BSG: "No Exit"

[NB: Check this post for updates and revisions. I'm watching the episode again, as it was a concentrated dose of BSG mythology.]

What we now know:

1. Ellen Tigh is indeed one of the Final Five; there's no more ambiguity on that point. Not only that, but she and the other four Fivers were apparently the creators of the Significant Seven Cylons.

2. There are actually eight "Significant" models, but the missing Number 7 is an artistic type named Daniel, who seems to be a Cylon we have never seen before (or, hey, maybe we have). So I was wrong about Starbuck's status; who and what she is remains a mystery.

3. Sam Anders's bullet to the brain seems to have released a flood of memories related to Cylon history. I'm going to watch the show again, because I'm fuzzy on the details. It seems that the Final Five were developed by humans on Kobol, and the Five developed the remaining Eight. Lucky Thirteen, eh?

4. The Cylon conversations in this episode constantly refer to the humans, the humans, the humans. Brother Cavil gets a series of passionate monologues-- including an Agent Smith moment in which he rails against his enfleshment-- and vents his resentment of humanity and all things human. This seems to be strong evidence against the hypothesis that, at this point in history, there are no humans left-- only Cylons.

5. Cylon base ships can produce fresh apples and brie cheese at need. If only the beleaguered humans knew how close at hand a decent food supply was! This does, however, bring up the question of whether base ships are stocked with gardens, or if their fresh produce is the result of some combination of genetic engineering and the force-growing of organic entities (how else to produce enough food for beings that are churned out in amniotic assembly lines?).

6. Greek mythology alert! Ellen Tigh is a theist, and Brother Cavil, whose "real" name is apparently John, is a Cylon she considers to be a son. Given that they had repeated sex on New Caprica, the creator and her firstborn, I couldn't help thinking this mirrored the Ouranos-Gaia relationship. Ouranos (a.k.a. Uranus) is both son and lover/husband of Gaia, the Earth, the All-mother.

7. All of this answers the question of why the Significant Seven (or Eight) might hold the Final Five in reverence or feel the need to forbid any thoughts about them. Mystery demystified.

8. Still no resolution on several fronts: the significance of the music that "activated" the Final Five, the question of whether the BSG universe really is theistic, the ontological status of Head-Six and Kara Thrace, etc.

9. Adama's chest pains continue, and Laura Roslin coughs in front of Lee Adama, to whom she is passing the torch.

10. Some mention was made of near-lightspeed travel and relativistic effects, which may be part of the explanation for the similarities between Earth's culture and language and those of the Twelve Colonies. Then again, I recall hearing something in the dialogue about false memories. I'm confused on these points.

11. Adama seems resigned to the presence of friendly Cylons, and even asks Tyrol to use Cylon tech to "heal" the Galactica, which is literally falling apart.

12. Where was Baltar, dammit?

13. It appears that Cylon monotheism originated with the old Cylon centurions, and that monotheism was transferred to the Significant Seven/Eight when the Final Five came back to the colonies to help the centurions engineer the enfleshed, humaniform models.

14. It seems that the Significant Seven/Eight ended up being the result of a joint effort between the Cylon centurions, who had been developed by the human colonials as part of their ongoing project to create artificial life, and the later efforts of the Final Five, who had a hand in stopping the First Cylon War, forty-some years previously.

General remarks:

1. I think BSG fans will be divided into those who love this episode (titled "No Exit," possibly after the Sartrean play, in which a vanishingly small number of participants are trapped in hell together, constantly shifting in their relationships with each other, then renewing the cycle at the end of the play) and those who hate it. It's very, very late in the game, and the revelation of this much important information in a single episode means the episode serves as little more than a vehicle for exposition. Some will love this, because all that info provides a bit of relief and release for the viewers' pent-up frustrations after 3.75 seasons of ignorance. But others are guaranteed to hate the episode because it's essentially a talkfest punctuated by scenes of brain surgery performed by the dude who says "I'm a PC!" in those Mac commercials. "Show, don't tell!" is supposed to be the rule in writing, including screenwriting. Tonight's episode included a lot of telling.

2. Ellen Tigh's conversation with John/Cavil demystifies such phenomena as the Temple of Five and the mandala (another Matrix trope, prophecy as control, appears in this episode, at least by implication), which makes me wonder whether the series is leaning toward an objective atheism.

[NB: An anonymous commenter-- whose comment is unpublished, alas, because it was anonymous-- pointed out that, in reference to the Temple of Five, Ellen disavowed involvement in what had transpired there, ascribing the 3's vision of the Final Five to an act of God. In that sense, yes, the events surrounding that temple and the ensuing supernova remain a mystery, but Ellen did reveal that that temple was originally called the Temple of Hopes, built 3000 years ago by the thirteenth tribe after the tribe had left Kobol. I think we already knew the algae planet was an outpost of the thirteenth colony, but the name "Temple of Hopes" is new to us. Not a demystification, then, but we do get some new information.]

3. I'm still holding out re: whether everyone's a Cylon, despite all the talk of humans, because it's still not obvious to me that we've heard the most fundamental revelations about Cylon nature. As I mentioned before, the faithful repetition of history is more likely when history's participants are sentient machines than if they're humans.

4. I enjoyed the way the episode opened with a sweeping recap, though I still don't understand how Ellen "resurrected." I gather it happened several months ago, before the hub was destroyed, which may mean that Ellen was around even before the fleet began its beeline for Earth.

UPDATE: Ellen's resurrection occurred 18 months previously, immediately after Saul Tigh had killed her. I should have followed the time captions more closely; I noticed them more clearly upon second viewing.

5. It was good to see Dean Stockwell have his Shakespearean moments, railing against his resemblance to humans. These scenes are what will most likely redeem the episode in the eyes of those BSG fans who would otherwise dismiss the episode as a mere expository device.

6. I'm beginning to think the series is going to end on a bittersweet "and the cycle continues!" note. It might not. It might end up like "The Matrix Revolutions," in which the humans and machines arrive at a type of truce not seen before, a truce that could be permanent, but that still leaves open the possibility of future human-machine war, plunging everyone back into the old cycle of violence. However the series will end, it's a safe bet that not everything will be resolved. I'm pretty sure Adama and Roslin will die, though. Humanity might survive, though I suspect that that survival will be tied to Cylon tech, especially their work in genetics.

6a. This brings up a subsidiary question, though: why the hell were the Cylons able to copy humans down to the molecular level, but have been unable reliably to produce versions of themselves that can procreate? And how susceptible are artificial genes to mutation? How organic are the Cylons? The science on this is suspiciously fuzzy.

7. One thing I'm curious about: we found out that Tyrol and Tory were apparently an item back on Earth. But what is Tyrol going to do if/when he discovers that Tory killed Cally? Will the Final Five experience a schism, or will Tyrol quietly accept that Tory was acting according to the dictates of her nature?

8. Wild thought: Baltar was missing from this episode. Could he be Daniel? Or is Daniel as gone as Cavil seems to think he is?


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