Tipping points
BSG 4.14 - "Blood on the Scales"
I assume the scales referred to by the title are the scales of justice, or of cosmic fate. This episode was very difficult on a number of levels--I suspect that the entire rest of the series will be like that--but it also felt like a closing of the circle for so many characters, a rebalancing in preparation for whatever they find next on their journey.
Gaeta saw his coup to its logical conclusion; Adama had to remind him that he was the admiral now--he has to make the hard choices this time. And even though Gaeta doesn't like Zarek's methods--Gaeta wanted the truth on their side, while Zarek just wanted to eliminate the competition as efficiently as possible--he does make those choices. He makes very different choices than Adama did; when parts of the fleet spooled down their FTL drives at Laura's urging, it was a direct mirror of the situation Adama faced at the beginning of Season 2, a military coup against the real civilian government (nobody accepted Zarek as President) that threatened to split the fleet in half. Gaeta was going to leave part of the human race behind to its doom. As real and valid as the rebels' distrust of the Cylons is, that would have doomed them all. But he wasn't ready to counterattack; that was an active act of civil war that he couldn't quite face, and the fact that he couldn't order the attack against the Cylon basestar, knowing that it would in turn fire on the fleet, meant that part of him knew the stakes of the game he was playing.
Gaeta wanted a trial--a reenactment of what he'd been through himself, stacked, a catharsis where he knew he'd get the outcome he wanted. Adama didn't go along with it, didn't plead as he had, and that must have rankled. Still, Gaeta believed in what he did, and knew what he'd become, and that's the way he faced his death--in an airlock again, judged and found guilty, and really guilty this time.
And Zarek's play this time is just a bigger, uglier version of the other schemes he's tried along the way--a power play cloaked in the thinnest of tissues of legitimacy. At least, that's the first plan: he tries talking the Quorum over to his side, but he comes with armed men, he comes prepared for their rejection. His other plots never panned out; he's going for broke this time. And that's the way he faces his death: knowing he gambled and lost, but that he couldn't have done anything else, because that's what he is, what he has been from the beginning.
Roslin seems to have gained a new kind of faith--a faith in Adama, but more than that, a faith in what they can all do together, and in her role in their future. It's not a faith based on prophecy, but on history: on the distance they've come together, what they've done so far. And with that faith, she literally regains her voice: she assumes the leadership, she broadcasts her arguments and pleas directly to the people. In her illness and the escalation with the Cylons, she'd become increasingly isolated, exercised her power more and more through a layer of military and civilian functionaries. That was never her strength; her strength was her ability to connect with those she led, to weigh their concerns and advocate for them. She was always the representative of the civilians in the fleet; her relationship with Adama seemed to conflict with that role for a while, but I don't think it will any longer, after the coup. The coup put Adama outside the military, if only briefly; Roslin lived on the battlestar for a while; Adama and Roslin have both been moving from the opposite sides to a central point for a while, and now they've survived the total collapse of both the civilian and military hierarchies in the fleet. Whatever they put together now from the wreckage won't have those crisp lines.
Hotdog, one of the original nuggets, won't fire on the president; Narcho, who earned his position in the ruthless environment of the Pegasus, will. Kelly, who loves the battlestar like a home, doesn't like where the coup is going; more than that, the fact that the Chief is a Cylon doesn't change what they've been through together in the end. The Chief is still the Chief; he always has been. Kara and Lee fall back into the rhythm of their teamwork, their shorthand communication and easy coordination, and when Sam is shot, Kara knows she has to stay with him, and Lee knows he has to leave her as she asks him to. (In particular, it felt like Kara has returned to herself in this episode, because she's finally acknowledging and acting on her ties to others--to Lee, to Sam, to Adama's reinstatement.) Romo can't resist being a lawyer, or helping a wounded man, for all his cynicism, for all that his dog won't get fed. Baltar dreams of Adama being shot by a firing squad, and for the first time, he realizes what that will mean to someone besides himself. He's safe on the basestar, but he won't let the Six distract him with sex; he has to go back; he has finally internalized the responsibility he bears for his own leadership.
Everything they've been through so far has made them what they are now.
And that's why the conversation between Gaeta and Baltar at the end was so utterly heartbreaking to watch. They call each other "Felix" and "Gaius;" they drink like friends. They talk to each other with the kind of open honesty that can only occur between two people who have shown each other their worst. Gaeta talks about his childhood dreams, and the joy he took in science, until Baltar ruined it for him; and Baltar accepts the responsibility for that too, just by being there. On the basestar, Baltar had asked the Six to cut off his legs so that he can't run again; as Gaeta talks about his past, he scratches his stump; and just before the bullets fly, the last thing he says is that he can't feel the missing leg any more.
