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Okay, this was how the viewing of "Downloaded" began
at our house:
{Six wakes up in a tub of goo, gasping
fearfully about her memories. Pause TiVo.}
evay: How was it that Six was killed in
the destruction of Caprica, but Baltar wasn't?
Moogie:...that's a really good question. How the hell did he survive?
Maybe he's a Cylon. {Moogie is very good at predicting plot twists
which I never see coming.}
evay: But what would be the point? She went on and on about how
their baby would be half-human-- oh, but wait, that was before we realized
it was Sharon's and Helo's kid Six was actually talking about.
Moogie: He could be seriously deep undercover.
evay: eh, it wouldn't make sense.
Moogie: Are we going to see a new Cylon model?
{Resume TiVo. Male voice saying "Shhhhh." Pan up to...BALTAR!
hovering over the tub. Pause TiVo.}
evay (with much screaming and table-pounding): I can't believe
it! Goddammit! I can't believe Moore did that! Baltar's a Cylon!
{Resume TiVo.}
BALTAR: I'm not really here.
{Pause TiVo.}
evay: What the hell?!
And from there we were off and running
into the best show of the season, even topping "Resurrection
Ship" for advancing the overall series mythology.
New Cylons, old Cylons, Cylons fighting each other,
Mister Underwear Model returns to fight the Cylons,
the cybrid baby is born, Baltar hallucinates Six, Six
hallucinates Baltar, and we still have two more episodes
to go!
How do the clones address one another?
Do they have something like an individual smell or an
aura or something which the units can sense? Or is it
like the Q, where everyone is "Q" and you
just sort of know who's being addressed? I'm going to
have to tweak my nomenclature yet again to keep everyone
straight. Lucy Lawless's character (Xenanne) called
herself model #3, so I'm renaming her Threena. The Sharon
who started the the series on Galactica and died
there was the only one who actually functioned as "Boomer,"
so she's the one who's been reanimated, and the one
who started on Caprica with Helo and is now on Galactica
and was pregnant until this episode is (for now) Sharon.
There are a bunch of Sixes on Caprica, but only one
who's bucking the system, and naming the Cylons after
locations gets hairy when they move, so let's call
her
Rebel Six for the moment.
I can't imagine that every personality
who gets downloaded wakes up in an underlit tub of
goo in an otherwise empty enormous darkened room,
surrounded by a delicately dressed welcoming committee
who personally coddle and coo the resurrected one back
to sanity. Seems a bit inefficient.
So the Cylons hadn't actually planned on
complete and utter genocidal annihilation; it was just
lucky overkill?
Notice that Boomer is handcuffed to the
side of the download bin, while Rebel Six isn't. So
they knew that Boomer might have a bad reaction.
Speaking of knowing, I guess they don't
have a constant groupmind link after all. Maybe it's
only when an individual is uploaded that the memories
are shared with the gestalt, and everyone who downloads
after that gets that information. But are memories
only shared within a model (since Sharon had Boomer's
memories specifically) or is all information shared
with everyone? And each personality gets to keep her
own individual memories as well as getting the model's
history, sort of like a Trill symbiont? (There's another
echo of this late in the first scene with Rebel Six
and Boomer, where Rebel Six speaks of "embracing
my new life.") And whatever isn't implanted pre-download
is like any other information which has to be shared
manually, which is why Rebel Six didn't know about
Baltar being alive, because she was downloaded nine
months ago show time before that information would
have come to the gestalt, and was deliberately not
told about it.
However, wombat61 pointed out a problem
with this. If the memories are downloaded and uploaded
only between bodies, how does Sharon have Boomer's
memories? Sharon was running around on Caprica with
Helo while Boomer was still on Galactica with
Chief. My original theory was that when Boomer was
touched by the nekkid Sharons (I should say, the Eights)
on the basestar, her memories were uploaded and she
received a message to activate her sleeper programming.
But even if her memories reached the gestalt that way,
how would Sharon -- on Caprica, with no contact with
other Cylons by that point -- have gotten them? There's
a similiar problem with Rebel Six; if she's shared
her experiences with the Six gestalt, and those memories
of feeling love for Baltar and/or other humans are
making her feel guilt or other stress, won't
all the new Sixes after her be affected as well?
Would they
all be walking around with sneering Baltars at their
sides?
Maybe they are all a bit off and they're going to
rally to her cause?
As
far as I can tell, this is a genuine continuity error.
(Of course, if Moore would just explain how they
talk to one another, this could be pretty easily resolved.)
What a terrifying moment, for Boomer
to wake up and realize, truly realize, what she is.
