Who Are the Bad Guys?

[ray gower]

**May be some mild spoilers**

Zzarich is a terrorist.
Rosslyn is a scheming politician, and what ever orbit she is in, it isn't a lot lower than her Vice President!
Tigh is a drunk with an overly ambitious wife,
The Chief spends every other episode in jail,
Starbuck doesn't care who she thumps.
Adama Jr, is a mutineer.
His Dad is not above arranging a few assasinations.
Baltar is right off his chump.

Against all this, we really don't have any 'Bad' Cylons!

Okay they have almost destroyed all human life. But at least they have a loftier goal than simple personal self-serving ambition!

So who are the Bad Guys?

[imported_EdOtt]

I think that is just it, battlestar galactica is refusing to give its viewers such an easy choice. this last episode showed 6 and sharon who was reborn on caprica starting a peace movement. meanwhile sharon on battlestar galactica is mourning her dead child whom it turns out they could not kill her cause she is a freaking little baby girl.

have to say this last episode was fantastic.

peace
ed

[philoSCIFI]

Originally posted by ray gower
Okay they have almost destroyed all human life. But at least they have a loftier goal than simple personal self-serving ambition!

*is shocked*

Are you serious?

[ray gower]

*is shocked*


Are you serious?

Well actually, yes.

The Cylons want to dicover the meaning of their life and/or God, a lofty goal indeed.

If that means destroying humanity, well no sweat and there is nothing more personal in it than you shooting all them aliens in Doom.

But our human types. It is very personal and very nasty.
None of them are exactly cream of the crop. More like the evil smelling stuff underneath when it all goes sour?

[Dave]

Originally posted by ray gower
If that means destroying humanity, well no sweat and there is nothing more personal in it than you shooting all them aliens in Doom.

So, you see it only as Evolution in action; Survival of the Fittest?

Doesn't the fact that they are Human (and I'm assuming that you are Human too) have anything to do with it?

I think the writers are rather hoping that it would

Originally posted by ray gower
But our human types. It is very personal and very nasty.
None of them are exactly cream of the crop. More like the evil smelling stuff underneath when it all goes sour?

That's Humans for you!
Surely you've met some Humans like these before. Humans are pretty nasty and evil in real life too! Genocide and War, Persecution for religious and political beliefs, allowing famines and plagues to continue when action could be taken to prevent them. And that's just those Humans in charge. Not many ordinary Humans are as altruistic as you would hope them to be. Generally, it is "What's in it for me?" first.

When a natural disaster occurs, while most people will pull together for the good of everybody, some go off looting shops and robbing the dead bodies.

On a separate tack, there was a march yesterday in Oxford to promote animal testing. This was to counter the anti-vivisectionists who what to stop all animal testing. Personally, if I, or a member of my family, or a neighbour, can be cured of cancer, alzhiemers (sp), but an animal must first be experimented on, then my choice is easy. But I can see where the anti-vivsectionists are coming from (though not their methods.)

I would be quite happy for someone to remove the Foxes in my garden, (who dig it up and cry all night) but as wild animals they have as much right to it as me.

So it is no surprise that if we treat animals as less than humans, we would do the same with aliens, and certainly with machines like the Toasters. Issac Asimov's Robot books cover this issue.

There are some people who see a hierarical structure to life with Humans at the top, there are others who see all life as equal and how we define ourselves is how we treat others. But what happens if we ever meet our equals or betters?

We are very Xenophobic, even just with foreigners never mind other alien species that we might meet or robots we might build. I think it is a inbuilt genetically programmed tribal thing. In the past we tended to join genetically similar tribes, today we make groups of like minded individuals. It is a attempt by our genes to keep the genepool coherent. Look at the way our society has treated the disabled as an example.

While we should rise above this programming because we know that it is wrong on a moral level, it probably does make our genepool weaker, and hence less fit to survive.

The advantage of the Toasters is that they are all alike.

[ray gower]

Doesn't the fact that they are Human (and I'm assuming that you are Human too) have anything to do with it?

Perhaps I am the last of the Cylon race? :lol:

And yes I have met people who are like our ignoble heroes, and a few of an already small number can make dibs on being quite so blatent or callous about it.

I think your march helps show the relative ratios. With a population of 60 Million in the UK, perhaps 800 felt strongly enough to turn up. I doubt 8 of them could be classed as activists. The rest of us, while we might think it would be nice if the cute beagles weren't used for testing shampoo, will continue to buy the cheap stuff even when we know that countless dogs were turned bald through testing it.

Yet on Galactica we already have 8 decidedly dodgy characters out of a population of some 40,000. And they are just the ones in charge!
Behind them are the run of the mill crooks, mobsters and racketeers that will inevitably appear.

Do they deserve to survive?

[Dave]

Originally posted by ray gower
Do they deserve to survive?

If you have Faith in a God or Gods (as they do) then you expect to be ultimately Judged to be deserving or not. If you don't then you should stop fighting between yourselves and get on with the fight with the Cylons, because no one is going to win or lose it but you yourself. On both counts, I think they fail the test.

But I still think that just makes them Human, and I'll still be rooting for them.

Now that Ray has revealed himself as a Cylon we will have to watch him carefully!