BSG 4.05 The road less travelled
I’ve been having this brainworm about last week's episode that the Gaius parts could have ben some kind of later day “Judgement of Paris.” The part where Paris has to decide who of Athena, Hera and Aphrodite is the fairest and by choosing Aphrodite and her offer of Helen’s love sets off the whole Trojan War.
In Escape Velocity Gaius is visited by three women, Tory, Roslin and Six and they each want something from him (even though it’s probably not the same thing). It’s easy to align Six with Aphrodite, goddess of love, and Laura with Hera, Queen of Olympus. Tory as Athena is trickier; she’s not the wisest but as a Cylon she has sprung direct from the mind of her creator and the pain-pleasure she offers is scientifically calibrated. Gaius rejects it and Tory/Athena with it despite having embraced the whole pain=pleasure equation with a fervour back in S3. Then, however, it wasn’t a game and had the added ingredient of real fear. He’s not afraid of Roslin/Hera either and although she plays him beautifully, leaving him visibly gagging for more, it has no lasting effect. Roslin, I think, doesn’t get Baltar. She’s afraid of him because his unlikely political successes suggest someone who is either very lucky or very smart at getting power and once he has it will hand humanity over to its enemies in a heartbeat but she doesn’t know about the Six factor. Gaius/Paris chooses not Roslin but Six who offers him real pain and through it love, the grace to be loved in spite of his transgression, even because of them. She inspires a sermon close enough to certain strains of Christian mysticism that even in the real world Jacob at TWOP falls for it hook, line and sinker. However, when Gaius says somebody in the universe loves him he’s not being mystical - he’s staring right at her. While she looks at Tory, which is interesting. Also interesting that her power seems to be growing tangible, a side effect of worship maybe. Whatever the case Gaius’s choice seems unlikely to launch 1000 ships since there probably aren’t that many left in the universe but it could still end badly.
This week I agree with selenak - they’ve been playing the universal self-loathing line too long and it’s losing impact. Mathais’s death felt like nothing after Callie’s and we’d already seen Chief hit bottom in his “demote me” speech. The rapprochement with Gaius seemed symbolic, possibly of the mooted cylon-human alliance that the mutiny seems to have scuppered and that together with Lebonen’s return should have been huge but felt like treading water somehow. I think I’d rather have seen what actually went down in the cylon civil war than had it reported second hand. Starbuck struggling with herself has been done to death but I did like the matter-of-fact way she accepted the mutiny and her whaling on Lebonen for Mathais’s sake. She may not be an angel of light but she does seem a little older and less self-involved than previously.