Hello and welcome to Sci-Fi Therapy, the podcast where we put our favourite sci-fi shows on the couch. In this first season, we're going to take a deep dive into Battlestar Galactica, the version from 2006. If you'd like to follow along with us, in today's episode, we'll be looking at the pilots, specifically part two of the pilot. I'm Nalima, a psychotherapist based in London. And I'm Mark, a theologian from Germany. So, the way our episodes will work is that Mark and I have watched the episodes separately, and then we pick a few things that have struck us about the episodes, and then we talk about them. And before we dive in, please make sure you hit that subscribe button so you can follow us along on this journey. And if you like what you hear, leave us a review to let us know what you think. Now as in the last episode we'd like to give you a short summary of what is happening in the second part of the pilot so when we left off um we saw or actually thought um that captain apollo lee adama the son of the commander um is probably dead because he tries to escape a Cylon attack by igniting what looks like a large and huge weapon of some kind. It turns out that he's actually alive. And what he did was he ignited sort of the FTL drive, the faster than light drive of the ship he's on. The now colonial one to make it look like a nuclear explosion in order to disperse and irritate the missiles that were hitting or flying towards the ship and it seemingly worked, everybody is a bit rattled but still alive which is a good and thankful thing and. Now that we know that he's still alive, basically two things happen to, two directions are being described in this episode. One, there's a military direction, because all of the military personnel, starting with Commander Adama over Sol Tai and all the rest of the Galacticus crew, are still sort of in battle mode, in war mode. We hear them constantly referring to the war that we fight. There's a war on, and we need to go back into the fight, which is the reason they try to find some ammunition. Because, as we remember, the Battlestar Galactica was going to be turned into a museum and is, of course, without any sort of weaponry or ammunition. I mean, they do have weapons, but they have nothing to shoot with. So what they try to do is they try to go and visit uh the ragnar station which is a weapons depot um that is located in some sort of space storm it looks like a nebula from star trek and it seems to be a rather inhospitable place um with lightnings and as we will learn some sort of radiation that does not seem to be harmful to humans, but to every other life form. And the reason the station is there is because it is especially harmful to silicon pathways and silicon circuits, so to Cylons. So this is actually a weapons depot located in a very inhospitable place to Cylons. On the other hand, we have the direction of the civilian part of the population, so all the survivors are represented by the president. Uh laura rosalyn who is now trying to uh gather all the survivors all the refugees and make a run for it basically so in her mind um humanity has fought a war and has lost and now has to run away as far as they can in order to hide from the cylons and make a living or as she puts it we need to make a run for it we need to run and we need to settle down and we need to start having babies and lots of them because uh correct me if i'm wrong here in lima but i think there's like 50 000 people left yeah. I think it's something like that. Yeah so this is the amount of people that is left from a few billion people and i um i think there's a scientific number uh of how many people you need before your population simply collapses into itself and 50 000 seems to be slightly and barely above that threshold you know so that your gene pool doesn't doesn't degrade over time so yeah um we learned a few other things or a few other things happen One, they meet a guy on the station, on Ragnar Station. It is simply a guy who has a weapon for some reason and who claims to be a weapons dealer. It turns out he's not. Instead, he is a Cylon. And because of some accident, Commander Adama gets trapped with him in a tunnel. And as they try to find their way back to the rest of the Galacticus crew. He looks worse and worse. And they start talking to each other. And at first, he tells some lie about having allergies or something. But then Adama realizes that the way he looks, he's probably being affected by the storm and the radiation, which can only conclude one thing and only mean one thing. He is a Cylon. So Commander Adama in this moment realizes the Cylons look like us now. The Cylons look like humans. And they fight. Commander Adama wins. He kills the Cylon. And they have this very peculiar dialogue which only lasts for, I don't know, a couple of moments where the Cylon kind of gives away the motivation for the Cylons to do what they did, namely attack the human race. And that is maybe the Cylons are God's retribution for the human's sins, for the sins that the humans have committed. Sort of like, you know, the flood in the Old Testament. So, yeah, that happens. And we also learn about Gaius Balta a bit more, who is a very peculiar person. And I think, and we know already that he's your personal favorite character. As in that he is of course sort of a bad guy with no conscience to speak of and of course because of that he is portrayed by a British person and we learn that he, sees the woman in red called number six, and we are left in the dark about how he can see her actually so is she a vision is she a hallucination we don't know she seems to be able to interact with him and his body in a very physical way though nobody else sees her only he sees her and he is musing by himself um is she a hallucination? Is she a vision? Is she a chip planted in his brain? We simply don't know. What we do know is that she is sort of giving him clues. And if this is his subconscious, talking to him, his subconscious is really, really clever. But effectively, we don't know. So, a lot of other stuff is happening, interactions between, for example, Commander Adama and his son, between Saul Tsai and Starbuck. But you know in the overall story arc what happens is that. They have basically Commander Adama and the president have a meeting, and she's trying to convince him that the battle is lost and that the one thing they have to do is to hide and to run away and to save everybody that is savable And so, Commander Adama, at some point, decides that she is actually right, which is interesting to see because his opinion of the schoolteacher, as he calls her, isn't that high. Mm-hmm. But he seems to realize that the battle is indeed lost, and they don't stand a chance. I mean, it's the Battlestar surrounded by civilian ships with no defensive capabilities whatsoever. And so he really has to decide by himself, and we can speculate on what's going on in his brain. But basically, he comes to the conclusion, yes, we need to run. Yes, we need to save what's left of humanity. So they exit the stormy area, this nebula, and protect it by Commander Adama. The civilian ships, one by one, leave the storm whilst being attacked by Cylons. There's like two or three base ships, a whole bunch of Cylons fighters, a lot of rockets being shot at the humans. And one by one, the civilian ships leave the storm and FTL jump somewhere else beyond the red line, which seems to be uncharted space. And so in the end, Galactica leaves. We see some sort of really, really tough stunt by Starbuck, who manages to ram her ship into the one of Liadama. So it's two fighters rammed in each other because Liadama's ship was damaged in the fight. And with this interlocked maneuver, she saves him onto the ship. And so the Galactica itself can jump away. And the pilot episode concludes with a ceremony in honor of the dead people, killed by the fire, killed by Cylons, killed in any other fashion. And so when the ceremony is over, Commander Adama addresses all the people that are there, all the attendees. And he presents that there is a mythical 13th colony. So, we know that the president is the president of the 12 colonies, so 12 planets, as we described in the first episode, but there seems to be a 13th one. And he claims that he knows where it is and that they are now on an exodus, on a journey to this 13th planet as a sort of destination for refuge. And this will that this will be a long and arduous, journey but you know that that they will now go there and so he gives everyone else sort of a goal to aim towards and, yeah and the episode ends with the president talking to him and telling him right in the face that he has told a lie and that there's, of course, no 13th colony. And he bluntly admits, yes, yes, I've lied and there's no 13th colony. But it's not just enough to live, you need something to live for. So, yeah, that's