BSG 413-414
I got up this morning and couldn't resist watching BSG first thing.
I didn't post about last week's because I thought I might wait and see how the mutiny plot resolved itself.
I like my show dark and dirty and complex; I like rebellion and subversion and revolution even when it doesn't turn out so well. I stand with the Cylon in their network-enabled alterity, but I don't want anyone to forget that they were responsible for the genocide of the human race. I wanted the mutiny plot to honour the ways that pragmatic alliances between Cylon and human are always going to be betrayals, that the squabbling scraps of humanity can and must speak with more than one valid voice. When Gaeta stood up from his subordinate administrative tasks to confront Adama, I loved him. I loved the conspiracies, coded signals to Racetrack and quiet nods around the CIC.
I also loved Starbuck striking out and kicking ass, loved the solidarity of the Cylon in the brig. I enjoyed Laura's NO SURRENDER speeches, the Eight dodging bullets, Athena and Starbuck exchanging their the man-nursing and ass-kicking batons, Lambkin (is that how you spell it?) unexpectedly getting with the violence.
But I wish the show, which in previous Fleet divisions has refused to entirely take sides, could have maintained those divided sympathies. I thought they worked far too hard to show us that the mutiny was wrong and Adama right, that his military command and dictatorial politics ought too be considered ethically correct. The moment when Athena is placed into the hands of her rapist solidified that for me. As I said, my sympathies lie automatically with the Cylon, but I don't give them a pass for that; as Lee says, they left the humans with very few choices, and the show narrows those choices further still by drawing back from the complexity they were willing to offer to similar anti-Cylon actions in S2 and S3. Is it suddenly so simple now? Did those who died following Gaeta deserve it?
I'm also dissatisfied with Zarek as the cartoon bad guy, happy at the drop of a hat to slaughter dissent. It's not so much that I think it's out of character as that I have always found his characterisation impossible to believe in. Sometimes he seems to want legitimacy, sometimes he seems to have ideals; we're supposed to think he's only and always in it for himself, but that didn't quite ring true for me either. I'm rather glad to have got rid of him, if only because he now won't be annoying me any more.
And then Gaeta, oh Gaeta. He was never going to come out of this alive, was he? I liked his nobility at the end, but it doesn't change the fact that he died for sins the show has so far not been willing to execute its leaders for. Did he do worse than his confessor Gaius? Than Cain (who died, of course, but not, in the end, at the hands of the much-loved authority)? Maybe I'm wrong, but I do feel that we are supposed to see Adama's stance behind the firing squads as righteous where Gaeta's would be traitorous, out of place, the world turned upside down. With the Old Man and the President on the same side, reversals of authority can only be temporary.
The Cylon, on the baseship and on Galactica, come out of this by far the best, which is of course a huge reversal. I like the Chief dripping his blood into the machinery, the way the imprisoned characters came together. But on the baseship we don't really see them doing anything except submitting to the will of Laura Roslin. Like the good humans, apparently, virtue is to know when to follow the leader; after all, their right to do that is what the mutiny is being fought for. I wish we could at least have seen them arguing about it.
ETA: thingswithwings covers all the stuff I said, and all the stuff I didn't, a lot more eloquently than this.
I didn't post about last week's because I thought I might wait and see how the mutiny plot resolved itself.
I like my show dark and dirty and complex; I like rebellion and subversion and revolution even when it doesn't turn out so well. I stand with the Cylon in their network-enabled alterity, but I don't want anyone to forget that they were responsible for the genocide of the human race. I wanted the mutiny plot to honour the ways that pragmatic alliances between Cylon and human are always going to be betrayals, that the squabbling scraps of humanity can and must speak with more than one valid voice. When Gaeta stood up from his subordinate administrative tasks to confront Adama, I loved him. I loved the conspiracies, coded signals to Racetrack and quiet nods around the CIC.
I also loved Starbuck striking out and kicking ass, loved the solidarity of the Cylon in the brig. I enjoyed Laura's NO SURRENDER speeches, the Eight dodging bullets, Athena and Starbuck exchanging their the man-nursing and ass-kicking batons, Lambkin (is that how you spell it?) unexpectedly getting with the violence.
But I wish the show, which in previous Fleet divisions has refused to entirely take sides, could have maintained those divided sympathies. I thought they worked far too hard to show us that the mutiny was wrong and Adama right, that his military command and dictatorial politics ought too be considered ethically correct. The moment when Athena is placed into the hands of her rapist solidified that for me. As I said, my sympathies lie automatically with the Cylon, but I don't give them a pass for that; as Lee says, they left the humans with very few choices, and the show narrows those choices further still by drawing back from the complexity they were willing to offer to similar anti-Cylon actions in S2 and S3. Is it suddenly so simple now? Did those who died following Gaeta deserve it?
I'm also dissatisfied with Zarek as the cartoon bad guy, happy at the drop of a hat to slaughter dissent. It's not so much that I think it's out of character as that I have always found his characterisation impossible to believe in. Sometimes he seems to want legitimacy, sometimes he seems to have ideals; we're supposed to think he's only and always in it for himself, but that didn't quite ring true for me either. I'm rather glad to have got rid of him, if only because he now won't be annoying me any more.
And then Gaeta, oh Gaeta. He was never going to come out of this alive, was he? I liked his nobility at the end, but it doesn't change the fact that he died for sins the show has so far not been willing to execute its leaders for. Did he do worse than his confessor Gaius? Than Cain (who died, of course, but not, in the end, at the hands of the much-loved authority)? Maybe I'm wrong, but I do feel that we are supposed to see Adama's stance behind the firing squads as righteous where Gaeta's would be traitorous, out of place, the world turned upside down. With the Old Man and the President on the same side, reversals of authority can only be temporary.
The Cylon, on the baseship and on Galactica, come out of this by far the best, which is of course a huge reversal. I like the Chief dripping his blood into the machinery, the way the imprisoned characters came together. But on the baseship we don't really see them doing anything except submitting to the will of Laura Roslin. Like the good humans, apparently, virtue is to know when to follow the leader; after all, their right to do that is what the mutiny is being fought for. I wish we could at least have seen them arguing about it.
ETA: thingswithwings covers all the stuff I said, and all the stuff I didn't, a lot more eloquently than this.