Cally, Dee, and Ellen: on the reviled feminine on BSG (Ellen)

[pocochina]

womenlovefest TIME!

Day 1: what gender-neutral society?
Day 2: why these ladies?
Day 3: Ellen Tigh

I was going to go in alphabetical order to avoid showing favoritism, but there have already been a couple of comments about Ellen! Possibly I have tipped my hand regarding my everlasting love slight bias.

Comments

[witherwings]

I don't hate Ellen. I don't even particularly get why she's hated. I don't get her though, and I think that's probably because the writers didn't really get her either

[pocochina]

That's all fair. I'm deliberately reading a bit into it, and in any event, I do suspect that a lot of the credit for her development goes to Kate Vernon going full steam on not a lot of material.

Whatever else was up with the Final Five, I think the retcon at least allows for a more cohesive picture of Ellen - she behaved like a shallow construct because she was one, once Cavil stripped her of her identity, though (OH NEW CAPRICA) he couldn't possibly take away everything that was awesome about her. I'm okay with her still having the flaws that were on display in Deadlock, but yeah, the re-integration of Ellen into the Galactica environment and her own identity re-integration on the in-universe level, and then the writers' attempt to understand this big change in her character, was kind of a big thing in such a busy handful of episodes.

I'm easy because I always liked her so much! But I think you're absolutely right that she wasn't prioritized in a way she should've been.

[witherwings]

Eee, I got so involved with my own deconstruction of Ellen that I forgot to mention this bit of your meta which felt like the whole point:

she behaved like a shallow construct because she was one, once Cavil stripped her of her identity, though (OH NEW CAPRICA) he couldn't possibly take away everything that was awesome about her.I really enjoy this view of the final five-ness of Ellen and how the retcon actually works in favour of her here, helping us make sense of the way that the writers had dealt with her at the start (possibly one of the only examples of the final five retcons working out for the best for our view of a character

[pocochina]

I am thrilled to have inspired Ellen thoughts! <3 <3

The Final Five thing was a bit of a mixed bag, I agree. It paid off for Ellen so I'm biased in favor, but I acknowledge the problems with Tyrol and Saul. I thought it worked for Anders in terms of making him so much more interesting, but it was pretty incongruous with his backstory. It would've worked brilliantly for Tory if she'd gotten the screen time she deserved.

we have to talk around what their motives are for and how their character development actually works behind the scenes that we see and guess what was in their heads at certain times, and rely on how awesome the actors may be and how well they throw themselves into their character and scenes.Yeah. I also think it's a byproduct of volume - so much to say and so little time - and then the question of ownership is so murky. (ie, I think my Lee belongs far more to Jamie Bamber than to Moore or Eick, but because they did decide what would happen to him, it pulls at the seams sometimes.) I feel like we have to kind of flip

[korenap]

I completely hated the jealous Ellen thing, if they had tied her freakout to Cavil raping her somehow it might have worked.

For a fic I've been working on, Six is literally Ellen and Saul's daughter, created from the combination of their DNA.

What I heard is that RDM's original idea was to have everything blow up and have Ellen and Tigh on opposite sides at the end. Have the universe mirror the Tighs relationship. He decided to drop that since he thought it would cheapen the series. Would have been nice if Ellen was a person in his mind rather than a plot and story device.