BSG Comic: The Final Five #4 (last one!)
Jul. 7th, 2009 06:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaSo, you guys, I'm not gonna lie to you, this was a real let down on the crack front. AND THEY'D BEEN DOING SO WELL.
Pretty much, I think, because we're now getting to the parts of the story we already know.
It opens with Cavil about to flush Tigh and Ellen out an airlock, per the No Exit backstory, and Ellen reaches up to the glass and traps Cavil very briefly, in a projection which she uses to make one last attempt to reason with him and reveal some extra shit to him.
We see the journey of the Five post-Earth Nukage. It seems that Tigh's body was made unbeknownst to Tigh (yeah, fortunately we don't get lots of details) and Ellen put his body into the ship instead of her father's, making her choice about who was gonna survive, etc. Choosing her husband over her father. Tigh's not super pleased about this. Although he doesn't totally flip out either.
Anders isn't sure why he's along for the ride (CONTINUITY, WHAT CONTINUITY?!) since he's just a random dude, but Ellen says they couldn't have perfected resurrection without him so he earned his place.
Tyrol is all judgey at Tory for um, I think Tory tried to assassinate Tigh in the last comic? I really can't recall. And Tory's all, well YOU built this entire ship and Tyrol's all, TO THINK I WANTED TO MARRY YOU ONCE, BEFORE I KNEW YOU WERE REALLY EVIL.
They don't have anywhere to go so they head back to Kobol hoping they can live there and not get shot on sight. They stop off on the Algae planet, visiting the Temple of Hopes which they exposit was built by the 13th Tribe when they crashed there because they were starting to think turning their backs on the gods was a lousy idea and they were trying to make amends. No extra info on how the supernova-vision thing came about though.
We do, however, see Ellen finding a grave of someone else named "Ellen," and remembering that when her mother left her and her father she said that she couldn't live up to the memory of "Ellen." So it looks like John Cavil named his daughter after his lost love and like...wasn't so utterly devoid of emotion as he liked to pretend. Or something.
They get back to Kobol but it's all ruins; it's twelve years into the Cylon war at this point due to all the subluminal travel they're doing. The Cylon Centurions find them on Kobol, recognise them as machines and don't kill them. Tigh very loudly demands they save the humans, while Tory goes all survival of the fittest and if the humans deserve to live then they will. At Tigh's prodding she goes on to claim that since only the five of them survived, clearly they were more fit to survive than all the rest of the Cylon on Earth.
Ellen speaks to the Old Man Hybrid who she has been told can speak for all of the Cylon (kinda interesting).
Tigh objects to giving them resurrection, but Ellen says she's already done it. Ellen also says that while she swapped out her father's body for Saul's parts of her father's mind were still downloaded or something and she wanted to use those to graft onto parts of a centurion mind to make Number One.
Tigh says he's not sure it's a good idea to graft a sociopath and a killer robot together. Ellen's like, EVEN SOCIOPATHIC KILLER ROBOTS DESERVE SECOND CHANCES! And says very dodgy things about how she's going to be a better mother than she was a daughter. Not that I'm really sure why she thought she was a sucky daughter since her dad wanted to KILL ALL LIFE and she basically just helped him. Sort of. But whatever.
Then John Cavil - the one we all know - breaks free of the projection and is all NOOOO YOU DIDN'T GIVE ME PARTS OF A REAL PERSON'S MIND. I'M NOT A REAL BOY! And spaces them.
The End.
The Other Seven:
We do see some of the other seven, but they pass up the cracktacular chance to explain who THEY were modelled on. We just get Leoben being made as a counterpoint to Cavil, some stuff about D'Anna, always with the questions, true believer and ultimate skeptic at the same time (which, to be fair, is about the best description I've ever heard of Three). We see Six but there's no comment on her.
We also actually see Daniel, but because of the art style he's pretty generic. He is, however, BLOND, thus I claim that he is still totally Dreilide.
