ALL THE FEELS.

ALL OF THEM.

I just…I cannot. This show. THIS SHOW. IT’S SO GOOD.

APPROPRIATE GIF IS APPROPRIATE.

NOT ENOUGH TYRION.

Also, oh Sansa! Sansa, darling, you are my new favourite: you are smart and clever and stuck in a TERRIBLE position, but you’re a quick study and totally out-gamed Joffrey.

It’s agony waiting for the next episode! Any of you Game of Thrones fans? Did you watch the season premiere? Thoughts?

• TERRA: Wouldn’t a part of you but just a LITTLE disappointed that it’s not the other Matt Smith?
  TERRA: When they get married, I hope she looks deep into his eyes and sees another Matt Smith standing inside, waving.

I’m dead.

Dead.

Epic awesomeness.

Ah, Memorial Day weekend. A perfect time for grilling, drinking, socializing, and binge-watching episodes of Game of Thrones. Actually, forget the first three because Bear and I holed ourselves up in his parents house and saw no one and went nowhere because we were glued to the TV.

I will preface this by saying I’ve never read anything by George R. R. Martin. I attempted GAME OF THRONES once, but got bored and put it aside. For shame, JJ! fantasy fans will decry. You’ve read everything by J. R. R. Tolkien, including THE SILMARILLION and THE LAYS OF BELERIAND and you couldn’t get through GAME OF THRONES? Yes, yes, I will admit it. I can read pages upon pages of dry, boring Tolkien and couldn’t finish Martin. However, I will probably give him another try at some point.

But you see, I didn’t realize, until I started watching Game of Thrones, that there was a reason to be reading.

Say hello to my latest love, Tyrion Lannister.

Why did no one introduce me to Tyrion Lannister before? I love sarcastic, trickster types who are sympathetic and admirable and best of all…SELF-AWARE! People, people, this was a serious lapse. Tyrion Lannister, I love you. I love you so much. (Peter Dinklage needs to win the Emmy like…right now. Also, for some reason I like him much better blond. And he’s got the world’s greatest voice. ♥)

The thing that surprised me most about Game of Thrones was that it wasn’t a “quest” fantasy, unlike Tolkien and unlike a myriad of other sword-and-sorcery books on the fantasy shelves. No, Game of Thrones is pure politics, and it’s FASCINATING. I am totally enthralled by what’s happening in Westeros, and you know what? Not much is actually happening in Westeros. There is a lot of whoring and killing, but there is also politicking. I eat this stuff up. (See also: my love of the political machination bits of the KUSHIEL series.) And as always, my favourites are the overly ambitious, morally bankrupt characters, i.e. the majority of House Lannister.

Oh, where to begin. You want fucked up? Look no further than the scions of House Lannister. Crazy, tyrannical, autocratic father? Check. Whacked out, really ambitious, spurned in love queen? Check. Sarcastic imp of an unloved son? Check. Incest? Check. Incest between twins? Check and check. Why is it that I love the unlovable so? I do. Jamie Lannister, in particular. Sure he’s sleeping with his twin sister and fathering inbred children (is it worse because they’re twins?), but I get the sense he’s got his own story to tell. And for all his moral grossness, he seems to genuinely love his dwarf brother (but not in that way…although in this universe, who the hell knows?). *sniffle* I’m such a sucker for truly awful people in fiction.

(There is some psychological insight to be gleaned from my obvious love of complete psychopaths. I’m not sure what.)

On the flip side, I also love me some Daenerys, who is badass and totally awesome and not morally despicable. But when it comes down to it, there are the outright awful people and the awesome people, and I always find myself siding with the outright awful. I wonder why.

Anyway, do the rest of you watch Game of Thrones? Are you as enamored of the Lannisters as me?

The Jalgeum Quartet in Sungkyunkwan Scandal

What do you get when you have a witty, intelligent, cross-dressing heroine, a stodgy, principled (but adorable) nerd, a rebel with a heart of gold, and a weaselly, manipulative, and ambiguously gay mischief-maker? ONLY JJ’S NEWEST KOREAN DRAMA CRACK.

