So For Any Battlestar Galactica Fans Out There...A Couple of Mysteries
First Merry Christmas to our Christian readers.And for those who celebrate it, Happy Guernarthar's Ascension Day as well. You know who you are.
Do we have any BSG fans out there? I'm a big one myself - it's my favorite current TV show.
In any case, I've just been rewatching season 1 of Battlestar Galactica, and as always when watching BSG, trying to pierce the mystery of the character Six that appears in Balthar's head. It is still unclear what her nature is two seasons later.
As Six is at times involved with leading him to "God's will," today, I'm wondering whether she can be considered to be his Daemon - δαιμων - in the socratic sense - his good genius, rather like an intuitive force, or even a muse.
It all depends, I suppose, whether in the end, the resolution of the human/cylon conflict will lead to some sort of prophesied state or whether it is an unending conflict. If they do arrive at the "prophesied state" then I imagine Balthar's sinning against his own will be a necessary part of that journey.
Balthar, I suppose, is a kind of a Judas - sinning against his own, sometimes by his own will, sometimes not; in the end, we are left asking whether his sinning against humanity will be instrumental in the fulfillment of the prophesied future for humans and cylons? Will his fall and desertion to the cylons be one of the ingredients necessary for the synthesis of the fate of its inhabitants?
Does that make him more like the original Judas of the normative Christian tradition, or more like the Judas of the Judas Gospel where the predestined aspect of his character is a stronger part of the narrative? Or even like Shabati Tzvi, the false Messiah - who sought out the darkest corners of the world, and inhabited them in his "role as Messiah" in order to release the sparks captured therein. Because those sparks, too, needed to be set free, in order for the redemption of the world to occur.
The interesting thing about Balthar is that, like the character of Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost, there is no endpoint to his fall. Everything he does results in him falling further. Even at those points that he ceases to will his own fall.
Will Gaius Balthar become, in the fulfillment of TV time, the living archetype of the paradox of the holy sinner. His fall necessary for the redemption of the world.
It is interesting that the first season has many more "mysteries" than those later on, though they have returned to that to some extent lately with the whole Deanna subplot and the words spoken by the hybrid in the bath.
posted by Alcibiades @ 5:08 PM
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