So yeah, not really a lot of crack.
And to be perfectly honest, I was a little disappointed in this issue. I really liked a lot of the early stuff in the earlier issues - the different approach to Cylonicity with humans putting their minds in robot bodies, and that making them atheists was pretty damn cool. As was the stuff about the head people as gods, and Aurora as a rogue god, who takes the place of Pythia/resurrects Pythia and later does the same to Kara. I love the mad prophecy parts.
I even like the idea of subluminal travel and the passage of ages meaning that in two generations you see the rise and fall of many civilisations despite the fact I'm sad at losing the idea that Earth had a complex and historied society, not one that rose and fell in the span of 100 years.
But this issue (and to some extent the last issue, though the CRACK of KARA BEING TIGH'S MOM kind of made up for it) also falls down on the same two key issues that the finale fell down on. Which I suppose one could argue makes it a very good tie-in. But, you know, not so much for me. Though the stuff here is more muted; I might not have picked up on it were I not all wired to do so from the finale.
Basically the two issues I'm talking about, which are inextricably linked here, are women and the evils of technology.
Saul and Tyrol immediately decry the actions of their various womenfolk. And while I love Ellen as the brains of the outfit because that's hilarious and also kind of genuinely cool, we get some fairly brazen demonisation of Tory (which again, is only the comic going where the show went, but my extreme near-physical discomfort at the way they treated her character at the end is...still very much present). Plus Ellen has been responsible now for TWO apocalypses and is the one who insists, against the will of her better half, to graft the mind of a sociopath onto the mind of a killer robot (which again HI-FRAKKING-LARIOUS, but...the point still stands).
There's a clear delineation between the "good" members of the Five - the three men who were either not aware of their participation (Sam), blinded by love and not active participants (Tigh) or recanted immediately upon realising what they'd done/what their evil girlfriends were like (Tyrol). Versus the unrepentant women, Tory and Ellen. Who are either made out to be nasty people (Tory) or just...well, see all the other recaps for Ellen. She's actually really interesting, but the fact still remains pretty much everything is her fault and she's cast as being wrong to have done all this.
Which also ties into, yet again, robbing the cylon of their agency as an independent species. I was genuinely cool with it when the first issue came out - I think I discussed it a little. That I was sad the Cylon presented here weren't just pure, created robots, but that I was also intrigued and willing to go with it as a mirror of our versions of the Cylon, because a world where we can manufacture our own bodies is...also a massive discussion on tech and us and shit.
But now we're also explaining away Cavil as fragments of a mind that was originally human. And while it's not explicitly stated, the fact that Ellen says they need human test subjects to make the Seven suggests that they, too, are, somewhere, modelled on people.
So much like my issues with Caprica, we are moving away from "they evolved," and more towards, "they're just copies of humans; you can't have a sentient thinking creature without a spark of god's fire," or whatever you want to call it. Which is even more limiting than just the idea that god might have put his fire in machines, because apparently, it can only come from humans?
So like...these aren't the honking, great big unavoidable issues they could have been. But they ARE the issues I invariably butt up against if I try to look at the second half of this comic series in more than a superficial way, which is a shame.
Still, though, it's an above-average tie-in series. Even if I'm glad it's not canon.
Pretty much, I think, because we're now getting to the parts of the story we already know.
It opens with Cavil about to flush Tigh and Ellen out an airlock, per the No Exit backstory, and Ellen reaches up to the glass and traps Cavil very briefly, in a projection which she uses to make one last attempt to reason with him and reveal some extra shit to him.
We see the journey of the Five post-Earth Nukage. It seems that Tigh's body was made unbeknownst to Tigh (yeah, fortunately we don't get lots of details) and Ellen put his body into the ship instead of her father's, making her choice about who was gonna survive, etc. Choosing her husband over her father. Tigh's not super pleased about this. Although he doesn't totally flip out either.
