It’s week thirty of our planned off-season re-watch of the entire “re-imagined” BSG canon, and it’s time to move on to the season three premiere “Occupation/Precipice.” So why not join us here for the GWC online frak party? There’s room for everyone, though you’ll have to bring your own snacks…
Feel free to jump in at any point with your comments on this week’s episode as the re-watch is by definition spoiler free. We’ll be in and out, but we’ll definitely take a look at your comments before we start next week’s podcast.
Note: Some readers/listeners asked us to leave comments open on the frak party blog post as they enjoy commenting more than forums. So if you have the time, keep an eye on the blog post every now and then, too, so we don’t leave 'em out in the cold.
Occupation/Precipice effectively is our first significant look at the Colonials getting down to colonization. Unfortunately we also have the occupation authority present. The parallels with life in Vichy France perhaps hit home the hardest. The communications issues more paralleled World War II rather than anything in the Middle East right now even.
This line, spoken by Tigh to his fellow Tighlons (Chief and Anders), really struck me:
“Which side are we on? We’re on the side of the demons, Chief. We’re evil men in the gardens of paradise, sent by the forces of death to spread devastation and destruction wherever we go. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”
Boy, I can just see this popping up in the “previously on” montage in Season 4. I wonder now if this scene, with the three of them questioning their moral identity and Tigh giving his apocalyptic answer, was what clinched the writers’ decision to make them Cylons. (And then they threw Tori in because she’s close to the President.)
They all seem to be on the side of the humans, and they’re certainly waging holy terror on the Cylons (in fact are the masterminds behind that terror). But this answer from Tigh gives me pause along with one other thing: If the Final Five are on this benevolent mission to protect humanity, then why conceal that mission and their true identity from themselves? The whole point of programming sleeper agents (a la The Manchurian Candidate) is to get them to do something nasty that is against their conscious will.
Actually I’ve never understood why the Cylons would make Cylons who don’t know they’re Cylons, as there have been plenty of fully self-aware Cylons who have successfully infiltrated human society with good old-fashioned lying. In other words, sleeper programming doesn’t make them better human impersonators. The only thing I can figure is that some models, like Boomer, were deemed weak and susceptible to becoming human sympathizers, so the Cylons made her a sleeper to insure she wouldn’t betray them.
But having benevolent Cylons who are, what, secretly more benevolent? Doesn’t make sense.
Me too! I barely noticed it the first time around, but wow, it’s a great line that opens up so many possibilities. If you apply Tigh’s speech to the big picture of what are the Final Five really up to, which side are they on? Whose “paradise” is it, the humans’ or the Cylons’? The line implies that they’re not benevolent to either side, but that they’re actually a third faction, perhaps serving some kind of greater purpose or even bigger big picture that isn’t necessarily good for humans or Cylons.
It also suggests that the Final Five might connect back to humanity’s first “Fall” way back on Kobol. I don’t quite know what to do with that idea, but maybe the Final Fifth is that Lord of Kobol who tried to raise him/herself above the other gods, and the other Four supported him/her? And yet the talk about the Temple of Five suggests that the Final Five were the worshippers of that one god, meaning that the last one couldn’t be a god. The thing that really bothers me is that I always thought the five priests had to be humans in order for the timeline to work out right. Are cycles of history overlapping somehow, and the Final Five are monotheistic Cylons of an earlier cycle that the scrolls mistook for monotheistic human priests, who perhaps spread the seeds of their “new” old religion on Kobol and made the polytheistic religion fall apart, resulting in the expulsion of the humans, Athena throwing herself off the cliff, etc.? Or are the Final Five and the five priests really not one and the same after all?
One more speculation. The line is very reminiscent of the story of the Fall in Genesis; it’s vague enough that we can’t assume that the Colonials know Judeo-Christian mythology (I hate to use that word because one of its meanings implies passing a judgment on veracity, but I mean “myth” in the dictionary sense of “a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon”). If Tigh had mentioned a serpent, I think we could justifiably jump to that conclusion, but as it is, he could be alluding to a similar story in their own mythology.