I’m not very well acquainted with Korean pop culture (but I’m not so well-acquainted with American pop culture either), but every once in a while, things filter through my bookish haze to tickle my fancy. I watch the occasional Korean drama, usually ones my mother recommends or ones containing my favourite actors and/or actresses. For weeks my mother had been at me to start watching 성균관 스캔들, or Sungkyunkwan Scandal, but I had been slow to start. I was initially skeptical about it, and I was skeptical for a few reasons.

1. Sungkyunkwan Scandal is a sageuk, or historical drama. I know next to nothing about Korean history (except for very broad strokes) and the trials and tribulations of the kings, palace officials, and nobility of a country I know nothing about is boring.*
2. The romantic male lead is played by Micky Yoochun, a Korean boyband singer** with whom my mother has been obsessed. OBSESSED.

*A slightly more humiliating reason I don’t enjoy historical dramas is they often use a more archaic form of Korean (the equivalent to Shakespearean English, I suppose) which I find difficult to understand.
**Formerly of 동방신기 (Dong Bang Shin Ki), presently with JYJ.

But! After practically forcing me to sit down and watch the episodes, I was completely won over by this drama, although how could I not, when it contains all the tropes I adore and it’s totally charming to boot?

The Premise

My life sucks! I'm poor, my brother's sick, my father's dead, and I'm smarter than all the men out there but this retarded Confucian society won't let me use my brains because I am a woman! What to do?

An impoverished young woman makes a living as a scribe in order to earn money for medicine to treat her sick younger brother. However, she must cross-dress as a man so as to escape punishment and suspicion, as the only learned and literate women of this time were courtesans. But Yoon-hee dreams of a new society, one in which women are allowed to live out their academic dreams without fear. Through a series of events, she accidentally becomes enrolled as a male scholar at the prestigious Sungkyunkwan University, where she meets three other likeminded students who dream of a better Joseon.

But complications arise, as she finds herself falling for a fellow student, not to mention if her true identity were to be discovered, she will face death by beheading…

The Characters

Kim Yoon-hee

First we have our intrepid heroine, Kim Yoon-hee, affectionately referred to by her Sungkyunkwan friends as Daemul, or Big Shot.*** She is the yangban daughter of an intellectual and idealistic father, who educated her in Confucian classics (but on the sly, to the point where Yoon-hee wasn’t even aware of what he was doing). Alas for Yoon-hee, her father was murdered before our story opens, leaving the family with an ailing son and no means of producing income. The complications of being a woman and breadwinner in her family is what causes Yoon-hee to end up at Sungkyunkwan.

She attends Sungkyunkwan as Kim Yoon-shik, using her brother’s name and identification tag to pass as a man. I will admit it takes a bit of suspension of disbelief to believe that this beautiful young woman could ever pass as a man, but hey, whatever. I love her: she’s ridiculously smart, somewhat jaded and cynical, and determined to “live life as a person”, as someone whose talents are appreciated instead of dismissed.

***See note regarding Education in Joseon Korea below.

Lee Sun-joon, a.k.a Stodgy Nerd, pictured here reading porn for the first time. (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.)

Next we have Lee Sun-joon, nicknamed Garang by his friends. (Although the nickname is never used much. It means “Perfect Husband” and it wasn’t exactly given with the kindest of intentions.) He is the stodgiest stodgy nerd who ever stodged AND I LOVE HIM. He is so square, it’s hilarious. The privileged son of a prominent government official, he is scrupulously principled, but also kind-hearted and clear-sighted. He is the main romantic interest.

There are many reasons I love Sun-joon, but I love that he’s someone who sticks to his guns and beliefs. I also love that he challenges Yoon-hee intellectually, not to provoke her but just by virtue of who he is and how he sees the world. His interactions with Yoon-hee change him as well; he sticks to his guns, but he’s not inflexible. Like the bamboo reed, he bends but does not break, to the point where he believes himself to be in love with a man. (Ah, Sun-joon, so intelligent yet so dumb.)

