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Post by artemis on Nov 4, 2006 11:53:41 GMT -5
From Six's reaction, the 5 seem to be either feared or unliked for some reason. Or maybe they were models who didn't turn out well. More humanlike than was desired? Or not tuned into their ecosystem as the rest of them are? when six said that, i also thought perhaps the other five had split from the seven we've seen for some reason - perhaps some sort of internal disagreement, perhaps something else - and that perhaps it is too painful for the remaining seven to discuss. like how when someone becomes estranged from their family, sometimes the family members that stick together refuse to even discuss the one that left?
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Post by artemis on Nov 4, 2006 12:05:18 GMT -5
Speaking of Greek mythology.. On rewatching the the episode this morning, I noticed that during the scene when they gave Sharon a new call sign (she is no longer 'Boomer' meaning Boomer died), that the description given for Athena was 'goddess of wisdom and war' - usually accompanied by the goddess of victory'. I got curious as to why he just didn't use that goddess's name - and wondered what it was. From wikipedia: In Greek mythology, Nike (Greek Νίκη, pronounced /'nike/ "NEE-keh", meaning "Victory") , was a goddess who personified triumph. yes, that's right. at the Acropolis in Athens , Athena was the primary deity worshipped, but there was also a smaller temple to Nike, as well as another smaller one to Poseidon. i wonder who Poseidon would be on the show?
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Post by Lola m on Nov 4, 2006 13:30:12 GMT -5
From Six's reaction, the 5 seem to be either feared or unliked for some reason. Or maybe they were models who didn't turn out well. More humanlike than was desired? Or not tuned into their ecosystem as the rest of them are? when six said that, i also thought perhaps the other five had split from the seven we've seen for some reason - perhaps some sort of internal disagreement, perhaps something else - and that perhaps it is too painful for the remaining seven to discuss. like how when someone becomes estranged from their family, sometimes the family members that stick together refuse to even discuss the one that left? Ooh, and we've seen this bunch squabling, so maybe we'll meet the others if there is some kind of split within this group and some of the ones we know go off to join up with them?
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Post by Shan on Nov 4, 2006 16:08:32 GMT -5
Okay, kind of vaguely formed from last night when I was just dozing off and typed this morning between cups of coffee...but it was fun to think about! Oh. My. God, Shan. ETA: BSG has eaten our brains! Interesting take on the final 5 Cylons. It's cool how many different theories would fit. From Six's reaction, the 5 seem to be either feared or unliked for some reason. Or maybe they were models who didn't turn out well. More humanlike than was desired? Or not tuned into their ecosystem as the rest of them are? CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP!
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Post by Sara on Nov 4, 2006 16:52:50 GMT -5
Speaking of Greek mythology.. On rewatching the the episode this morning, I noticed that during the scene when they gave Sharon a new call sign (she is no longer 'Boomer' meaning Boomer died), that the description given for Athena was 'goddess of wisdom and war' - usually accompanied by the goddess of victory'. I got curious as to why he just didn't use that goddess's name - and wondered what it was. From wikipedia: In Greek mythology, Nike (Greek Νίκη, pronounced /'nike/ "NEE-keh", meaning "Victory") , was a goddess who personified triumph.
She was a daughter of Pallas (Warrior) and Styx (Hatred), and the sister of Cratos (Strength), Bia (Force), and Zelus (Rivalry). Nike and her siblings were all attendants of Zeus.
According to myth, Styx brought them to Zeus when the god was assembling allies for the coming Titan War. Nike assumed the role of the god's personal charioteer, a role often portrayed in classical art. Her Roman counterpart is Victoria.
