Below is a post discussing the events in "No Exit," Friday's episode of "Battlestar Galactica."
In the comment area of this post, you may ask "Battlestar" writers Ryan Mottesheard and Jane Espenson about "No Exit." I'll give you more details on that below.
There's lots more info on this site about the four proceeding episodes of "Battlestar Galactica":
Look here for an interview with Michael Angeli, the writer of "Blood on the Scales," the Feb. 6 episode. Actor Richard Hatch shared his thoughts on the developments in that episode here. Look here for an interview with Mark Verheiden, the writer of "The Oath," the Jan. 30 episode.Look here for an interview with executive producer Ronald D. Moore, who wrote and directed "A Disquiet Follows My Soul," which aired Jan. 23. Look here for interviews with Moore and with the writers and the director of "Sometimes a Great Notion," which aired Jan. 16.
Regarding "No Exit," It's best if you've seen the episode before you proceed any further.
OK, regarding the questions. It would be smashing if you could follow these guidelines:
If you have questions of Ryan and Jane, leave them in the comment are of this post. You may also email the question(s) to me at moryan@tribune.com. Please leave the question at the top of your comment, and use the word QUESTION in all caps if you can. Please only leave one, two or three questions. Much as I'd love to send them every "Battlestar" question we all have, I don't want to fry their circuitry. Please keep your questions to things that pertain to "No Exit" or ideas, histories and concepts that the episode touches on. Please read the other questions that I've come up with and that other people have left. If you see one that covers what you wanted to ask, please don't repeat it. I'll accept questions until 2 p.m. Central Time on Saturday. After that, you can leave questions for your fellow "Battlestar" fans but they won't be considered for submission to the writers. I won't send every question. I'll pick the most representative ones and send those on. Answers should be posted on Sunday evening.Finally, if you don't have a question, or if you do -- either way, feel free to leave your thoughts or analysis or reaction to "No Exit" below. I look forward to the debate and the reactions and everything else you have to say.
My thoughts on "No Exit" are below.
Please close your examination booklets. Do you think you got high marks on the Cylon SATs?
Is it just me, or was watching "No Exit" like taking a brain-crushing Cylonology test? I tried to make my small, pitiful cerebellum absorb all the information, but there was a lot of it.
In fact, the word that kept coming to mind as I watched this episode was "downloaded." As in, "No Exit" was an attempt to download a boatload of Cylon-human history and information into the brains of audience members.
And I wondered if that's what feels like when a Cylon is downloaded into a new body -- do they feel overwhelmed by data and shaken by the amount of information and memories they're trying to process? Are there tears? Judging by Ellen's reaction to being downloaded, yes.
But like Ellen, we can take a breath. We can get it together. Deep cleansing breaths.
OK, let's proceed to the analysis!
"No Exit" reminded me of some of recent episodes of "Lost," which is now starting to answer a lot of questions and supply a lot of backstories and details that were previously missing from the show's storytelling "mosaic," as executive producer Carlton Cuse termed it in a recent interview.
In terms of supplying missing chunks of human-Cylon history, "No Exit" may be the most dense and information-packed episode in "Battlestar's" history. There's a lot to chew on here, and it'll certainly keep us gabbing for some time.
And it was a change of pace from the intense action of "The Oath" and "Blood on the Scales." This was a big-time information dump, but as such, I thought it was handled about as gracefully as it could be. Certainly the actors all gave it their all; Kate Vernon was terrific as the most commanding and shrewd Ellen we've ever seen. And I'd pay good money to watch Dean Stockwell do just about anything, but seeing him tap into Cavil's rage, resentment and condescension was a treat. You have to give it up for an actor who makes hate so entertaining.
At its core, however, there was a philosophical debate going on in "No Exit." The writers, harkening back to a famous "Lost" episode, could have named this episode "Man of Science, Woman of Faith."
Cavil and his belief in the superiority of the artificial Cylon race was pitted against Ellen, the woman who believes that humans, for all their physical imperfections, contain that which is necessary for "real" life: Love, compassion, creativity, emotion.
