Thursday, February 12, 2009

The Case for the Cylons

That sounds more provocative than I mean it. Prompted by Robert Farley's brilliant essay arguing that Tom Zarek and Felix Gaeta are heroes, not traitors, I've tried to explore the other side of the argument: That a Colonial-Cylon alliance carries real advantages for humanity.

Like, for instance, hundreds of 6's and 8's running around looking to get pregnant. I'm just saying.

But I also argue that we can't pass a final moral judgment on the Cylon empire quite yet. You may not be convinced.

2 comments:

said...

Cylons rawk!

Anonymous said...

Interesting post - you're argument is strong, but with much of the "plan" now revealed I'm still not sure we can conclusively pass moral judgment on the machines/Cylons (thus it is still difficult to ascertain, fundamentally, whether Cylons and humans can and/or should peacefully co-exist). Certainly Cavil is despicable and the Final Five seem to have had honorable intentions, but I'm yet to be convinced that we have enough of the facts. Do we make different cases for the different species of Cylons? There are especially many unanswered questions regarding the Final Five-

-what exactly are they?
-why can they reproduce?
-why did only 5 of them survive the holocaust on Earth?
-what led to the holocaust on Earth?


Further, I'm not satisfied with the reason why the Final Five species of Cylons on Earth voluntarily gave up resurrection technology. We're supposed to believe that the vast majority of them surrendered virtual immortality because they started reproducing?

Look at it the other way around - i.e., human medicine has the goal of extending/prolonging life, but we can certainly reproduce. If humans invented resurrection technology, would we not use it because we have the ability to reproduce? Or because of religious beliefs? Note that Cavil pointed out Ellen’s own atheism (or at least agnosticism) in the last episode.

Regardless of the serious moral and/or metaphysical issues involved with resurrection technology, I’m sure that a sizable portion of any population would embrace it and use it.