There's a lot of exposition thrown out in this episode and unfortunately it doesn't all work. Certain questions become doubled. It turns out it was the "Final Five" who created the current skin-job models, essentially making Ellen their mother. There's a lot of standard mythological "I love you because I made you" discussion between Ellen and Cavil, who we learn she had named John, which he hates. But what is puzzling is that she speaks of him as being a little boy at one point. Are we to believe that these models started young and then grew up? Or was this all badly written metaphor? But the really big problem with this revelation is that Cavil seems to know full well who the Final Five are, that Ellen is his maker and that he was involved in creating the others. This flatly contradicts some of the things he said last season where he talked about how it was not their place to know who the Final Five were and that the original programmers didn't want them to know. So we are to believe that Cavil always knew, and was just lying about all of that to hide the fact that he was responsible for their identities being secret? If that's the case, doesn't that make the whole New Caprica exercise play very differently? In this scenario, Cavil knows Tigh is a Cylon, so torturing him and pulling out his eye is just vengeance play on his part. But why would he sleep with Ellen Tigh? What sort of twisted Oedipal complex does that speak to? The story also gets confusing because we have to remember that there isn't just one John Cavil. So do they all have the same memories? Or is this Cavil the original and all the others are copies?
I noticed long ago that the "numbering" of the Cylons skipped 7. Obviously if there are 12 that just means that one of the Final Five was 7, but that seemed odd. Of course, the numbers are wrong because when they wrote that Sharon was an 8 they had no inkling of a "Final Five" storyline. So how do they fix this? They just say that there was a 7 line that Cavil messed with and that was the end of him. The Sevens were artistic and were named Daniel. A little part of me can't help thinking that perhaps Kara IS Daniel. Cavil's messing with the genetic code resulted in a female Daniel who still acted masculine in some ways (thus flipping off the fans who complained they made Starbuck a girl). Of course, this is probably nonsense. We know who Kara's parents were.
The bullet in Anders' brain is so obviously a "device" it's not even funny. It's an excuse to get him talking. It smacks of the kind of soap opera stereotype we often hear: "My husband is a robot, but he thinks he's human, but since he got shot in the head, the bullet is making him remember his past robot lives". I'm going to call it the "magic bullet".
Anders' story is that the Final Five were the only Cylons to escape the destruction on Earth because they invented resurrection. Then they traveled to the other colonies to warn them about building robots, but it was too late because it was all happening again. ...Okay. We also learn that Earth Cylons could reproduce. What I don't understand about all of this is why D'Anna saw the Final Five as angelic glowing beings in the Kobol opera house. Firstly, because the Final Five aren't there, they are in the fleet. Secondly, because I don't really see what's so special about them, aside from the fact that they created the other models. Is it just that the D'Annas were programmed to view the Final Five as god-like beings? I don't get it. And going by to my complaint from before that the discussion of the "Final Five" being in the fleet was wrong since Ellen was not in the fleet; we now know she was on a Cylon base star! Did D'Anna know this? And where are the other Cylons that Sharon said there were way back in season 2???
They call in a brain surgeon, and it's Jon Hodgman? If the series wasn't a farce already, I think it just turned that corner. And he isn't even given a serious role to play; he's given goofy dialogue that makes him just a joke. If my brain surgeon showed up and he was Jon Hodgman, I would demand a new surgeon! He probably went to a hobo medical school.
Lee suggests that they rebuild the Quorum but that representation should be by ship rather than by colony. Well, duh. Doing it by colony worked for awhile because most of the ships were colonially homogenous. But after New Caprica, they should have done this! That just makes more sense. Why is nobody smart enough to figure things out in a timely fashion?
Is there supposed to be significance to Ellen offering Sharon an apple and then eating it herself? It certainly seems like they want it to have significance. Never mind that Adam and Eve (or Woman as she was known then) did not eat an apple (I don't know where that idea got started; probably some confusion with Snow White). I don't get what it means. Is Ellen the serpent? Is Ellen Eve? Is this supposed to be temptation or not? It's like they threw it in to make the audience go "Aha!" but it really doesn't seem to signify anything.
On the other hand, one can clearly see Cavil as a Cain figure (not the Admiral, the Biblical murderer). He murder his brother Daniel because he didn't get the favor he sought from his mother. There are also echos of Data and Lore from TNG.
While we're on Star Trek parallels, we once again get into First Contact territory. Cavil complains how limiting the flesh is and how he wishes he were more mechanical. This is eerily reminiscent of the Borg Queen telling Data how they used to be organic ("flawed, weak") but evolved to include the synthetic. The Borg Queen sees the machine elements as perfecting the flaws in their nature, and Cavil sees things similarly. So Ron Moore is once again just repeating himself.
There was a fleeting reference to angels at one point, and I'm not sure where that is going either. Is it going to turn out that there is some analog to the Holy Kryptonians from the original series? It's also curious that the idea of one God came from the Centurions. Why did they develop a theological faith? It does explain why Cavil is so dismissive of it, since he was present when this idea was programmed into the other models. But doesn't that still cheapen so much of the story?
Galactica is falling apart now? May I just ask that if the ship was really suffering so much damage, why did nobody notice it until now? And Tyrol says he's got some organic Cylon stuff that can fix it. ...So really the ship has cancer, but the magic Cylon blood can cure that too!
In essence, this episode functioned much like the "Two Fathers/One Son" story on The X-Files, attempting to lay out and fix the mythology of the show. Similarly, certain details fell through the cracks. It was a decent episode, and I like these sorts of expositional stories, but at this point I don't believe the mythology will ever make the kind of sense that it should.
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