Moon Jae-shin, mostly known as Guh-ro.

Third we have Moon Jae-shin, called Guh-ro or Crazy Horse. Guh-ro is Sungkyunkwan’s resident bad boy and the secondary love interest. By day, he’s a lazy student who’s failed three times, but by night he’s the Red Messenger, racing across rooftops and shooting arrows wrapped with propaganda against the oppressive ruling faction. He’s an idealist and an iconoclast and quietly devoted to Yoon-hee.

Guh-ro has this endearing habit of hiccuping around the ladies, which alerts him to Yoon-hee’s true identity. Upon finding out, he becomes her silent protector, eventually coming to love her from afar. I will admit to being slow to like Guh-ro; I dislike overly angsty characters and I was afraid he would be consumed by his Pain. But! The show is better than this, and I came to love Guh-ro wholeheartedly in my own way. Besides, Guh-ro has a sense of humor, which…instant points. (But Yoon-hee/Sun-joon forever!)

This is THE Gu Yong-ha.

And last, but certainly not least, we come to my absolute favourite character, and the one closest to my heart, Gu Yong-ha, also known as Yeoh-rim or Forest of Women. (Or at least, I think that’s what it means. The implication is that his nickname is really vulgar.) He’s worldly, flamboyant, and fabulous. He’s also a slippery fellow, seeming morally ambiguous at first because he tends to manipulative people and situations for his own amusement. (Can you see why I adore him?)

But this little weasel isn’t without his weaknesses, and Yong-ha’s is Guh-ro. Certainly he’s utterly faithful to his best friend Guh-ro, but sometimes I wondered if he wasn’t a little in love with him. Yong-ha admits wanting to “be close to and touch” Guh-ro, enough to question his sexuality, when Sun-joon comes to him with his romantic crisis.

Brotherly love indeed.

The show leaves Yong-ha’s sexual identity ambiguous. Of course, the issue of homosexuality was entirely different in Joseon Korea than it is today. Margaret Cho used to joke that “Everybody a little bit gay…but NOT IN KOREA!” (It’s kind of true.) But unlike homosexuality in Western culture, being gay wasn’t a reflection of one’s masculinity; it was considered social deviance. Confucian order is very rigid and very conservative, with the family being the highest ideal. A homosexual does not contribute to the highest ideal; hence, social deviance. But, as Yong-ha says, “It’s a sin to hate, but how can it be a sin to love? No matter who it is.”

Still, Yong-ha is coded as queer to me, and it has nothing to do with his affection for Guh-ro. He fills the role of a Wildean dandy: well-dressed and extremely fashionable, popular with the ladies, and a little affected. (Although he has a good reason for his affectations.) I love Yong-ha because he is the glue who holds this foursome together.

The Jalgeum Quartet in their Sungkyunkwan uniform.

The strength of this show lies in the relationships these characters have with each other. Unlike other Korean dramas I’ve watched, which can often fall into cliches and tired romantic tropes to generate melodrama, Sungkyunkwan Scandal relied on the appeal of these four idealistic youths with the vision and desire to change their world for the better. Also! The love triangle didn’t make me want to vomit! Yoon-hee doesn’t have to “choose” between one or the other! Sun-joon and Guh-ro are ACTUAL friends, as in, they would literally die for each other! See? It’s is possible to make me interested in a love triangle!

Anyway, if you’ve managed to make it through my ridiculously long post about this, you deserve some sort of medal. Also, if I’ve managed to interest you in watching this, go to Dramafever.com and you can watch it streaming for free! It’s even subtitled!

The Historical Context

If you’re interested, let me provide you with a little context or nuance that subtitles can’t properly explain. Even though I may not know the name of every king or every battle, I do have a very broad, very sketchy impression of Korean history, not to mention a sort of instinctual understanding of a general “Korean spirit” that I must have absorbed like osmosis from my mother and grandmother.

The Setting: The Joseon Dynasty under the rule of King Jeong-jo in the 18th century
Right, so I know next to nothing about the king (who is pretty well-known, I guess, sort of like George III of England in the equivalent time period but less of the madness and more of the reformative vision), but I do know a little about the Joseon Dynasty.

