Dirty Hands
I'm so excited for today because it's a big finale day for my favorite Thursday shows. I can't wait until 8:30 so I watch Parks And Recreation (which won't be back again until the next mid-season which is so totally bogus) and then comes The Office! I'm so pumped! But Thursday is also great because I actually went to the gym and exercised. Holy frak. I ran a mile all in one go (which is a big deal when you're me) and biked on a simulation alpine pass (gotta love technology). So what could make today even better? Reviewing Dirty Hands, of course!
I have to tell you all: I hear praise for this episode a lot in this fandom and I've always thought, "Well, I like it, sure, but it's not that great." And then I watched it last night and I was like, "Holy frak! This is a great episode! Who knew?!" Lots of you did, it would seem. But I'm happy to now be on the Dirty Hands bandwagon.
So let's just get right to it shall we? To the cut!
1) Dirty Hands begins with 41,400 survivors, a two person gain from A Day In The Life. Looks like people in the fleet are really starting to have some babies. Laura's wish has come true!
2) The big idea in Dirty Hands is about class and caste relationships. Colonial society was never equal. Some colonies were more privileged (Caprica) and some are looked down upon (Sagittaron). Professionals are more likely to come from a place like Caprica, while farmers are more likely to come from Aerilon. Religious nuts come from Gemenon and Sagittaron and so on. You get the picture. So people would naturally kind of fall into careers that were most prominent in their place of living. But, since the attack, society has become more rigid. People could, if they tried, go to other colonies and become other things than what their parents had been, but what was a class system has started to develop into a caste system. Tylium refiners can only be tylium refiners. Deckhands can only be deckhands. Algae processors can only be algae processors. And their children are likely to follow in their parents footsteps because it's not like they can go to college and prepare for a career there.
3) Starting off this distinction, the episode begins with Seelix getting rejected from flight school because she's considered too important in her current job (avionics) to move. It certainly feels somewhat justified. The deckhands are just as important as the pilots because the pilots can't fly if they deckhands don't do their job, but the system is basically telling Seelix that avionics is what she does and she's not allowed to do anything different.
4) But there's trouble a-brewing not related to social mobility. Working conditions and quality control in the tylium refinery have reached a new low and contaminated tylium made it into Racetrack's raptor and basically frakked the thing up, causing it to crash into Colonial One, narrowly missing killing Laura and Tory.
5) But, just incase you were wondering, Laura's office/bedroom may have been destroyed, but she's always welcome in Adama's beds.
6) Laura and Adama go and talk to the head tylium guy, Zeno Fenner. He's protesting over the poor working conditions. His people barely have any time off. They get to sleep and that's about it. Not only that, but the refinery itself is deteriorating and it's more and more dangerous for people to even be on the ship.
He quotes something from a book that's been circulating across the fleet: My Triumphs, My Mistakes By Gaius Baltar, about the ruling class and the proletariat. It's all very Marxist, I'm sure. Laura takes the opportunity to arrest him for something like treasonous actions during a time of war, but, as Adama jokes to Chief, she really arrests him because he was reading that book and it pissed her off. Laura's a bit touchy lately.
7) And speaking of Baltar's book . . . Cally's back to being super annoying again. Any sympathy she gained from me in A Day In The Life has fled the scene. She's talking about Baltar's book and how it makes so much sense and how there's a ruling class and how she and Tyrol will never be a part of it because they aren't from the rich colonies. And then she basically bitch slaps Dee by saying that Dee's only an officer because she married Lee.
First of all, Dee was an officer well before she married Lee. I'm also certain she was a lieutenant before season three. So it's ridiculous to insinuate that she slept her way to the "top".
Second, this whole thing is kind of silly when I think of Caprica and what we've learned about Tauron. Hell, even from what we learned about Taurons in the episode Hero. I suppose Tauron could be a rich colony, but Taurons do not seem to be well regarded. They're typically seen as thugs who generally do things that are illegal. Yeah, Adama is Tauron and so was Cain, but I think it just means that Taurons are good fighters so they make good candidates for the military. But you can't convince me, based on what we already know and based on what I've learned in Caprica, that Tauron is a rich colony. So, the point is moot. Dee married a Tauron (raised on Caprica, sure) and she gets to be an officer? Doesn't even make sense.