In fact, I wonder if Ellen's attempts to convince Boomer of the beauty and the worthiness of humanity contain the show's mission statement. What follows is my current General Theory of "Battlestar"; it's just a boiled-down essence of what I feel the show may be trying to tell us:
That it does not matter whether a living being is Cylon or made of flesh. What makes someone "human" is their capacity to love and be loved, their capacity to feel pain, to give love and to care for others. In this sense, either humans or Cylons can "be human." "Being human" means being flawed, but it also denotes being capable of truly experiencing all the terror and the beauty that life can dish out.
That's my theory, anyway. I've long thought that this drama has been trying to tell us that humans and Cylons aren't that different, and the differences don't matter as much as the similarities.
Yes, there are two kinds of Cylons (Original Flava and the New Kids on the Block, if you will), and yes, they have quite different histories. But as Boomer proved at the end of the episode (and as Kelly proved in "Blood on the Scales"), life is about choices.
Biology is not destiny. Circuitry is not superior to flesh, and vice versa. The choices that you make define what you are.
Kelly is human and Boomer is Cylon, but both have free will, and they chose, in their own ways, to stop the cycle of violence.
"There must be some kind of way out of here, said the joker to the thief."
I think the way out of here is for enough of these characters -- human and Cylon -- to keep on making choices that stop the endless cycle of destruction and genocide.
Cavil could choose to leave the humans alone, but he just can't. If you think about it, he's the most flawed Cylon model of all. Of all the models we've seen up close, Cavil is the least interested in growing and changing and learning. He may have altered his programming here and there, but he's fatally stuck.
Unlike other Cylon models we've seen, he's not curious. He's not interested in changing his worldview. He's rigid in his definition of right and wrong, good and bad. His refusal to adapt is his fatal flaw. Still, as Ellen tells him, there's always time for redemption -- but he has to choose redemption. He has to choose to want something other than violence and revenge.
He chooses to hate and to stay stuck. That could lead to the end of his race, but he'd rather die and be "in the right" than live in doubt and uncertainty.
Speaking of free will, the decision to lobotomize the Centurions now seems like a very bad idea. They were the ones that apparently came up with monotheism (and how did they do that, I wonder?), which is now the foundation of the Cylons' spiritual life. But like the humans before him, like the humans he hates so much, Cavil has subjugated the Centurions and the Raiders and turned them into his mindless servants.
And he's better than the humans how?
Cavil has always said that the Cylons erred by ignoring what they are -- machines. But Ellen tries to point out to him that Cylons are not just machines. They were created by humans, so they have human attributes programmed into them. They're just as human, in their ability to hold grudges and their ability to change and their desire to love. Cavil refuses to acknowledge that.
"You claim to be a perfect machine, but you are driven by the most petty of human emotions -- jealousy and rage," Ellen says.
"And who made me?" Cavil retorts. "...it's my maker's fault."
Oh Cavil, are you that juvenile? Is it always mom's fault?
At some point, life has to stop being about who's to blame for what. At some point, the excuse, "But he/she/it/they started it!" just gets old. Cavil may think of Boomer as intrinsically flawed, but she, at least, is starting to get a glimmer of the bigger picture.
Not that Ellen is a saint. I think there's a lot she's holding back and not telling Cavil. And I look forward to seeing how that deliciously antagonistic relationship plays out (do Roslin and Baltar now have competition in "least likely to be BFFs" department?).
I was extremely intrigued by the mentions of "Daniel," the seventh Cylon model. And here's a thought: Isn't it interesting that we don't know the name of Starbuck's father? Could she somehow be related to Daniel, or even be Daniel, a version that got downloaded into a female body? We know that Daniel was artistic, and Starbuck has been painting and drawing all her life. But I could be barking up the wrong tree with this line of speculation, I totally admit that.
And that line of speculation originated, of course, in the dual brain dumps that were going on in this episode.