The Joseon Dynasty lasted approximately 500 years and is, in many ways, the “defining” period of pre-modern Korea. Traditional Korean dress, hanbok, comes from the Joseon Dynasty, as well as many other aspects of “traditional” Korean culture. It’s a period of absolute unification of the Korean peninsula, not only politically, but ideologically. It established Confucianism as the prevailing philosophy, when previous kingdoms had been predominantly Buddhist. It was also a time of tremendous scientific and literary achievements, so there’s a sense of romanticism about it, in much the same way the English Renaissance is romanticized. (I apparently have a better sense of English history than I do American history.)

Class and Gender in Korean Confucian Society
Korean society had more or less two defined classes: the yangban, or the scholarly class, and the cheonmin, or the peasants, slaves, and other undesirable members of society. On top there was royalty and in-between was a sort of burgeoning merchant class. Yangban and cheonmin status was inherited.

Education was not only the privilege of the elite, it was also the only way to advance in society. Only yangban could attain positions as officials in the government, own land, etc. The brightest, most intelligent would get the top positions and get paid the best. Women, as you might assume, were non-entities for the most part, with a few exceptions here and there. Yangban women were educated, but not to the same extent as men, but the most educated women of that time were cheonmin; that is, they were kisaengs, or courtesans. Highly educated and prized for their intelligence, wit, and beauty, they were also society’s dregs with no status or “honor”.

Education in Joseon Korea
Okay, I admit I don’t understand this as much either, as much of the examinations seem to be based on the ability to understand Confucian precepts (regurgitation is not the same as true understanding), as well as the ability to write excellent poetry. It all comes down to how the Korean language is constructed.

Here’s the real gist of it: educated people read Hanja, which are Chinese characters. The common man reads Hangeul, which is the Korean alphabet. There are two “words” for EVERYTHING in the Korean language, one in Chinese and one in Korean. A very simple example would be the word “big”.

大 = Chinese character for “big”. Pronounced “dae” in Korean.
큰 = native Korean word for “big”. Pronounced “keun”.

Now, 大 is mostly used in the construction of words, concepts, or ideas. For instance, a hurricane is 大風, or 대풍 (pronounced daepung), the idea constructed from the Chinese characters for “great” and “wind”. (Incidentally, it’s from where we get the word “typhoon” in English. I think it’s pronounced dai fung in Chinese, but I could be totally wrong.)***

However, you cannot construct concepts from native Korean words in the same way. 큰 is most usually an adjective of some sort, describing the quality of something else. 큰사람 (keun saram) means “large person”. It does not connote greatness, or largeheartedness, or anything that can be attributed to the character 大. 大人 (dae-in–which I totally just made up, by the way) is constructed of the characters for “big” and “person”, but would mean something closer to “great man”.

***This is why Yoon-hee’s nickname is hilarious. Dae + mul together means “large thing”, that is “big penis”.

ANYWAY! This very long digression goes to the fact that scholars (and poets) in the Joseon era were judged for their inventiveness, their clever, witty, intelligent, and lyrical abilities to phrase lines in the form of insightful poetry that furthers understanding of concepts like Poverty or Honor or Humility.

That’s it. Wow, I never intended to write anything this long about a Korean drama, but hey, I do love this thing to bits.

Battlestar Galactica

My dear friend, The Inimitable Bex, is an enormous fan and had been suggesting to me for ages the show as one I would enjoy. She hasn’t been the only one, various friends whose artistic opinions I value had continually been at me to give Battlestar Galactica a go, citing it as being “totally up [my] alley”. It hits all my “buttons” (so to speak): religion, mythology, post-apocalyptic narratives, forged families, etc. Spoilers follow beneath the cut.

Well and good, but I will own some slight reluctance on my part. I like space operas, but I tend to like space operas that are about human conflict. I loved that Firefly had no alien races and despite the Henson-ified characters of Star Wars, I loved that it was your very traditional, fantasy-genre-based hero’s journey. One way to not sell me on a concept is to tell me the story is about humans vs. aliens/machines—Us vs. Them, if you will. (I could never get into Asimov’s ROBOT series.)

