The greatest shows always give you meat to chew on
A few remarks concerning BSG miniseries that I have re-watched. I hope fragrantwoods will share her take on it.
First off, one amusing note. While Kara is in the brink, for punching Saul Tigh, the CAG announces that a certain Anders will replace her! I guess that they had no idea about creating the character of Sam at the time, and I bet that the name they used there just ended up struck in someone's head so when they wrote the Caprica storyline for season 2 it popped up and Kara's new love interest was named Sam Anders. It's a hell of a coincidence though. I like it because, being a fan of Jorge Luis Borges, the man who thought of hypertext years before computers and the World Wide Web were even invented, I love that sort of things when a subsequent work or author creates its precursors.
Also, it reminds me of that episode of Buffy during the first season, "The Witch", when a cheerleader named Amber is performing and Amy tells Buffy that she trained with Benson...3 years before Amber Benson was hired to play Tara !!
But let's back to BSG. The miniseries isn't perfect but I enjoyed rewatching it, picking up all the nods to Blade Runner over again (sometheing that remained throughout the show and in Caprica) and seeing how the characters were introduced to us.
I remember that I was very pro-Roslin in the miniseries (the teacher in me I guess!) and for the most part of season 1. The cancer thing and the scene in which she was sworn President were truly poignant. Mary did a fine job. Things changed later and I sided in the Adama camp. I even enjoyed the way Baltar played her and announced he would run for president in season 2! But in the miniseries, I liked her a lot, she was strong and level headed with a touch of vulnerability that made her touching.
What struck me the most when I rewatched it two days ago is that Adama and Roslin sounded like the only true adults there. All the others sounded like teenagers and kids, even Saul Tigh who behaved in a very childish way.
In one way or another, the Galactica crew are Bill's children so they are introduced as such. Starbuck is a great pilot but a brat -- and she has the old man wrapped around her finger --, but Lee is not better ( I didn't like him much when I saw the miniseries the first time around, I wanted to slap him in the face for the way he behaved with his father)and he is, first and foremost, introduced as someone having daddy issues. The chief is a good kid, looking up at Papa Adama with bright innocent eyes and sneaks in with Sharon to have sex, like teenagers; Boomer is the rookie who keeps screwing up her landing. Helo sounds more mature than the others but he's still the guy with a girl on every colony, and he is first showed while he's sucking on a lollipop!
I think it set the tone of the show. Adama is the Patriarch (or Zeus), the one everybody (including Saul) refers as "the old man", and the childless Roslin is the "schoolmarm" turned Mama Prez. Billy is her first obvious metaphorical kid but by the end of the miniseries, Apollo has become her "escort boy", her young knight in armour; he accepts that the "lady's in charge" , to Doral's dismay, and it's believable that he will play his new Mama against Papa Adama.
The metaphorical family will become more obvious later when Kara develops a personal bond with Laura (and Laura's dreaming of her own death bed in season 4 will feature the four of them as father, mother, daughter and son). Even though there was ambiguity in the meniseries and the Kara/Lee thing was foreshadowed through the "viper intercourse" Starbuck came up with to save Apollo's ass (she's always so agressive in sex! ;- )) in the end, I have always consider them, first and foremost, as siblings; a bit incestuous ones, for sure, but who were not in mythological times? And if you have seen the finale of the show you must know that the BSG 'verse was highly mythological.
Gaius Baltar is another very childish character. He's only on level 1 if we follow the Kohlberg's scale of moral development. There's his vanity and selfishness of course, that are more immature features than villain's traits here -- because Gaius is not the villain of the play --, and how he reacts when he is caught in bed with another woman, and his fear of "being punished", his crying that he doesn't want to die before Caprica Six saves him, but I also love the way he raises his hand when Boomer says there's room for three more people in the raptor! A big contrast to Helo's choice to leave his seat to him, because Baltar is the greatest mind of their time.