Anders isn't sure why he's along for the ride (CONTINUITY, WHAT CONTINUITY?!) since he's just a random dude, but Ellen says they couldn't have perfected resurrection without him so he earned his place.
Tyrol is all judgey at Tory for um, I think Tory tried to assassinate Tigh in the last comic? I really can't recall. And Tory's all, well YOU built this entire ship and Tyrol's all, TO THINK I WANTED TO MARRY YOU ONCE, BEFORE I KNEW YOU WERE REALLY EVIL.
They don't have anywhere to go so they head back to Kobol hoping they can live there and not get shot on sight. They stop off on the Algae planet, visiting the Temple of Hopes which they exposit was built by the 13th Tribe when they crashed there because they were starting to think turning their backs on the gods was a lousy idea and they were trying to make amends. No extra info on how the supernova-vision thing came about though.
We do, however, see Ellen finding a grave of someone else named "Ellen," and remembering that when her mother left her and her father she said that she couldn't live up to the memory of "Ellen." So it looks like John Cavil named his daughter after his lost love and like...wasn't so utterly devoid of emotion as he liked to pretend. Or something.
They get back to Kobol but it's all ruins; it's twelve years into the Cylon war at this point due to all the subluminal travel they're doing. The Cylon Centurions find them on Kobol, recognise them as machines and don't kill them. Tigh very loudly demands they save the humans, while Tory goes all survival of the fittest and if the humans deserve to live then they will. At Tigh's prodding she goes on to claim that since only the five of them survived, clearly they were more fit to survive than all the rest of the Cylon on Earth.
Ellen speaks to the Old Man Hybrid who she has been told can speak for all of the Cylon (kinda interesting).
Tigh objects to giving them resurrection, but Ellen says she's already done it. Ellen also says that while she swapped out her father's body for Saul's parts of her father's mind were still downloaded or something and she wanted to use those to graft onto parts of a centurion mind to make Number One.
Tigh says he's not sure it's a good idea to graft a sociopath and a killer robot together. Ellen's like, EVEN SOCIOPATHIC KILLER ROBOTS DESERVE SECOND CHANCES! And says very dodgy things about how she's going to be a better mother than she was a daughter. Not that I'm really sure why she thought she was a sucky daughter since her dad wanted to KILL ALL LIFE and she basically just helped him. Sort of. But whatever.
Then John Cavil - the one we all know - breaks free of the projection and is all NOOOO YOU DIDN'T GIVE ME PARTS OF A REAL PERSON'S MIND. I'M NOT A REAL BOY! And spaces them.
The End.
The Other Seven:
We do see some of the other seven, but they pass up the cracktacular chance to explain who THEY were modelled on. We just get Leoben being made as a counterpoint to Cavil, some stuff about D'Anna, always with the questions, true believer and ultimate skeptic at the same time (which, to be fair, is about the best description I've ever heard of Three). We see Six but there's no comment on her.
We also actually see Daniel, but because of the art style he's pretty generic. He is, however, BLOND, thus I claim that he is still totally Dreilide.
So yeah, not really a lot of crack.
And to be perfectly honest, I was a little disappointed in this issue. I really liked a lot of the early stuff in the earlier issues - the different approach to Cylonicity with humans putting their minds in robot bodies, and that making them atheists was pretty damn cool. As was the stuff about the head people as gods, and Aurora as a rogue god, who takes the place of Pythia/resurrects Pythia and later does the same to Kara. I love the mad prophecy parts.
I even like the idea of subluminal travel and the passage of ages meaning that in two generations you see the rise and fall of many civilisations despite the fact I'm sad at losing the idea that Earth had a complex and historied society, not one that rose and fell in the span of 100 years.
But this issue (and to some extent the last issue, though the CRACK of KARA BEING TIGH'S MOM kind of made up for it) also falls down on the same two key issues that the finale fell down on. Which I suppose one could argue makes it a very good tie-in. But, you know, not so much for me. Though the stuff here is more muted; I might not have picked up on it were I not all wired to do so from the finale.