The horror of it -- Grace Park's scream, and the rapidly
rising crane shot, captured the emotional vertigo beautifully.
The audience has to remember suddenly which Sharon
this is, and where we "left" her when she
died -- what she was thinking and what she might or
might not have known.
So: Rebel Six has Baltar whom only she
can see. Baltar has a Six whom only he can see, who
is not the one he lived with on Caprica. Does
each of them have a chip? There's no way the Cylons
could have a program which knows Baltar well enough
to predict his responses, so maybe the chips just
send
out generic impulses, which are then given dressing
and detail by the individual. Baltar gets a Threat
prod,
and he hallucinates Six throwing him across the room.
Rebel Six gets a Guilt prod, and hears Baltar whispering
in her ear about the billions of humans dead. Each
of the "ghosts" has a similar tone and stance:
a little sneering, a little cajoling, a little baiting,
a little reward. But: who put the chip in Rebel Six?
And if Baltar and Rebel Six have chips, why?
Boomer didn't need a chip to love Chief, nor did
Sharon
need one to love Helo. Is it because the Sharons are
the "weak" models, as Ghost Six once suggested,
and Sixes are tougher, so Rebel Six needs something
to help her along? To what purpose? To get her to find
the humans and hook up with the real Baltar again?
The
pursuit of the emotion of love? What happens if Rebel
Six does get off Caprica and gets to Baltar? She'll
expose him, more solidly than Roslin's accusations.
Maybe that will be Baltar's way out if he's revealed
-- Rebel Six helps him escape the fleet. If Boomer
gets a message to the fleet, that would also expose
Baltar.
Will she choose to help Rebel Six? Turn them both in?
What a marvelous ethical quandary has been set up,
with
these two as traitors to their own treason. And serving
gods only know what masters in the end. (Will the
two
rebels join up with the human resistance, and get off
Caprica all together?)
Does nobody notice the enormous
pauses in conversation when Rebel Six or Baltar turn
in distraction to their ghosts?
How can so much of Caprica be so intact,
right down to pictures in frames, but everyone dead?
They wouldn't have re-stocked Boomer's apartment. And
why was it untouched to begin with? Did they leave
it that way in case she came back still in her cover
identity?
Kudos again to Park and Tricia Helfer
for showing us clearly different units of the same
model.
Sharon and Boomer aren't the same person. Ghost Six
is seductive and lethal; Rebel Six is vulnerable and
confused,
and
doesn't give you the sense that she's constantly plotting
and conniving. (Even though she is, c.f. slicing her
face with her own nail.) It's a hard trick to pull
off, and the two actresses keep doing it consistently.
Plus
Park has these enormous and expressive liquid eyes
which convey fathoms of feeling.
I love Cottle's snark: "I find it
absolutely amazing -- you people went to all the trouble
to appear human and didn't upgrade the plumbing!" A
detached placenta is bad.
Okay, Threena is talking to Rebel Six,
and they walk along a sort of balcony, where several
Sharons (Eights), Threes, Sixes, and Dorals (Fives,
by process of elimination given her comment) are leaning
against a banister looking out. As Threena and Rebel
Six come around a corner to go down the stairs, there's
a Doral, in full bright-red business suit... gardening.
Digging, actually, with quite a bit of energy. And
as the camera pulls out, we see that everyone leaning
on the banister has a great view of... another concrete
wall. These people are plain weird.
"There's talk of boxing her," Threena
threatens. Like the destruction of the Resurrection
Ship, the thought of having one's individual memories
not passed down to another body is about the only "death" a
Cylon can have. Although not for anything, it's only
been what, forty, fifty years since the original war
when the Classic BSG Cylon models fled the humans?
and how long would it have taken them to create bodies
which so perfectly mimic humans that it takes a deep,
elaborate, specialized scan to detect it? How many
times could any individual unit have been killed and
resurrected? Do they die more quickly because they're
manufactured? Maybe they take it for granted because
they don't bother to heal -- when Rebel Six is injured
in the explosion, Threena immediately offers to "take
a crossbar and put you out of your misery." She'll
only wake up again in another body (unless, of course,
Threena boxes her), so it's not as horrifying as it
sounds, and Rebel Six doesn't seem appalled or even
offended at the suggestion.
Why does Mr. UM think it makes sense
for the Cylons to remember him in their gestalt as
a terrorist? Isn't the anonymous strike-and-run more
frightening? That they don't know if the bombs were
set just recently or have been there for a while? Bad
tactics, I think. Why give the enemy any information
about you if you don't have to?
