Viewing Pegasus while also half way through first season
This contains spoilers for BSG, both first season (Episodes 1.5, 1.6, and 1.8 in particular) and the latest episode (2.10). Those on my friends list who have yet to see any of it should just pretend this post doesn't exist. I'll be lending you my Season 1 DVD just as soon as we finish watching it. Yes, it is a good show.
After phylogenetics excellent post, I almost didn't bother posting this one (which I started writing Friday night), but we cover somewhat different ground, so I thought I'd put up my thoughts anyway.
I started watching BSG early on in season 2 (I still haven't seen the season 2 opener...), so I have only been able to watch Season 1 since earlier this week. I've made it through Episode 1.8 (Flesh and Bone) tonight, but I had only made it through Episode 1.6 (Litmus) when I watched tonight's episode. Having just seen Episodes 1.5 (You can't go home again) and 1.6 put me in a very different frame of mind than anyone who was watching this episode coming off of the rest of season 2, with season 1 just a distant memory.
Admiral Cain is a total hard-ass. She runs a very tight ship, and has managed to fight an aggressive war against the Cylons, with no back-up and no resupply. She has been coming from exactly the same position Commander Adama wanted to take back in the mini-series: she is a military commander and her country is under attack, her duty is to make war on the enemy until either they are defeated or she is dead. For her, at the moment, nothing comes ahead of that duty. If Adama had not fallen in with President Roslin and the civilian fleet, he would likely be in the same mind-set still (except that he really isn't up to being a hard-ass, and without the goal of protecting the civilians, his ship would likely have collapsed into disarray and complete morale failure fairly quickly, trying to fight a bleak and hopeless war for which their ship is hopelessly outclassed).
As a side note, I have to say that I didn't like 1.5 very much at all. Commander Adama's willingness to endanger the remnants of humanity and cripple his ship's future function in order to embark on a futile search for a lost pilot merely because he loves her and had had a falling out with her just before she vanishes may be sympathetic (I doubt I'd do differently), but it is monstrously selfish and appalling given his position. While the show does point out that his actions are crazy and destructive to the fleet, it bothered me that there were no repercussions to his selfish and insane actions. The ridiculous idea that Starbuck could pilot the Cylon ship gave the episode a 70's scifi feel that somehow made me like Adama's insane search even less (because it emphasized the "the Captain is always right, even when he is completely wrong" feel).
As a further side note, I only liked 1.6 after reinterpreting Sgt. Hadrian's actions as completely reasonable, or at least fully justified. When asked to investigate how the security failed, she asks for to be allowed to run an independent tribunal because she knows that Adama is hopelessly protective of his favorites among his crew (and that she isn't part of his in-crowd), and that her investigation will be hopeless if she doesn't have a free hand. What she quickly discovers is that even with a free hand, her position is still hopeless, because the crew of the BSG has such incredibly bad discipline that when the chief of security, tasked with investigating how a Cylon agent was able to infiltrate the ship, steal explosives and blow himself up, starts asking the crew simple questions, their immediate response to her is to lie. They don't even have cold, calculated lies arranged to protect themselves, they just start lying off the top of their heads, badly, baldly, so accustomed to the slipshod regulations and favoritism and cronyism that marks Adama's command that they just assume that they will be allowed to get away with it.
When she doesn't tolerate their incompetent lies, one of them becomes so flustered that he starts confessing, not to the truth, but simply making up more lies about how he is guilty, clearly shielding someone, but who remains unclear to Sgt. Hadrian. In fact, even though the lies are obvious, discipline and obedience of regulation is so bad on the BSG that it is clear that Sgt. Hadrian's investigation is going to become mired in ridiculous lies, habitual incompetence, and the same garbage that made her previous investigation of sabotage entirely hopeless.
In fact, all of these problems are well known aboard the ship, since they stymied the previous investigation of an attack which nearly destroyed the fleet (and clearly could have if the saboteur had wanted to). What was done to correct this situation after the last attack? Apparently nothing, since the same lack of discipline and covering up of rules violations is still rife aboard the ship. Who is responsible for this absolute failure to protect the ship from infiltration and attack? That would be Commander Adama, whose famous soft-touch has repeatedly threatened to destroy the fleet (perhaps, Sgt. Hadrian is also still reeling from Adama's insane search for Kara in the last episode, or maybe that is just me).
So Sgt. Hadrian uses her powers to drag the Commander before the tribunal and berate him before the civilian tribunal judges, perhaps in the hope of convincing the civilians that he really does need to be relieved of command and replaced with someone who is willing to run a tight ship in a time of war. Perhaps she realizes that that won't happen, but merely hopes to embarrass him sufficiently that he at least gives some thought to the problems that his soft-touch has caused for the ship. Instead, she gets his little self-righteous "This is a witch hunt" speech, before he demonstrates his lack of commitment to civilian government by disbanding the tribunal.