The other part of the problem is Stargate and Star Trek and all space operas involving the military. Military dramas bore me. I never liked A Few Good Men or shows like M.A.S.H. and J.A.G. (another thing I hate about the military—all those stupid acronyms). Military thinking runs very counter to how we intuitively act and react—the chain of command has to be beaten into you (literally and metaphorically). Battlestar Galactica is about a battleship in space fighting a war against machines. Yawn.

And yet. Holy frak. My friend Jess gave me the first 3 seasons of Battlestar Galactica (I found the rest on SurftheChannel.com) and damn if it actually isn’t the best TV show I’ve ever seen.

The Cylons were created by Man. They rebelled. They evolved. There are many copies.

And they have a plan.

Half a century before the actual timeline of Battlestar Galactica, Cylons were machines created by humans to make our lives easier. Once technology rendered them sentient, they rebelled against their creators and declared war. After a long and bitter conflict, a truce was declared.

For 40 years there was a tenuous peace until one day, they attack the Twelve Colonies of Kobol with nuclear bombs, wiping out the human race—save for a small faction. Less than 50,000 souls are all that’s left of mankind and now it’s a desperate struggle for survival across space, fighting Cylons, fighting internal tension, and trying to find a place to call home.

Forged Families and the Post-Apocalyptic Setting

Commander William Adama

One of the reasons post-apocalyptic narratives are a favourite of mine is because we get to see what heights and what depths people are capable of when pitted in such an extreme environment. As it turns out, humans are capable of great nobility—and great treachery. One thing Battlestar Galactica is great at portraying is that the capacity for both exists in all people, and that people aren’t wholly good or wholly bad. Moral shades of grey! I love it! Always will!

I tend to view Battlestar Galactica almost as a family saga. On one hand, you have Commander Bill Adama as “The Old Man”, the leader of the military faction and de-facto father figure. On the other, you have President Laura Roslin, the schoolteacher-turned-Leader-of-the-Twelve-Colonies, as the de-facto mother figure. The main players are their surrogate (or even actual) children, especially Lee “Apollo” Adama and Kara “Starbuck” Thrace.

President Laura Roslin

As with any good show, each character simultaneously represents a concept beyond him/herself, while inverting tropes at the same time. Like any good father, The Old Man protects his family from outside threats, administers discipline, and keeps a watchful (and sometimes blindly indulgent) eye on his children. Madam President, like any good mother, keeps the cogs turning and gets things done. And boy does she get things done. Madam President, she is hardcore: cold, ruthless, utterly pragmatic, and not afraid to throw people out the airlock if it serves her purposes. This is a woman who destroyed an entire ship filled with innocent people because it might be a Cylon plant. DAMN.

On the other hand, you have Papadama (as I like to call him) as the emotionally intuitive one, the one who knows how to rouse people to action by cutting through to the heart. He, more than Mama President, is more easily moved to compassion and between the two of them, you have Mercy and Justice. (As a side note, this is one of my favourite archetypal male/female inversions: the intuitive male and the intellectual female.)

Captain Lee (Apollo) Adama

Their surrogate/actual children, on the other hand, are another type of inversion. Both are Viper pilots, first in the line of defense against Cylon Raiders, but they couldn’t be more different from each other. Captain Apollo is a fastidious, by-the-books military officer and his psuedo-sister Lieutenant Starbuck is your hotshot, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants top gun. Admittedly, this is an inversion I don’t enjoy: sometimes (okay, often) Apollo can come across as a whiny bitch and Starbuck is one of my least favourite types of “feminist” heroines—the “kickass” warrior. They are the Head and the Heart.

But to give the writers credit, both Apollo and Starbuck are infinitely more complex than that, even if they make me grit my teeth with frustration and/or annoyance. And I think the writers meant for me to have that reaction to these two (to whom I affectionately refer as the Twins) because for all their obnoxious flaws, both are completely human (and not in a human/Cylon sense).