Anyway, that’s not going to stop me from drawing a parallel :). In Genesis, the “demon” in the form of a serpent spreads “death and destruction” (leading Adam and Eve to awareness of their nakedness, which results in them becoming mortal and getting kicked out of Eden) by convincing them to eat from the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” There are lots of ways to interpret what that fruit is exactly, but doesn’t “the knowledge of good and evil” sound a bit like a condition for sentience? Perhaps Tigh is predicting the Final Five’s own awakening into awareness of their true nature as Cylons. Or, maybe, their purpose is to awaken sentience in somebody else, say, the Centurions? I really like the GWCers theory that the Centurions are going to become sentient and not be too happy with the Significant Seven when they do, and I could see them switching over to the Final Fiver’s side, whatever side that is…
Sorry for the booklength post, but that line has been rolling around in my head for nearly a week now. I’m glad to see that others find it really intriguing, too!
Tori was another co-conspirator but was seemingly just off-screen for most of this. Her statements in Exodus Part 2 do seem to indicate that she was part of the planning in leading the evacuation. After all…she could well have been off-camera during the story Occupation/Precipice prepping humans for their evacuation. Such had to be planned, after all, otherwise chaos would have certainly reduced the size of the Colonial population to a more manageable level.
This is one of my favorite episodes of season 3, right behind exodus part two and crossroads part two.
I absolutely love Tigh’s dialogue in this episode. The quote about the demons of course, but especially where Roslin slaps Tigh in the face and his reaction. Look up “grizzled” in the dictionary and you will probably see a picture of old Tighclops.
Just in general I really enjoyed the overall level of bad-assery(should be a word) that Tigh and Starbuck brought to the table in this episode.
Exac-Tly. I just remembered too that Elosha says that the scrolls of Pythia speak of a “lower demon” who helps the people in a time of crisis. That was taken to mean Sharon at the time, but perhaps it has broader implication.
In the context of the Garden of Eden myth, I’d say the two are synonymous. It’s self-awareness or self-consciousness that Adam and Eve are biting into.
Interestingly, it is in this very episode that we learn that the intelligence of the Centurions has been capped to prevent them from becoming sentient.
I really like how the episode start with the brief flashes and nothing spoken. Just letting the pictures talk.
It’s great to see so much of Tigh in these episodes. When craaaaap is going down, Thighclops is the guy you want next to you, ready for some badassery.
It’s funny how Ander’s and Roslyn both think it’s sick when humans work for Cylons, but expect that Cylons will work for them… how many times has Athena helped out Roslyn and Adama while aboard Galactica?
I love when Adama tells Lee he’s soft, both mentally and physically and then tells his son to get his fat ass out… ahh, tough fatherly love is all the impetus it takes to get Lee whipped back into shape. The whole time Lee was getting berated, he looked like all he really wanted was just one more doughnut… mmm, doughnuts.
I love that when the Chief is yelling at Gaita about Cally being detained, neither know that they have been sharing messages, Gaita being the secret inside source and him taking this verbal abuse from the Chief, even though he knows he’s done so much for the humans up to this point… outside of getting Baltar elected in the first place by revealing the rigged election plan.
The first time watching when Leoben brought down the stairs cute little KC, I remember almost crapping myself when he introduced her to Mama Starbuck. Actually, not that different of a reaction to the one we see from Kara at that moment!
Now, I know that the whole KC thing was one big Starbuck mind-frak, but does anyone else believe that Leoben is so sick that when Kara went to hide in the bathroom that he came in and caused KC’s injury to speed things along with Kara’s destiny with him?
It’s so funny that Zarek had over a year to think about the election and when he finally got out of detention, only to be herded onto a truck sitting smack next to Roslyn, he finally got to confirm his suspicion about her trying to rig the election and both realizing that it would have been infinitely better for humanity if she had actually succeeded in her efforts.
Rewatching it kept bugging me about what Kara used to kill Leoben that first time. So more captures, first shot is when we see what she is holding:
Second is what is left sticking out of Leoben:
Apparently a meat fork…but where did it come from. There wasn’t one on the table during all the scenes of them sitting down for the meal. Small continuity problem. But hey it make’s Leoben the butt of a good joke…“May the Fork be with you!”
Did anyone else notice (I think it’s Precipice – maybe it’s Exodus I) that Casey is singing “Ring Around the Roses”? I would not have known this were it not for my subtitles, although you can hear her singing “Ashes, ashes” quite clearly. Any thoughts? Is this another example, albeit a much more minor one, of the “bleeding” of universal music a la “All Along the Watchtower,” and/or maybe another hint that BSG is actually set far, far in our future?
Similarly, [spoiler]the mention of “99 Bottles of Ambrosia” in Razor?[/spoiler]