Nike was regarded as the bestower of victory, both in war and in contest. As a war goddess she was often represented standing alongside Zeus, Athena and Ares. Kara kind of fits the Nike description. If she does indeed change from her experience on the planet and metaphorically dies like Boomer did (kind of actually died, but metaphorically, too), I wonder if we'll see her nickname changed to Nike? And Adama is very Zeus-like and now considers Sharon/Athena more of a daughter than Kara. Hmm... Ok - so right after the scene where they renamed Sharon, we see Baltar asking Six who the final 5 Cylon models are - if he's seen them. She cut him short with 'I can't talk about that. It's complicated, but we don't talk about them - ever." Was that fear, anger, or what? I'm assuming the hybrid isn't a Cylon, and it fits with artemis's parallel to the Pythia in Greek mythology - the oracle that speaks in riddles. Sara had an interesting tidbit from Ron Moore about the different models of the Cylons that fits in with the different Greek mythology gods. I don't know about the original Galactica show's mythology, but are we seeing the Greek gods and how they might have come to be? And, for the curious, this is what Moore had to say: Ronald D. Moore has confirmed in interviews that there are 12 different models of humanoid Cylon, with many copies of each model in existence. Moore has also stated that the humanoid Cylons are not based on pre-existing humans: "The idea is not that there was likely an original human model that they were copied from. The idea was that these models of Cylon were sort of developed out of their own study of us. The Cylons on some level looked at humanity and said "You know what? There's really only 12 of you." If these are the 12, and sort of if you look at them they each represent different archetypes of what humanity is."
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Post by Shan on Nov 4, 2006 17:02:56 GMT -5
Speaking of Greek mythology.. On rewatching the the episode this morning, I noticed that during the scene when they gave Sharon a new call sign (she is no longer 'Boomer' meaning Boomer died), that the description given for Athena was 'goddess of wisdom and war' - usually accompanied by the goddess of victory'. I got curious as to why he just didn't use that goddess's name - and wondered what it was. From wikipedia: In Greek mythology, Nike (Greek Νίκη, pronounced /'nike/ "NEE-keh", meaning "Victory") , was a goddess who personified triumph.
She was a daughter of Pallas (Warrior) and Styx (Hatred), and the sister of Cratos (Strength), Bia (Force), and Zelus (Rivalry). Nike and her siblings were all attendants of Zeus.
According to myth, Styx brought them to Zeus when the god was assembling allies for the coming Titan War. Nike assumed the role of the god's personal charioteer, a role often portrayed in classical art. Her Roman counterpart is Victoria.
Nike was regarded as the bestower of victory, both in war and in contest. As a war goddess she was often represented standing alongside Zeus, Athena and Ares. Kara kind of fits the Nike description. If she does indeed change from her experience on the planet and metaphorically dies like Boomer did (kind of actually died, but metaphorically, too), I wonder if we'll see her nickname changed to Nike? And Adama is very Zeus-like and now considers Sharon/Athena more of a daughter than Kara. Hmm... Ok - so right after the scene where they renamed Sharon, we see Baltar asking Six who the final 5 Cylon models are - if he's seen them. She cut him short with 'I can't talk about that. It's complicated, but we don't talk about them - ever." Was that fear, anger, or what? I'm assuming the hybrid isn't a Cylon, and it fits with artemis's parallel to the Pythia in Greek mythology - the oracle that speaks in riddles. Sara had an interesting tidbit from Ron Moore about the different models of the Cylons that fits in with the different Greek mythology gods. I don't know about the original Galactica show's mythology, but are we seeing the Greek gods and how they might have come to be? And, for the curious, this is what Moore had to say: Ronald D. Moore has confirmed in interviews that there are 12 different models of humanoid Cylon, with many copies of each model in existence. Moore has also stated that the humanoid Cylons are not based on pre-existing humans: "The idea is not that there was likely an original human model that they were copied from. The idea was that these models of Cylon were sort of developed out of their own study of us. The Cylons on some level looked at humanity and said "You know what? There's really only 12 of you." If these are the 12, and sort of if you look at them they each represent different archetypes of what humanity is."That's interesting to know! But I wonder how the Cylons didn't base the models on pre-existing human genetic code <edit> if SINCE the Cylons and humans can reproduce together.
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Post by Sara on Nov 4, 2006 17:03:48 GMT -5
As for the description of Athena as goddess of wisdom and war, any musings on Athena always bring me to Neal Stephenson's brilliant description of her in Cryptonomicon:
"So anyway, you probably learned in elementary school that Athena wears a helmet, carries a shield called Aegis, and is the goddess of war and wisdom, as well as crafts - such as the aforementioned weaving. Kind of an odd combination, to say the least! Especially since Ares was supposed to be the god of war and Hestia the goddess of home economics - why the redundancy? But a lot's been screwed up in translation. See, the kind of wisdom that we associate with old farts like yours truly, and which I'm trying to impart to you here, was called dike by the Greeks. That's not what Athena was the goddess of! She was the goddess of metis, which means cunning or craftiness, and which you'll recall was the name of her mother in one version of the story... So now the connection to crafts becomes obvious - crafts are just the practical application of metis...
