Destiny

[scifishipper]

Comments

[rachelindeed]

Hee! Destiny. You've focused directly on the most controversial part of this beloved scene. I salute you :)

I like what Ron Moore said in a podcast when he was summarizing where Lee was at the beginning of Season Four:

Lee's fundamental joy and belief in Kara galvanizes belief in himself, [he takes a] second chance in a life out of uniform.I love the absolute confidence in Kara that Lee displays throughout this scene. He treats her completely normally, and believes everything she says about having come back to lead them all to Earth, and basically says to her that he is ready to accept impossible things now, things he might not have accepted before -- "destiny" being the one they discuss, her "resurrection" being the one they don't speak about because they don't even have to. She's here -- she automatically gets his love and his faith

[rachelindeed]

I very much agree Rachel with your interpretation if we just look at the scene in its own terms. I was just struck rewatching it the other day that that line takes on a different meaning in the context of the ending. For me it solves the issue of Lee's  immediate acceptance at the literal level of losing her in Daybreak.  He can accept because at some level, not quite conscious, he knows her return is temporary.

I do think that although  he hadn't worked out much in the way for specifics that RDM had long decided Kara and Lee and Kara's fate by this point: Kara wouldn't live on earth and Lee and Kara wouldn't end up together. This scene in that context is both an acknowledgement of their love with the hint of tragic inevitability that it isn't going to be.

[callmeonetrack]

Love their reunion. So disappointed that it rang so false for Lee to leave her side for even a minute when she came back. Anders or not. Was it not the direct opposite of what Romo was trying to tell him? Sigh

[scifishipper]

I agree with much of what you have said. Despite some interesting moments in S4, I am also disappointed that the four leads were separated to allow room for the cylon storyline. The core of the show seemed to be gutted and we were left with waiting for everyone's individual journeys to mesh at the end into some greater whole. I wanted to know exactly the same things about how people in kara's life would come to terms with her return. I wanted the "family," as Adama put it, to stay together.

On a shippy level, I can't believe that Lee would just leave her. I see what the writer's wanted us to take from this scene, but they should not have been made to separate, esp after all the loss. I feel like the reunion should have meant something more than to just reinforce this notion of destiny that the writers were cramming down our throats. Sorry, not my favorite storyline. :(

(Please excuse typos - phone...)

[callmeonetrack]

What galls the most is that this WAS the kind of show it was in S1 or even early S2! I mean that's how they would have handled it, I think, by really spending time on showing you how it affected each of her core people. :( But the show changed and became so plot-dependent and so little time was spent on the characters. I mean, even the final five--they spent all that time on listening to the dumbass song in the walls and then it's revealed in Revelations who they are and aside from Adama's breakdown and Kara's look of shock/betrayal--we get ZERO processing of who the five are from anyone. I SOOOO wanted more of a reaction from Lee when he's contemplating airlocking them but it got such short shrift! There was such rich material there. Gah

[scifishipper]

I wish I had more time to respond, but I have to say that the quote from the script is just gutting and has brought tears to my eyes. :( I just don't get it either. I don't know what was going on. Makes me so sad.

[rachelindeed]

Oh, reading everyone's comments I feel sad again, too

[rachelindeed]

But does Kara have a relationship with Sam  in season 4 in any meaningful way? She uses him for sex to try to feel that her body is a real thing. She seems ready to shoot him to protect her destiny without a second thought in Faith. It's Lee she goes to after she finds her body. And when she stops to take care of him in the mutiny it plays  given the way Kara works as a character through the mutiny as her reaching for her Starbuck persona as a crux for dealing with her crisis coming to a crashing halt with an imperative to help someone live rather than to kill. Then she realises that Sam holds some answers to her destiny and she realises she feels tenderness for this man whom she has wronged in some way. I know KS plays the last part of this very hard as if it is more than that and then did the ad lib but I don't think that is supported by text, theme or structure. In the last podcast Mrs Ron is waxing lyrical about the last K-S scene but it is very clear that that is not RDM's take. I don't think he wanted to say much at all about K-

[scifishipper]

From everything that I can see, and based on Katee's comments, she knew that L/K were not going to be together in the end and that is how she played it. Her attitude towards Sam changes for me when he gets shot. There's a depth of emotion about Sam that I had not seen and frankly found to be very strange. There's all sort of romantic overtones to her scenes with Sam when he's getting the surgery, sliding into the goo, and finally steering the fleet into the sun. I can't stand to watch it, but it is plainly there. For whatever RDM was *trying* to accomplish, he did give them something that looked like a relationship to me. I hate it, but I think it's there.

*cries in a corner*

[rachelindeed]

But sci-fi-shipper if Katee weren't playing it the way she were would you think the story was attaching any positive romantic weight to Kara-Sam and that it was saying Kara chose Sam over Lee. I can't see anything beyond what Katee is bringing to it that suggests that at all. I haven't read anything that RDM has said that suggests he wanted to invest some final meaning in Kara-Sam. The fact that Katee's explanation of her own performance has basically nothing to do with the story only strengthens my belief that it is not what the story is saying at all.

[damao2010]

I'm really late to this discussion (as, sadly, seems to be the case quite often recently *sighs and curses RL a bit*), but I'll add my two cents, anyway

[scifishipper]

after he gives her the idol, he talks about "till they meet again." There was hope there. Hope for something undefined, but hope. Hope that continued throughout the season. And that hope was what misled us to believe they stood a chance at the end of their journeys, when their paths were again reunited completely. This is why the poof is so painful still.

Yes. This is why it is so painful. :( I miss them.

[damao2010]

Me too. *hugs you*

[rachelindeed]

Oh, really beautifully written, damao. I always love your take on these characters. Gorgeous!

And I really like what you've said about that combination of wariness and hope, resignation and yet anticipation. I think you've really captured the feeling of the scene. I think you may be right that a subconscious sense that Kara can't share her future with anyone may not actually fit as an interpretation of their interactions this season. I will think about it more as we go along.

**loves your beautiful perspective**