Technophobia, evolution, race, and religion: thoughts on the Battlestar Galactica finale

Me – Anders is the worse hybrid ever. He needs to be saying more cryptic things and helping put out all the fires on the Galactica.

David – He must be a Ford Hybrid.

After four seasons of some of the best television currently on, Battlestar Galactica came to an end last Friday night. I was bracing for an apocalyptic “everybody-dies” kind of ending, so while the finale was certainly not touchy-feely happy-ending-y, it was a lot less dismal than I was expecting. I was thoroughly enjoying it until about 2/3 of the way through, when the writers decided to totally frak everything up, IMHO.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

I cannot emphasize how much I hated the anti-technology ending. This is such a cliché of mainstream scifi. The idea that humans don’t have the moral capacity to deal with the power of modern technological advances, and that the people would be happier in some pastoral utopia is a way overused theme. If the theme was ever delved into or discussed with any great care in the show, maybe it would make sense. But I felt like the “let’s all become noble savages” theme came out of left field. (As symbolized by Baltar, Caprica’s greatest scientists, returning to his agricultural roots.) So we just give up medicine? And what about all the people who had been injured in the battle against the cylon colony? We just leave them to suffer and die from easily treatable infections and conditions?

Okay, granted technological advances allowed humans to create cylons, and cylons are what almost destroyed humanity, but technology is also what allowed the BSG humans to survive. Being able to live in spaceships and wander the galaxy for years, medicine to cure sickness, weapons to shoot at the cylons, and Hera, the supposed key for the survival of both cylons and humans, are all a result of technology. To me, BSG has always been an allegory about racism, prejudice and xenophobia, and not about the dangers of technology.

My understanding is that the reasons the Centurions rebelled is because of humanity’s treatment of them as basically slaves rather than equal sentient being. We also know that the holocaust that occurred on the 13th tribe Earth was caused by the Centurions. Perhaps the original humaniod Cylons didn’t treat the Centurions any better than humans. To me this is a more a metaphor for the dehumanization of groups of people, usually along racial/ethnic, religious, gender, class, etc. lines, in order to subjugate them, that has persisted through our human history. In order to enslave, abuse, rape, kill we often have to see these humans as objects, as less than human, as somehow lesser than “our” kind.

Pegasus’ Lt. Thorne’s use of rape as a method of interrogation of GinaSix and Athena is a good example of this kind of dehumanization. The constant referral to cylons as toasters and machines, as unfeeling and incapable of emotion, and therefore, by implication, not deserving of the same rights and treatment of “real” humans, is another example of how humans justify their attitudes towards (and sometimes torture, abuse, and rape of) cylons. This is even more pronounced in regards to the Centurions, who lack biologically constructed bodies and therefore don’t “look like us”. (And it’s interesting to note that the Centurions seriously desired biological bodies. Perhaps they had internalized some of the messages of their human masters.)

The point here is that it was not technology itself that caused the near annihilation of humanity. It was their lack of ethical development; their inability to recognize intelligent beings who were not human as deserving of the same rights and respect that they gave other humans. This is why the key to both human and cylon survival was cooperation and acceptance of one another as equal beings. This acceptance was critical to stopping the cycle of mutual violence and genocide.

The BSG humans and cylons who settled on our Earth maybe finally accept one another as equal. They also recognized the independence of the Centurions by giving them leave to go off to pursue their own destiny. But clearly getting rid of technology doesn’t solve the problem of dehumanizing the “other.” We only just construct different “others.” We have thousands of years of our human history to say otherwise. If anything, modern technology can help provide empirical support against certain kinds of constructed racial distinctions that have justified centuries of dehumanizing and othering. The fact that all of modern humanity shares a common ancestor of Hera/Eve could only be discerned by modern scientific methods.

Speaking of human origins, the finale made me even more confused about where humans come from in the BSG world. Kobol is origin planet of BSG humans in their mythology. So what are the odds that evolution would happen in exactly the same way on both Kobol and our Earth to produce humans that can interbreed? Basically zero if just natural forces are at work. So maybe the humans on our Earth were descendants of the Kobol humans that somehow lost technology. Of course, let’s not forget that the twelve human colonies from Kobol were named after the 12 signs of the zodiac. On Kobol they discover a replica of the night sky as seen from Earth with the 12 zodiac constellations in the location you would see them from our Earth (i.e. the Earth from the final episode, not the 13th colony post-apocalypse Earth that the final five come from). So what the frak does that mean?

