aftermath
Collaborators
I know this was a really good episode because I hated watching it. I couldn’t watch a couple of chunks of it. I was so, so worried about Gaeta now that he is apparently my bb. Maybe it would have been a bridge too far even for this show for Kara to mention the dog bowl a couple of days later and have them realize they’d executed a hero, but to the show’s credit, I couldn’t predict that with any certainty. I hope this episode and the fact that he is a SUPER SPY means the actor will get a little more face time because he is great and Gaeta is great and has been through hell enough that he actually rolls his eyes in annoyance at Tigh which makes life just a little more worth living and hooray for queer masculinity and ALSO HANDSOMENESS I APPROVE THIS MESSAGE.
I’m not down with this Circle idea. This is not a jury. Especially not Saul being in on it. He can’t be trusted. He can’t. Tigh gets to sit in judgment of others for treason and murder, MY GOD I cannot think of anything more inappropriate. The insurgency veterans are the last people who should get to be on even a show jury because they are the least likely to be able to be neutral (though as Roslin points out, nobody could be truly impartial). As we see with them, when they’re people who have essentially molded themselves into breathing weapons are locked into a room, they’re not able to stand up to each other and have a productive discussion. They’re just going to bully each other to settle their own scores. And while death sentences might arguably necessary for enemy forces who can at least justifiably be classed as not even people on some level, this is absolutely inexcusable. And of course even granting Cylons personhood for the sake of argument, airlocking a Cylon is basically detention and expulsion in most cases; hardly the same as a human execution.
The accused are not even given the opportunity to present evidence on their own behalves. Because the commissions are secretive, they’re constrained in any fact-finding and evidence-gathering they might otherwise do. This comes home when Tyrol asks Callie after the execution of….Plummer, was it?….if anyone had helped her. She wouldn’t have thought it was important to mention because she didn’t know he was on the chopping block. (I refuse to say “on trial” because, you know, that word means something and this isn’t it.)
Tigh in particular is just as out of control here as he was on New Caprica and cementing my opinion of him as the worst of the worst. He’s pretending a little bit that it’s about justice, insisting on the technicality of six Circle members - as if the sixth member has actually acted as a check on any unjust executions at that point. Kara will eventually, but Tigh resists her and can’t quite believe it. It’s about trying to rationalize the measures he took on New Caprica, and his murder of Ellen, for which he claims moral righteousness but abdicates responsibility. “She died for it because that’s the price of collaborating with the enemy.” The price you pay to who? On what ledger? There’s no Loyalty Authority on high that’s going to demand that price. Tigh has decided it’s owed to him and that makes him dangerous. Way harsh, Tai Tigh.
In particular, Tigh’s sneering that Gaeta is “such a good guy” is a perfectly-delivered line, but it really does drive home the fact that yes, going based on his service record from before the occupation, Gaeta is a good enough guy that they should have given him the benefit of the doubt. Thinking back to the election, Tigh in particular knows that Gaeta will do the honorable thing even if it means standing up to power, and he deliberately obscures that knowledge because he wants to execute Gaeta just to have one more execution. That Gaeta isn’t seduced by the lure of the office alone. And while I wouldn’t recommend doing criminal investigations or trials on that basis, they’re just going on their gut feelings anyway, and it’s an incredible show of bad faith that they didn’t even try to get those right.
He manipulates all of them shamelessly into voting guilty over their doubts - he plays Tyrol far too easily with CALLIE WAS ON THAT LIST. That, though, is what introduces the crack of doubt in Tyrol, enough that he’s eager to hear Gaeta’s side of the story and able to react in time to prevent the murder. Because the refrain is, what would you do, about those names, on that list? And while the thought is supposed to be that I’d try and help, trying to help just one person because you know them doesn’t do anything about systemic injustice. Trying to minimize the damage to lots of people is what you do. Even if you’ll never get credit for it.