Lieutenant Kara (Starbuck) Thrace

Apollo is Momma’s Boy and Starbuck is Daddy’s Little Girl and boy do they have frakked up relationships with their parents and each other. Especially each other. I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of the Romantic Double (please see: the writings of Percy Bysshe Shelley), but I was simultaneously horrified and intrigued by the incestuous bent to their relationship. Mostly I was intrigued that I was horrified because ordinarily stuff that like doesn’t faze me. They’re not even related by blood. (We also won’t delve into how Apollo married the wrong adoptive sister. Oh yes, there’s a lot more to this frakked up family.)

But family sagas wouldn’t be interesting if the members weren’t highly dysfunctional. And God(s), for all that I wanted to bash in each of their heads for different reasons, I just as often (if not more often) wanted to give them all hugs.

Narrative Doubling in Battlestar Galactica

Sharon (Boomer) Valerii

Doubles are everywhere in this series. Every character has at least one double—if not more—and all represent different aspects of the human narrative. For instance, you have Apollo/Starbuck (the Twins), but you also have Apollo/Anders as two different romantic interests for Starbuck. Hell, you even have Apollo/Dead Brother Zak, as Good Son/Bad Son and act as yet ANOTHER set of romantic rivals for Starbuck (this is another reason Starbuck irritates me—all those damned love interests).

You also have Starbuck/Dee as two different types of adoptive daughters for Papadama, who also serve as potential rivals for Apollo’s affections. (Adamas! Stop dating within your adopted sibling pool! Geez!) And of course, you have the biggest narrative double of all: the Human/Cylon existence.

Athena and Helo

Human/Cylon doubling is the most interesting as it raises the question of what makes someone “alive”. The Cylons are “people”; they have a culture, feelings, and religion. What differentiates human from Cylon? If they feel as humans do, if they’re even made from synthetic organic material and bleed as we do, if they love as we do—then are we just programming as well?

The most interesting double of all was the Boomer/Athena storyline. Both are Cylons of the Eight model (there are 12 models—sort of). Both fell in love with humans (again—sort of) and are deeply involved with the Galactica. They are, in fact, the same person: Sharon Valerii. Programmed with the same memories and the same capacity for emotion. However, one was reviled for what she was and the other loved and accepted despite her Cylon nature. Athena became a wife and mother while Boomer stood alone. Athena has everything Boomer ever wanted: love, acceptance, a family, and all with the full knowledge of her identity as a Cylon.

The Chief (and Boomer's love interest)

(Something small and inconsequential: I wish Athena’s callsign were something else. I realise there was an Athena character in the original series, but naming a wife and mother being after the Greek virgin goddess of war and wisdom is weird. I would have called her Demeter, due to her storyline. Maybe Inanna or Astarte to go with the Babylonian goddess of love and war.)

What is left to you when all you’ve ever wanted is snatched by someone who is not only exactly like you, but is you? You go as far in the opposite direction as possible. In some ways, Boomer is the most human, despite the fact that she is a machine. Oh Boomer. You broke my heart.

I view both Boomer and Athena as the bridge between human and Cylon: Boomer in an emotional way and Athena in a more literal way. Athena is the mother of Hera, the first and only human-Cylon hybrid, who eventually becomes Mitochondrial Eve and the mother of us all.

Religion and Battlestar Galactica

Gaius Baltar (Jesus Christ?)

The most interesting and compelling part of the show (for me) were the religious aspects of it. The Cylons and the humans are of different religious persuasions: the Cylons are monotheistic and the humans are polytheistic. But that would be over-simplifying it for both humans and Cylons run along the religious spectrum: from atheism to fanaticism and a few are even converted from one “side” to another.

It would be too easy to point fingers at the Muslims—oh sorry, Cylons as being the Big Bad. (This is also neatly inverted in season 3, when the humans become the suicide bombers.) After all, they commit genocide in the name of their God, but it’s not nearly so simple. Despite the obvious comparison due to the monotheistic nature of their worship, their religion is nothing like Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.