it. Please add anything that I've overlooked. Just at the end, we see the Cylons going to, what was the name of the planet? with the um. Correct i was wrong i was totally wrong that's not the last the last scene i'm sorry um and thank you for adding that yes they meet there's a last scene on ragnar station. That's it go on. Um so um we see that uh the cylons enter ragnar station um and they uh, Well, yeah, they have a look around. And we see all the Cylons that we know so far. So there's the guy that they met on Ragnar Station. There's number six, of course. There's the guy that seemed to be some sort of public relations guy in the first episode. He isn't really important, which is why I've not mentioned him before, but he's there. And we see Boomer. and boomer because they debate whether or not to follow and pursuit the humans and try to wipe out all that's left of humanity and they say yeah we need to do that because if we don't if we don't pursuit the humans they will come back and take revenge and yeah so uh they they see boomer um who shows up and she says don't worry i know how to find them and yeah so we know now that there's um that boomers now also uh a cylon and we learned something else which is rather important um cylons show up in multiple numbers so there's like uh 12 or 13 i don't know a number of cylons entering the facility, But there's like three number sixes, four of another model, two of another model, and then one boomer. So what we can conclude from that is that there's like maybe a few different Cylon models. And, but, you know, it's not like there's like one number six. There may be hundreds of number sixes. There may be dozens of boomers. So a model is a model like a volkswagen okay so you have like a car um and this is one model of a car but there's like millions of this one model and same seems to be true for uh the cylons so yeah and um this also leaves us to realize that um maybe um or at least we can actually at least question whether or not Cylons can die or not. Because at one point the guy with the gun on the Ragnar station says that even if he dies, his mind will just transfer to another body. So, maybe they are interchangeable as well. We might see that in later episodes. So, yeah. Number 6. Says that as well in the first pilot. Does she yeah that her body. Will it's almost like reincarnation. Which would make sense for a um for a um a polytheistic yeah polytheistic a society indeed yes um but we might might see that in in later episodes um as well um nelima what do you say want you would you like to put this episode on the couch. Yes. Okay. You and I have put together our notes and picked what we thought would be the most interesting. Right. So, I guess we just take it from the top, don't we? Yeah. Okay. So, parent versus children relationships. So, I was thinking of this both literally and also metaphorically, if that's the word. So, literally in terms of the Adama. So you've got General Adama and Leo Adama and their relationship we saw in the first pilot episode looked really strained. And it sounded, at least my understanding of it was that it's because the other brother died. So Captain Apollo's brother died and he didn't think that his brother was ready to fly, but he believes that his dad pushed him into doing this because this was how the brother would get love from his dad. Um and then in the second part of the pilot you can see at the beginning of the episode how, distressed um general adama looks um to think that oh my god his other son is now dead and then they have this sort of moment um i think it was towards the end of the episode, where they try and talk to each other and general adama says not right now but they still hug each other um and there's something in that that almost feels um like yeah it looked awkward it looked a little bit uncomfortable and it looked like it made things a little bit better because then also there was another point in the episode where uh the younger dharma he sort of says you know i think my dad is right and he actually calls him father calls him dad I can't remember the exact words that he used but it sounded like he really respected his father um, And then there's the other relationship for me, which also feels a bit like a parent-child relationship, but the more rebellious type of the XO. Why can I not remember his name? Saltai. Saltai. So there's the relationship between Saltai and Starbuck. And if you remember in the first episode he put starbuck into the uh break uh for bad behavior, and in the second episode of the pilot he approaches her to apologize and also to say well done for the brilliant rescue that she did of captain apollo and he goes and it to me it seemed pretty humble and i was a bit at first i was like oh this is really cool that he's doing this and he has the humility to be able to you know say i was wrong and she basically turns around and says you know does ask for permission to speak frankly which you know got to give her some credit and then basically says you know demonstrates her total lack of respect for him because he is an alcoholic um and she finds him weak um and i guess that is probably why she doesn't have the same relationship with him that she does with general adama which seems much more respectful and general adama seems to also be able to get through to starbuck and communicate with her in a way that she understands um that is also respectful to her and so i found those relationships quite um quite interesting shall we say what. Would you um assume the reasons are for those sort of relationships. I mean, why are Sol Tye and Starbuck the way they are? Why are Commander Adama and Li Adama the way they are? Um i feel like the adama one is probably a bit more sort of stereotypical of that sort of you know father son relationship you know dad's in the army son joins the army to impress dad um, and it seems like lee was made for it like this is his place that's where he should be starbucks says to lee that she was the reason why the brother died to kind of almost say that he wasn't fit for the military he wasn't fit to be a pilot but because they were in a relationship she passed him um and so he made it through and he shouldn't have made it through and if he hadn't have made it through then he would probably still be alive disappointed but alive um and. Don't you find it funny that, I mean, just because you phrase it like you just did, raises, for me, the question at least, nobody seems to think about the brother's will, you know? I mean, the father seems to blame himself because, I mean, we don't know, do we? Do we know that Komaru Adama is giving himself some blame because of the death of his son? No, I don't think so. Not yet. I think it comes out in the first or second episode. Okay. Well, at least Lee Adama blames his father because of the influence the father has on his son. And starbuck blames herself because she passed her boyfriend even though he wasn't ready and and i start thinking so the brother who has not remained nameless but whose name i simply can't remember yeah zach or something we need to look this up. Oh maybe yeah. Um but um i I mean, he has, I mean, he feels like a puppet, doesn't he? I mean, you know, if, how do I put this? Yeah. Your trainer, your supervisor should be able to tell you, okay, you're not fit for duty. But if you're the worst in class, the worst pilot there is, if you're not completely stupid, you should be able to notice the fact that everybody else is outdoing you and that they're all better than you. And I mean, nobody's talking about what he wanted. They're all assuming stuff, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Like, did he not have it within him to see, actually, maybe I'm not a good pilot. Maybe this isn't the bit of the military that I should be in. Right. And maybe that's okay. But then i guess this is the i guess this is the sort of therapy side of it would be like uh sometimes we're not able to see that kind of stuff sometimes we will, use everything within us to follow the path that our parent wants to us to follow because we just want to be loved by our parents um and so even if we think that we're bad at this or this is making us unwell in whatever way we will pursue it just so that our parents will be proud of us, so he may have seen it and he may have had all of this awareness and also he may have just ignored it and been like well fuck it my girlfriend's passed me dad's gonna love me now um you know life's all right. Wouldn't it be really ironic if he did all of this to impress his older brother. Yeah that would be interesting yeah actually, If only he could come back from the dead. Yeah. And then the Starbuck relationship. I mean, Starbuck in herself, I find her really interesting because she's so ballsy and so sort of self-confident and she seems really... What's the word she's self-confident and has