The Chief is probably the most tortured one, and to that I have to say, good. He’s the only one that had any semblance of a level head, even including Anders. When Anders comes to, he peaces out. Tyrol has let his misgivings be quashed by the bloodthirstiness of the rest of the Circle, even after he knows he executed someone who tried to save Callie. He’s the one who really internalizes how quickly they’re moving and shouldn’t be, and how close they came to executing Gaeta. (Pixie Cut, OTOH, took the completely understandable rage she felt towards Cavil and turned it on civilians, to the extent that she didn’t even speak up during deliberations, having heard Gaeta’s claim of innocence.)
Anders seems like a decent enough guy who eventually comes to terms with what’s going on there, but he handles it exactly wrong. “I’m done”? You’re going to walk out and let him be on a death list? That is selfish. This is exactly the opposite of what Gaeta heroically did during the occupation. You don’t give up. You stay and try to do something about it, or you blow the whistle. You don’t just let it continue and wash your hands of it. Anders is entitled to a break, don’t get me wrong, but walking out and keeping his mouth shut to the extent that they can recruit Kara is just giving up and letting someone else do the dirty work. It has to stop. The insurgency veterans are doing exactly what they said they hated in the Cylons.
Starbuck. Oh Kara. This. She’s the most self-aware of everyone on the jury, I think, recognizing to Anders that she just wants to make someone pay for her misery, while the rest of them lie to themselves that it’s justice. I don’t know how the girl hasn’t snapped and just never come back from it yet, to be honest. She knows on some level, I think, that Gaeta told her the truth and that’s why she yells at him in the hangar to beg. She can’t bring herself to stand up for him, but she can’t let herself stand by if there’s a flicker of doubt, either. It wasn’t about hitting him. She could’ve hit him to her heart’s content, nobody would have stopped her. Yelling out the details like that was please, convince me, I can’t lose anyone else. Please.
Gaeta rips my heart out when he’s released. GIVE IT BACK I NEED THAT. He hardly even seems relieved or happy to be alive. I don’t know what else I could have done. His faith in Baltar was destroyed, his trust in his community is ripped to shreds, even his skill at work is devalued if they’re willing to murder him on such flimsy pretense. For having done what he could. Ever the humanist scientist, he took rational stock of the position he was in and figured out where he could do the most good. That’s far, far more laudable than having gone off the deep end blowing up a bunch of civilians.
Huge, huge disappointment to see Zarek and his bullshit rationalization for the secret commissions. He’s become what he was for two seasons publicly defining himself against - an unaccountable government with ultimate power over its citizens. It’s not about justice. It’s not even about politics or deterrence. We know the fleet observes the deaths as mysterious disappearances, so nobody is getting any sense of justice being served. Zarek is getting off on finally having enough guns to make the rules, and the Circle is getting off on their thirteen pounds of flesh. He tries to sell it to Roslin as having been for her own good, but he doesn’t expect her to buy it any more than he had thought of it before he said it. Maybe he thought of it when they were on their way in so he would be ready. That little smile Roslin gives when he asks her if she wants to spend her next term as executioner-in-chief is just. I could almost hear her saying “if I have to.” She’s going to really have to keep a close eye on Zarek, but at the same time, I think he’ll know she’s keeping a close eye on him and keep his head down. I do think “I don’t want to be on the outside looking in any more” was an attempt to play on her emotions and look more trustworthy than he is, and I think Roslin suspects it as well. Maybe he’s learned by now that he shouldn’t try to play her.
The undermining is a little bit subtler on the military end of things than the legal end of things, but Tigh is undermining Adama even more surely than Zarek is undermining Roslin. Zarek at least has technical legal authority to do what he does. It makes it all the more frightening, for citizens to be summarily executed under color of law without trial no matter what they’re accused of, but there’s nothing legally invalidating the executive order until Roslin puts a stop to it. Tigh, though, has absolutely no authority to be doing what he does on the ship. (Nice, too, how he suddenly found respect for the man he essentially tried to steal an election from as soon as Zarek tells him to cut loose with his bloodthirsty revenge fantasies.) Adama has no idea about the Circle. Tigh is running a murder ring on his ship and keeping it from Adama, who if he is the man I think he is would (and will) flip a shit.
A Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Oh. Laura Roslin. I love you. Zarek made a good point about the trials - and he of all people would know about making a public relations circus while on trial and clearly guilty - and so she decides to minimize harm in the best way possible. While I think she’s doing it because it’s the right thing to do, knows that just having been restored after the New Caprica rescue is the right time to establish it, because nobody’s really going to be able to question her issuance of the pardons on grounds of patriotism.
Baltar really isn’t in any different a position at the end of this episode than he was during the occupation. He’s locked up under the control of the Cylons, completely disempowered though he sits amidst trappings of luxury, and so he breaks once again with reality. To dream of Laura, natch, because ALL SHALL LOVE HER AND DESPAIR. He dreams of Tigh’s approval, Adama’s forgiveness, and Roslin’s love. And Six is the evil voice in his head now, not his inspiration.
When it comes to real life, as real as life can even be for Baltar, he finds not Six but Three gliding around his cell pointedly overdressed for the occasion. And Six herself is threatening to throw Baltar to the wolves. She really seems to have not made up her mind. (Initially I thought she was holding out so anyone who was on the fence about voting to protect Baltar wouldn’t think they were just being sentimental, which wouldn’t have been a bad move, but she’s actually undecided.) Whether the Cylons’ version of “not staying” is a euphemism for “leaving via airlock” or they’re considering dropping him into the human fleet, doesn’t much matter, he’s screwed either way, and he seems to know that.
Lee gets a quick cameo in the episode to show that he’s still desperate for his father’s approval, and still never going to get it unless they’re in a situation that is actually life or death. “Keep jumping.” Yeah, body snark is totally a part of acceptable parent-child dynamics, Bill. Way to be.
Torn
The Baltar/Six stuff is at its best in the beginning of the episode. By which I mean, TOTALLY FUCKED UP. In those first few moments of the episode, I couldn’t even tell whose head we’re in and IMO that’s how it should be. They are too tied up in each other now. We shouldn’t be able to separate them entirely any more, almost.
Baltar/Six is almost a microcosm for human/Cylon relations now. Six’s line that “Cylon psychology is based on projection” is a direct explanation of Cylons, but it’s also an accurate description of Baltar/Six. (I really hope his suspicion that he is a Cylon is unfounded, I like the gray area he occupies.) Neither Six’s Baltar nor Baltar’s Six are entirely identical to the versions of the characters we know from a third party perspective. They see the other as sophisticated, poised, somewhat mean, almost all surface. They’re re-making each other in their own images.
Everything about Baltar/Six has changed, in the aftermath of the overthrow of the occupation. Even their theme is slower, darker, mournful though it’s recognizably theirs. Six follows him around in black; Three in white. They are both still very much themselves - Six is torn between the way her affection for Gaius twists her understanding of her mission; Gaius can’t resist his scientific curiosity, fight his desire to prevent suffering (especially his own) at any cost, or decide whether he has a Destiny or not - but their relationship is different because they’re finally faced with the reality of each other.
Which I was on board with, until we see Gaius lose his temper and murdering Six JFC. Has there been one episode this season that did not feature a man being overtly violent toward a lady associate? Because, and I will be completely honest here, I COULD DEAL WITH LESS OF THAT. This is also the second time a Six has begged him to put her out of her misery. This time he gives in, but not without a fight. He still hasn’t completely figured out where Caprica Six ends and the other Sixes begin, which is also an issue for the Sharons and for the humans and the story at large, and so he lets the cognitive dissonance push him to the brink.