Anders and Ellen, via their conversations with others, downloaded 3,000 years of human-Cylon history in under 44 minutes. Whew. Let's see if I got any of it wrong. In the list below, I'm going to try to fit what we learned into the rough outlines of what we already knew. Chime in and correct me if I got any of this wrong, and I'll change it if necessary (but be aware that some of what's below is speculation, which I've put in parentheses):
UPDATE: There's another extremely helpful timeline below, by commenter Adam Whitehead. I highly recommend it, I think it's really helpful in understanding all the human/Cylon history we're all trying to fit together. Look in the comment area below for Adam's excellent recap of these historical events. [Clarifying this first bullet point: This first bit is just speculation. We don't know if everything first originated on Earth. This is just a guess, it might be wrong.] Thousands of years ago, everyone originated on Earth (maybe?). Ellen alludes to the fact that the 13th Tribe, when it fled Kobol, was just "backtracking" to Earth. So I read that comment as indicating that everything and everyone in this story first came from on Earth (hence the Dylan connection? The prevalence of the names of Greek and Roman gods in the colonies and so forth?)On Kobol, the humans and the "gods" lived peacefully together (were the Cylons the gods? Were they viewed as gods because on Kobol, they were human beings who had figured out how to download themselves into new bodies or "resurrect" themselves?) In any case, it appears that on Kobol, the humans first created the Cylons and perfected resurrection.About 3000 or so years ago (3600 years? More?), the Cylons and the humans fled Kobol. The Cylons (whom we've been told are the 13th Tribe) stopped at the Algae Planet and visited or constructed the Temple of the Five. Then they went to Earth. The humans fled to 12 other colonies. They lost contact with the 13th Tribe and eventually, they began to invent and/or perfect artificial life. (Perhaps they'd gotten clues on how to construct Cylons while they were still on Kobol? Perhaps that accounts for why Centurions in the Colonies and on Earth were similar?) About 2000 years ago, there was a nuclear catastrophe on Earth (But who rose up and started that conflagration? If everyone there was a Cylon, how and why did that destruction begin? ). Five Cylons who had worked on re-creating the resurrection/downloading process escaped in a vessel that had been orbiting around Earth. About 40 years ago, those Final Five Cylons arrived at the 12 Colonies, where a war had broken out between the humans and their Cylons (Why were the Centurions developed in the colonies so similar to the ones that were found on Earth?). They approached the Colonial Cylons and offered them a deal: If they stopped the war, the Final Five would help the Colonial Cylons, who'd only been able to create hybrids by that point, create human-looking Cylons (or skinjobs). The Colonial Cylons take this deal and end the war. The Final Five help the Colonial Cylons create eight skinjob models. (Then these skinjobs are seeded throughout the Colonies?) Eventually the skinjobs and Colonial Cylons decide to go to war against the humans (Why? Because they didn't believe in the One True God? Becuase the humans were seen as flawed and undeserving of life?). The second Cylon War begins. Some years before the second Cylon War, Cavil wipes the memories of the Final Five and places them in key positions, so that they'll see the destruction of most of humankind. When the Final Five don't die, he does all he can to make their lives miserable. Eventually four of the Final Five realize that they are Original Flava Cylons. And eventually Anders recalls all this and that more or less brings us up to the present-day storytelling. A few more observations, before I get to my list of Burning Questions:
OK, this is my list of Burning Questions (part of it any way, the burning-est part):
What's this "colony" that Cavil and Ellen referred to? Why was Earth destroyed 2000 years ago -- who started that conflagration? Did everyone start out human, and living on Earth, then go to Kobol?Why did everyone flee Kobol?On Kobol, were the Cylons the "gods" that the humans came to worship? Was the 13th Tribe always composed entirely of Cylons? Is Daniel in any way related to Starbuck? Will we see Daniel again or leand more about him?Why did it take Cavil 18 months to threaten to poke around in Ellen's brain? [Update: In comments people have said it's because the destruction of the Hub forced Cavil's hand. Good point. However it seems like he kept her around for a long time without making her help him -- which seems unlike Cavil.]Was there one decisive thing that changed Boomer's mind or was it a gradual process of hearing out Ellen?Was the 13th Tribe all Cylons, from the start of the exodus from Kobol?Will we get more on the Centurions' belief system and so forth?Is what makes us human a capacity for creativity, compassion and love? Does having circuitry matter less than having a heart?Share your thoughts and questions below.
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