What makes us human?

ONE of my favorite shows right now, apart from “Heroes,” is the “Battlestar Galactica” TV series, which reimagines this cult classic that first appeared as a movie in 1978.

I’m actually a late convert to this show, which I could never seem to catch on cable, and frankly once you start finishing a whole season in one sitting, it’s hard to be patient with watching weekly episodes on your TV set, heh

This might contain spoilers for those who haven’t seen the show yet or who are still blissfully unaware of the reimagining, so you’ve been warned, OK?

To me, this reimagining of the “Battlestar Galactica” universe is a thought-provoking examination of some of the scientific and moral dillemmas that face us in the real world. The show’s creators have managed to pull this off without being heavy-handed (well, for the most part) and still making the series entertaining and action-packed.

In a twist that riffs on themes that have also been explored by Isaac Asimov in his “Robots” novels, and by “Blade Runner” and “Terminator,” some of the Cylons now look human. Heck, not only do they look human, in many ways they are human – it’s not just skin-deep, but extends to their organs, their blood and all, which appear to be real even when examined by doctors.

More important, they also feel human, with the capacity to fall in love, and think like humans, even believing in the existence of God.  In fact, the irony here is that some of these human-looking Cylons (there are 12 models of these human-looking Cylons, and many copies of each model), believe in God more than many of the actual humans do. The Cylons are also monotheistic, believing in just one supreme being who is the God of both Cylons and humans, while the humans believe in the Gods of Kobol, who are actually the Greek deities of myth.

Some of the most fascinating, even chilling episodes involve scenes with the human heroes torturing Cylon captives, excusing their actions by saying these human-looking enemies are only machines. Even the most murderous of these Cylons is shown being capable of nobility, in resisting pain (instead of turning off their pain software) and forcing their captors to consider the possibility that they are just as human as the humans themselves. 

The characters in this series are not black and white cardboard creatures. The heroes are not perfect, and the supposed villains are not all evil. In fact, my favorite character happens to be one of the human-looking Cylons, who was unaware of the truth.

It’s a question the show poses again and again. Can machines fall in love? More to the point, can humans fall in love with machines? And when these two beings, who as a Cylon pointed out were both ultimately created by God, in that God created humans and humans created the Cylons, fall in love, who is to say that this love is less because it was felt by a machine, or was felt for a machine?

In the series, as in the real world, we are shown that we have a tendency to demonize our enemies, to dehumanize those who are unlike us, to say that they are the Others who are unworthy of God.

Yet what happens when the machine turns out to be more noble than man?        

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