beliefs and principles and she stands by them and she doesn't seem sort of hypocritical. Um i. Have a lot of respect for her i have to say. Okay to me she seems sort of um the word i'm looking for is not unorganized but a bit jumpy, chaotic yeah chaotic yeah well she seems to act on on an impulse a lot you know she she seems to have a problem with uh self-restraint i mean it's it's a bit ironic that um an alcoholic like soul tie would accuse her of having trouble to just realizing when to shut up but um but she does doesn't she i mean she yes uh there was a fault on both sides when she hit a superior officer, at a card game that is true but i mean it is still hitting a superior officer and you just i mean yeah she lost all respect for him obviously but you just don't do that you know yeah if you feel like you can't yeah please go on. It's just why the military just i find it fascinating because you have to follow these orders whether you agree with them or you don't and i can completely understand why she doesn't respect this man who is supposed to be in a position of not just power but responsibility and yet isn't doing anything to look after himself so he can take on this responsibility. But don't you have that everywhere? Well, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that is part of the issue of like, you're not allowed to, in a way, if you aren't a superior, you're not allowed to stand up to your superior. So General Adama could say something to Saltaire, but not anybody else. Right. Because I remember having a really, really, really bad boss. Like he was unfit for that sort of job. Okay. He just didn't know how to lead. He didn't know how to solve problems. He didn't trust anybody. um and worst of all he hated conflicts and he hated making decisions, which is yeah which is like an anti-boss if you will and he's still he's still because of reasons he still got the uh the position and um i i remember feeling this this deep conflict in myself because on one hand i had lost all respect for that man and i still have and um i don't know what I'm going to do or say next time I meet him. I hope this is still years and years in the future. But on the other hand, he was my boss, so I was bound to do what he wanted. Yeah. So, as an employee, or in this case, as an inferior soldier, is inferior the opposite of superior. Yeah. Yeah well not the same yeah not not you know just not on the same step on the on the leather you know um um so as a soldier as a normal soldier or as an employee you just have if you can't take it and if you feel like okay my superior is is just um it's just not doing a good job and if every other way is shut down or impossible for you, then you can just quit, can't you? I mean, this is the last resort that you have. Yeah, yeah. Or, I mean, ask for a transfer. I mean, not now. Battlestar Galactica is literally the last ship in... Yeah, they have no choice. Yeah, now they have no choice. But beforehand, before the war, she could have asked for a transfer to another ship, couldn't she? Yeah because i guess that's sort of demonstrating your power in a different way so rather than, uh because i mean that's what i've done in jobs is where i haven't liked my managers or i haven't respected my managers um like especially my corporate jobs where i was an assistant, and you're working with people in positions of power and i sort of feel like as an assistant And if you don't respect your boss, it's really difficult to work with them. And so that's when I've left companies is when I've lost that respect for my boss because I sort of feel like, well, I'm not going to take orders from somebody that I have zero respect for. And that's why it does sort of make sense what you're saying. Like, why didn't she request a transfer when she could have done that? But maybe that's something about the technicalities of how they do things. Maybe it's not so possible or something. Well, I guess it could be the case that she very much loves Commander Adama and she gets along with everybody else. It's just the XO that she has a problem with. So maybe she figures this is like the lesser evil. Yeah, true. Because in the end, and we've seen this, she gets thrown into the brig and uh commander adama bumps her out again yeah yeah but this is sort of and and and you know and um this is what i was trying to get at she seems to act on an impulse, and yes i agree she's a very very um sympathetic uh character and i like her as well because she's a very strong, strong character. And yes, she seems to have principles, but self-restraint? Yeah emotional control yeah even i mean this was what i found weird as well was when she was just before she rescued um captain apollo uh i think all the ships had been told to come back in so they could go ahead and make the jump but captain apollo obviously couldn't because his ship just melted um just broke down whereas like she was just like like she was high um and it was only when general adama sort of said like what what can you hear it almost sounded a bit like a grounding exercise like uh you know name five things that you can see like four things you hear that kind of grounding exercise yeah and that kind of almost brought her back down to earth and then she was able to you know rescue captain apollo and get back and then they jumped but that for me yeah like you're saying like that self-restraint that almost like a refusal to follow any commands unless it's said to her in the right way or, done in a way that works for her. Almost like you get like prima donnas, people who think that they're so amazing and they should be treated like a star. Oh, right. Narcissists. Almost a bit like that of like, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, which I hadn't thought of with her actually before. It's just coming to me now of like, actually, maybe this is how you get through to her is if you speak to her in a specific way and then she will respect you. Whereas if you don't, because I'm sure General Adama, Commander Adama has his own weaknesses, even if it isn't a drinking problem, you know, you can find weaknesses in anybody. Have you ever, no, you've never been a teacher, have you? No, God, no. I'd never do that too hard. because because i have and um i can i can tell you uh usually there is this this um sort of rank between you and the children or your students right like you're the teacher you're the guy in charge and or the person in charge and and they are the students and they follow what you tell them to do this doesn't work from the start you have to earn that trust, it's not it's not enough to be the teacher you also have to fulfill that role and um you have to sort of establish that that i'm not going to call it dominance but respect yeah and you usually do that by respecting the students and and um i've i'm thinking about this because uh starbark is definitely only respecting people that first respect her. Mm. Right? Yeah. I mean, she is respecting, as you said, Commander Adama for some reasons we may learn in the future. I don't know. And she isn't respecting a guy who is an alcoholic and who is dangerous and who she feels is weak. And I thought there was sort of a strange comment because he doesn't seem weak, does he? He does make tough decisions. He is the XO. Yeah yeah and not in completely in a dispassionate way either no not at all like there was one moment i can't remember when this happens but he says to general adama you know i'm the one that everyone hates like i'm meant to be the one that everyone hates like he makes that sacrifice, to be able to run a ship right in the way that it's meant to be run right right exactly and And that seems like a really nice thing for him to do. Yeah. So, there's like a huge thing in her character, I think. And I would also point to maybe an inability to feel sorrow or to feel, I want to say bad feelings, but she's definitely able to be aggressive. But it's like, I mean, do you remember when they tell her that Liyadama is dead? And her reaction is this one sound that she always makes. She sort of coughs, and that's it. Yeah. Which I did sort of wonder, is that like that uncomfortable thing that people have where they don't want to admit that they have feelings? Mm-hmm. I would certainly assume that. It looks like that to me. So, yeah. Yeah. And so, we have, I don't know if you agree, but we have a character that is a person that is very aggressive, seems to live on adrenaline, is definitely an adrenaline junkie, has an inhibition problem. Because she doesn't know how to control her own impulses uh. She seems. To have a moral compass um which i'm not very certain of at this point but you know we. Might see in the future. And is also um unable or unwilling to show uh that she has feelings like um or attachments love or. Something i don't know. If we can. Really see. That uh respect yes deep attachment