Ron Moore's version of Battlestar Galactica may be a classic in an
almost literal fa****on--could Battlestar Galactica be Plato's The
Republic refa****oned as a science fiction television series?
Why shouldn't people be completely selfish because might makes right?
Because the ultimately unhappy person is the tyrant, that is, Baltar,
at the end of the occupation. Battlestar Galactica showed the
downward progression from oligarchy, the first commander of Pegasus
after Admiral Helena Cain and the black market mafia, to democracy,
the people who voted for Baltar, and finally the tyranny of Baltar.
Interestingly, Plato's The Republic ends with the Myth of Er, where a
miraculously revived soldier tells of the endless cycle of
reincarnation that distills the essence of souls, with each cycle
involving people forgetting previous lives before passing on to the
next. And note that in this myth, people could choose to be
reincarnated as animals, such as Greek hero Ajax choosing to be a
lion, and vice versa. I don't think it's a stretch to assume that
Cylon souls can reincarnate as human souls and vice versa because that
speculation was explicitly stated by Leoben to Starbuck when he
explained that in other cycles she had been in his place and he in
hers.
The final Cylon I think, isn't, or is, everyone, everything, past,
present, and future. The final Cylon is the collective consciousness
of the universe. The choice is to continue the cycle, to continue the
distillation, to purify or discard the dross ... or to end the cycle,
to do what Admiral Adama would advise, to "live with it". The Cylons,
what is left of them, jump and really do go their own way, or maybe
some stay behind to cast their lot with humans, but there is no final
resolution, no victory of one side or another. After all, in each
cycle there must eventually be human and Cylon, just like there are
both humans and animals.
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