Basically the two issues I'm talking about, which are inextricably linked here, are women and the evils of technology.
Saul and Tyrol immediately decry the actions of their various womenfolk. And while I love Ellen as the brains of the outfit because that's hilarious and also kind of genuinely cool, we get some fairly brazen demonisation of Tory (which again, is only the comic going where the show went, but my extreme near-physical discomfort at the way they treated her character at the end is...still very much present). Plus Ellen has been responsible now for TWO apocalypses and is the one who insists, against the will of her better half, to graft the mind of a sociopath onto the mind of a killer robot (which again HI-FRAKKING-LARIOUS, but...the point still stands).
There's a clear delineation between the "good" members of the Five - the three men who were either not aware of their participation (Sam), blinded by love and not active participants (Tigh) or recanted immediately upon realising what they'd done/what their evil girlfriends were like (Tyrol). Versus the unrepentant women, Tory and Ellen. Who are either made out to be nasty people (Tory) or just...well, see all the other recaps for Ellen. She's actually really interesting, but the fact still remains pretty much everything is her fault and she's cast as being wrong to have done all this.
Which also ties into, yet again, robbing the cylon of their agency as an independent species. I was genuinely cool with it when the first issue came out - I think I discussed it a little. That I was sad the Cylon presented here weren't just pure, created robots, but that I was also intrigued and willing to go with it as a mirror of our versions of the Cylon, because a world where we can manufacture our own bodies is...also a massive discussion on tech and us and shit.
But now we're also explaining away Cavil as fragments of a mind that was originally human. And while it's not explicitly stated, the fact that Ellen says they need human test subjects to make the Seven suggests that they, too, are, somewhere, modelled on people.
So much like my issues with Caprica, we are moving away from "they evolved," and more towards, "they're just copies of humans; you can't have a sentient thinking creature without a spark of god's fire," or whatever you want to call it. Which is even more limiting than just the idea that god might have put his fire in machines, because apparently, it can only come from humans?
So like...these aren't the honking, great big unavoidable issues they could have been. But they ARE the issues I invariably butt up against if I try to look at the second half of this comic series in more than a superficial way, which is a shame.
Still, though, it's an above-average tie-in series. Even if I'm glad it's not canon.
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-07 06:59 pm (UTC)I was so mad about that point I didn't bother ordering the last comic. Even Kara is Togh's mommy can't fix that.
No origin on the SS at all? Nice one there.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-07 07:50 pm (UTC)Although clearly, he was a Rock Star Scientist. Who used the proceeds from his sellout stadium concerts to fund his SCIENCE.
Boo.
And no, Kara as Tigh's mommy doesn't fix that, though I will never, ever stop trying to claim that it's canon. WHY NO, I DON'T SEE A DOUBLE STANDARD HERE AT ALL. Ahem.
As to the SS, well we get some waffle about how they're all representative of different facets of humanity, meant to exist together in concert, but nothing specific about who they were modelled on, no. There was a slight implication - and I'm not sure whether it was intentional or not, I may just be reading into it and seeing something I don't like - that perhaps since I think they could build Cavil because they already had the genetic material to build Ellen's father, and since they mention needing biological material and see dude floating in tanks and stuff, that maybe it's meant to suggest that they build them using the people we saw in captivity in the Adama flashbacks in Razor?
Which obviously, I'm again not a fan of because it's that whole making inexplicable, impossible robots and then slowly making them not really that inexplicable or impossible which is...more boring.
You know, retroactively just making ALL cylons some form of human in a robot body that...is itself an identical copy of another human body? Not so much cus the idea is inherently crappy (it's not), but because it's part of a wider pattern of taking everything that made the Cylon a unique species and retconning them as very directly owing all their agency, sentience, beliefs, thought-patterns and appearance to humans. /randomness.