By sacrificing himself Helo made, not only a heroic decision, but also a man's choice. We all know that his journey was supposed to end here, except that the feedbacks about the character were so good that the Powers That Be decide to keep him alive...which was a great idea because I adore Helo! Besides if anyone could survive on a Cylon-occupied and irradiated planet it was the one who already looked like a Greek Hero and whose last name, Agathon (which isn't known in the miniseries if I am not mistaken), was the one of an Athenian tragic poet who was supposed to be incredibly handsome! Helo's journey into adulthood will go on, and the next step will be to make a husband and a father out of him.
But I digress...
So he's still a little boy, our Dr Baltar (and there's a huge difference if we compare him to another genius from decades before, Daniel Graystone, who was introduced to us as a father...) and Caprica Six's love for him -- something that is quite obvious in the miniseries and Tricia did a great job conveying that genuine love while pointing out the difference between Caprica Six and the Six we see in the opening scene -- might be connected to her fondness for children. It will take a long time and the ordeal of season 3 for Gaius to start growing up. His failure as president or even as cult leader will be very significant. And can I say that his future relationship with Laura will be very Oedipal?
So parenthood and the children/parents relationship is a big theme on BSG (and it will become more and more obvious with the Baltar/Head!Six scenes at the end of season 1 and with the birth of Hera of course) and it's there since the beginning, with Caprica Six marvelling at the baby's fragility -- before killing said baby which is a dark scene but it's also an act of mercy from her point of view and the look of pain on her face is significant as she's vanishing in the crowd -- or later telling Baltar that the children of humanity are coming back home.
When I saw the miniseries 6 years ago I thought that the Boxey character would have a storyline in the series, but he did not. His name was never mentioned again so I took it that the boy's presence was just a nod to the original series. Now I think that rescuing Boxey from Caprica in Sharon's raptor, was a pure metaphor. An old world, the world of the fathers, disappeared during the Cylon attack, but the youngsters were saved and with them the hope for humanity to survive and build something new. The Pandora Box had been opened, unleashing the worst calamities on our characters, but hope remained inside still...kinda boxed...Boxey!
In a way, Boxey was foreshadowing (without the knowledge of the authors themselves!) Hera, daugter of Helo and of another Sharon, and mother of a future humanity on Earth 2.0 (and all the babies that "they'd better start having", to borrow Laura's and Bill's words), but he also represented all those young characters that were introduced in the miniseries.
By the way Tigh said something meaningful in a scene where he has to make a tough call deciding to seal off everything forward of frame 30 and start an emergency vent of all compartments. Tyroll begs for one minute to get his poeple but Saul refuses.
"Tigh: If they remembered their training, then they had their suits on and they were braced for possible vent action
Chief: There's a lot of rooks in there.
Tigh: No one's a rook anymore."
In a way they are both right. BSG shows how rookies can't afford to be rookies anymore. They represent hope, but some young lives will also be lost because of tough calls that must be made for the survival of the largest number. Later on Colonial One Lee argue that they should stop the rescue mission and jump to the Ragnar rendezvous and leave behing thousands people that are on ships that can't jump ("we'll be saving tens of thousands. I'm sorry to make it a numbers game, but we're talking about the survival of our race"). Roslin follows his advice and makes the call...dooming Cammie, the little girl she had met earlier, to die; a detail that Billy provides to her which kinda echoed Lee telling Bill that he killed Zak. The scene that follows is very dark, with the voices on the radio announcing that the cylons are upon the ships (and thus that Lee was right), accusing the Colonials who are about to jump ("I hope you people rot in hell for this") and with the last picture of the Cylons firing and Cammie playing with her doll before the screen fades to white. That scene put Laura on the same level as Tigh, and also establishes a connection between Caprica Six killing the baby on Caprica, and her. There's no innocent anymore as everybody is doing harm and causing death.