question mark i don't know and things like like mourning or sorrow or um fear stuff like that yeah i i can't see that. I mean she doesn't display it publicly but she has that picture of um leo dharma like her with the brother and leah dharma and she opens out the picture so that all three of them are present in it um almost as a way of like acknowledging the relationship the care that she has for them but i do agree with you i do think like she doesn't she seems to find it difficult to display those feelings um in a public setting um and i mean her character in the original series was a man. So it's quite interesting to see her as a woman struggling to do the things that women are stereotypically good at doing. Yes, which is a different story altogether, I think. Yeah. Yeah, okay, it's definitely interesting. Because to see a person that has a problem with all that we just described in the military, like the strictest sort of organization you can be in, that's sort of a contradiction, isn't it? Yeah yeah exactly especially also the other thing i'm just thinking is that it's not like other people have difficulty in showing emotion um like when they all think that captain apollo is dead everyone goes quiet there was a time when lots of people were crying on what looks like the bridge i'm gonna call it the bridge um so it's not like she's in an establishment like a stereotypical military establishment where no one is allowed to show feelings or anything like that. It seems to be a very open establishment. Right. If somebody like Starbuck would show up in your, um, it's not office that you have, is it? In your, in my. In my private practice. Yeah. If somebody like Starbuck would show up in your private practice, um, would you have any idea what to do with her? Well it's like you say it's um it's that sort of um being able to respect somebody, and sort of demonstrating that they can trust you but it is very difficult like when i have had clients like that in the past it has been a really difficult relationship to navigate, because you're both almost like fighting for power in the beginning and then eventually it gets to a stage where it is equal. Yeah. You'd have to earn her trust first. Yeah, exactly. You've got to earn her trust first, but then it's sort of difficult because it's... It's almost a bit confusing in private practice because someone is coming to you, they are paying you for a service. And it's like, but they're almost sort of fighting against themselves that they want help, if that makes sense. So they're coming to you for help. And it's not like a, you know, I don't work for free. I work in a private system. So They're coming to me that they've decided i need help they they want they will have to pay for it and yet then they're sort of also saying i also don't want to be here and i hate you do you see what i mean. Yeah definitely and so. It's always been super confusing. And and uh at this point i i question that you would ever go and and ask you for help in the first place because you know that this is starbuck and i don't think no rather i i'd be curious to see what would make her realize that she needs help what what needs to happen in order for her to start self-reflecting, that would be that would be very interesting to see if if something like that shows up later on Yeah. Well, it's also what a lot of the narcissist experts say is that narcissists in general won't come for therapy because you have to have that ability to self-reflect to have, I guess, also a sense of humility to be like, maybe there's something I want to change about myself. And the only narcissist that would come is the people that would want to sort of test a therapist. And incidentally, this is a, I think, perfect segue to Gaius Balta, speaking of narcissists. Because to me, it seems that the only thing that makes Gaius Balta reflect is a vision of a dead person. Um i i was i was left with the question why why is this happening i mean i don't i don't really get number six uh let's call let's call her uh here's hallucination for the time being okay and i don't get it i don't know much about hallucinations anyway but um this is like like is she trying to help him is she trying to help humanity is she is she um an envoy of the cylons because she seems to be convinced that the silence will win in the end but then again she is for example and i didn't mention this in the summary but um there is it's really not important for the story arc but at one point um they notice a device a cylon device on the bridge. Inops i think it's the name um and it's it's between some some screen array you know um and she directs his view but gaius balthas view to that device and tells him look there's a cylon device why yeah so this is one thing that i'm pondering and the other is that she seems to mirror him constantly she tells him you don't have any sort of guilt you don't have any sort of uh so you know you're not self-conscious at all and um she quotes him at one point and tells him uh that that he seems to have said uh that guilt is a feeling of small people because they've run out of of of arguments or something and uh she even tells him that she's in love with him because he doesn't feel guilt which is really i don't know and and i guess he is i mean he's the image of a narcissist he only thinks about himself um he's i mean yeah he looks a bit wrecked. Throughout the episode but i mean he does take care of his own appearance doesn't he, and he's very smart and he has this smart ass accent this this this oxford uh posh accent which makes him sound some sort of uh elitistic anyway and and you know he's above it all. And he knows how to wiggle himself out of every bad situation. So, yeah, I don't know. So, this is what I'm puzzled about, really, because I don't really have an idea of why this happens to him. You know? Why is he experiencing this? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is why I found it interesting when he was like, is this a chip? And, you know, have you planted a chip in my brain? Because I was like, I could imagine that. Yeah, but seriously. Because of his sort of self-confidence. Seriously, why would the Cylons implant a chip into him? And then give him the vision. The other thing, yeah, because she did say to him in the pilot, in the first pilot, that he is part of God's plan. So there is something, and maybe that was the extent of it, was him giving them this information so that they could get into the human system. And perhaps there's something else for him to do as well later down the line. Maybe, which incidentally makes him a prophet. Ooh. Yeah. And this is, I really don't want to say this because he's, you just don't like this guy. And I mean, people usually imagine when they talk about prophets, they talk about people that really are like God's best friend, you know? And, you know, old men with long beards and telling everybody, God wants this from us. And, you know, I just had dinner with the Almighty. Stuff like that. And this is, of course, wrong. A prophet in the Old Testament is usually a person who wants to be away from God as far as he can. They all hate the role they've been given right um and i mean it's like seriously that there's people um in the old testament that that try to run away and that don't want to um talk to god at all and they get usually they get they get um tasks like tell that that city um, that uh that they're gonna you know they're going to be uh demolished and wiped off the face of the earth by me if they don't change something like that and they hate this task because they know that nobody's going to listen, right they're not stupid also usually god doesn't talk to them in normal fashion there's not like an old guy in a white suit standing in front of you it's usually like a burning bush talking to you or some wind or i don't know you know it's scary right yeah so so and you know they're just going about their daily business and then suddenly something happens and and after it you realize okay so the almighty just spoke to me yeah right and which. Which is starting to sound more and more like gaius. Yes exactly and and god has to convince them even force them right so um this is this is, really like a trope from the Old Testament I don't know if you've ever heard of Jonah yeah. Jonah and the whale exactly. Jonah and the whale so he wanted to run away and he got swallowed by a whale who spit him out to where he was where God wanted him to be this is what happened, right? So they're usually forced they're usually forced and they so they are forced by God to do something they don't want to do and they usually have to deliver a message they don't like. Wow. Gaius has to do something he doesn't want to do, and he's being convinced by a very beautiful and sexy woman. Yeah. Delivering messages he doesn't want to deliver. For example, this is a Cylon