Battlestar Galactica and the Issue of Genocide (contains spoilers for the show)

The science-fiction show Battlestar Galactica ran from 2004 to 2009. An excellent show based off an earlier version done in the late 1970s, it has a central theme of genocide, what counts as genocide, and how to deal with it. The show opens with the near-obliteration of the human race, leaving roughly 50,000 survivors to explore the universe in the hopes of finding a new home. The cylons, originally robots created by the humans who turned against them in a bitter war forty years prior to the show, had returned with the intent of wiping out the human race. The twist, however, is that the cylons had figured out how to make new models that appeared human – the doctors cannot recognize a difference. There is a supposed test created early in the show that can test for synthetic somethings (it’s never really made clear), but that never resurfaces. There are, however, infinite copies of the same model, so that when one dies, its memories are uploaded into another copy which can then go out into the world (or wherever it needs to go).

The humanoid cylons (often referred to as “skin jobs”), despite the fact that they are supposedly machines, follow a religion. They believe in the “one true god,” whereas the humans that they were trying to eliminate were mainly a polytheistic society, with a religion that reflected what we know as ancient Greek mythology. These cultural differences play a large role in the conflict between the two “races” portrayed in the show. Both see the religion of their enemy as wrong and inferior (for a time, anyway). In addition, both societies fancy themselves to be democracies, although they work in different ways. The humans elect a president and vice president, and the twelve former colonies are represented in a quorum. The cylons work together to vote based on a majority-rules system. However, both societies are blatantly capable of genocide and mass murder, which is talked about particularly in our reading by Michael Mann, who argued that liberal democracy does not exclude genocide and atrocities. While it might be argued that it is not genocide because it is machines versus humans, it is an attempt to completely eliminate another race and their culture, and the “skin jobs” are much more human than is initially believed. It is proved that there can be offspring between a human and a cylon, and the emotions felt by the cylons are a contradiction to the theory of their simply being a machine.

In addition to this opening massacre, much of the show focuses on the human-cylon war, in which each side tries to evade and eliminate the other. In one episode, it is discovered that the cylons are susceptible to a particular disease that humans long ago developed an immunity to. Some of the humans wish to send the sick cylons that they’ve captured into the rest of the cylon fleet, thereby wiping out everyone in one fell swoop with biological warfare. The episode (“A Measure of Salvation,” Season 3, Episode 7) focuses on the arguments for and against wiping out the cylons. On the one hand, it is recognized as a genocidal act – but on the other hand, these are the enemies that obliterated the human race and have been hunting these few survivors ever since. Why not end the hunt, save the remaining humans, and never have to fear their enemies again? It is up to the sabotage of one human – who knows firsthand just how human the skin jobs can be – to save the cylon race by killing the infected prisoners.

Another episode, much earlier, shows a cylon-created “hospital” on an abandoned, nuked planet in which the cylons try to harvest reproductive organs from remaining humans, as well as experiment on them, in an attempt to figure out how they can reproduce and create fully cylon offspring. This example of forced sterilization, in addition to torture and death, completely goes along with the definition of genocide.

Later in the series, the genocidal arguments waver as the cylons are divided by a civil war. There is always the question of trust, but it becomes less genocidal on the side of the humans when there is the desire to team up with these rebel cylons.

The genocidal acts of the cylons against the humans in the series, especially early on, are fairly blatant and unarguable. It becomes more convoluted later in the show, but the focus on what constitutes a genocide and what is a just retaliation remains.

Also it’s an excellent show and you should watch it.