So the miniseries that serves as a pilot and ends up with the cliffhanger of the reveal of both the fact that there are 12 models and that Boomer is a cylon, tells us that this is going to be the story of people on the run, with hidden enemies among them; a story about moral ambiguity, line crossing and therefore about the definition and preservation of humanity in a context of such survival, but it is also the story of youngsters who will go on a journey, led by two parental figures, and who might be growing up and becoming men and women in the process.
And with BSG writing being based on the constant parallel between the colonials and the cylons, as if the 'verse were a hall of mirrors, we'll see the cylon characters slowly leaving childhood as well, which, in their case, means becoming more and more human or reflecting the human struggles and the human flaws that their colonial counterparts will display.
The miniseries told us that the cylons rebelled against their parents just like Lee against Bill, staying away for some time after a first blow (2 years for Lee, after Zak's funeral and hurtful words, forty years of silence for the cylons after the armistice)and coming back home to get back to the ones whom they consider unworthy. By the way it's very significant that, during the official ceremony, Commander Adama delivers his famous improvised speech about the fact that humanity might not be worth saving, just after being accused by Lee of killing Zak, and that Lee is listening to Bill's words in the old man's viper...
Leoben the seer (and sexiest Cylon!) even uses against Adama his own words from said speech when later he tells him: "Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things you've done."
Both the colonials and the cylons will learn that lesson. So even though it became more obvious with the passing of time and seasons, the miniseries already clued the viewers in the echoes game between the so-called humans and the so-called machines. For instance in the opening scene a Number Six meets the diplomatic officer who has been sent on the space station and asks him whether he is alive. When he answers "yes" she says "prove it" before kissing him. Later Caprica Six catches Gaius cheating on her and decides to come out a few seconds before the attack. Baltar can't believe that his mistress is a cylon and says: "Prove it. If you're a Cylon, prove it to me right now. "
That 3 hour long miniseries wasn't flawless but it was already a terrific piece of SF television, providing a depth and a clever writing that the original series lacked, and concealing, beneath the surface of space opera, a study on humanity that Greek tragedies and the best science fiction novels have in common.
First off, one amusing note. While Kara is in the brink, for punching Saul Tigh, the CAG announces that a certain Anders will replace her! I guess that they had no idea about creating the character of Sam at the time, and I bet that the name they used there just ended up struck in someone's head so when they wrote the Caprica storyline for season 2 it popped up and Kara's new love interest was named Sam Anders. It's a hell of a coincidence though. I like it because, being a fan of Jorge Luis Borges, the man who thought of hypertext years before computers and the World Wide Web were even invented, I love that sort of things when a subsequent work or author creates its precursors.
Also, it reminds me of that episode of Buffy during the first season, "The Witch", when a cheerleader named Amber is performing and Amy tells Buffy that she trained with Benson...3 years before Amber Benson was hired to play Tara !!
But let's back to BSG. The miniseries isn't perfect but I enjoyed rewatching it, picking up all the nods to Blade Runner over again (sometheing that remained throughout the show and in Caprica) and seeing how the characters were introduced to us.
I remember that I was very pro-Roslin in the miniseries (the teacher in me I guess!) and for the most part of season 1. The cancer thing and the scene in which she was sworn President were truly poignant. Mary did a fine job. Things changed later and I sided in the Adama camp. I even enjoyed the way Baltar played her and announced he would run for president in season 2! But in the miniseries, I liked her a lot, she was strong and level headed with a touch of vulnerability that made her touching.
What struck me the most when I rewatched it two days ago is that Adama and Roslin sounded like the only true adults there. All the others sounded like teenagers and kids, even Saul Tigh who behaved in a very childish way.