Anyone else feel like the show overall is juuuust treading the line of overt VAW in a really sketchy way? The prisoners tried to gang-rape Callie BUT she was saved in time. Same with Sharon. Tyrol beats Callie BUUUUT he was unconscious at the time so he really didn’t mean it and also she WUVS HIM so it is ok. (That actually is some ableist bullshit. It’s not any different than if he had a seizure and gave her a black eye. BUT they’re using it in a context of something fucked up about Tyrol where he takes his shit out on women, and using it to show that he is messed up. That should have been off-limits in fairness to both of them.) Starbuck is raped BUT not with a dick, she gets out, and they were Cylons. Leoben tries to get Starbuck to fuck him while she is his captive BUT we know he did not physically force her, as if psychological coercion and the fact that he could physically force her with no repercussions is not enough. Six has had the shit beat out of her and worse how many times now, including by Baltar, BUT we don’t see the actual abuse, it’s all Cain’s fault, and if she is murdered she just comes back to life. Tigh kidnaps Roslin at gunpoint on Adama’s orders BUT it was political. Even leaving aside all the yelling and looming and shaking which is fucking scary, this is a really destructive pattern of wanting to mostly unquestioningly show oppressive, violent gendered power dynamics without Actually Hitting Girls. Show it and deal with it, or lay the fuck off of it, IMO. None of this setting up a paradigm of “acceptable” relationship violence and drawing arbitrary lines as to what is an acceptably violent expression of Male Displeasure (TM).
Life on the ship is being defined by the unholy alliance of Starbuck and Tigh. They have a few personality traits in common - overreliance on brutality, hyper-loyalty to their people in the presence of outsiders but still willing and able to undermine their people, a need to stave off and shut out emotions as best they can (Starbuck just isn’t as good at it as Tigh and has way, way more problems than he does) - and are both New Caprica refugees, but I don’t know that I buy it completely. It especially worries me because, though they were both prisoners at some point on New Caprica, I don’t think the culmination of their stories is paralleled in the way we’re supposed to think it is. Starbuck stabbed someone who captured and intended to rape her in order to save a child, and who she knew would not only survive but heal completely. She escaped from someone who was trying to bend her to his will. Tigh murdered Ellen because she didn’t bend enough to his will. It’s not like there’s a romantic relationship there, but it’s still essentially an abuser-victim dynamic. Euugh.
Tough love is the last thing Starbuck needs, unless it’s tough love to force her to talk about her shit. I have some sympathy for Lee when he snaps at her, but even then, he flings out that comment - “If you wanna die, I will open up an airlock for you. But you’re not taking one of my vipers with you” - as a challenge more than anything. Starbuck has been swimming in self-destructiveness the whole time we’ve known her - sometimes she’s wading, sometimes she’s in the deepest part of the ocean - but she’s going at it much harder than usual here, and he should be able to tell that the way he could a season ago.Yelling at her for blowing the training session at great risk to lives and equipment, fine. But he really doesn’t care enough or much at all about her if he can drop that and not follow up with her later, no matter how much of an asshole she’s being.
Adama, though. She deserves to be chewed out for messing with the cohesion of the crew. But there’s no excuse for disowning her. None whatsoever. “You used to be like a daughter to me.” After physically attacking her hard enough to throw her to the ground. GOOD THING SHE HAS NO PARENTAL ISSUES, OR THAT ONE WOULD STING. Then his admonition to her to “find a way to act like a human being” isn’t just the harsh comment on behavior it sounds like. It’s a threat. ‘Cause if she looks like a human being, but she’s not one…well. That doesn’t end well for her. Can’t be a mother, can’t be a daughter, can’t even be a person. She needs to shape up, for sure, but he’s way out of line too. This isn’t going to help her. As it is now, she’ll do something a little bit good - visit with Casey, be good around the other pilots for a while - and it’ll just be enough to get her head above water and then she’ll be broken in a whole new way all over again in this re-traumatization cycle. INTERVENTION. INTERVENTION. USE THE I STATEMENTS BUT DO IT.