Six, Three, and Eight (Nymph, Wise One, Maiden)

I think the major difference is their relationship to death, which is tied up with the biggest difference between human and Cylon. Cylons cannot die; their consciousness is simply downloaded into another copy of their body. For them, as Athena says, “Death is a learning experience.” For humans, life is a learning experience and death is a release. In some ways, you can view the Cylons’ quest for sexual reproduction (sounds silly, but bear with me here) as the Buddhist desire of releasing themselves from the cycle of death and rebirth. The ability to create life organically, from infancy onward, is Nirvana.

Because I was raised in a Christian house and went to Catholic school, I immediately pick up on Christian imagery (I mean, this is totally the Last Supper tableau), but I’m not unmindful of the polytheistic—no, mythopoeic elements. The writers of Battlestar Galactica? Totally have their mythology mojo down, and this includes Judeo-Christianity.

The Importance of 12

Let’s start with the number 12. The number 12 occurs with astonishing regularity in human myths: from the 12 Olympians, to the 12 signs of the zodiac, to the 12 Tribes of Israel, to the 12 Disciples. There are 12 Cylon models and 12 Colonies of Kobol (the planet from which all humans came).

The 12 Colonies of Kobol are named for the signs of the zodiac, but they are in fact closer to the tribes of Israel than the Greco-Romans. For instance, each Colony (planet) has a function in the way each Israelite tribe did: Aerelons are farmers, Gemenons are religious, etc. (Gemenons are totally the Levites, by the way.)

On the other hand, you have the 12 Cylon models which are more like zodiac signs. I mean, you could easily categorise all Sixes as being a certain type of humanity and the same with the Ones, the Twos, the Threes, and the Eights. Ones are singleminded, Twos are fanatic, Threes are intense, Sixes are pragmatic, and Eights are sensitive. Within each model there are, of course, individual differences, but overall? Yeah.

Religious/Mythopoeic Narratives

The story of a people journeying toward a Promised Land is pretty well known. Humans are searching for their own promised land, a mystical planet called Earth. The fact that Moses never saw the Promised Land is also well-known. Laura Roslin dies of breast cancer (sob!) before she can live on Earth. And yet. Laura Roslin is the prophesied “dying leader” of Pythia’s scriptures. There are many dying gods and goddesses throughout the world: Osiris, Adonis, Baldur, Ishtar, even Persephone, and of course, Jesus Christ. They are usually associated with sun/seasonal myths, as well as rebirth. Through Roslin the human race experiences a rebirth.

But perhaps the most intriguing figure is Gaius Baltar. He is a man of science, a believer in the rational universe, but he is also totally self-serving, self-centered, obnoxious, cowardly, and despicable. I LOVE HIM. He is also the messianic head of a monotheistic cult who metaphorically “died” and was “reborn” again as a religious leader. Baltar has the most frakked up storyline of any of the characters: he was responsible for the destruction/oppression of humanity not once but TWICE, he may or may not be insane, and he has a beautiful Cylon girlfriend claiming to be an angel of God living in his head. I love Baltar because all he ever wanted to do was save his own skin and if he was safe, then to save his reputation. Because of this, he becomes an outcast and hated (and consequently, even more loved by me).

This could have easily gone an insipid route, in which Baltar finds redemption in God or whatever. But Battlestar Galactica is so much better than that. He doesn’t find redemption in God—his position as religious figurehead was more accidental than anything else. Contrast that to Roslin, whose religious position as the “dying leader” was a total calculated maneuver. No, Gaius Baltar finds redemption in himself, when he casts aside his selfish impulses and discovers he has the great capacity to love. Can it be reiterated HOW MUCH I LOVE HIM?

There is so much more to uncover and discuss on this show (like the awesome of Colonel Tigh and the Chief), but I will lay those aside for another time. If the verdict weren’t clear enough before: THIS IS THE BEST SHOW EVER. WATCH IT. NOW, NOW, NOW! And once you’ve done so, come back here and answer this one question for me:

What the frak is Starbuck?