Viewing Pegasus while also half way through first season

[alephnul]

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.

Comments

[heron61]

I agree with much of your analysis, but I also think that the fact remains that Admiral Cain is ultimately overly aggressive and far too caught up in her own power. Specifically, during the stand-off at the end, she was willing to escalate to war with the Galactica because she was both certain that she would win and seemed to believe she could make Adama back down, both of which seem rather foolish decisions. A very obvious and simple alternate plan is to let the Galactica ships land on the Pegasus, act like she is opening negotiations, seem reasonable, and then go over to the Galactica with a couple of trusted aids and in front of her crew arrest Adama for insubordination (and then presumably execute Helo and the chief). The Galactica crew are trained military and while they are willing to fire on another ship, it looks very likely that if faced with someone in-person who was operating in an approved military fashion, they might hate what was happening, but they would also likely not stop it, especially since Starbuck and Apollo are not on board the Galactica at the time.

[alephnul]

It seems to me that Adama is the one who escalates to threatened ship-to-ship violence, under the insane hope that the Admiral will stand down and allow his forces to extract her prisoners. When Cain says at the end of the episode that Adama has already crossed the line beyond which things start to spiral out of control, I tend to agree. Her response of a massive display of force (but no shots fired) seems like the only thing that could possible get Adama to reconsider and back down. It is clear that Cain will never let him take back his men, so it is only a question of whether he wants to get his people killed in a pointless mutiny. Helo and Tiro are going to be executed no matter whether he chooses to back down or not (well, okay, in actually they aren't...).

I don't think the arrest Adama approach would work, as I think the Galactica crew would likely ambush and overwhelm anyone who attempted to arrest Adama. You'd pretty much have to get him off-ship before you'd have a chance of pulling that off, and you'd still have the problem of trying to replace him. I don't think the crew of the Galactica would serve under someone appointed by Cain if she were to arrest Adama.