So that is what I was mulling over coming into the most recent episode, dissatisfied with the "Daddy Adama is always right, even when he is clearly wrong" feeling of those two episodes. The hard-ass Admiral Cain provided a wonderful follow-up to this, and I cheered when she reprimanded Adama for his crew's lack of discipline, and particularly for his dangerously over-close relationship with Cara and Lee. Even her willingness to execute her XO for his mutinous rebellion in refusing a direct order during battle (presumably on the assumption that he could get away with it because they were very close, a parallel to and direct rejection of Adama's use of nepotism and unwavering loyalty with his own crew, where direct mutiny is rewarded with re-reinstatement) seemed like a brutal but rational step to maintain discipline in the face of a fantastically desperate situation.
While Adama has not resorted to methods anything like Cain's, the Pegasus has been through a far more brutal and exhausting few months than the Galactica has. They have been fighting alone, with no reason to believe that any other human besides their own crew still lived, fighting to do one thing only: do damage to the enemy. Lee sees no need to have his crew keep score, but then the Galactica pilots are fighting a purely defensive war, flying endless CAPs and only seeing battle when they have to defend the fleet for a few moments before turning and running. Encouraging aggressive behavior on the part of his pilots would only end up with more frustrated pilots on their endless CAPs, and more dead pilots as they fought that extra second to add a notch to their wing, rather than fleeing for the Galactica. The Galactica pilots have the satisfaction of protecting the civilian fleet, being the defenders of the hope of humanity, while all they Pegasus pilots have had the satisfaction of is risking death to kill Cylons.
Which brings us, of course to the aspect of the Pegasus that, understandably, leads most other viewers, who were not coming into the episode pissed off at Adama's lax and self-indulgent leadership style, to HATE HATE HATE the Pegasus and its Admiral: unlike the Galactica, the Pegasus crew have not only not humanized the cylons (most of the Galactica crew haven't humanized the cylons, although many of the main characters have, note the reception Cally gets after her release from the brig for shooting Boomer), but have decided to systematically dehumanize them further by allowing (the male members of) the crew to gang rape their imprisoned Cylon.
I'm torn on whether this is a fair tactic on the part of the show's creators. Rape is a sufficiently hot-button that it immediately throws everything that might have been reasonable and decent about Admiral Cain and the crew of the Pegasus out the window for most viewers. The Pegasus has managed to maintain morale and cohesion while fighting for months with no hope of victory or any end other than death? Yeah, but the Pegasus crew gang rapes their prisoners. Unlike the Galactica, which tortures them (episode 1.8) and gives them summary execution (1.8 and nearly in 2.06). Is rape really that much worse than torture and murder? Understandably, for most viewers, who are far more likely to face rape than torture or murder, rape is far worse. Would viewers have reacted as strongly if Lt. Thorne were merely renowned for his brutal non-sexual torture? Would as many viewers have cheered if Helo and Tiro had killed him while preventing him from torturing her by, say, "merely" half drowning her repeatedly for eight hours? Disturbingly, I think many wouldn't have.
While rape is in fact frequently used as a weapon of dehumanization in warfare, I think that the Pegaus crew indulging in group non-sexual torture of PegaSix would have made the episode much richer, as it would have much more strongly tied what the Pegasus crew did to PegaSix and what Lt. Thorne was about to do to Preg!Sharon to what the Galactica crew have already done to Cylons they had under their power. Yes, yes, Kara tortured Loeben under one of those stupid ticking time bomb scenarios (except it wasn't), but her focus quickly shifted to trying to convince Loeben that, since he would shortly decide to stop feeling pain while she tortured him, that therefore he was just a machine, and eight hours of brutal torture brought her no closer to getting an answer to the ticking time bomb question anyway. Kara's torture easily slid to the same "You aren't human, you're just a machine" focus that seemed to have motivated the Pegasus crew as well in their brutality.
Another weakness of the rape aspect of the plot is that there are seemingly no female characters on the Pegasus. While various theories have been proposed for why this is true within the reality of the show, I think that the most likely explanation is a meta-level choice on the part of the creators, who didn't feel they had time to go into a further side issue of how the female crew members on Pegasus are reacting to this situation. While there is a distinct current of generalized misogyny in the drunk Pegasus pilots, it is also true that women in the military have (recently rather famously) been just as willing to engage in dehumanizing brutalization and sexual humiliation as men. My hope is that the Pegasus plot line continues long enough that we get to see some of the female crew on the Pegasus (I refuse to believe that the Pegasus has no female crew) and how they are handling the situation.