8) We get another great scene between Laura and Baltar (why can't all the scenes be between Laura and Baltar? Or Laura and Starbuck? Or Laura by herself?) She goes looking for the next chapter in Baltar's book and it's just such an interesting kind of mind game play when she just kind of stands there and orders the marines to strip Baltar so they can find the hidden pages. And she just kind of calmly looks and him and watches until Head!Six entreats Baltar to spare his dignity and give the pages up.
I listened to the commentary and, apparently, Ron Moore had originally had it so that they stripped Baltar completely and Laura just stood there watching. I think that would have ultimately made for a better mind game but, as I said in a previous review, I can go without seeing Baltar's chest hair again, so I'm okay with these alterations.
9) Laura also tells Baltar that she's the only person who has read his book. As Baltar will say later, the president certainly is an accomplished liar.
10) Laura and Bill assign Chief (and Seelix) to go over the tylium ship and check everything out and report back. While he's there he finds some not-good things. First of all, he meets Milo, an eleven year old boy who is an accomplished tylium refiner, so that's not really good.
The other thing Chief finds? The crew has disappeared the pressure seals, a vital part to the refining process because without them, the machines won't work properly.
That wasn't a good idea.
11) Chief goes back to Laura and Adama and tells them about it and tries to reason with them about the conditions on the tylium ship. He tells them that most of the crew hasn't had a day off since the first attack and that they can't transfer, they can't stop. He basically likens it to slave labor because there's not even basic compensation for all that they do. They just do it because it's what they did before the attacks.
Laura does make a good point that no one in the fleet is exactly having a good time, that there are lots of ships with bad jobs, such as the algae processing plant. The truth of the matter is that this is a situation of life and death. If they don't refine the tylium into something usable, the fleet is frakked. And that includes the people on the ship. Not running the machinery and not having the workers do their job is unacceptable because it really does, quite literally, effect the fate of humanity.
12) Laura decides to have Cabot arrested until they find the pressure seals but it doesn't really end well because Cabot had been in cylon detention on New Caprica and being put in Galactica's brig seemed to trigger memories and he basically freaks out. He scratches at the walls until his fingers bleeds and mumbles incoherently. Chief basically appeals the humanity within Fenner to reveal where the pressure seals are so that he and Cabot can be released and Fenner eventually caves and tells him.
13) Chief goes back and replaces the seals but not before noticing that Milo isn't the only kid working on that ship. He goes back to Laura to plead their case.
Laura's sympathetic, but only to a point. She claims that there are children on ships across the fleet. That's just how it works out. In listening to the commentary, I think Ron Moore made a really interesting point about Laura's attitude about this. Does she want there to be child labor? Of course not. But she realizes the practical day to day realities of this fleet and that, yes, child labor is going to happen. It's a shift from how she probably would have dealt with a similar situation back on the colonies as Secretary of Education. She tells Chief that nothing about the fleet is ideal.
Tyrol suggests that jobs are being inherited. He asks if he can only train his son to be a deckhand because that's why Chief is and that's all Nicky can ever be and something about that kind of strikes a chord in Laura because, while class differences are just a fact of Colonial life, I think she is appalled about it developing into a caste system and there's something about how Chief says what he says that kind of brings it into perspective for Laura. She decides that they'll look at the census information and pull people who have jobs that would qualify them to work on the tylium ship to give some of the workers there a bit of a respite.
14) It sounds like a decent plan to me until . . . Well, the lottery isn't perfect because really obscure qualifications suddenly become really important. Like, there's a kid who worked on a farm for one summer and suddenly they're labeling him a farmer and telling him he can use heavy machinery. That's . . . not good.
15) So Chief, because he's a perpetual wanderer in this episode, goes to see Baltar to ask him about his book.
I think Baltar has seriously legitimate points, but, honestly, it kind of disgusts me that anyone in the fleet would read that book and agree with it. Because he's Baltar. Remember him? The guy you elected as president and frakked everything up? Traitor to the human race?
So I like that Chief is kind of one of the more sensical people about this and approaches Baltar as a bit of a skeptic, not because he disagrees with what Baltar's writing, but because he doesn't believe Baltar can actually speak to these experiences.
Now, I like this scene because it gives us some interesting insights into Baltar's character. He grew up in a small hamlet on Aerilon, on his family's farm. He was an intelligent kid and understood that he needed to get out so he changed his accent and, basically, his identity, for the chance to do what he actually wanted to do.