In one way or another, the Galactica crew are Bill's children so they are introduced as such. Starbuck is a great pilot but a brat -- and she has the old man wrapped around her finger --, but Lee is not better ( I didn't like him much when I saw the miniseries the first time around, I wanted to slap him in the face for the way he behaved with his father)and he is, first and foremost, introduced as someone having daddy issues. The chief is a good kid, looking up at Papa Adama with bright innocent eyes and sneaks in with Sharon to have sex, like teenagers; Boomer is the rookie who keeps screwing up her landing. Helo sounds more mature than the others but he's still the guy with a girl on every colony, and he is first showed while he's sucking on a lollipop!
I think it set the tone of the show. Adama is the Patriarch (or Zeus), the one everybody (including Saul) refers as "the old man", and the childless Roslin is the "schoolmarm" turned Mama Prez. Billy is her first obvious metaphorical kid but by the end of the miniseries, Apollo has become her "escort boy", her young knight in armour; he accepts that the "lady's in charge" , to Doral's dismay, and it's believable that he will play his new Mama against Papa Adama.
The metaphorical family will become more obvious later when Kara develops a personal bond with Laura (and Laura's dreaming of her own death bed in season 4 will feature the four of them as father, mother, daughter and son). Even though there was ambiguity in the meniseries and the Kara/Lee thing was foreshadowed through the "viper intercourse" Starbuck came up with to save Apollo's ass (she's always so agressive in sex! ;- )) in the end, I have always consider them, first and foremost, as siblings; a bit incestuous ones, for sure, but who were not in mythological times? And if you have seen the finale of the show you must know that the BSG 'verse was highly mythological.
Gaius Baltar is another very childish character. He's only on level 1 if we follow the Kohlberg's scale of moral development. There's his vanity and selfishness of course, that are more immature features than villain's traits here -- because Gaius is not the villain of the play --, and how he reacts when he is caught in bed with another woman, and his fear of "being punished", his crying that he doesn't want to die before Caprica Six saves him, but I also love the way he raises his hand when Boomer says there's room for three more people in the raptor! A big contrast to Helo's choice to leave his seat to him, because Baltar is the greatest mind of their time.
By sacrificing himself Helo made, not only a heroic decision, but also a man's choice. We all know that his journey was supposed to end here, except that the feedbacks about the character were so good that the Powers That Be decide to keep him alive...which was a great idea because I adore Helo! Besides if anyone could survive on a Cylon-occupied and irradiated planet it was the one who already looked like a Greek Hero and whose last name, Agathon (which isn't known in the miniseries if I am not mistaken), was the one of an Athenian tragic poet who was supposed to be incredibly handsome! Helo's journey into adulthood will go on, and the next step will be to make a husband and a father out of him.
But I digress...
So he's still a little boy, our Dr Baltar (and there's a huge difference if we compare him to another genius from decades before, Daniel Graystone, who was introduced to us as a father...) and Caprica Six's love for him -- something that is quite obvious in the miniseries and Tricia did a great job conveying that genuine love while pointing out the difference between Caprica Six and the Six we see in the opening scene -- might be connected to her fondness for children. It will take a long time and the ordeal of season 3 for Gaius to start growing up. His failure as president or even as cult leader will be very significant. And can I say that his future relationship with Laura will be very Oedipal?
So parenthood and the children/parents relationship is a big theme on BSG (and it will become more and more obvious with the Baltar/Head!Six scenes at the end of season 1 and with the birth of Hera of course) and it's there since the beginning, with Caprica Six marvelling at the baby's fragility -- before killing said baby which is a dark scene but it's also an act of mercy from her point of view and the look of pain on her face is significant as she's vanishing in the crowd -- or later telling Baltar that the children of humanity are coming back home.
When I saw the miniseries 6 years ago I thought that the Boxey character would have a storyline in the series, but he did not. His name was never mentioned again so I took it that the boy's presence was just a nod to the original series. Now I think that rescuing Boxey from Caprica in Sharon's raptor, was a pure metaphor. An old world, the world of the fathers, disappeared during the Cylon attack, but the youngsters were saved and with them the hope for humanity to survive and build something new. The Pandora Box had been opened, unleashing the worst calamities on our characters, but hope remained inside still...kinda boxed...Boxey!
