As I lie awake late one night recently, I was thinking about some scenes in the finale of Battlestar Galactica. If you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to know what happens (Darth Vader is Luke’s father), then don’t read this (yet).
A quick summary of the series: humans are nearly eradicated by Cylons (robots created by those humans a while back) and are chased by them for most of ther series. Some Cylons rebel against the rest and join forces with the humans. Oh and many of the Cylons are indistunguishable from humans. Come to find out some Cylons from a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away as well) came in and stopped the “first war” between them and, in exchange, helped the Cylons perfect their human look-a-like models. Now, fast forward to the end of the series during the final confrontation between the human side and Cylon side. The Final Five Cylons that came into the fray and crafted the armistice are siding with the humans (and, in fact, did not know they were Cylons until late in the game). The humans have destroyed the central system that allows the Cylons to live forever (basically, the persona data gets downloaded into a new body of the same model when the old one dies/is killed). The Final Five offer a new armistice: give the Cylons the information needed to recreate what was destroyed and both sides go their separate ways believing/hoping in faith that the other is trying to hunt them down (again). The humans agree to this as well as the Cylon “leader”, Number 1 (this being his model number). For the Final Five to get the information, they need to interface together in order to piece together the data that each has. Of course, when this happens, the dark past of one of them enrages another and results in one of the Final Five being killed immediately and the information lost forever. Throughout the confrontation, the Cylons have the military advantage (the battle being on their home turf with plenty more operational weaponry and numbers than the humans. However, at this point in the finale, #1, who is fully aware of this situation, commits suicide; he moves the handgun in his hand to his mouth and pulls the trigger.
What is it that made #1 do this when the Cylons could have easily destroyed these humans (as well as the last bit of worthwhile weaponry the humans had)? Sure, because of the numbers in that specific situation, #1’s chances of surviving the fight was minimal, but suicide? I think the issue came down to that of hope. Throughout the series, #1 claimed to be an atheist (whereas the rest of the Cylons were monotheists), however I think his suicide contradicts these claims. He wasn’t placed in a difficult position, nor was he forced into the compromise. He willingly accepted it because it offered him a hope of a life after death, in effect a religious hope. He quickly grabbed hold of this hope for purely selfish reasons: so that he could live another day. The very moment that hope was postponed (after all, the Cylons would have eventually recreated the missing pieces), he panics–something out of character. Instead of reasoning this as a poor choice from the writers, I will assume it was intentional and not as a way of quickly ending the series.
This panic, then, reveals #1’s true nature as a believer. He had always wanted to believe, but was afraid of what that might entail. In this sense, #1’s suicide isn’t a random act, but one of total desperation for the very belief he truly cherished. The hope he briefly saw was the removal of his mask of unbelief. When that faltered, suicide was the only option he saw that would remove the mask because he would rather have died a believer than to live either as a believer of lies or as a false non-believer. It is within this irony that #1 reveals that his guise as a preacher was the best guise of all as it was the real him masking an illusion of an atheist.
