the listing continues!
BSG is another show that has been pretty formative for me, though unlike AtS, I have kind of been able to process and mostly have good feelings toward it.
One influence that BSG has had on how I watch shows is that I apply the Laura Roslin Test to fictional 'verses now to see how much credibility I give the major conflict. The Laura Roslin test is ( Read more... )
One influence that BSG has had on how I watch shows is that I apply the Laura Roslin Test to fictional 'verses now to see how much credibility I give the major conflict. The Laura Roslin test is ( Read more... )
My favourite episodes:
Blood on the Scales
The Oath
Kobol's Last Gleaming I and II
The Hub
Sometimes a Great Notion
Escape Velocity
Unfinished Business (long version)
Occupation
Resurrection Ship Part I
Razor
I have a higher opinion of 4.5 than you. I think SAGN to BotS is the best four episode run in the show because it just plays out the death of hope in so many ways and has so much to say about the relationship of words and deeds. I also like far more about Daybreak than I dislike. It's No Exit to Someone to Watch Over Me that either bores me or pisses me off and that's got a great deal to do with not finding the Cylon characters interesting enough for so much of them. I also think that the show really suffers from not having a proper fall out of the mutiny episode.
On Laura in 4.5 I find it frustrating after the mutiny until Daybreak because there is so little of her and I hate the equation of her and the ship but I don't think she's as weakened as often presented. I think taking season four as a whole Laura has a pretty clear arc around her acceptance of mortality and with it life without taking refuge in the idea of her death having special meaning and is much better served than her marginalization without a story told from the perspective of her agency from Black Market through to Crossroads, the two Lay Down Your Burdens aside.
On human-Cylon blending my short thought is that the Cylon characters were lacking in reality - Cavil excepted - and the show could not carry them having much dramatic weight but the show stayed just the side of a line I accepted in where it went. My long thought are at:
http://effrasebbsandflows.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/the%20mutiny
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Ha, all television has been problematic to me for two and a half years because of the Laura Roslin standard.
That's true, that those two episodes running up to the mutiny are pretty strong. They just kind of didn't make either list, because they're not the strongest of the show, and they're too painful to rewatch often.
Laura has a pretty clear arc around her acceptance of mortality and with it life without taking refuge in the idea of her death having special meaning
I like this read on it a lot. From a kind of macro-story perspective, though, it's not so much "bad things happened to this particular character" as the story was taking such bizarre twists and turns that it had to find some way to marginalize her in order to allow as much credibility as possible which is still not much.
I've actually never rewatched anything after No Exit (which I only like BECAUSE ELLEN), though. My opinion might change if I can bring myself to revisit it.
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On blending and the ethical response, what I like about Laura's approach is that she is able to take it as practical fact, even though that is very painful for her. I would like to have seen that explored more, but I think there is (just) enough there to see a parallel between the way she broadens her conception of reality to accept knowledge from the gods in season one and the way she does with Cylons in 4.5. Reality for human survival requires human- rebel Cylon co-operation and Laura doesn't fight reality; she takes it into herself. I also think Laura's approach to ethics is vindicated in Daybreak by Lee taking the very position he has eschewed against her in Escape Velocity over Baltar. Again I wanted more, but I don't think Laura's stance is being diluted.
What interests me ethically about the end - and here I do wish Laura had been given a chance to reflect on it - is the way in which one of the dichotomies that had been established - the lie of war versus the lie of earth - is subverted. The lie of earth turns out to run through the lie of war and the choice of deliberate violent confrontation with Cavil's Cylons. I love that the visual moment that Adama tells Kara to blind jump the ship is almost identical to the moment that Cain told Kendra to do the same. There's a lot of compassion for Cain and recognition of ethical paradox in that.
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