device, and everybody could be a Cylon because they look like us now. And also, sometimes prophets get humbled by God. You know, they're not particularly, not necessarily, some of them are, but not necessarily very, very deep believers. I mean, they are vaguely aware of the fact that God exists, but, you know, they're not like the most holy man that you can imagine. Right. And so... But Gaius isn't. I mean, he doesn't even believe in any sort of God. He is not a religious person. He is a person of science. And yeah, so all of this, what I'm getting at is he's basically an Old Testament prophet delivering God's word. Yeah yeah absolutely because this is why i guess it's an interesting question that you're asking this difference between hallucination and vision because if it is a hallucination then it is more of like a science thing of like this is just happening to him and it has no effect on other people right whereas it sounds like from what you're saying that you could argue actually maybe this is a vision because a vision i always imagine that's something that comes from you know another being it's not something that's internal it's something that is fed into you externally by somebody else i.e god and what the way you're sort of describing it it's almost like because guys has access to this information is providing this information he's almost building trust with the president with the military people and in the end maybe he's going to have this massive message to deliver and because he's built up this trust they will believe him and then for me there's this other bit as well of like what you're saying about the humbling of like he's always been this person about self-preservation you know he's not on anybody's side he's on his own side right and actually i wonder if what number six is doing um is humbling her is teaching him about maybe eventually he'll get to a place of self-sacrifice even you. Know this is this is by the way also a thing um god. Usually doesn't. Choose very powerful people, Like, you know, he could, wouldn't it be easy if I want to tell a whole population to change their ways, I would, wouldn't I try and convince their king, for example? Yeah, exactly. Why can't God have a chat with Trump? Yeah. And he doesn't. He chooses small people, people that nobody knows, you know. Um and so the question from a theological standpoint would be why Gaius Balta so in all that he claims to be a guy that only cares for himself a guy that doesn't believe in any sort of god yeah does he on the other hand have some sort of antenna for god for some divine message you know that he wasn't aware of or is he such a deep and utter sinner that that god thinks okay with this one i need to be a bit more active because you know of the absence of any sort of conscience, um right and just you know um to to humor the other possibility um let's assume for a moment that he is not having visions and that he's not a prophet and that he does have hallucinations. I don't really know this phenomenon very well. What would it mean if he had hallucinations, if this was actually something out of his own mind? Well, then it'd be a psychiatric disorder. Right. Meaning? So, it could mean, I mean, you get hallucinations with different psychiatric disorders, but the one I'm most familiar with is schizophrenia. And so it is where people will see things, they will hear voices that other people can't see and hear. And to them, it's completely real. and usually that's a result of trauma um or at least my understanding of this is with my clinical experience is the people i've worked with who have had this disorder it's been because of trauma that they've experienced at a young age and you could sort of say that well guys bolt has surely someone of that level of intelligence if he is also say a narcissist he would have experienced trauma you know people aren't born narcissists i don't believe right right and even that level of intelligence you know you hear a lot about i don't know if you have the same thing in germany of gifted and talented children no um but you'll do like a special exam they are exclusive. To the to the people of great britain. Well i mean this is why they all have british accents or english accents really posh accents, um but it's like you know these special kids who get like they get tested and prodded and pushed to be these geniuses right um you know they're probably born you know everyone i guess you know you're born with a level of intelligence right and if you nurture it in a particular way the idea is that this person can be a genius and that's what but that's not a that's not going to have been a nourishing healthy childhood you know um. And how does a hallucination work what is happening in your brain do you know. I don't know right i don't think i do know um all i know is like from my clients it would be um so it can be loads of things so all of the senses can get triggered so people can you know you can smell it's it's like seeing something it's as if you're seeing reality but the only person that can see it is you nobody else can see it i guess what i was usually part of the sorry go i. I guess what i was getting at is that usually in in not only battlestar galactica but all a lot of other tv shows and and movies you get the explanation that a hallucination is some sort of expression of your subconscious. Yeah so it's a way of so, my my clinical understanding of it is that it's a way of understanding the trauma a way of expressing that trauma and processing it in a way that's not going to go ahead and destroy you completely like destroy you mentally and if you say if you. Say process what's the end goal what is the mind trying to achieve? To get to a place where you can you can accept it. You can accept that this thing happened to you. Ah. And there's a really good... I can't remember the name of it, but it's about, it's written by a clinical psychologist based in, I think, the Netherlands. And she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and she was having hallucinations of wolves and other animals sort of chasing her. And I can't remember either what the trauma was about that she'd experienced. But, you know, she'd got to a place where she could, you know, she trained to become a clinical psychologist and led a perfectly normal life. But it wasn't like these hallucinations ever completely left her right but she was able to manage them and almost like live with them and then you have another group of people called um the hearing voices group um and i think they have different sort of chapters across the world but there's a uh it's quite an active community in london and they're all about actually why should we because psychiatry will tell you that hearing voices and having hallucinations is a bad thing, whereas these people part of the hearing voices community um they're sort of actually saying it's not necessarily a bad thing it is a way it is just part of who they are and there is a way that you can get to to be able to live alongside these hallucinations whereas i guess what we're seeing with gaius is that he's really he's terrified of them he's fighting them he doesn't want to be experiencing them? Well, I mean, it's not a really bad hallucination that he has, is it? I mean, I don't know how it feels to have auditorial hallucinations, or auditory hallucinations, I guess they are called. I mean, are there instances where those voices are really harmless? Yeah absolutely yeah there are people who like people i don't i can't remember if this is what it's still called now if it's called um uh it's not called split personality disorder anymore they've changed the name um but there's a disorder where it's like you have different parts of your personality and each part of your personality has a different voice i'm. Sure there. Are movies about this as well. Yes yes yes there are definitely yeah but what i'm getting at is like okay so let's say you're sitting in a room and and you hear you start hearing your voices, and um i've i've actually had one one encounter with a person who had that problem and those voices were were really really scary okay so they were telling him to do stuff and they were telling him that they would come and get him so he was really scared but are there are there instances where those voices are actually really friendly and tell you that you are, I don't know, okay, or they try to tell you jokes or something. Well, this is what the Hearing Voices group is all about. Right. It's about saying there is a way to get to that place where you can work with the voices rather than seeing them as threatening. Okay. It's almost like a bit like kind of what you were saying when we were talking about having a client like Starbucks. Like if you approach someone with fear or you approach someone in a disrespectful way, you can't expect them to be respectful back