Maybe our Earth was actually the origin planet of humans. They developed into a space-faring civilization, colonized Kobol, forgot about our Earth, and the Earth inhabitants somehow lost their civilization, language capacity, etc. (And then how does the Zodiac enter into our Earth’s history tens of thousands of years later? And what about all the Greek mythological names of BSG characters?!? And the fact that the names of the Lords of Kobol were all gods from Greek mythology? Never explained, but more on that later.)

Of course, the easy answer is what the BSG writers are implying - that evolution on our Earth (and maybe Kobol) was guided by a divine hand. Great. Go intelligent design. Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with the spiritual overtones of the show. I think it made for some interesting plot points and moral discussions, especially the whole Cylon monotheism v. human polytheism. But sweeping away all these unanswered questions about the origins of humanity in the BSG universe with a last minute default to “a higher power did it” seems like a big cop out to me. It’s like the writers didn’t want to wade through the thick history and mythology they created to sort it out. Better to wave the “god did it” wand and make all the questions go away. This also applies to the question of what were HeadSix, Head Baltar, and back-from-dead Kara. Easier to say they were Angels than to actually delve into the metaphysics of their existences. (More on this later.)

One final thing that really struck me was the neo-colonial overtones of the BGS humans’ colonization of our Earth. I know this was probably not intentional, but the image of a bunch of white people (and a few Asians) checking out the “primitive” Africans, and commenting on how they could teach them language and agriculture was a little off putting. So the white people bring the Africans knowledge and technology (well, not too much technology since we swore that off as bad), and their descendants are able to be civilized. That’s not playing on any racists tropes . . .

Of course, maybe that’s exactly what the Lords of Kobol did to humanity that evolved on Kobol. Oh wait! An idea is forming.

Okay, so here’s my theory. The BSG human mythology said that humans evolved on Kobol in harmony with the Lords of Kobol (their gods) for thousands of years until about 2,000 prior to the show. At this point, for some unexplained reason, gods and humans departed (which is why Athena’s mythological namesake committed suicide), and the humans settled into the 12 colonies, with the humanoid cylons going to fake Earth. So who were these Lords of Kobol? As I mentioned before, they have the same names as Greek gods – Zeus, Hera, Athena, Apollo, etc. Maybe they were actually some super-advanced alien civilization that gave humans technology (think Prometheus myth) and maybe even guided human evolution (think Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 series). Then some cataclysmic event occurred that ruptured this peace. Maybe the humans and humanoid cylons were warring.

In any case, the Kobol lords got the heck out of Dodge and perhaps ascended to some higher plane of being (or maybe they were already there). They basically left humanity alone until they saw the human/cylon warring cycle about to start all over again. So they manifest themselves in the form of HeadBaltar and HeadSix to start setting things right. They also directed humanity and humanoid cylons towards both fakeEarth and, finally, our Earth, in effort to make sure we could just all get along. Resurrected Kara was also part of that plan. While humans and cylons might use the terms “god,” “gods,” “angels,” we’re really just talking about incredibly advanced technology. (As Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So see! Technology saves the day again. Ha!) And maybe they appear to the Greeks as some point to influence the development of human civilization, which is why Earth Greek mythology and the zodiac are so similar to the Kobol myths of the BSG humans.

But, of course, my theory would actually have made the finale make sense. And we can’t have that, now can we?

Some unanswered questions:

- If BSG humans arrived 150,000 years ago in Africa, then why didn’t Earth humans develop language until and agriculture until much later? Current scholarship places the development of language in humans at around 50,000 years ago and the invention of agriculture at around 10,000 years ago.

- Where do all the Greek mythology references fit into this? It would have made much more sense for the BGS humans to arrive on Earth right before the rise of classical Greek civilization.

- Why do they final five, Starbuck, and Hera hear “All Along the Watchtower”? Does this mean Bob Dylan is a Lord of Kobol?

- Is the dying leader that will lead them to Earth Kara and not Roslin?

- What happened to Michael, the humanoid cylon model 7? Ellen says Cavel kills him out of jealousy, but there were some hints that he was Kara’s father. Was he?

- Can the humanoid cylons die of old age? And if not, barring accidental death or murder, does this mean the Chief, Ellen, Tigh, and all the Twos, Sixes, Eights, could possibly still be living? I have this vision of the Chief being the inspiration for some Celtic god in ancient Scotland.

- Is anyone still reading this post at this point? If so, you’re more of a geek than even I am :)