A Living Nightmare

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

The Cylons had a plan... And it was pretty awful. It didn't really get expanded upon much but what do you think about the "farms" (Gah, gives new meaning to the words "farm system" for the pyramid players, don't it? Now I want someone to write Sue-Shaun ruminating on the "farm system" huh. I might have to prompt that in the fic battle post.) BUT I DIGRESS... so what did you think of this aborted storyline? (er, no pun intended!) What ramifications would it have had if they'd further explored it, not just for Kara but for the rest of the Fleet? I can't remember if she used this rationale in her pitch to go back for the Caprica survivors but I don't remember Roslin or Adama addressing it as a real concern.

Comments

[shah-of-blah.livejournal.com]

The Cylons had so many plans. I can't keep them all straight. I mean, first you kill all the humans, then you decide you want to make babies with them. Should've thought of that first, don't you think?

Er, but anyway, I would read that Sue-Shaun fic! I think that, as a whole, BSG kinda didn't follow through with their reproduction themes. The abortion storyline was dropped in a way that made me very annoyed, and they sadly did not capitalize on the connection between these two arcs.

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

True. And things got positively nutty with the whole Caprica miscarriage plotline.

[samstareagle.livejournal.com]

I think the writers never realized just how evil they had made the Cylons to be, not withstanding the fact that the Cylons had did have a genuine detachment from understanding why this was so awful in the first place. They didn't just blow up a civilization, they hunted down and raped whoever they could find that was left. Sweeping that under the rug made it look like the writers were trying to rewite their story's own history to be able to get away with a "forgiveness" arc that in truth never felt appropriate after that. But then again, they had to fall back on the Star Trek "Let's make everybody get along by the end of the story" technique, that never did work with BSG in the first place.

I totally agree, they should have kept running wit this. It's like saying you're depicting WWII in a completely REAL and DARK and TRUTHFUL way, but never mentioning the holocaust, the firebombings of civilians in Europe, the horrors of the Eastern front, the Japanese' brutality to the Chinese and POWs, and of course the aftermath of unleashing atomic weapons on the world. You wipe that stuff out, you're basically lying for history's sake, and you lose the right to say you're out there on the edge showing the truth of your subject matter.

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

It never made sense to me why we were supposed to forgive the cylons because humans had created them in the first place. A sin of creation does not equal a sin of (massive and utter) destruction to me. The constant idea that it was the humans' own damn fault made about as much sense as saying it's the parents' fault if their kid turns into a serial killer.

[imelda72.livejournal.com]

Well said.I think they got caught up in the cylons as characters, though, rather than acting out of a desire to make everybody happy.

This was a disturbing but excellent, and fundamental, story element, and they absolutely should not have dropped it.

[reginaspina.livejournal.com]

As I think you know, the lack of followup to the 'farms' storyline and what they did with Kara's ovary is something that bothered me even more than the stupid way that the opera house thingummy was resolved.

I totally agree that the showrunners got caught up in the forced need for reconciliation and didn't ever see the bigger picture of what they were actually showing onscreen (and not only did the Cylons initially destroy the 12 colonies and set up the farms etc., they hunted down the survivors AGAIN on New Caprica and basically wouldn't leave them the hell alone. GAH!)

In the real world, yes, victims of genocide and their murderers have been forced to live with one another (for example, in Rwanda) but it certainly hasn't been as happy-happy-joy-joy as it was on BSG. And I am still annoyed about the Kara dead-end there (indeed, the entire Leoben thing sort of petered out with nary a whisper in mid-season 4 too. Also annoying!)