Really the only point that needs to be reiterated is it CAN'T be canon because SAM IS A SCIENTIST DAMMIT!
no subject
Date: 2009-07-07 08:06 pm (UTC)Interesting, though -- I always notice in a lot of media that it's the female villains or mistake-makers who are portrayed as oblivious, penitent, or doing-it-all-for-love while the men are the actual committed decision-makers. So on one level I'm like "OH HEY THANKS", but on the other hand this sucks too for the reasons you said. I think the conclusion is that whenever your characters are pretty easily divided by gender, you may need to step back and rethink something.
So much like my issues with Caprica, we are moving away from "they evolved," and more towards, "they're just copies of humans; you can't have a sentient thinking creature without a spark of god's fire," or whatever you want to call it. Which is even more limiting than just the idea that god might have put his fire in machines, because apparently, it can only come from humans?
This doesn't bother me as much as you. (Not that I'm taking any of this as canon, but just as an idea.) Because... yeah? From a diehard Cylon lover this might come as a shock, but I'm not sold on machines evolving on their very own. I DO think the first spark had to come from somewhere, God or human brain fragments or whatever. I guess as a metaphor it's pretty reductive, because it makes them less... real somehow? Eve out of Adam's rib? Forever spiritually inferior to the people they were fighting, because humans were humans first and that's the true source of soul-having? I get that.
But to actually take it as science fiction for a minute... where else *would* they get that way from? You know, I like humans and our whole mess, and I kind of don't believe the Cylons would be that much like us without being cut from the same cloth. I'm like, of *course* John Cavil's got a humany mind in there! I think it's totally cool as long as you acknowledge that, you know, CHILDREN DESERVE TO LIVE and it doesn't make them less-than. It gives them harder ties to humanity than we even knew.
To wrap this giant comment up: Frak this noise, seriously, because Ellen is awesome and so are the Cylons. Like, I seriously reject the entire premise that making the Seven was a bad thing. It's not like they created the genocide as much as *stalled* it and made it a shitload more interesting.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-07 08:39 pm (UTC)Ahem. ;)
I think the conclusion is that whenever your characters are pretty easily divided by gender, you may need to step back and rethink something.
Ooooh, yes, what a great and succinct way of putting it.
Also, I think I would have been more okay with the genderflip the way you describe it (because yes, that is kind of awesome) if it were like, in isolation? It's like the same frustration I have at Kara's ending in BSG? In isolation, it's fine - awesome even - but combine it with everything else and it has the potential to look icky? So this is a specific interaction between the way the women are portrayed here and the larger problems with them in 4.5 of BSG? At least in terms of Ellen.
Cus Tory, yes, it was wall-throwy.
As to your stuff about the creation of the Cylon, I actually think that we don't disagree that much?
Cus like, I DO agree with you - robots aren't going to evolve without our input. And in fact our input into their evolution is one of the fundamental things I found fascinating about the Cylon in the first place. Because, like, we're tool-builders - technology has been influencing our evolution since we developed opposable thumbs. We are intertwined with it, so if we then go and create sentient robots, maybe that is our next evolutionary step? Like in a really literal way?
So you know, humans made the sentient centurions. They WERE made by "us". But there's a difference between making a sentient thinking mind with the capacity to come up with its own ideas and then, you know, self-improve and stuff, and just flatout transferring a human brain into a computer? Or (per Caprica) waiting for God to bless it with sentience?
I mean, YES, absolutely, the idea that the next step in human evolution is to start doing shit like transferring our consciousness into cyborg bodies is also awesome and a great way to explore us/tech/evolution. But I'm having trouble separating it in the context of this show from the loss of that first idea. Simply because I feel that Caprica (and to a lesser extent certain parts of 4.5 but NOT No Exit which was pure awesome) pushed such a depressing angle on the whole thing with their take on the creation of the Cylonses. I have trouble seeing this particular take as "the next step in our evolution," rather than, "look, they weren't really a legitimate example of AI after all because humans are the only real people, unless God does magic,"?
