BSG: A Measure of Salvation

Or if you like, "I, Borg, the Remake." Or if you're feeling particularly vindictive, Genesis of the Daleks II.

I'm going to mention this right off the bat: this review is unlike any other, because I'm going to spend basically all of it comparing an episode of Battlestar Galactica made in 2006 to an episode of Doctor Who made in 1975.

Obviously, the bulk of this review is going to center around the morality issue, so let's just dive right into that. It covers a lot of the same ground as Genesis of the Daleks (including the annoying, pious "if you kill him you will be just like him" argument), but it generally does it better. And no, I'm not going to bitch this episode out for being a remake of "I, Borg," because then I'd have to bitch out the entire show for being a remake of the 1978 Battlestar Galactica, and I'd have to bitch that show out for being a remake of the Book of Mormon, and we'd be here all day. So let's just put that to bed right here. Complaining about this episode and about "Hero" because they used recycled Next Generation scripts is only valid if you're going to complain about "Pegasus" as well.

Having said that, I am going to spent a ton of time comparing this to Genesis of the Daleks, both because I want to (and have them both on DVD, which is not the case with "I, Borg"), and also because it's probable that the writers didn't intend for any deliberate connection between the two.

And because I'm going to use this - a not-exactly-loved episode of Battlestar Galactica - to further attack a fan-favorite Doctor Who episode, I might as well reiterate that every single thing said on this blog is just my opinion.

Okay, here goes...

Every single episode of Battlestar Galactica has the same credit sequence, to an extent. Two shots of Caprica City. Six shielding Baltar from a nuclear shockwave. And then an entire planet under nuclear assault. Every single credit sequence reminds you exactly what the stakes are, and exactly what the Cylons are. If, as the Cylons themselves believe, your actions define who you are, then the Cylons are for the most part xenocidal monsters who need to be put down.

And please remember that, per "The Farm," Cylons have been keeping human prisoners. Caprica probably isn't the only planet (a deleted scene in The Plan would seem to confirm this) where the Cylons are doing things. What happened to these people once the Cylons decided that the occupation of the Colonies was an error? Were they allowed to go? Were they given anti-radiation medicince?

I'm not bringing up the prisoners to further my "they're monsters and thus killing them is justified" case, I'm bringing up the prisoners to point out that, if the Cylons were all wiped out by disease, our people would be better off. I want to reiterate that right here: wiping out the Cylons would be an act of xenocide, and would therefore be wrong. Is it the lesser of two evils? That's the question I'm asking here.

Furthermore, also in "The Farm," Simon the Cylon went into considerable detail about how humans die from radiation poisoning. You can bet that this has been the unpleasant fate of billions of human beings. Is it better than the disease that Apollo wants to unleash on the Cylons? Frankly, they seem about equal to me.

Finally, there is Roslin's argument. Adama says that if they commit genocide (it's actually xenocide, and I'll be refering to it as such), history will damn them. Roslin counters that at least there will be historians to damn them. That is a compelling argument.

Okay, now, let me get the most striking, important difference between this and Genesis out of the way right here and now:

The Cylons are not the Daleks.

Their warriors are cycloptic monsters who carry guns in their arms and are hard to kill. And they both killed their creator(s), who then resurrected anyway. And that is where the similarities end (Cylons never had a problem with stairs, for starters). Genesis tells us in no uncertain terms that Davros did everything he could to remove every vestige of humanity from the Daleks. In contrast, the Humanoid Cylons (who are shown again and again to be the ones in control) were designed to be as human as possible. Once the Resurrection Hub gets blown, the fundamental difference between a human and a Humanoid Cylon is that the skin-jobs can talk to their computers by sticking their hands in the sink. Furthermore, with only one exception (which I will get to later) in the entire twenty-six-year run of the classic show, the Daleks never once showed any semblance of remorse for what they did, and not one Dalek ever switched sides. In Galactica, we already have Athena, and Caprica-Six may or may not be leaning that way by this point as well. In other words, and this is crucial: "Downloaded" proved, before "A Measure of Salvation," that at least some of the Cylons were redeemable. We are now thirty-six years on from Genesis of the Daleks, and we have yet to see any indication whatsoever that the same is true of the Daleks.

(And now I need to go into a massive diversion about The Evil of the Daleks, so anyone who doesn't care can just skip ahead to the section labeled "The Cylon Virus is not a nuclear bomb.")

