Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 5 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT When The Know-Nothings Get Control
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.09.2006
"Wipe 'em out," yeah? So I'm glad we're looking at this from a bunch of different angles, with due deference to like the sanctity of life. And before you freakin' email me, I'll remind you of something Abraham Lincoln said, which Moore has said more than once is a guiding principle for the show: " With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." With malice toward none, and charity for all. The categorical imperative says it's fine to commit genocide as long as you'd be happy to be on the other side of the line. But we'll get to that particular bizarre viewpoint in a second. Right now it's Roslin's office on Colonial One, where Lee is explaining his sickening but clever plan. "We jump to an area we know the Cylons use as a supply line, NCD2539. We stay there, exposed; we look as if we're spoiling for a fight. They'll send their Fleet. And where there's a Fleet, there's a resurrection ship. And once the resurrection ship is within our reach, we execute our infected prisoners. We bug out, the executed prisoners download into the resurrection ship, and with them, the virus." Roslin confirms that the virus would download to the new bodies, and Adama is very still and quiet about this. "Rescuers become carriers of the plague. Cylons themselves don't believe that they'll develop a cure." Well, Cylons are downers, Bill. But I think I see the logical loophole here, too: one of the main differences between the humans and Cylons has always been "network" v. "non-network." Adama's decree is that no computers be networked, because of the way the Cylons can get in; the Cylons' greatest fear, on the other hand, is having anybody cut off from the network: I think the resurrection ships are all connected, so this would work. Or, you know, whatever: the Cylons are scared of it, and they would know.
Roslin breathes, taking it in, feelings its edges: "Oh, my Gods. This could be the end of the Cylons entirely." Forever, notes Apollo helpfully. Helo speaks the hell up. "Genocide? So that's what we're about now?" Genocide or xenocide, raman or varelse. (I'd say framling, but I'd guess you know that by now, and anyway: every war that ever happened in real life happened between humans, so it's not letting anybody off the hook. On the other hand, as a wise person on the forums noted, qua Hera, that the existence of mules still can't make a horse a donkey.) "They're not human. They were built, not born. No fathers, no mothers, no sons, no daughters... " Helo gets taller, a little. "I had a daughter. I held her in my arms." Apollo notes that she was half-human, not a thing, a dangerous thing, like the Cylons. "This is our one chance to be rid of them," says Apollo, which is true. Helo's response piques Roslin: "You can rationalize it any way you want. We do this, we wipe out their race, then we're no different than they are." Which is still not the point, to me or to Roslin: "Captain, I respectfully disagree. The Cylons struck first in this war and, not being content with the annihilation of billions of human beings, they pursued us relentlessly through the galaxies, determined to wipe us out." Which is possibly bullshit and definitely a biased account, but what Helo says next is unmitigated bullshit: "They tried to live with us on New Caprica." She smiles at him, that one smile you are thinking of, the terrifying airlocky one: "... What did you say?" He stupidly repeats himself, and then Roslin gets so hardcore so fast I think we all might die.