Television
No Exit
15 February 2009
Another episode of Battlestar Galactica. Such a turn from the previous episodes of fighting, tension, action, killing, plotting, etc. In “No Exit,” several main characters do not appear at all, but we instead see a lot of talk amongst the Cylons. The 12th one and some of those we haven’t seen in a while, the ones aboard Galactica herself. Talk, talk, talk. Geek talk. Lots of numbers: 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 3000, etc. Lots of discussion about how this is part of history repeating itself, including the time frame on Earth currently (or at least in a period near the Holocaust). If you don’t know the show, there’s nothing to say about it. Even if you watch, what is there to say? (My friend Neil said this about the episode: “John Hodgeman? Hahahahaha.”) The first minutes with the 12th Cylon are the most important, it gets a little wordy. But, along the lines of where our present history and BSG intersect, go back and read James Parker’s article in The Atlantic from a couple of months ago. I think he nailed it, with his comparison to the views of L. Ron Hubbard.
One somewhat tangential thing I was thinking of: If I suddenly found out that reincarnation is how things work and that I had a past life wherein I did bad things, would I feel weighed down by that? Would I suddenly feel responsibility for that other person’s decisions?