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.