off to be the Adam and Eve's of a new planet. Well done.
Yeah, I like this post a lot too. Nice Schulte.
Whatever.
The Cylons didn't know who the 'final five' were so it is totally plausible that they might mistakenly try inter-species breeding with one of their own.
Also, based what info do you conclude that there is a "super-god-Cylon-machine"?
And also, wouldn't half humans and half Cylons be the same thing? A halfling?
And while its fun to argue about 'wheels within wheels' based on super-circumstantial evidence (at best), I think there are more important questions to be asking.
For example, at what point is a human/Cylon half-breed no longer human or Cylon? In otherwords, if a person is half human and half Cylon what are they, and when do they become a new species?
What is it that differentiates Cylons and humans? From the show we know that:
1) there is something special about Cylon blood that temporarily cures cancer
2) Cylons don't have the antibodies necessary to overcome to ancient human diseases
3) Cylons don't die -- they can be ressurrected
So, Cylons cannot get cancer, but they can die of the common flu.
The real difference is point 3... that Cylons don't die.
This is the primary metaphysical differentiation between Cylons and humans. Humans die after living one life, and Cylons can live multiple lives.
Since Cylons can resurrect then why do they need to breed at all?
As we can see -- inter-breeding benefits both species insofar as the subsequent generations can evolve new immunities (see 1 and 2).
Is inter-breeding just needed, then, for temporary genetic diversification?
If so, are Cylons just trying to mate with humans as a way to prevent their own extinction?
Otherwise, possibly, Cylons are trying to elevate the humans to their status - by giving them the ability to live multiple lives. Perhaps this results from a deeply embedded kernal of code from back in the day when the Cylons were designed to assist humans. Of course now you have me going off on my own ill-advised speculation.
Back to one final point --
One of the basic problems with the Cylon model, as I see it, is that at some point there will be more Cylons than there is infrastructure to resurrect. So this either means a class system will develop (whereas the upper class continues to resurrect and the lower classes either die off or breed), population control will be strictly enforced, or that they will completely abandon the resurrection model for a more sustainable one - namely reproduction.
Then Cylons best chance at survival, in the long run, surely is to become human.
So yeah, we are talking about TV show, right?
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