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So. Was thinking about this ‘Is Laura Roslin a Cylon?’ thing the other night, as someone lent me their DVD of season 1 and I got to see “33" for the first time. Found myself instinctively kicking against the possibility. But, still, her actions in that early episode might kinda fit the theory.
I also tend to resist any suggestion that Baltar might be a Cylon, which is another one I’ve seen about on the interwebnet. Seems to me that his character arc is central, that he’s been very carefully nudged along since the very first time we saw him: in the miniseries, he says that he doesn’t believe in any God, doesn’t want children, and when he’s asked straight out he refuses to say that he loves Six. And yet look at where we are now, with Baltar totally into the whole idea of protecting/being responsible for a Human-Cylon child, believing in God to the extent that he thinks he’s “God’s instrument”, and when he’s finally confronted with a real, flesh and blood Six, he wakes her from a catatonic state by admitting that he loves her.
It’s quite a turnaround, and the events in “33" are one of the first steps towards pushing him there - Six is trying to convince him that his escape from Caprica is proof that God has a plan, and that he’s a Big Part of that plan. There’s a sort of standoff sequence which sees Six insisting he accept the existence of God by repenting his sins, and the prez actually seems to hold off ordering the destruction of the Baltar-threatening Olympic Carrier until his acknowledgement of God’s hand in all this has been duly witnessed by the tall blonde lady in his head.
So, maybe that kinda fits. Might just have been a meaningless writerly flourish, but then again, maybe it was a Really Significant Moment revealing the prez's cylon-ness. But still, I kick against that, because, I think, I much prefer the idea that the Cylon plan is all about prompting, and having correctly predicted the human response to those prompts, rather than by leading.
It's not really conventionally dramatic to have a villain that's already anticipated and planned for everything they're going to do, and it’s probably more difficult to write scripts that can accommodate a scheme like that and still maintain audience doubt and dramatic tension and all that important stuff. But it still seems like the kind of thing a race of computers would come up with, something that's kinda like the way chess computers beat human opponents, maybe. But if Roslin is a Cylon, then their Big Plan was pretty much just to kill everyone and kill everyone until their sleeper agent was in charge of the entire human race - that whole thing with her transmitting her identity code, and talking about the chain of presidential sucession, in the miniseries - and then having her lead everyone by the nose to wherever they want. And there’s just too much of a conventional, human-like structure to that plan, whether there’s all the emotional stuff with her turning out to be a sleeper agent or not. It's a stupid plan. I want it to be impossibly clever.
Also, we’ve seen scenes with her on her own and she’s been crying about having cancer and has shown no indication whatsoever that she thinks she might be a Cylon. Unlike Boomer, who was frightened of herself from day 1.
And anyway, I think it’d be the programme makers showing their hand too soon. The whole ‘everything that happens is all part of the Cylon plan!’ interpretation seems pretty obvious in the right light, but I’ve scanned the BSG threads on a couple of other boards *cough*JohnByrneForum*cough*, and it seems they can’t see this at all, it’s all just been Scarey Robots vs Army Spaceships to them. In fact, the enjoyable part of this show, for me, is all the various degrees of doubt as to what’s a total set-up and what isn’t. But that’d all be pissed away by revealing that Roslin, the person who assembled the fleet, whose idea it was to flee, who has been leading humanity away from Caprica and has been taking Key Decisions every step of the way, has in fact been a Cylon all along. It’d be quite a swerve, to make that 100% clear. Not saying that’s a bad thing, but still.
Besides, I’m still wanting *Apollo* to be a cylon. I know, I know, I know: Apollo has a family, so that would necessitate some new, previously unseen Cylon ability to be able to copy existing people rather than just create new ones from scratch, but still. It’d be great.
Clues? There’s the *bizarre* incident in the miniseries - Lee has been picked up by Colonial One, notices there’s a couple of “pulse generators from Galactica” sitting in the hangar bay, doesn’t know why they’re there. Then the Cylons are closing in, and he sets them off and generates a pulse which happens to fuck up Galactica’s view of them. Then everyone on Colonial One wakes up an unspecified period of time later, and the Cylons have gone. Those pulse generators were placed there by persons unknown; that Cylon attack was to prompt him to set them off. And the original Lee Adama, the one that was a total 100% arsehole, was switched at that point - and he was mid-way through a prickish argument with his dad when he went to set the pulse off - and the Lee that we’ve seen since, the nice one that *doesn’t* really hate his dad, the one that’s managed to build up a really strong father-son bond, the one that the other pilots on Galactica like, that one is really a Cylon. It'll boil Adama's nut.
That’s why a defenceless Lee wasn’t shot on sight by that Centurion in ‘Valley Of Darkness”, that’s the Adama in the “Adama is a Cylon” that line Leomen whispered to the Prez, with her staring out Commander Adama straight after just being yer classic misdirection.
I’m only speculatin’, obviously. But I’m reeeeeaaaally hoping I’m right, if only so that arsehole original model human Lee can then make a return, with nobody on Galactica really liking him as much as that nice Cylon Lee. |
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