Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Pseudo-Christian allegories in Battlestar Galactica (spoilers)


Recently I've started re watching Battlestar Galactica. I used to watch it when it was airing on Si-Fi channel before Si-fi was a paid cable channel.

Upon rewatching it, I've started to notice a lot of very interesting religious themes and questions being addressed. To begin, the obvious dichotomy between the polytheistic religion held by the humans with its similarities to the Bible, like how president Roslyn stands a moses figure, leading the people through exile to the promised land, despite the fact that she will not be allowed into the promised land. Within this specific portion there exists an interesting relationship between the believers and non-believers in said prophecy.

Possibly more blatant is the monotheistic religion of the Cylons which exists in relation and contradiction to the faith held by a large portion of the human race. Between the two, the god of the Cylons seems to be more active in the realm of the show, such as when Gaius gives himself over at the behest of the blonde Cylon apperiton who appears frequently in his head, and correctly "guesses" the location of the ore-refining tanks allowing Apollo to destroy the Cylon base on the ore-baring planetoid. However, all of this is tempered by the fact that the Cylons are super evil and hell bent on murdering the whole human race.

At times, these allegories are so very literal as the "last supper" orientation of the background on the Netflix veining screen.
The show also takes the lineage of god as the father and humanity as the children one step further as to include the Cylons as the children of humanity, whom has turned their back on god for favor of the gods of koulbal (essentially greek and roman gods, and the twelve colonies are correlated to astrological signs)

At this point in the show (mid season 2) it is apparent that "god"s plan is the eventually annihilation of the human race but only after it's use toward the end of creating a true human/Cylon hybrid child, which is intended to replace humanity as the "children of god"

All in all I am falling further and further into the deep and well written hole that is Battlestar Gallactica. I would highly encourage any scifi fan or good-tv enthusiast to check it out

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