Viewing Pegasus while also half way through first season

Sep 26, 2005 03:26

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.

spoilage ensues )

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phylogenetics September 26 2005, 13:57:46 UTC
Excellent post!

I didn't focus on season one in my post on "Pegasus" because it's a distant memory for most of us but you bring up some valid points on the lack of discipline on Galactica----and how the decisions comes back to bite Adama in the ass.

While I think discipline on the ship can be better, the situation forces Adama and Co. to turn a blind eye to some of the crew's hijinks. Part of this is that they can't be replaced (Tyrol, Tigh, Lee and of course, Starbuck gets away with quite a bit). And since Adama runs the ship with a paternal eye, it's harder to maintain that hard gaze on everyone. This is where Tigh would normally come in, but he is undermined by Adama himself at times.

I think Pegasus is run with a tighter fist but less personal attention. This is fine under normal military circumstances, but in the losing war they are engaged in, where the soldiers are also each other's families...Adama's philosophy serves as the 'better' example methinks (in the long run since they're all stuck with each other).

Your reactions to Adama's problems have been raised by many others but I think fans choose to ignore Adama's shortcomings in this episode because Cain is the 'outsider' and people get defensive when outsiders come in and try to muck with 'our' family. I think people then use the rape complaint as an excuse to dismiss the many valid points that Cain makes.

As kaseido says, taking the episode on an emotional leve, we recoil in horror at what Cain does, yet from a logical perspective, she has done absolutely nothing wrong. The opposite could be said of Adama throughout 'You Can't Go Home Again' where logically, we know Adama's prolonged search for Starbuck is wrong yet emotionally, we can't let go of her either (well, some can't, others...).

But this is typical BSG to not have noble heroes making the 'right' decisions. We have the 'bad guy' speaking the truth, and forcing a hard look at the characters and the good guys making bad choices.

I do believe Hadrian was out of line at points in her interrogation, but she brought up valid and, as it turned out, prescient points when she focused on Tyrol and Boomer. But BSG likes to coat everything in ambiguity so we never get a clear cut good guy or bad guy.

Adama has his faults but we know he's a good guy because we understand where he's coming from. Cain is a 'bad guy' because she allowed something horrific to occur under her command. Yet in many ways, Cain is a superior officer. Her ship is probably run more efficiently, and she has fewer discipline issues than Adama.

However, I don't think Adama gets away with his lax rule. It is clear, even to him, that the ship is not run as tightly as it should be. Cain points this out. When Starbuck and Apollo comes in demanding a recind on their transfer orders, Adama puts his foot down. I think he does realize how far they've come from the tight(er)ly run ship he presumably had before the war started. The problem is that fans dismiss much of Cain's complaints because they dislike Cain's allowance for rape and torture on her ship.

Another weakness of the rape aspect of the plot is that there are seemingly no female characters on the Pegasus.

While no female Pegasus character except for Cain takes center stage but there are plenty of females in the background in positions of relative power. The fact that the rapes were told by the males was a way for us, the viewers, the connect what they did with real life situations. It would have been nice to see the female crews' reactions to gang rapes on their ship, but I think the writers choose not to go into that area and deliberately left the female crews' opinions out.

Perhaps it would have been better if they didn't...but maybe they are writing Pegasus as such monsters (on an emotional level), only to force us to rethink our position when they show redeeming values in part two. This type of fan tweeking sounds like something Moore would do.

Again, excellent thoughts. Perhaps I should take a second look at season one, it seems Moore is still playing with some of the themes from the first season.

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alephnul September 27 2005, 03:21:59 UTC
I think that Adama's method works well with being the protectors of the civilian fleet, while Cain's method is probably better for soldiers who are required to charge into battle every day for months with no hope of anything but eventual death. I do think her method shows some personal attention (or rather lots of attention to maintaining morale).

This episode in particular played very nicely off of first season, and getting to see the lax discipline of first season come back and bite Adama was very pleasing. The first 4 episodes had a lot of main characters being wrong, but then the 5th and 6th episodes had main characters being very wrong and it being treated as being only a little wrong, and that made me nervous for the quality of the show. That those old wrongs were highlighted and thrown in the main characters faces in this episode made me feel much more favorably inclined towards the show.

I agree that Hadrian's investigation in 1.06 was kind of a loose cannon, but I felt that was a flaw in the episode, rather than a flaw in the investigation (if that makes sense). The investigation that should have occurred in that situation should have been far-reaching and intense, but shouldn't have wandered as far into the accusatory mode. But then, the investigation that should have happened would have had too much focus on technical details to be much fun to watch, and wouldn't have given Adama the opportunity for self-righteous speachifying at the end.

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