Nonetheless, a fantastic episode, if a little too easy to read as morally simple.
After phylogenetics excellent post, I almost didn't bother posting this one (which I started writing Friday night), but we cover somewhat different ground, so I thought I'd put up my thoughts anyway.
I started watching BSG early on in season 2 (I still haven't seen the season 2 opener...), so I have only been able to watch Season 1 since earlier this week. I've made it through Episode 1.8 (Flesh and Bone) tonight, but I had only made it through Episode 1.6 (Litmus) when I watched tonight's episode. Having just seen Episodes 1.5 (You can't go home again) and 1.6 put me in a very different frame of mind than anyone who was watching this episode coming off of the rest of season 2, with season 1 just a distant memory.
Admiral Cain is a total hard-ass. She runs a very tight ship, and has managed to fight an aggressive war against the Cylons, with no back-up and no resupply. She has been coming from exactly the same position Commander Adama wanted to take back in the mini-series: she is a military commander and her country is under attack, her duty is to make war on the enemy until either they are defeated or she is dead. For her, at the moment, nothing comes ahead of that duty. If Adama had not fallen in with President Roslin and the civilian fleet, he would likely be in the same mind-set still (except that he really isn't up to being a hard-ass, and without the goal of protecting the civilians, his ship would likely have collapsed into disarray and complete morale failure fairly quickly, trying to fight a bleak and hopeless war for which their ship is hopelessly outclassed).
As a side note, I have to say that I didn't like 1.5 very much at all. Commander Adama's willingness to endanger the remnants of humanity and cripple his ship's future function in order to embark on a futile search for a lost pilot merely because he loves her and had had a falling out with her just before she vanishes may be sympathetic (I doubt I'd do differently), but it is monstrously selfish and appalling given his position. While the show does point out that his actions are crazy and destructive to the fleet, it bothered me that there were no repercussions to his selfish and insane actions. The ridiculous idea that Starbuck could pilot the Cylon ship gave the episode a 70's scifi feel that somehow made me like Adama's insane search even less (because it emphasized the "the Captain is always right, even when he is completely wrong" feel).
As a further side note, I only liked 1.6 after reinterpreting Sgt. Hadrian's actions as completely reasonable, or at least fully justified. When asked to investigate how the security failed, she asks for to be allowed to run an independent tribunal because she knows that Adama is hopelessly protective of his favorites among his crew (and that she isn't part of his in-crowd), and that her investigation will be hopeless if she doesn't have a free hand. What she quickly discovers is that even with a free hand, her position is still hopeless, because the crew of the BSG has such incredibly bad discipline that when the chief of security, tasked with investigating how a Cylon agent was able to infiltrate the ship, steal explosives and blow himself up, starts asking the crew simple questions, their immediate response to her is to lie. They don't even have cold, calculated lies arranged to protect themselves, they just start lying off the top of their heads, badly, baldly, so accustomed to the slipshod regulations and favoritism and cronyism that marks Adama's command that they just assume that they will be allowed to get away with it.
When she doesn't tolerate their incompetent lies, one of them becomes so flustered that he starts confessing, not to the truth, but simply making up more lies about how he is guilty, clearly shielding someone, but who remains unclear to Sgt. Hadrian. In fact, even though the lies are obvious, discipline and obedience of regulation is so bad on the BSG that it is clear that Sgt. Hadrian's investigation is going to become mired in ridiculous lies, habitual incompetence, and the same garbage that made her previous investigation of sabotage entirely hopeless.
In fact, all of these problems are well known aboard the ship, since they stymied the previous investigation of an attack which nearly destroyed the fleet (and clearly could have if the saboteur had wanted to). What was done to correct this situation after the last attack? Apparently nothing, since the same lack of discipline and covering up of rules violations is still rife aboard the ship. Who is responsible for this absolute failure to protect the ship from infiltration and attack? That would be Commander Adama, whose famous soft-touch has repeatedly threatened to destroy the fleet (perhaps, Sgt. Hadrian is also still reeling from Adama's insane search for Kara in the last episode, or maybe that is just me).
So Sgt. Hadrian uses her powers to drag the Commander before the tribunal and berate him before the civilian tribunal judges, perhaps in the hope of convincing the civilians that he really does need to be relieved of command and replaced with someone who is willing to run a tight ship in a time of war. Perhaps she realizes that that won't happen, but merely hopes to embarrass him sufficiently that he at least gives some thought to the problems that his soft-touch has caused for the ship. Instead, she gets his little self-righteous "This is a witch hunt" speech, before he demonstrates his lack of commitment to civilian government by disbanding the tribunal.