Man, the girls of the Colonial fleet
have some awesome apartments. I can only imagine the
luxury Lee lived in. And Boomer cleaned up and styled
her hair with breathtaking speed.
Boomer's re-emergence is brilliantly
written. The bitterness and anger, the self-hatred,
the resentment, clinging to the only identity she can
remember -- all note-perfect. Although if she can only "remember" being
Boomer, does that mean she's a new personality thread?
Was she alive in another body before she was Boomer?
It doesn't sound like anyone else only remembers one
life back. Was she created as a blank slate with the
imprinted memories?
Baltar's Ghost Six has given him things
to say; now we have the reverse, with Rebel Six's Ghost
Baltar speaking with her, for her. It was spooky and
exciting
to watch. What is he? How is he?
Sharon and Helo cooing over baby Hera
was really sweet. (Hera, Queen of the Greek gods;
Ghost Six
says of her that she was to "lead the next generation
of God's children.") But why would Helo say that
her birth was due to the Cylon god? The Lords of
Kobol
couldn't grant a similar miracle?
Moore was really particular about only
showing clones of the six models we've seen so far.
I wonder if the Cylons themselves think that's a bit
weird, that only half their "population" is
present.
It's fascinating to listen to the Cylons
speak, how both rebels just say "she" and
know which person they mean, and how carefully they
avoid using names other than "Sharon" and
the one instance where Threena calls Rebel Six "Caprica." I'd
like to see another episode like this with more Cylon
interaction, to see how their society works.
So Threena wants Boomer to move out.
To where? What does that mean? Why can't she stay where
she is, other than the identifiers? She can't just
get rid of "Boomer's" stuff? Are they going
to rent out her room? Are there dorms where they all
sleep in anonymous stacks?
Threena says that Starbuck was on Caprica
-- Boomer gives her this hilarious look like And
you didn't tell me? But then she says Kara
escaped "with the help of another Sharon." Why
wouldn't she say "another Eight"? Is she
trying to tie Sharon's treason to Boomer's, to make
Boomer feel worse?
So now Sharon blames Roslin and/or Adama
for Hera's death. Adama already treats her with thinly
veiled disdain, and Roslin nearly ordered her pregnancy
aborted. All the loyalty she has left is Helo. How
much help do the leaders still expect to get from her?
And if she's no longer cooperative, is she next
out the airlock?
That was kind of Chief, to go with Helo
to scatter the ashes. Although unless there's air coming
out of the Raptor, pushing the ashes out in a stream,
they wouldn't be moving in a vacuum. Even if Helo flung
them in an arc, it'd be very slow movement and dispersal.
(I know, I know, pick pick pick.)
To Baltar's credit, he really does look
devastated over the baby. He's definitely more on the
Cylons' side emotionally -- or at least, Six's side.
(The Sixes' side?) If Rebel Six shows up to rescue him,
he'll jump ship (literally) without a second thought.
I think it was a mistake to turn Hera
over to someone who hasn't been briefed. Granted that
it's difficult to detect a Cylon by scientific means,
something is going to happen which will make her stand
out, and the mother is not going to know what to do
to keep it quiet. I understand the idea of hiding the
baby in plain sight, but not without the main player
in ignorance. Besides, all the Cylons have to do is
keep an eye on any female infant born within four months
of Sharon's due-date. Even in a fleet of fifty thousand,
how many girl babies could be born in that window?
And how many are going to be visited by the President?
Roslin's cover story was a decent one, nevertheless,
and mostly believable.(She puts her hand out to caress
Hera's head, and never quite makes contact with
her skin. Diabolical!)
Interesting bookend of Threena in the
opening and Roslin near the close both saying "Trust
me..."
The end scene was a little stilted and
preachy in spots in the dialogue, but sometimes you
have to jam in a little cabbagehead narration to move
things along. I am glad to see that Cylons can be changed
from their experiences and don't have to be all of
a mind and all of a piece like automatons, but I'd
like to see Cylons without that literally "humanizing" experience
change their minds. So far we've seen Sharon, Boomer,
and Rebel Six change sides, but what about one of the
men? What about a Cylon with no human exposure? Does
Rebel Six really think that a day and a half of preaching
is going to sweep Caprica like wildfire and change
everyone's minds? (not that it'll bring back the dead,
of course...)
Why did Boomer tackle Mr. UM and stop
him from shooting at Threena? And what is he going
to report back to his comrades?
According to Joseph Campbell in The
Power of Myth, "Maya," the name of
Hera's adoptive mother, means "illusion." |
