[Download] "Humanity's Scarred Children: The Cylons' Oedipal Dilemma in Battlestar Galactica." by Extrapolation # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Humanity's Scarred Children: The Cylons' Oedipal Dilemma in Battlestar Galactica.
- Author : Extrapolation
- Release Date : January 22, 2008
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 205 KB
Description
The new Battlestar Galactica series is constantly being praised for what Mary McDonnell likes to call "stones that contain relevance to our own world" (Bassom, Companion Season Two 6). Unlike the political, social, and military allusions, however, the psychological themes in the show have failed to draw critical attention. While it is true that the series has effectively dealt with the psychological toll of the post-apocalyptic situation on the characters, and has realistically depicted the resulting trauma, Battlestar Galactica also deals with the condition and fallibilities of the psyche on a more fundamental level. The conflict between humanity and the Cylons is rooted in the Cylons' failed psychological maturation which, with regard to the series production, serves as the motor that drives individual plots forward and connects them to the fabric of the series' overall text. Within the fictional universe, this psychological dimension has wide-ranging implications for the relation between humanity and the Cylons as well as for the development of individual characters, including the Cylons who in this series (unlike the original) exist as individuals. In the original Battlestar Galactica the Cylons were simply one-dimensional villains, robotic aliens from the vast regions of space that hated humanity for reasons unknown and, probably, unintelligible to the Colonials. This drawback was alleviated to some extent by the introduction of the character of Baltar. Having Baltar lead the Cylon pursuit of the Colonial fleet gave the Cylons a human face with which the viewers could identify. In spite of the fact that Baltar's reasons for hating humanity were never addressed in the series--which essentially made the character as one-dimensional as the Cylons themselves--he was still a recognizable individual within a seemingly endless mass of identical robots. Baltar's presence did not weaken the series' fundamental structure: the contrast between emotionless and evil machines, on the one hand, and the atmosphere of warmth and implicit trust aboard the Galactica, on the other. There was no specific, that is, psychological motive for the Cylons' hatred of humanity, which left little room for development or change, and ultimately reduced the premise of the series to the ancient struggle between good and evil.