So that is what I was mulling over coming into the most recent episode, dissatisfied with the "Daddy Adama is always right, even when he is clearly wrong" feeling of those two episodes. The hard-ass Admiral Cain provided a wonderful follow-up to this, and I cheered when she reprimanded Adama for his crew's lack of discipline, and particularly for his dangerously over-close relationship with Cara and Lee. Even her willingness to execute her XO for his mutinous rebellion in refusing a direct order during battle (presumably on the assumption that he could get away with it because they were very close, a parallel to and direct rejection of Adama's use of nepotism and unwavering loyalty with his own crew, where direct mutiny is rewarded with re-reinstatement) seemed like a brutal but rational step to maintain discipline in the face of a fantastically desperate situation.
While Adama has not resorted to methods anything like Cain's, the Pegasus has been through a far more brutal and exhausting few months than the Galactica has. They have been fighting alone, with no reason to believe that any other human besides their own crew still lived, fighting to do one thing only: do damage to the enemy. Lee sees no need to have his crew keep score, but then the Galactica pilots are fighting a purely defensive war, flying endless CAPs and only seeing battle when they have to defend the fleet for a few moments before turning and running. Encouraging aggressive behavior on the part of his pilots would only end up with more frustrated pilots on their endless CAPs, and more dead pilots as they fought that extra second to add a notch to their wing, rather than fleeing for the Galactica. The Galactica pilots have the satisfaction of protecting the civilian fleet, being the defenders of the hope of humanity, while all they Pegasus pilots have had the satisfaction of is risking death to kill Cylons.
Which brings us, of course to the aspect of the Pegasus that, understandably, leads most other viewers, who were not coming into the episode pissed off at Adama's lax and self-indulgent leadership style, to HATE HATE HATE the Pegasus and its Admiral: unlike the Galactica, the Pegasus crew have not only not humanized the cylons (most of the Galactica crew haven't humanized the cylons, although many of the main characters have, note the reception Cally gets after her release from the brig for shooting Boomer), but have decided to systematically dehumanize them further by allowing (the male members of) the crew to gang rape their imprisoned Cylon.
I'm torn on whether this is a fair tactic on the part of the show's creators. Rape is a sufficiently hot-button that it immediately throws everything that might have been reasonable and decent about Admiral Cain and the crew of the Pegasus out the window for most viewers. The Pegasus has managed to maintain morale and cohesion while fighting for months with no hope of victory or any end other than death? Yeah, but the Pegasus crew gang rapes their prisoners. Unlike the Galactica, which tortures them (episode 1.8) and gives them summary execution (1.8 and nearly in 2.06). Is rape really that much worse than torture and murder? Understandably, for most viewers, who are far more likely to face rape than torture or murder, rape is far worse. Would viewers have reacted as strongly if Lt. Thorne were merely renowned for his brutal non-sexual torture? Would as many viewers have cheered if Helo and Tiro had killed him while preventing him from torturing her by, say, "merely" half drowning her repeatedly for eight hours? Disturbingly, I think many wouldn't have.
While rape is in fact frequently used as a weapon of dehumanization in warfare, I think that the Pegaus crew indulging in group non-sexual torture of PegaSix would have made the episode much richer, as it would have much more strongly tied what the Pegasus crew did to PegaSix and what Lt. Thorne was about to do to Preg!Sharon to what the Galactica crew have already done to Cylons they had under their power. Yes, yes, Kara tortured Loeben under one of those stupid ticking time bomb scenarios (except it wasn't), but her focus quickly shifted to trying to convince Loeben that, since he would shortly decide to stop feeling pain while she tortured him, that therefore he was just a machine, and eight hours of brutal torture brought her no closer to getting an answer to the ticking time bomb question anyway. Kara's torture easily slid to the same "You aren't human, you're just a machine" focus that seemed to have motivated the Pegasus crew as well in their brutality.
Another weakness of the rape aspect of the plot is that there are seemingly no female characters on the Pegasus. While various theories have been proposed for why this is true within the reality of the show, I think that the most likely explanation is a meta-level choice on the part of the creators, who didn't feel they had time to go into a further side issue of how the female crew members on Pegasus are reacting to this situation. While there is a distinct current of generalized misogyny in the drunk Pegasus pilots, it is also true that women in the military have (recently rather famously) been just as willing to engage in dehumanizing brutalization and sexual humiliation as men. My hope is that the Pegasus plot line continues long enough that we get to see some of the female crew on the Pegasus (I refuse to believe that the Pegasus has no female crew) and how they are handling the situation.
Nonetheless, a fantastic episode, if a little too easy to read as morally simple.