...I hope I'm still making sense. I am aware that it's a very thin line and wholly tied up in my personal responses to parts of the show, which I think is why I'm taking so long to, um, blather about it in an attempt to...find where my line is and see if it's justifable?
It's not like they created the genocide as much as *stalled* it and made it a shitload more interesting.
YES! VOTE ELLEN, FOR A MORE INTERESTING APOCALYPSE!
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 05:12 am (UTC)Well, good to know that issue 4 is out, and I shall be able to start my quest to aquire it, regardless of content.
-It bugs me that Tory just gets written off as being "evil". I mean, I always thought that she was an interesting character who really got the short end of the stick. (I mean, she's the only one of the five to accept her cylon nature, can we not see more of that?)
-We just get Leoben being made as a counterpoint to Cavil
While I would have loved some more Significant Seven backstory, I always had a feeling that this was the case. It just seemed to work, as those two were on opposite ends of the spectrum.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 04:17 pm (UTC)Agreed. It's such a wasted opportunity. And also plays into the unfortunate implications in this comic and later parts of the show that accepting you are a cylon=evil, while being vaguely ashamed of it and apologetic and wishing you were a real person=good.
It's kind of why I love the Sixes. Cus on the one hand, I can see that probably the intention with Caprica (hell, they even have Head Baltar say it to her at one point) was that she wished she were more human. But at the same time, she's so...unapologetic about being a Cylon, even while fomenting Cylon revolution, even while in a human brig because she betrayed the Cylon, she's pretty awesome?
It's like she's this brilliant middle-ground I wish they'd done more of (and totally COULD have with a character like Tory) where she refuses to let being a Cylon define her the way Cavil does, in a limiting way. And aspires to all the good things she sees in humanity. But without in any way wanting to stop being a Cylon?
While I would have loved some more Significant Seven backstory, I always had a feeling that this was the case. It just seemed to work, as those two were on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Again, I agree with you. I just wished we'd been told what the others were intended to represent AND who they were modelled on (though as I said I think they were copies of random human test subjects, but boooooo, that's more boring than like, them being copies of people the Five knew).
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 06:47 pm (UTC)That's one of the things I always thought was part of Cylon-thought. They just sort of accepted that they were cylons, and that couldn't be changed. They could try and act human, be as human as they could, but at the end of the day they were cylons. And that couldn't really be let go of.
Caprica shows that, and is awesome because of it.
It's like she's this brilliant middle-ground I wish they'd done more of (and totally COULD have with a character like Tory) where she refuses to let being a Cylon define her the way Cavil does, in a limiting way.
If BSG could have gone on longer (like, another half season), I think they could have explored this. Tory could have been so much more.
Again, I agree with you. I just wished we'd been told what the others were intended to represent AND who they were modelled on (though as I said I think they were copies of random human test subjects, but boooooo, that's more boring than like, them being copies of people the Five knew).
I know. We got the Final Five backstory, so can't we have the Significant Seven Backstory? The only one we really know about is Cavil.
I'm working on a fanfiction right now that explores the Final Five backstory (different from the comics), and I'm working on Significant Seven bases.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 12:54 am (UTC)While I was listening to the podcast commentary on the Season 4.0 DVDs I noticed a script writer refer to Tory in one scene as becoming a villain but then Ron Moore corrected him and said she was becoming more independant. So it seems like at least one writer thought of her as the bad guy rather than as a more gray character like Baltar who was very carefully kept from becoming a caricature.
Its not like I'm a Tory fan but seriously, Tigh, Tyrol and Sam threw people out the airlock for collaborating. Athena, who arguably got the happiest ending, murdered two women who at the time posed no threat to her while Tory at least had reason to fear Cally turning them in. It could have been even worse though; I've heard from the TWOP boards that the original plan was that Ellen would join Cavill out of rage over Tigh and Caprica's baby. Thankfully this was scrapped during the writers' strikes.