to you. Right so i think that's how the hearing voices project is working of okay coming from that place of equality yeah. I mean because you know um his vision number six uh she's having public sex with him in a way. So um. If this was a hallucination i guess there are worse hallucinations. Um and. Just like you just uh described i mean other people see pack of wolves or dangerous animals. And he. Sees a very beautiful woman that is. Really really into. Him i mean yeah. If i think it's i think it's the the judgment though of that of like you know when you see other people then approaching him because there was one moment where he was i think i can't remember what position she was in but he was sort of looking like really ecstatic and someone is approaching him and sort of kind of looks away uncomfortably like what the hell is going on there because no one else can see the lady in red number six all they can see is him in his throes of passion well. Sure it's it's embarrassing but. Still still. It's not scary is it i mean right now. She's not scary and and yeah Yeah. Okay. I'd be scared if my dead girlfriend turned up. Well, she doesn't look dead, does she? I mean, she's not a zombie. No, she doesn't. No. But yeah true um yeah but he doesn't seem scared anyway and um yeah okay so we're still at this this could be either like it could be a very very very vivid hallucination and it could also be some sort of vision because uh god the almighty or in this case gods try uh and decided to to taken a more active part in in his life for whatever reason yeah okay gosh. It's got me really excited to watch the other episodes. To find out. Does Gaius turn into a fucking prophet. Yeah um we'll we'll see we'll see uh I seem to remember that this is going to be really really interesting um okay but yeah okay um speaking of god um we have uh this other bullet point god's retribution for man's sins yes. I'd like you to explain this to me. Though because. I've found it um because as much as i can understand the concept i don't under i understand the words and the meaning of the words but i don't understand the concept, Like, why does God have to have retribution for man's sins? Like, I thought we were all going to hell anyway. So, isn't that retribution enough? Like, why is God so mean? Um um okay like why okay so so we are assuming or you are assuming at this moment that the cylons are some sort of of punishment for the sins that men have committed yes right okay so this is a very old concept um if you um if you take a peek in the old testament um then you'll see that uh the relationship to to god um is actually not much different from a child to a parent if you will and that there's always this this struggle okay so god is offering a deal basically a deal um in in lack of a better word um i think a better translation would be a bond i guess and part of this bond is that he will always care for his people in the Old Testament that's the Israelite people but it later becomes like everybody on this planet and. So and the people all they have to do is believe in him right? And to stick to the rules that he has laid out there are several the most the most known or most popular are the Ten Commandments, And they usually fail to do that. And so, they have to seek forgiveness from God in some way or the other. And usually, his people failing what he told them to do leads into some sort of punishment, like wandering around the desert for 40 years for a trip that would take you and me 14 days. Like if you if you follow the the trek that they took uh through through the desert if you if you go like the crow flies it's really short a distance um and uh in in the beginning uh in in the genesis uh you get like that we are actually um god's people and god's earth 2.0 because the first one was drowned in a flood, you know, because they failed to live up to his standards. Yeah. So, you have this sort of idea that God, it's not like an experiment, but it's more like, okay, so God gave them free will and then they messed up. But then, I mean, is that not the thing, though? It's like, so you've been given free will, but it's almost like God is saying, I've given you, but don't use it. Right. Right. This is actually a contradiction. And it is, if you look at the big picture, it almost seems like God tried to extinguish humanity. Then he tried to lead humanity. And then he resorted to give them hints. Like he drowned them in a flood then he uh let them out of egypt in this big exodus and he even showed up in a storm or uh in a wind or in in a burning bush and you know all the forms that that good took and um and in the end it was jesus christ like like he tried to to find it almost seems like he was trying to find ways to talk to his people so that they would finally listen to him and um i mean from from a mythical standpoint this seems like what sort of, incapable god is this like he literally made us he could really do better than this. But on the other hand, you see or you could argue that God is desperately trying to make us listen to Him. And this is because He respects humanity's free will to choose their own lives and destiny. Right. If you compare this to a parent-child relationship, then you have the same thing. You teach your children everything that you think they need to know to get on or do okay in their own lives but at a certain point you have to realize that you can't actually steer them anymore you can't control them yeah right so they make their own decisions and they start making mistakes And they start making big mistakes. And all you can do is be there for them. Tell them, I think this is a bad idea. But in the end, your hands are tied. Right? Like if God were actually to take a really, really, really active role. And I know this is probably going to start this conversation, whether or not God is taking an active role in humanity's destiny. I'm not going there right now. Okay. Yeah, because this is like a whole different conversation. But if he wants to respect the thing that he has given us, free will and the freedom to choose our own destiny, then the only thing he can do is give us examples, give us guidelines, give us hints for a good life. But then he has to if he really respects our free will he has to sort of lean back and let things roll because you know if he didn't and if he were to to really really uh force us to do his will we wouldn't have free will anymore would we so you can compare this and this is what the old testament is trying to reflect you have a sort of related topic in old greek myths it's not the same thing because greek gods really don't care about humans they are sort of there yes they made humans but then they are like toys to them and greek gods are really unpredictable. But you do have the same idea where in Greek mythology, humans are sort of wiped out and then brought back and they are killed for not respecting the gods and stuff like that. And you could always ask the same question, like, why did they make us if they then decide to punish us for what we did because of the way they made us? you know they could. Have made us differently, yeah does that make sense yeah because that sounds a bit more like what commander Adama was saying to the guy that turned out to be a Cylon where he was like maybe this is god's retribution he was but like not convinced by that whatsoever. No because he said that well his reply is that the Cylons are made by humans, You know, so they're not made by God So they're not God's tool to do his bidding Let me turn that up just one notch, Imagine you have a child And that child turns out to be a child abuser, You know, convicted, proven child abuser. You know, child porn, child rape, all the stuff that you can imagine, all the really horrible things that you can imagine. Um wouldn't you at one point decide you know and imagine um the police are looking for your child and they are asking you do you know where your child is would you tell them and at one point you would you probably would you know and because you feel responsible it's not like you told him to do all these horrible deeds, you know? It's not like you're responsible for their actions. It's, you know, it's your child. It's not you that committed all these crimes. But still, you feel like responsible because it's your child. And this is what the guy on the Ragnar station is actually pointing at When he says that, yeah, maybe God feels like a father who thinks that humanity, not really was a mistake, but needs to be stopped because they have committed so many sins and this can't go on. Yeah. Yeah, it's made me think of that sort of like, where's the line between where you take responsibility as a parent in terms of, you know, like you're saying, like, it's not like this, say, this person that has become a pedophile has necessarily been given the tools to become a pedophile by the