I think he gets it wrong, though, because I certainly don't think either Laura or Adama want to keep the working class down. I just think the fact of their lives in the fleet overrides social mobility when it means they lose people like tylium refiners or avionics experts.
One point I like that Baltar does make? Will the fleet ever be commanded by someone not named Adama? I definitely have had serious issues with Lee's constant promotions because it seems to be, as a viewer, that Lee hasn't always deserved what he's gotten, so yeah, I'd fist bump Baltar on that.
16) The Not!Farmer sustains a really bad arm injury after one of the machines jams and Tyrol's had enough. He goes all Norma Rae on us and shuts the entire thing down. He calls for a general strike of all working class people. That includes his deck crew back on Galactica.
Oh no you didn't, Chief!
17) Adama throws Chief in the brig and tells him that if he doesn't call of the strike he's going to put Cally against the wall and shoot her, seeing as how she's a mutineer. If Chief still doesn't cooperate, Adama tells him he'll start in on the rest of the deck crew.
Chief caves and calls off the strike.
So, two questions: Would Adama have actually killed Cally had Tyrol not stepped down? And who was right in this case?
I think that yes, Adama definitely would have killed Cally Tyrol had Chief not called off the strike. And I think it's because, in this case, Adama was in the right. A strike is an admirable idea but the military just can't function like that. As Adama says, often times the security of the fleet will come down to one person having to do something they don't want to do but do because it's an order. If people hesitate, people die. It's that simple. If Chief's crew learn that they can refuse orders, the whole chain of command breaks down. The military is a very different place from civilian life. The chain of command is there for a reason (and I realize this goes against some stuff I said way back during the Kobol arc in Scattered, Valley Of Darkness, and Fragged).
So, yes, I do think Adama would have killed Cally, if only to show the others that he wasn't bluffing. And yes, I do think that Adama was right. But Chief was right about the situation on the tylium ship and I definitely give thumbs up to Adama because as soon as he lets Chief out of the brig, basically tells him to go talk to the president.
18) Laura and Chief's conversation is a good and fruitful one. First of all, she basically makes him restart the Colonial Worker's Union, which he had been in charge of on New Caprica and they talk about things like maintaining their current work force, starting training programs, allocating low level maintenance to people like those on Colonial One.
19) Back on Galactica, Seelix's been accepted to flight school! She's now an officer! I unapologetically love this scene. I love everything about it. I love Starbuck's tough talk and I love how Chief knew it was going to happen and had Seelix's officer pips in his pocket. I love how Seelix is confused but really excited and I love that the rest of the deck crew salutes her, happy to see one of their own move on and up.
It's so rare that BSG has a happy ending. I'm almost in shock!
So, yeah, I loved Dirty Hands. I thought the stuff about the labor disputes and the emerging class/caste system was really interesting and I loved a lot of the character moments. I feel like I really got to know Chief and Baltar a lot better and there was some good fleshing out of Laura and Seelix. Even the really minor characters felt "lived in". I'm going to give Dirty Hands 4.5 out of 5 airlocks.
I have to tell you all: I hear praise for this episode a lot in this fandom and I've always thought, "Well, I like it, sure, but it's not that great." And then I watched it last night and I was like, "Holy frak! This is a great episode! Who knew?!" Lots of you did, it would seem. But I'm happy to now be on the Dirty Hands bandwagon.
So let's just get right to it shall we? To the cut!
1) Dirty Hands begins with 41,400 survivors, a two person gain from A Day In The Life. Looks like people in the fleet are really starting to have some babies. Laura's wish has come true!
2) The big idea in Dirty Hands is about class and caste relationships. Colonial society was never equal. Some colonies were more privileged (Caprica) and some are looked down upon (Sagittaron). Professionals are more likely to come from a place like Caprica, while farmers are more likely to come from Aerilon. Religious nuts come from Gemenon and Sagittaron and so on. You get the picture. So people would naturally kind of fall into careers that were most prominent in their place of living. But, since the attack, society has become more rigid. People could, if they tried, go to other colonies and become other things than what their parents had been, but what was a class system has started to develop into a caste system. Tylium refiners can only be tylium refiners. Deckhands can only be deckhands. Algae processors can only be algae processors. And their children are likely to follow in their parents footsteps because it's not like they can go to college and prepare for a career there.