She can’t keep living in how she feels. She has to deal with what has happened. She skims the very surface of what she’s feeling with Anders, but she doesn’t talk about what happened to her. The only time I can think of Starbuck talking about what happened to her, any of it, is her talk with Helo at the end of Scar, and even then, she barely alludes to traumatic events, and he already knows what happened. Also they’re a lot of fun together. Need lots more Starbuck-Helo quality time.
Speaking of Captain America Lieutenant Caprica, he’s showing some heavily obscured depths, no? He’s not just insightful with Sharon and Kara, who he knows well, but able to take the temperature of the entire crew and bring the situation to Adama. Adama himself is apparently too out of touch with all his crew, even his bestest bro Tigh, to figure out that something is up, but Helo can cogently identify, isolate, and explain the problem and its magnitude.
Sharon is Athena! Oh, I love it. She sprang full-grown from the head of Zeus. And really, that’s what Athena has done, twice over. She was created as an adult, in the image of mankind in general, and now she has rebuilt herself as Adama’s lieutenant. She’s completely remade, born as an adult. (Athena, mother of Hera. Very wrong, and by which I mean, very ancient Greek.) ALSO THANK YOU SHOW FOR FIXING THIS NAME BUSINESS because I was really tired of writing out Sharon Valerii Case 17-24-C or what the fuck ever. Boomer is the one that was on Galactica S1, Athena is on Galactica now, and it’s something that all the characters recognize that. I like how they had Hot Dog drop in an explanation of who Athena is for the audience, and the rest of the cast, who eagerly await his arcane wisdom. It also reinforces that she’s a filial threat to Apollo. And in keeping with the title of the episode, it serves to forcibly tear her from the other Sharons. She’s not one of them any more in any meaningful sense, except her particular ability to hack into their main frame.
We leave off with Saul trying to drink himself to oblivion. Man Pain is one thing and BAD ENOUGH, but Man Pain over having intentionally caused harm to someone else? Absolutely not. I’m not sure he’s actively trying to kill himself as per his “you won’t see me again” to Bill, but he doesn’t particularly care if he doesn’t wake up. And selfishly chugging back all the good stuff when he’s too blasted to even appreciate it. Some people are downright thoughtless.
Other thoughts
- I love Baltar’s voice. I just love it. I want to sit and let it caress my ears. I also felt that way about Cain, did she have the most gorgeous speaking voice or what? I’m still not over it.
- I don’t want to sound unappreciative of the Bamber nudity, because, recognize, but doesn’t it feel a little exploitative to have him comment on his body so blatantly without clothes on? Like HE IS RIPPED NOW, NEVER FEAR.
- What the hell is the deal with the hybrid? It’s the Mind of the Ship? IDGI.
- “KAWA! KAWA!” Shameless grab for cute baby smiles, but it totally worked on me. I AM SO EASY. SO EASY.
- Something that just hit me and kind of made me sad: do they have music they can share on the ship? Assuming their technology is about even with ours, they probably mostly have personal entertainment devices. But a speaker set? Have we ever heard them play music in the mess? Don’t tell me it would not be the best thing ever to put a couple of drinks in Helo and Hot Dog and watch them try to get down. Don’t even lie, we are all friendlies here. You know the deck crew would all jump up on the tables and take their pants off when they hear Gemidonna. I want these people to get to kick back and have a legitimate party instead of drinking themselves stupid once in a while. Even before it went boom, they only got to trickle into Cloud 9 a few at a time and had to be on their best behavior there, which is just no fun at all. TOGA! TOGA! TOGA!
- Something that hit me while I was in bed moaning in pain yesterday: what the hell are they doing for their Special Woman Times? To be stocked for this long, the choice would have been fuel or tampons. GIRLS. I HOPE YOU ALL HAVE OTHER OPTIONS. Also you know they are all syncing up to Starbuck, as if that could possibly be good news. GET A HAT AND HOLD THE FUCK ONTO IT. And Tigh is a total tool about cramps. It is probably really easy to deal with Lee though, he would be all, LADY-BOX DOES WHAT? GO. JUST GO. HANDLE YOUR WOMANITY.