BSG: Baltar Beyond Forgiveness?
This post has been included in the latest Battlestar Galactica Blog Carnival. This week’s host is at the Athens Exchange.
spoilers through “The Road Less Traveled” (4.5)
Susan Lefevre jumped the fence after serving only one year of a ten-to-twenty year drug sentence. She was 19. Today, she is 53 and a mother of three. After her escape from jail, she has not been in any other trouble.
But now, thirty-four years later, she got caught. She’s hoping for a pardon based on the fact that she’s lived as an exemplarity citizen for all this time. My friend and I watched this news report, and she said—It’s a question of rehabilitation or punishment.
I thought that was a great point to make. For those who are not familiar with this idea—There are two main schools of thought regarding jailing law-breakers. A good rehabilitation program will send out better, more societally adjusted people then it took in. A good punishment program will send people out angrier and more damaged than they were when they went in. But of course, it’s easier to punish than rehabilitate.
After watching “The Road Less Traveled,” I realized that this issue also applied to Baltar. I know many viewers still want him to die before the series ends. He, of all the characters, has been the most infuriatingly and loathsomely self-serving. Although we can argue whether his crimes are greater or lesser than those of other characters, Baltar is the one least repentant. He frustrates with his magical ability to rationalize almost anything and everything for that all-encompassing protection of his psyche.
But now, he’s finally cracked. He could no longer deny who he is and what he’s done. Even with all that, he sees love in front of him. There’s love from the Six in his head. There’s love from his disciples. There’s even love, of a different kind, from people like Lee and the president.
So he starts believing in redemption, perhaps not in the attainment of it, but he starts believing that the pursuit of it is good.
Then the question comes back to us, the viewers. Is Baltar beyond forgiveness? Beyond another chance? Is who he was more important than the man he is now?
A woman in the episode said she was angry. To Baltar, she said she was angry at the scientists, at the corporations, at the politicians, at the Cylons, at the gods. She sounded like she wanted punishment—of someone, somewhere.
Punishment, undoubtedly, is the easier path. It’s the easier emotional choice. Rehabilitation, undoubtedly, is better for society. It’s the more-beneficial, more-powerful light side of the Force.
But rehabilitation involves forgiveness, the harder emotional choice. And rehabilitation involves the understanding that what is now is different than what was then. It involves letting the past go.
The Human/Cylon relationship is much changed. Can the Humans and the Cylon-splinter group align for the benefit of both? Or will the need for punishment win out? Can the Colonists forgive those who attacked them, if only to save their own souls?
What about Baltar? Will he be accepted? Will the fleet and we the viewers allow him his new life—his rehabilitated life? Because that, certainly, is the societal road less traveled.
just wanted to say how good i thought this post was.
your points on societies ability to differentiate between rehabilitation and punishment, or even if there’s a desire to, are prescient in the extreme.
The need to see crimes atoned for, be it physically or mentally, is deep rooted in the human psyche. Our inability to truly forgive often holds us back, and i say that as someone who’s made the very mistake.
as for Gaius…we’ll see. but i for one would like to see him come through all this in one piece. whether or not the fleet en masse can see his true repentance is another matter.
and i do think he has repented…
Oddly, my scripture reading for the day I watched this episode was the parable of the lost sheep. It was an eerie correlation to Balter’s need to connect with Tyrol. And I was again struck by the messianic nature Baltar has assumed. Will it play out as such? Will the enabler of the destruction of the colonies also be the instrument by which humanity is saved? Or will some new twist in the human journey alter his course?
magnusbarfod: If the writers are having Baltar be insincere in all this, they sure didn’t tell the actor. James Callis is doing an incredible job, and there is truth in his presentation.
griot: Conventionally, Baltar is one of those characters whose redemption will only come at his final sacrifice. We’ll have to see whether the BSG writers follow this conventionality or not. I love that this series has me guessing at things like this rather than just taking it for granted that I already know the forgone conclusion.