"I associate the word 'crafts' with making crappy belts and ashtrays in summer camp."
"It's all bad translation. The word that we use today, to mean the same thing, is really technology."
"Okay. Now we're getting somewhere."
"Instead of calling Athena the goddess of war, wisdom and macrame, then, we should say war and technology. And here again we have the problem of an overlap with the jurisdiction of Ares, who's supposed to be the god of war. And let's just say that Ares is a complete asshole. His personal aides are Fear and Terror and sometimes Strife. He is constantly at odds with Athena even though - maybe because - they are nominally the god and goddess of the same thing - war. Heracles, who is one of Athena's human proteges, physically wounds Ares on two occasions, and even strips him of his weapons at one point! You see, the fascinating thing about Ares is that he's completely incompetent... And so it seems to me that Ares really was a god of war as such an entity would be recognized by people who were involved in wars all the time, and had a really clear idea of just how stupid and ugly wars are.
"Whereas Athena is famous for being the backer of Odysseus, who, let's not forget, is the guy who comes up with the idea for the Trojan Horse. Athena guides both Odysseus and Heracles through their struggles, and although both of these guys are excellent fighters, they win most of their battles through cunning or (less pejoratively) metis. And although both of them engage in violence pretty freely (Odysseus likes to call himself 'sacker of cities') it's clear that they are being held up in opposition to the kind of mindless, raging violence associated with Ares and his offspring - Heracles even personally rids the world of a few of Ares' psychopathic sons. I mean the records aren't totally clear - it's not like you can go to the Thebes County Courthouse and look up the death certificates on these guys - but it appears that Heracles, backed up by Athena all the way, personally murders at least half of the Hannibal Lecterish offspring of Ares.
"So insofar as Athena is a goddess of war, what really do we mean by that? Note that her most famous weapon is not her sword but her shield Aegis, and Aegis has a gorgon's head on it, so that anyone who attacks her is in serious danger of being turned to stone. She's always described as being calm and majestic, neither of which adjectives anyone ever applied to Ares...
"Let's face it, Randy, we've all known guys like Ares. The pattern of human behavior that caused the internal mental representation of Ares to appear in the minds of the ancient Greeks is very much alive today, in the form of terrorists, serial killers, riots, pogroms, and aggressive tinhorn dictators who turn out to be military incompetents. And yet for all their stupidity and incompetence, people like that can conquer and control large chunks of the world if they are not resisted. . . . Who is going to fight them off, Randy?
"I'm afraid you're going to say we are."
"Sometimes it might be other Ares-worshippers, as when Iran and Iraq went to war and no one cared who won. But if Ares-worshippers aren't going to end up running the whole world, somebody needs to do violence to them. This isn't very nice, but it's a fact: civilization requires an Aegis. And the only way to fight the bastards off in the end is through intelligence. Cunning. Metis."
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Post by artemis on Nov 4, 2006 17:12:34 GMT -5
there's this whole modern idea that two gods having the same 'domain' as we think of it is redundant, but it's not. for example, in some places Aphrodite was worshipped as the goddess of war - even though today she's about the last greek god we would think of as possibly having that aspect. part of it is that the greeks distinguished nuances in some concepts where we don't, and part of it is that because what we know today as 'Greece' used to be a heap of independent city-states, each one had their own patron deity and focused on specific aspects of said deity, and each region focused on a different aspect of the same god (signified by using the different modifiers as talked about in a post above). this is also why we get so many different versions of the same myth, although usually one version is the best-known today. for an example, until Hercules' labors were written down as canon, each region had their own labors. it's only because we read the canon version rather than hear the original stories that we think of him as only having twelve of them.
by now you're probably thinking it's rather like each city-state had its own fanfic, and yes, that is in fact a decent metaphor. ;D
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Post by Squeemonster on Nov 5, 2006 11:46:40 GMT -5
Excellent info on Greek mythology, everyone. Considering I know next to nothing about it, and my google-fu has no patience, I greatly appreciate everyone taking the time to post all this information.
Very interesting stuff.