parent. But i would say that the parent probably did provide some sort of environment that then created this child in this way um but then where do you draw that line of responsibility of where actually the parent turns around and says actually i can't be responsible for you any longer this is your choices that you're making exactly and i hand you over to the authorities and still and still Well. You could argue that it's not really your responsibility at all, so you don't talk to your child and you don't talk to the police, you know, and so I guess the question that is brought up here is how much is God responsible for what humans do? And is he because he's not really uh answering to anything and anybody because there's nothing above god so why would he feel like that he had to um yeah to to to ask for forgiveness or you know kind of erase his own mistake if you will. Yeah, actually, because that's kind of the thing that we sort of hope to get to in therapy of like where parents have that humility to acknowledge, actually, I did fuck up and I'm sorry for that. And I'm also a messed up human being. Right. And so almost being able to get that forgiveness from their child and be able to then move on to have an adult relationship with their adult children. Does that make sense? And whereas. I guess god can't do that god won't ask for forgiveness. Right right exactly so this is this is an interesting uh thing to see and also i guess gives us an idea us the viewers an idea um on how the cylons see themselves because they they seem to think that they are actually doing god's will i i always feel like a certain pinch or sting when i listen to um gaia's hallucination dash vision of number six uh saying that that god is love and i'm i'm always thinking yes but only amongst themselves because they're trying to extinguish a whole race at this points right yes so so how does this connect how does god being love connect to yeah and i'm now killing 50 000 people right yeah um or trying to this. Is what we were saying last episode yeah i mean it's what we were saying last episode of um like when there's one god it's. Almost like. Everyone has to prove that their god is right. Exactly so. Let's eliminate all the other gods Whereas like you're saying, if your God is love, where's the love here? Exactly. Quite um also just loosely connected to this topic but i think um it's something to keep in mind for later episodes um historically there's a reason why monotheism prevailed over polytheism and that is that polytheism gives you an outlet to explain every every aspect of um of human nature. Um, so there is a God for wrath. There's a God for love. There's a God for, uh, for the, um, for home and family. There's a God for, I don't know, the seasons. You get the idea. And um but they're all really unpredictable right so what um i don't know what what hera um zeus's wife does is is sort of unknowable and what zeus himself does is really unknowable and and usually um stories about the greek gods in particular are starting with with some sort of weird stuff that zeus does usually impregnating somebody right so it's it's what they do and what sort of um uh things to do and punishments to to deal out they come up with is really really weird and you can't really really know what's happening and monotheism is sort of A different architecture In religious belief if you will Because The idea of a bond between God And his people gives you Predictability If I do this. Then God will do this There's a Latin Expression for that Duot des Which means. For one follows The other and always follows The other right So, if I do something wrong, you know, if I... If I commit sin according to the Ten Commandments, if I kill somebody else or sleep with another man's wife, I will get a punishment. If I don't do that, God will like me. Right? So, it's not suddenly like, I don't know, cheating on your wife is okay on Mondays, but, you know, tomorrow it might be different. Yeah right and also god is uh acting to his own bond to his own contract that that he has with his people so they know that he won't change his mind all of a sudden yeah and this is a very different concept uh of religion uh historically and and a preferable one because you don't you're not like a play ball to the wits and will of a divine being you know what's going to happen which really makes sense if you look at the world and for example the seasons. And you really want that that you know if you're like a society in its infancy and you try to settle down and you try to build up a civilization, you really need to rely on the fact that every summer is about the same. So, you have good crops and you can feed your people, for example, right? Whereas in a society and a civilization that relies on very, very different means of existence, this can be very volatile. Yeah. So, there is a deep wish in human society and in humans in general for reliability. And we can see this today when we want, like, for example, markets, you know, economic markets to be predictable. This is what we really want to achieve. We try to cheat the system as much as we can in order to predict the future because we want to know what's going to happen tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow in order to feel secure. And monotheism, in a way, is an expression of this desire to have some sort of predictability. Yeah. I was just wondering, is this part of, because I read somewhere that Islam is now becoming the most popular monotheistic religion. So the number of converts to Islam is higher than other religions. And I was thinking maybe part of that is that need for control, that need for following rules. It wouldn't surprise me, to be honest. In the past, in like the 1600s, the 1500s and earlier, the most popular religious movements in Europe were very strict, very puristic movements. And uh you know the the stricter they were usually um monasteries you know um monks and and um usually uh people living uh in in small communities the stricter they were the more followers they got in a world that seemed that seemed very unreliable yes indeed and this is this is the one thing um Which is one of the things that you could criticize about, well, modern Christianity in general. We could give guidance. If we dared to do that. And with guidance, I don't mean strict rules. I mean help with living, you know. And people seem to confuse this. I don't want to go there really because we're way off topic then. But I guess that the more relevant to life you are and the more guidance you provide, the more attractive you are. Yeah. If that makes sense. Yeah. Right? Yeah, because it's also sort of making me think about different types of therapy. And, you know, the therapy that is the most attractive at the moment is cognitive behavioral therapy because it has a process. There is a start. There is an end. There's a middle. You know, it's all very sort of directed. Whereas, you know, you come to me for therapy and it's like, how do you want to do it? You know, no one wants to sort of make those. Yes. No one really wants to take control or have control or, you know. People want a mentor. Yeah exactly whereas the idea of co-creating something which can be chaotic um it can be dysfunctional it can be you know you can't plan it so it's um it's it can be scary. And this would bring us to um to the end of the episode i guess um where adama gives them some sort of hope even false hope yeah and I don't know if I've mentioned this before I have a colleague who, usually pulls out this one sentence people want to be led people, And this sounds sort of not good on first glance, but I get the idea. There's a different but similar expression in theology that you need to have rules and you need to have constraints in order to have freedom. And this is this is because um within a certain boundary you can act very freely and different people need different different boundaries okay um you and i might need like broader boundaries some other people might need uh narrow boundaries and i know i do sound like a very conservative all-white guy now but um um but again if i may and and i i do believe your brother is is a school teacher isn't he um yeah from my experience in in school i had a class that was filled with students that had been thrown out of other schools before and they were really really chaotic and they were really unruly and you couldn't do anything with them uh they didn't didn't perform as students at all um it's not like a very over talented um genius class it's it's really really problematic children uh that were usually like 17 18 years old the youngest was 16 i think and And they, you know, what would regularly happen was that I would call their names in the morning and there were. There would be two students missing and then a colleague would come in and tell me yeah uh they're not coming in today um then