The Parable of Cain

In anticipation of the upcoming Battlestar Galactica movie, Razor, I thought I'd spend a little time getting to know Admiral Helena Cain a little bit better. Her introduction in the episode Pegasus, where Galactica’s fleet of human refugees found themselves in the company of another Battlestar, this one named Pegasus, who managed to survive the Cylon attack on the twelve colonies as well.

In command of the Pegasus was Admiral Cain, described by Commander Adama as a promising, up and coming officer who had found herself on the fast track to her rank. A rank which so happened to be above Adama’s own, making Cain his immediate superior and de facto commanding officer of the entire military, including the Galactica and her crew.

As Cain’s story unfolded, it became clear her quest for survival had taken a much different path than Adama had taken. It was learned she commanded with fear and intimidation, shooting her XO when he refused to follow an order, stripping a civilian fleet not only of parts, but of personnel taken by force from families who were lined up and shot if they failed to cooperate.

The power struggle which inevitably developed between the two highly divergent philosophies for survival lead each of the leaders to go so far as to plan the assassination of the other in a bid to gain unquestioned command. Despite their divergent and seemingly irreconcilable philosophies, the juxtaposed assassination plotting served to highlight the similarities between the two military commanders, each of them coming up with a nearly identical scenario for disposing of the other at the conclusion of a mutually planned and executed battle to deal a crippling blow to the Cylon fleet. Even more fascinating is the fact that each of them also chose not to go through with their plots, though they had the means of succeeding in their goal, with Cain’s end instead coming at the hands of a former Cylon prisoner whom she had exposed to horrific conditions and treatment (more on that to come in the analysis of Razor).

Admiral Cain’s character, in the end, can be seen as the embodiment of the redemptive violence of a fascist military dictator. Her quest is for revenge, to continue the war the Galactica and her fleet have long ago given up as lost, and that vengeance necessitates any actions which strengthen their chances at fighting the Cylon forces. It is that same single mindedness which not only leads her to plan Adama’s death, but also gives her the clarity to see through the battle against the Cylons they wage together, that Adama’s presence offers her a unique strength of it’s own. And that together, they are stronger than either could be on their own.

Perhaps the most intriguing element of Cain’s character is in the mirror she represents, to other characters such as President Laura (speak softly but carry a big airlock) Roslin, Starbuck and of course Adama himself.

She can be seen as a pure distillation of strengths of each of these characters. She possessed Roslin’s ruthless pragmatism gone unchecked by her sense of responsibility, Adama’s myopic decisiveness left unhindered by his compassion, and Starbuck’s arrogance and nerve without her sense of honor to serve as a balance. Cain existed with all these divergent elements merged into a single voice with a single purpose, unwilling to tolerate any dissention or questioning of her authority.

As such she commanded her forces by calling on their basest elements, ruling them through fear and intimidation, encouraging their anger and lust for revenge to fuel the fight against their more powerful enemies. And yet, the strength she represented was genuine. The passion she inspired in her troops was powerful and effective.

After her death, Starbuck – who had once been tasked with carrying out the murder herself – gave a memorable eulogy, declaring the simple truth that for all her faults, they had been stronger with Helena Cain’s presence than they were without it.

Stripped of the idea of glamour and heroics, war is ugly and primal. It’s about defeating one’s enemy by any means necessary. In the miniseries which kicked off the re-imagined voyage of the Battlestar Galactica, newly appointed President Roslin insisted that the war was over, convincing Commander Adama they had lost and the only hope was taking whatever survivors they could and trying to ensure the survival of humanity. Helena Cain and the Pegasus were unwilling to concede defeat so easily. The war for her was not over so long as she had the means to fight it, and it’s hard to argue her cause itself wasn’t just and righteous even if her methods were unacceptable within the structure of polite society.

This struggle is a classic one in modern storytelling, personified by the infamous “You can’t handle the truth!” from A Few Good Men, where Jack Nicholson’s Nathan Jessup gives his famous monologue, saying in part:

Jessup: …And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives...You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty...we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something.

What BSG does, perhaps better than any other series which has come before it, is blur the lines of gender mores and expectations. That Admiral Cain was a female is almost inconsequential to her story. No part of her actions or decisions were shown to be predicated by her gender, and indeed, the parallel drawn between her decisions and those made of Adama serve to highlight the many ways there were alike almost as deeply as it highlights the differences between them.

Perhaps Helena Cain’s greatest weakness was that she was so focused on defending and avenging the society which had existed before, she did not consider the need to defend what was left of humanity, and the new society which had evolved after the Cylons had decimated their worlds. Her inability to concede the battle which had been lost left her blind to the necessity of saving what had been left behind. And yet the question of what part she might have played in the stories which followed her death is an intriguing one. Her decision not to have Adama and his senior staff killed represented perhaps the kernel of change within her, a glimmer of understanding that the strength he represented and the fleet he protected were the same things she had been fighting for.

It would have been easier, perhaps, especially in a time where questions of the morality of war loom so large over our own society, to portray such a character as purely a villain, to have her death be a triumph. Instead, the questions she represented are allowed to linger, and her shadow looms large enough to bring Razor to our screens for a more in depth analysis of her actions and the legacy she left behind among not only her own crew but the fleet as a whole. It speaks to the complexity of her character and the allegory she represented, the question of how much of one’s own humanity can be sacrificed in the name of saving humanity itself, and how easy it can be to focus so completely on fighting you lose sight of what you’re fighting for.