I’m starting a new occasional series of posts on television programs I watch that might interest you. The first is on a show I’ve followed closely since it’s mini-series debut and which now how three more episodes before it’s finale. Battlestar Galactica on the Sci-Fi Channel was a reboot of the late seventies’ Star Wars wannabe. As I discussed early on in a 2005 Breakpoint piece, it’s story of a ragtag fleet of humanity’s remnants fleeing the robotic Cylon forces that had destroyed it’s 12 home worlds could be read as a study in clashing culture in the post 9/11 age. Humans must retain their values in their war of survival against their enemy Other to justify their right to exist. Never has a television program consistently given me a sense of disquiet when I sat down to watch it–anything could happen to almost any character and often did as they are pressed much further towards doubt, despair and few good choices as they searched for the mythical destination of Earth. This last season promises answers to the many questions as to what agency has been behind events and interventions into both the human and Cylon races–increasingly we have seen evidence of a invisible hand–whether natural or supernatural–overseeing revelations and changes of fortune.
It would take way too long to catch newcomers up on where we are so near to the end so, with the recommendation that you start catching up on back season via rented or bought DVDs, or online episodes and come back and read this later, I’ll issue a SPOILER ALERT to those who wish to do so. The rest of you get to hear my current theory of What’s Behind All This. Based on this week’s episode, “Someone to Watch Over Me,” I’m wondering if I glimpse the ultimate theme of the series. Here goes:
In the episode we saw Starbuck, shaken to her core since learning that she had crashed on Earth, and, after finding her wrecked Viper and a decayed corpse with her dogtags, was wondering WHAT she was. Cylons could be “resurrected” into new bodies with intact memories. Did that happen to her? But she knows that she isn’t one of the 12 models of Cylons–so, who is she?
Three weeks ago we learned that there was a seventh Cylon model that was killed earlier in the race’s history. Called Daniel, the only artistic model was destroyed by the Cylon Cavil, in a Cain/Abel analog. Last night’s story had Kara Thrace (Starbuck) in the bar trying to remember a song her father had taught her on the piano. She is helped by the bar’s piano player who becomes a sort of proxy for her father/teacher. Using the drawing human/Cylon child Hera gave her, she finds her “muse-ic” and together the two play the song. This is a breakthrough moment for Kara, recapturing long-suppressed memories of her father’s love and approval. Several of the Final Five Cylons hear the tune and recognize it is the music each of them heard right before they discovered they were sleeper Cylons in the human community.
When they ask Starbuck where she learned the tune, we see that the piano player is gone. It seems that the unseen element guiding both Cylon and human destinies has appeared to Kara to nudge her to the next point in her self-discovery.
That’s when my wife got a flash of insight–she thinks that the Piano Man was a psychic expression of the long lost Daniel, the artistic Cylon, who is orchestrating events and characters. If this is so, and if indeed the culmination of the story is at hand, I think we may be seeing that the guiding hand behind events is somehow the power of art, the cultural phenomenon that tells our stories and gives our lives meanings. If so, and it’s too early to be sure of course, then this would seem to exclude a purely supernatural explanation for the providential interventions in the saga. (See now why this wooly theorizing would be confusing to almost anyone not steeped in the series’ lore?)
There are other elements pointing to this as well. The visions of Baltar, and others include an opera house where “the shape of things to come” is revealed. So, music, or in a larger sense, art, is a trigger into identity and possibly dramatic resolution, may be the overriding theme of Battlestar Galactica. Just my guess. It won’t be long before we know what the frac is going on.
