This week’s Battlestar Galactica pretty much solidified the fact that there will never be peace between the humans and the Cylons as long as Roslin is President of the Colonies. Now obviously for the series to remain exciting, they can’t have any prolonged peace with the Cylons, at least not until the series finale, but for there to be even a chance of peace, Roslin’s got to go.
Some may chalk up Roslin’s complete lack of qualms about killing off the entire Cylon race to her wiliness to do whatever is necessary to save the human race. The thing is when questionable actions are taken in the name of the greater good that affect humans and their rights, Roslin is often torn. Even though she took away the right to abortion and didn’t stop Tigh from carrying out his suicide bombings, she wasn’t happy with those things. In the case of the suicide bombings, she argued vigorously against them but she never did anything to stop them from occurring.
Contrast Roslin’s behavior when dealing with humans to her actions towards Cylons. In season two she threw Leoben out an airlock without a second thought. She also had no problem taking away Helo and Sharon’s baby, going so far as to fake its death (and, if it wasn’t for the fact that the Cylon baby juice cured her cancer, she would have had the baby forcefully aborted against Sharon and Helo’s wishes). This week she took her callous behavior to a new level, with attempted genocide.
I like that it was the military leader, someone who stereotypically would be more likely to be in favor of victory by any means, that had a problem with wiping out an entire race. Adama has come along way in his relationship with Athena. He has overcome his own prejudice and fear (and getting shotness) to befriend Athena. I actually toyed with the idea that he had ordered Helo to kill the Cylon prisoners before they could spread their disease to their entire race (especially given how quickly he accepts, and even seems to endorse, what Helo did) but if he had ordered Helo to kill the Cylons, surely he would have done so before they jumped into Cylon territory and put their ship at risk for nothing.
It was an interesting dilemma Helo faced. Even though he may have saved an entire race, he had to murder five helpless Cylon prisoners in order to do so. The whole murder bit kind of taints the goodness of his actions.
Also it was noteworthy that other than Helo, and to a lesser degree, Adama, nobody, not even Athena, had much of a problem with wiping out the entire Cylon race. It seemed like there were quite a few people who were aware of what was going on as well. That, in and of itself, doesn’t bode too well for the prospect of peace sometime down the road.
On a side note, it did seem somewhat unrealistic that everyone was so sure that this disease would wipe out the entire Cylon race. Sure the Cylons would have a tougher time working on the disease, since they have no immunity, but if Doc Cottle could find a cure in the run of an afternooon, surely the Cylons would find it as well. But I guess if they had thought it would only be partially effective, it would have been harder for Helo to justify his actions so I’ll let it slide.
