Since these negotiations of reproduction and desire are rooted in media technologies, it is fitting that, in Battlestar Galactica's symbology, most figures of danger and deviance are displaced onto the mediated bodies of the Cylons. We could view Cylons through the lens of technicity, which references taxonomies that are analogous to ethnicity, but derived based on technological variations. This move operates bilaterally, reconfiguring historically anterior categories of racial and ethnic otherness in terms of technological difference (this is a typical procedure in science fiction), as well as overlaying emerging technological threats and anxieties with familiar racial and ethnic discourses. Because race (as opposed to, say, sexual orientation) is traditionally rendered as natural, physical, or essential, it has been difficult (though certainly not impossible) to reconcile with a postmodern model of identity as fluid, performative, and socially constructed. The intervention of technicity enables the Cylons to stand in for this tension within a world that diegetically excludes racial inequality proper. They are explicitly racialized (when Six denounces "toaster" as a "racist" epithet, for instance, or when their vulnerability to a machine virus biologizes their absolute difference from humans), but at the same time attempts to stabilize the categorical distinction between human and Cylon continually break down, compromising the purity of any such demarcation. The Cylons are thus a paradigmatic example of the economy of technicity, and the program carries the concept even further by exploring inter-technic relationships and offspring, such as the Agathon family (Helo, Sharon, and their hybrid child Hera). Now, the conversion from ethnicity to technicity is never complete, and the persistence of racial vision means that troubling ideologies surface across BSG's multiethnic cast and often symptomatic mise-en-scene. Nonetheless, the overdetermined soup of symbolic material on offer sets us afloat on a rich reservoir of telling and ambivalent affinities.
A case in point being the ways that, given how Cylons encode all vectors of difference on the program, various dimensions of ambiguity have a tendency to coincide and blend in fan interpretations. One example is Felix Gaeta, a young and handsome tactical officer who has inexplicably never been drawn into the soap operatic sexual networks that drive many of his peers' storylines; he is portrayed by Alessandro Juliani, who is reportedly of Italian and Chinese descent, and within our extratextual context appears decidedly on the outskirts of whiteness. Fans have long speculated that Gaeta is one of the unrevealed Cylon models, no doubt in part because there is no diegetic framework for his distinctiveness except technicity; meanwhile, his queerness has become such an open secret that even other BSG actors will joke that Gaeta is gay (both these readings play out in large part via Gaeta's highly charged relationship with effete Cylon-lover Gaius Baltar). Hermeneutic outbreaks like these highlight the absurdity of Ron Moore's apologia, when asked about the program's conspicuous dearth of gay characters: "I think homosexuality definitely exists in the world of Galactica, but I frankly haven't found a way to portray it yet" (27 July 2006) -- as if Moore could assert his authority over the excess transmissibility of texts, as if he could possibly avoid portraying the non-normative desires that erupt at every turn. Galactica accommodates a military culture that is relentlessly egalitarian, complete with co-ed uniforms, quarters, and washrooms, while the civilian government is plagued by controversial sexual politics (such as abortion) familiar to US audiences from our own anti-gay "religious right." Nonetheless, among BSG's humans, these gendered elements seem only ever explicitly to resolve into heterosexual romances and conflicts. The Cylons, as a mechanism for mediating all forms of otherness, provide a ready enclave for representing deviance.
On one hand, Battlestar Galactica makes a good faith essay at offering, through its elaboration of Cylon society and subjectivity, a queer phantasmagoria that calls hegemonic mores into question. Lucy Lawless (who plays Model Three) described her character's liberated perspective: "Cylons haven't attached some sort of morality to nudity and sexuality and all that stuff, and they're extremely experimental" (ComicCon). On the other hand, this move marks sexual "experimentation" as categorically alien, confined to the program's presumptive "bad guys." In the battle that ends the Cylon occupation of New Caprica, this perverse collective takes custody of baby Hera: found by her supposed spiritual parents Six and Gaius amidst the carnage, she is handed off to Three, who was linked to her in dreams and by a human prophecy that the child will teach her love, and subsequently Boomer (another Model Eight, like Sharon Agathon, Hera's birth mother) becomes her primary caretaker. This unconventional kinship network sets the stage for an onscreen manifestation of lesbian desire in the form of a triadic romance between Three, Six, and Gaius. While the three are scandalously shown sleeping naked together, and while Six is eventually dumped by both partners, Six and Three express meaningful intimacies that take this plot beyond cliché titillation. However, such non-procreative relations trouble reproduction even within the unrepressed Cylon family. Three's desires for corporeal and divine communion threaten the replication of Cylon-kind enough that she is condemned to their version of death for her depravity. The Cylons' organic breeding project is equally flummoxed by the multiplication of mothers, as evidenced when Hera falls ill under their care, and only a return to her biological parents offers hope for a cure. So, while the fluid and prolific resonances of technicity open the Cylon narrative to alternative passions and bonds, heteronormative containment is also in operation. Queer representation thus resembles a protocological negotiation, circumscribed by discursive and material affordances but tested by excess vitality, and, as with all emergent systems, its ultimate complexities cannot be predicted in advance.