In a way, Boxey was foreshadowing (without the knowledge of the authors themselves!) Hera, daugter of Helo and of another Sharon, and mother of a future humanity on Earth 2.0 (and all the babies that "they'd better start having", to borrow Laura's and Bill's words), but he also represented all those young characters that were introduced in the miniseries.
By the way Tigh said something meaningful in a scene where he has to make a tough call deciding to seal off everything forward of frame 30 and start an emergency vent of all compartments. Tyroll begs for one minute to get his poeple but Saul refuses.
"Tigh: If they remembered their training, then they had their suits on and they were braced for possible vent action
Chief: There's a lot of rooks in there.
Tigh: No one's a rook anymore."
In a way they are both right. BSG shows how rookies can't afford to be rookies anymore. They represent hope, but some young lives will also be lost because of tough calls that must be made for the survival of the largest number. Later on Colonial One Lee argue that they should stop the rescue mission and jump to the Ragnar rendezvous and leave behing thousands people that are on ships that can't jump ("we'll be saving tens of thousands. I'm sorry to make it a numbers game, but we're talking about the survival of our race"). Roslin follows his advice and makes the call...dooming Cammie, the little girl she had met earlier, to die; a detail that Billy provides to her which kinda echoed Lee telling Bill that he killed Zak. The scene that follows is very dark, with the voices on the radio announcing that the cylons are upon the ships (and thus that Lee was right), accusing the Colonials who are about to jump ("I hope you people rot in hell for this") and with the last picture of the Cylons firing and Cammie playing with her doll before the screen fades to white. That scene put Laura on the same level as Tigh, and also establishes a connection between Caprica Six killing the baby on Caprica, and her. There's no innocent anymore as everybody is doing harm and causing death.
So the miniseries that serves as a pilot and ends up with the cliffhanger of the reveal of both the fact that there are 12 models and that Boomer is a cylon, tells us that this is going to be the story of people on the run, with hidden enemies among them; a story about moral ambiguity, line crossing and therefore about the definition and preservation of humanity in a context of such survival, but it is also the story of youngsters who will go on a journey, led by two parental figures, and who might be growing up and becoming men and women in the process.
And with BSG writing being based on the constant parallel between the colonials and the cylons, as if the 'verse were a hall of mirrors, we'll see the cylon characters slowly leaving childhood as well, which, in their case, means becoming more and more human or reflecting the human struggles and the human flaws that their colonial counterparts will display.
The miniseries told us that the cylons rebelled against their parents just like Lee against Bill, staying away for some time after a first blow (2 years for Lee, after Zak's funeral and hurtful words, forty years of silence for the cylons after the armistice)and coming back home to get back to the ones whom they consider unworthy. By the way it's very significant that, during the official ceremony, Commander Adama delivers his famous improvised speech about the fact that humanity might not be worth saving, just after being accused by Lee of killing Zak, and that Lee is listening to Bill's words in the old man's viper...
Leoben the seer (and sexiest Cylon!) even uses against Adama his own words from said speech when later he tells him: "Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things you've done."
Both the colonials and the cylons will learn that lesson. So even though it became more obvious with the passing of time and seasons, the miniseries already clued the viewers in the echoes game between the so-called humans and the so-called machines. For instance in the opening scene a Number Six meets the diplomatic officer who has been sent on the space station and asks him whether he is alive. When he answers "yes" she says "prove it" before kissing him. Later Caprica Six catches Gaius cheating on her and decides to come out a few seconds before the attack. Baltar can't believe that his mistress is a cylon and says: "Prove it. If you're a Cylon, prove it to me right now. "
That 3 hour long miniseries wasn't flawless but it was already a terrific piece of SF television, providing a depth and a clever writing that the original series lacked, and concealing, beneath the surface of space opera, a study on humanity that Greek tragedies and the best science fiction novels have in common.