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Post by Karen on Nov 5, 2006 13:31:52 GMT -5
Training Exercise. Starbuck and Apollo back in the cockpit. With mixed results. <snip for space> Ooh, nekkid Sharon. Projecting again. We choose to see our environment anyway we wish. Ah, the am I a Cylon question. On the rewatch, I got the feeling that Baltar projected that naked vision of Sharon!8. (horny bastard, he is) Six didn't seem to have seen her. And I think I have it wrong about Six - she isn't all about sex, but Baltar is. She is more about god and love and nature.
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Post by leftylady on Nov 6, 2006 18:40:50 GMT -5
Speaking of Greek mythology.. [snip] From wikipedia: In Greek mythology, Nike (Greek Νίκη, pronounced /'nike/ "NEE-keh", meaning "Victory") , was a goddess who personified triumph.
She was a daughter of Pallas (Warrior) and Styx (Hatred), and the sister of Cratos (Strength), Bia (Force), and Zelus (Rivalry). Nike and her siblings were all attendants of Zeus. Ok - Caprica Sharon is now "Athena". Remember that "Pallas" is one of the names of Athena. [temple of Pallas Athena on the Acropolis] Is Hera/Isis to become the personifiction of triumph / victory for the Cylons? No wonder the baby is so important. leftylady
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Post by Rachael on Nov 11, 2006 12:57:14 GMT -5
It's settled. Baltar is no Jamie Bamber. You noticed that too, huh?
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Post by Rachael on Nov 11, 2006 13:01:39 GMT -5
Too many pilots, not enough birds. Sharon, not Boomer. New callsign, Athena. Thank you for making it easy to distinguish the 2. Dead Man's Chest. This is a rather civilized conversation so far. Why only seven known models? Speaking for the viewers. I can't talk about that. Speaking for the producers. Hee. Did anyone get a "Klingon" vibe from that? The whole DS9/Tribbles/forehead discussion? "We do NOT talk about it."
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Post by Rachael on Nov 11, 2006 13:13:07 GMT -5
When Starbuck and Tigh are toasting and saying "yeah, right" there is a seriously frakked up situation. Morale has taken a hell of a hit. "Holding court" Helo's the XO? "I don't think they care, sir" true enough. they are both so busy bleeding that they cant' see anything else. So these are the hybrids. Oracles of Pythia, with the blathering.. she's The Ship Who Sang. Ooh, ooh! I thought that too!!! I keep thinking that it's gonna turn out Baltar is their God . . . . I have no idea why I think that . . . . I am clearly insane. ;D I don't think so. I've had the same thoughts. So maybe we're both insane. We're still unresolved as to whether Baltar is a Cylon, IMO. As Dave pointed out, he might just be immune due to genetic variation. No matter how much mention they made of how similar they are genetically...well, the immune system is genetically quite different even between twins, due to DNA rearrangements in the immune cells themselves. Hell, immune cells within the same person have different combinations of Ig genes. So he could conceivably still by a Cylon and also immune. Or lucky. His contact wasn't that direct. Or he could be the Cylon God, but not a Cylon. Or...hey, maybe he picked up some sort of sexually transmitted infection of Cylon nanomachines from Six, and that explains some of his Cylonesque qualities.
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Post by Rachael on Nov 11, 2006 13:20:01 GMT -5
Dissension among the ranks. Will Baltar be a unifying force? He's been working with Galactica the same time. So they think he's a traitor too. He can't win. WHOA!!!!! "The Hybrid" is that what they want from Hera? To replace her when sh'e grown? Or are they actually referring to Hera and she's in on these discussions? Huh - I hadn't thought of that . . . I doubt it, though. Although the choice of the word "hybrid" is interesting. But I think they mean "hybrid" in the sense of a car with a gas/electric engine, or a bicycle that's part mountain and part road bike. She's a hybrid of two different models - humaniform and ship. It's probable that they have many hybrids of that sort already, and the difficultly in breeding human/Cylon hybrids would sort of preclude them being used for hardware in the Cylon fleet. Watch me be wrong now. (Also, this maybe belongs on the 3.07 thread, but while I'm on the topic of Hera's function - I believe that she could be what saves them literally from an infection like the one in this week's ep. I was all for seeing them have to use the antibody found in Hera's blood to save the Cylons. She really would literally be their salvation, then.)
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