The Evil of the Daleks, generally considered to be the best Dalek story by any Doctor Who purist who's willing to count the stories that only exist on audio these days, concerns a group of Daleks who wish to isolate the "human factor" (love and whatnot). The Doctor does this, and amplifies it, causing a few Daleks to become good. Does this mean the Daleks are redeemable?

No.

The Daleks want to isolate the "human factor" so they can destroy it. They are not interested in love and morality. They want, dare I say it, to be mechanical. The "human factor" is phlebotinum. Made-up science to fill a specific role in a story. If a character needs phlebotinum to be good, then that character is not good. (And now I could get sidetracked on this whole thing about Angel from Buffy, but I have to stop somewhere.)

As long as there is one Dalek left in the universe (and as long as the royalties keep flowing to the Nation estate), they'll be a threat. It does not matter which Dalek it is.

The same is not true of the Cylons.

The Cylon Virus is not a nuclear bomb.

So let's pretend that the Cylons are actually human beings, just for the sake of this argument. Hell, let's pretend that they're just a different nationality, and we're at war with them. Let's say they're the Germans. To win WWII, did we need to kill every German? No. A few of their leaders killed themselves (oh, hi, Cavil), and we put several other leaders on trial. To be sure, we smashed their country so badly that we haven't heard a peep out of them since.

Ergo: to "win the war," should it be necessary to kill every Cylon? No.

Because this is the difference between the Cylons and the Daleks. The Daleks are (when Terry Nation remembers, anyway) biological organisms that act like machines. The Cylons are machines that act like humans. Outside of The Evil of the Daleks, the Daleks exhibited a singular drive to crush, kill, destroy, exterminate. The Cylons have already fallen prey to infighting; their visions clash; they are no longer all on the same page.

Let's stop pretending the Cylons are Germans. Let's pretend they're the Imperial Japanese. Cylon Farms, Nanking. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Adama fudges the issue, saying it's about the use of biological weapons. That's not what's at stake here. We didn't nuke every Japanese city at the close of WWII.

But we nuked enough of them to end the war. (No, not debating the morality of that here. As a matter of historical fact, we dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and Japan surrendered. That's the only point I wish to make, and the only reason I brought it up.)

The Cylon virus is, however, not a nuclear bomb. You can't selectively target this baseship or that baseship. You can wipe out the entire race, or you can choose not to use it at all.

The issue is not biological weapons, or weapons of mass destruction. The issue is xenocide.

Blowing the Hub

So how is this different from blowing up the Resurrection Hub? (4.9, uh... "The Hub.") Taking away Cylon resurrection means that entire race will be extinct in one generation since, and this has been established time and time again, they cannot reproduce biologically. I fail to see the fundamental difference between unleashing a monster virus on the Cylons and effectively sterilizing them, and that is where this episode falls down.

Now, argue all you want about how "The Hub" hadn't been written yet, how the Resurrection Hub hadn't even been concieved of yet, because the writers didn't know they'd need a bigger and better Death Star to go blow up, whatever. Nobody in that episode makes a peep about how this is the end of the Cylon race. The rebel Cylons themselves are all for it!

Remember: everything after 4.9 is a bunch of infighting between the humans while the Cylons scramble to try to get resurrection back. Eventually, the humans and Cylons are able to broker a truce whereby the Cylons get resurrection back if they cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die promise to leave the humans alone (and amazingly, that's not the most insane, illogical thing the humans do in the finale). Okay, so once you've unleashed the virus, there's no cure and no reason to negotiate, but even after you blow the Hub you could still negotiate.

Except: when they blew the Hub, they had no idea that the Final Five knew anything about resurrection. All they wanted from the Five was the way to Earth.

So we're back at square one. I have no idea why it's not okay to unleash a virus on the Cylons, but it's okay to sterilize them. Either way they're going to die slowly and painfully, either right now from the virus or in a few decades from old age. Either way it's the end of the race.

That is ultimately what irks me about this episode. Genesis was flawed because it pretended to take the moral high ground simply to keep the show's most popular villains alive. This episode fails because its moral is blatantly ignored later on in the show.

And Helo commits treason. There's no way around it, that's what he does. And he completely escapes punishment for it. No, wait, I'm sorry, he gets reassinged to Dogsville. I don't know what's worse; committing treason, or getting "The Woman King" foisted on the audience.

Addendum here.