A case in point being the ways that, given how Cylons encode all vectors of difference on the program, various dimensions of ambiguity have a tendency to coincide and blend in fan interpretations. One example is Felix Gaeta, a young and handsome tactical officer who has inexplicably never been drawn into the soap operatic sexual networks that drive many of his peers' storylines; he is portrayed by Alessandro Juliani, who is reportedly of Italian and Chinese descent, and within our extratextual context appears decidedly on the outskirts of whiteness. Fans have long speculated that Gaeta is one of the unrevealed Cylon models, no doubt in part because there is no diegetic framework for his distinctiveness except technicity; meanwhile, his queerness has become such an open secret that even other BSG actors will joke that Gaeta is gay (both these readings play out in large part via Gaeta's highly charged relationship with effete Cylon-lover Gaius Baltar). Hermeneutic outbreaks like these highlight the absurdity of Ron Moore's apologia, when asked about the program's conspicuous dearth of gay characters: "I think homosexuality definitely exists in the world of Galactica, but I frankly haven't found a way to portray it yet" (27 July 2006) -- as if Moore could assert his authority over the excess transmissibility of texts, as if he could possibly avoid portraying the non-normative desires that erupt at every turn. Galactica accommodates a military culture that is relentlessly egalitarian, complete with co-ed uniforms, quarters, and washrooms, while the civilian government is plagued by controversial sexual politics (such as abortion) familiar to US audiences from our own anti-gay "religious right." Nonetheless, among BSG's humans, these gendered elements seem only ever explicitly to resolve into heterosexual romances and conflicts. The Cylons, as a mechanism for mediating all forms of otherness, provide a ready enclave for representing deviance.
On one hand, Battlestar Galactica makes a good faith essay at offering, through its elaboration of Cylon society and subjectivity, a queer phantasmagoria that calls hegemonic mores into question. Lucy Lawless (who plays Model Three) described her character's liberated perspective: "Cylons haven't attached some sort of morality to nudity and sexuality and all that stuff, and they're extremely experimental" (ComicCon). On the other hand, this move marks sexual "experimentation" as categorically alien, confined to the program's presumptive "bad guys." In the battle that ends the Cylon occupation of New Caprica, this perverse collective takes custody of baby Hera: found by her supposed spiritual parents Six and Gaius amidst the carnage, she is handed off to Three, who was linked to her in dreams and by a human prophecy that the child will teach her love, and subsequently Boomer (another Model Eight, like Sharon Agathon, Hera's birth mother) becomes her primary caretaker. This unconventional kinship network sets the stage for an onscreen manifestation of lesbian desire in the form of a triadic romance between Three, Six, and Gaius. While the three are scandalously shown sleeping naked together, and while Six is eventually dumped by both partners, Six and Three express meaningful intimacies that take this plot beyond cliché titillation. However, such non-procreative relations trouble reproduction even within the unrepressed Cylon family. Three's desires for corporeal and divine communion threaten the replication of Cylon-kind enough that she is condemned to their version of death for her depravity. The Cylons' organic breeding project is equally flummoxed by the multiplication of mothers, as evidenced when Hera falls ill under their care, and only a return to her biological parents offers hope for a cure. So, while the fluid and prolific resonances of technicity open the Cylon narrative to alternative passions and bonds, heteronormative containment is also in operation. Queer representation thus resembles a protocological negotiation, circumscribed by discursive and material affordances but tested by excess vitality, and, as with all emergent systems, its ultimate complexities cannot be predicted in advance.