I assume the scales referred to by the title are the scales of justice, or of cosmic fate. This episode was very difficult on a number of levels--I suspect that the entire rest of the series will be like that--but it also felt like a closing of the circle for so many characters, a rebalancing in preparation for whatever they find next on their journey.
Gaeta saw his coup to its logical conclusion; Adama had to remind him that he was the admiral now--he has to make the hard choices this time. And even though Gaeta doesn't like Zarek's methods--Gaeta wanted the truth on their side, while Zarek just wanted to eliminate the competition as efficiently as possible--he does make those choices. He makes very different choices than Adama did; when parts of the fleet spooled down their FTL drives at Laura's urging, it was a direct mirror of the situation Adama faced at the beginning of Season 2, a military coup against the real civilian government (nobody accepted Zarek as President) that threatened to split the fleet in half. Gaeta was going to leave part of the human race behind to its doom. As real and valid as the rebels' distrust of the Cylons is, that would have doomed them all. But he wasn't ready to counterattack; that was an active act of civil war that he couldn't quite face, and the fact that he couldn't order the attack against the Cylon basestar, knowing that it would in turn fire on the fleet, meant that part of him knew the stakes of the game he was playing.
Gaeta wanted a trial--a reenactment of what he'd been through himself, stacked, a catharsis where he knew he'd get the outcome he wanted. Adama didn't go along with it, didn't plead as he had, and that must have rankled. Still, Gaeta believed in what he did, and knew what he'd become, and that's the way he faced his death--in an airlock again, judged and found guilty, and really guilty this time.
And Zarek's play this time is just a bigger, uglier version of the other schemes he's tried along the way--a power play cloaked in the thinnest of tissues of legitimacy. At least, that's the first plan: he tries talking the Quorum over to his side, but he comes with armed men, he comes prepared for their rejection. His other plots never panned out; he's going for broke this time. And that's the way he faces his death: knowing he gambled and lost, but that he couldn't have done anything else, because that's what he is, what he has been from the beginning.
Roslin seems to have gained a new kind of faith--a faith in Adama, but more than that, a faith in what they can all do together, and in her role in their future. It's not a faith based on prophecy, but on history: on the distance they've come together, what they've done so far. And with that faith, she literally regains her voice: she assumes the leadership, she broadcasts her arguments and pleas directly to the people. In her illness and the escalation with the Cylons, she'd become increasingly isolated, exercised her power more and more through a layer of military and civilian functionaries. That was never her strength; her strength was her ability to connect with those she led, to weigh their concerns and advocate for them. She was always the representative of the civilians in the fleet; her relationship with Adama seemed to conflict with that role for a while, but I don't think it will any longer, after the coup. The coup put Adama outside the military, if only briefly; Roslin lived on the battlestar for a while; Adama and Roslin have both been moving from the opposite sides to a central point for a while, and now they've survived the total collapse of both the civilian and military hierarchies in the fleet. Whatever they put together now from the wreckage won't have those crisp lines.
Hotdog, one of the original nuggets, won't fire on the president; Narcho, who earned his position in the ruthless environment of the Pegasus, will. Kelly, who loves the battlestar like a home, doesn't like where the coup is going; more than that, the fact that the Chief is a Cylon doesn't change what they've been through together in the end. The Chief is still the Chief; he always has been. Kara and Lee fall back into the rhythm of their teamwork, their shorthand communication and easy coordination, and when Sam is shot, Kara knows she has to stay with him, and Lee knows he has to leave her as she asks him to. (In particular, it felt like Kara has returned to herself in this episode, because she's finally acknowledging and acting on her ties to others--to Lee, to Sam, to Adama's reinstatement.) Romo can't resist being a lawyer, or helping a wounded man, for all his cynicism, for all that his dog won't get fed. Baltar dreams of Adama being shot by a firing squad, and for the first time, he realizes what that will mean to someone besides himself. He's safe on the basestar, but he won't let the Six distract him with sex; he has to go back; he has finally internalized the responsibility he bears for his own leadership.
Everything they've been through so far has made them what they are now.
And that's why the conversation between Gaeta and Baltar at the end was so utterly heartbreaking to watch. They call each other "Felix" and "Gaius;" they drink like friends. They talk to each other with the kind of open honesty that can only occur between two people who have shown each other their worst. Gaeta talks about his childhood dreams, and the joy he took in science, until Baltar ruined it for him; and Baltar accepts the responsibility for that too, just by being there. On the basestar, Baltar had asked the Six to cut off his legs so that he can't run again; as Gaeta talks about his past, he scratches his stump; and just before the bullets fly, the last thing he says is that he can't feel the missing leg any more.