they had they have been arrested by the police for a week or something you know like because they stole something from a shop and all they they they stabbed somebody which did happen uh stuff like that so they were really really on the edge of being uh societal losers if you will you know on the receiving end of anything bad that can happen to a person and um so they had one problem they had never had any sort of restraint from their parents all of them it was the same thing and you know in every uh student in their class the story was basically the same uh their parents had failed to give them any sort of guidance any sort of restraint any sort of boundary and so they were left with trying to find their own way and their own orientation in life yeah and that made them frustrated and put them under immense stress, like imagine that you have to constantly find your own self-worthiness your own self-value and you have to constantly try to find your position within a certain group of people. And this is really, really, really stressful. And when my colleagues and I entered the room, the first thing that we would do was we would give them the rules. We did that one time, and then we enforced those rules very strictly. There weren't many, but those rules we did enforce with all the might that we had. We would put students in front of the door we would tell them to leave the building and come back tomorrow we would even strike them from the list of this class in particular for good that's what we would do just to show everybody else that we meant business, this had a very interesting effect because they would suddenly start and relax because we were the ones giving them the rules and they didn't have to do that anymore and they became calm, yeah almost sounds contradictory doesn't it so i. Mean it makes a lot of sense because it's that like you're saying you're putting those boundaries that safety precautions precautions almost in place. Yes which. Then also then gives them that freedom to experiment to explore to be creative to to do the things that they haven't been able to do because they've had to like you say create those boundaries and rules for themselves all this time. Exactly and if you and if you look at any working team there's this one person that is in charge and the only thing that person maybe does is make decisions for example okay yeah so from from an from the outside this person doesn't really do much but it provides a service to everybody else because when this person takes all the decisions, the tough decisions, the easy decisions. Everybody else can concentrate on their job. My gardener is looking at his plants and is working the way I tell him to work. My office specialist, my office worker, okay, my secretary is working the tasks that I give her. Okay, my social worker is really free in what he's doing. And i i once asked him if he wanted to do my job because let's be honest he could okay and he was like no hell no i was like okay why not and he was like no because i want to concentrate on doing social work i don't want to be bothered with with uh networking or fundraising or talking to boards or something right so um actually by being a manager you can i think if you're a good manager you can provide a service to other people by giving them boundaries interestingly enough so people want to be led instead indeed i would if understood correctly uh and i'm not trying to enforce some sort of, very strict society here. I'm just trying to say that people need orientation. And they need somebody or something to give them that orientation. Yeah. Yeah, because there's something about almost, sorry, go on. I just wanted to close the arc to the end of the episode because I feel like we're digressing a lot. I'm very sorry, dear listeners. And so this is what Adama is basically doing. He's giving them a reason to live and he's giving them a restraint. This is what they will probably have to do in the future, like trying to hold together the whole society. You know by by telling everybody okay these are the rules that we have laid out he even does this with with um president roslin you know when in the end they decide that every military decision stays with him and every civil decision stays with her yeah. Yeah that's it again it's like it's those boundaries have put in place and they are both allowed to move freely within those boundaries. Right. Right. Okay, so Nalima, what are you taking away from today's discussion? Probably two things, which are both going to sound really obvious, but I feel like these are, for me, they're really helpful things to keep noticing again and again. The first one is relationships are complicated. We all carry a lot of stuff. Other people carry a lot of stuff. And there's something for me about meeting the other person with respect in the hope that they will also meet me with the same level of respect, which is also difficult to achieve sometimes when you really don't like someone. Um and the second thing is um what's the second thing uh, damn i totally forgot it's falling out my brain hang on one second it will come back to me, um can you hear the man talking next door by the way yes. Don't worry about it. Okay Okay, he's just really distracting me. I can imagine. What did I say the first thing was about relationships? Relationships are complicated. Yes, and that you need to have respect before. You need to gain respect. No, no, you need to pay respect before you gain respect. There's something about what you were saying around religion that I thought was a really good point. Okay, let me start again. So what I'm taking from this episode is how complicated relationships are in general, whether that's relationships with partners, with parents, with children, with God, with your fellow human being. For me it feels like if we can all come from that level of respect then that makes it that tiny bit easier but it still feels very complicated and despite being a therapist and feeling like i understand relationships sometimes other times i'm also like i don't get this it makes no sense to me. Right anything else. That's it my brain does not remember the other thing that i had okay. I feel like um what i'm taking away is a lot of questions really um one is why is gaius balta having all these these visions and hallucinations and what are they are Are they hallucinations? Are they God speaking to him? What's happening here? Also, I'm kind of in the same boat as you are with human relationships are really, really complicated. I'm still stuck at what you described happened between Starbuck and Sol Tsai because he was trying to apologize and she didn't accept. And how people sometimes act on what they think is right, even though everybody else would disagree. And if that is really a good thing, like, you know, stories and TV and shows will usually tell you that you have to stick to your values, but is that always the case? You know, like, do you always have to stick to your principles, even though the current situation is probably a bad situation in which to keep your principles, you know, if the situation is questioning your principles? And I'm also curious about how this whole God versus humanity thing plays out Because this could be bad Like simply bad storytelling And if we learn something about all of this like you know I'm really interested in what aspects we're going to see um, So, yeah, basically I'm puzzled at this point and curious on how all of this develops and what sort of stuff we're going to see in the future. I feel like this could be an end to all the episodes in the future and I will try not to let this happen. What do you mean? It's a really easy way out, isn't it? To say, yeah, I have a lot of questions. It's a very theologian way to approach things though um that that that is that is what we do a lot like uh well. You've had it this one time then. Yeah okay and that'll be okay so this was my one time ending on i have questions okay right um yeah let's let's let's try and have some conclusions next time okay so um this concludes um these two episodes about the pilot of Battlestar Galactica. And in the future, we will pick out episodes that we want to take a closer look on. To be honest, we have not yet decided whether or not we're going to look at all the episodes in the future, or if we're going to, say, put several together, this will be something that we will decide as we go along. And we hope you have enjoyed these two starting episodes so far and that you are liking what you heard and that we can, welcome you to future episodes and you are happy to get along with us and go along with us on this journey. And on this note we'd like to end i hope you've enjoyed listening to us take care of yourselves and take care of each other and always remember the cylons look like us now until next time on sci-fi therapy so say we all so. Say we all.