3) Starting off this distinction, the episode begins with Seelix getting rejected from flight school because she's considered too important in her current job (avionics) to move. It certainly feels somewhat justified. The deckhands are just as important as the pilots because the pilots can't fly if they deckhands don't do their job, but the system is basically telling Seelix that avionics is what she does and she's not allowed to do anything different.
4) But there's trouble a-brewing not related to social mobility. Working conditions and quality control in the tylium refinery have reached a new low and contaminated tylium made it into Racetrack's raptor and basically frakked the thing up, causing it to crash into Colonial One, narrowly missing killing Laura and Tory.
5) But, just incase you were wondering, Laura's office/bedroom may have been destroyed, but she's always welcome in Adama's beds.
6) Laura and Adama go and talk to the head tylium guy, Zeno Fenner. He's protesting over the poor working conditions. His people barely have any time off. They get to sleep and that's about it. Not only that, but the refinery itself is deteriorating and it's more and more dangerous for people to even be on the ship.
He quotes something from a book that's been circulating across the fleet: My Triumphs, My Mistakes By Gaius Baltar, about the ruling class and the proletariat. It's all very Marxist, I'm sure. Laura takes the opportunity to arrest him for something like treasonous actions during a time of war, but, as Adama jokes to Chief, she really arrests him because he was reading that book and it pissed her off. Laura's a bit touchy lately.
7) And speaking of Baltar's book . . . Cally's back to being super annoying again. Any sympathy she gained from me in A Day In The Life has fled the scene. She's talking about Baltar's book and how it makes so much sense and how there's a ruling class and how she and Tyrol will never be a part of it because they aren't from the rich colonies. And then she basically bitch slaps Dee by saying that Dee's only an officer because she married Lee.
First of all, Dee was an officer well before she married Lee. I'm also certain she was a lieutenant before season three. So it's ridiculous to insinuate that she slept her way to the "top".
Second, this whole thing is kind of silly when I think of Caprica and what we've learned about Tauron. Hell, even from what we learned about Taurons in the episode Hero. I suppose Tauron could be a rich colony, but Taurons do not seem to be well regarded. They're typically seen as thugs who generally do things that are illegal. Yeah, Adama is Tauron and so was Cain, but I think it just means that Taurons are good fighters so they make good candidates for the military. But you can't convince me, based on what we already know and based on what I've learned in Caprica, that Tauron is a rich colony. So, the point is moot. Dee married a Tauron (raised on Caprica, sure) and she gets to be an officer? Doesn't even make sense.
8) We get another great scene between Laura and Baltar (why can't all the scenes be between Laura and Baltar? Or Laura and Starbuck? Or Laura by herself?) She goes looking for the next chapter in Baltar's book and it's just such an interesting kind of mind game play when she just kind of stands there and orders the marines to strip Baltar so they can find the hidden pages. And she just kind of calmly looks and him and watches until Head!Six entreats Baltar to spare his dignity and give the pages up.
I listened to the commentary and, apparently, Ron Moore had originally had it so that they stripped Baltar completely and Laura just stood there watching. I think that would have ultimately made for a better mind game but, as I said in a previous review, I can go without seeing Baltar's chest hair again, so I'm okay with these alterations.
9) Laura also tells Baltar that she's the only person who has read his book. As Baltar will say later, the president certainly is an accomplished liar.
10) Laura and Bill assign Chief (and Seelix) to go over the tylium ship and check everything out and report back. While he's there he finds some not-good things. First of all, he meets Milo, an eleven year old boy who is an accomplished tylium refiner, so that's not really good.
The other thing Chief finds? The crew has disappeared the pressure seals, a vital part to the refining process because without them, the machines won't work properly.
That wasn't a good idea.
11) Chief goes back to Laura and Adama and tells them about it and tries to reason with them about the conditions on the tylium ship. He tells them that most of the crew hasn't had a day off since the first attack and that they can't transfer, they can't stop. He basically likens it to slave labor because there's not even basic compensation for all that they do. They just do it because it's what they did before the attacks.
Laura does make a good point that no one in the fleet is exactly having a good time, that there are lots of ships with bad jobs, such as the algae processing plant. The truth of the matter is that this is a situation of life and death. If they don't refine the tylium into something usable, the fleet is frakked. And that includes the people on the ship. Not running the machinery and not having the workers do their job is unacceptable because it really does, quite literally, effect the fate of humanity.
12) Laura decides to have Cabot arrested until they find the pressure seals but it doesn't really end well because Cabot had been in cylon detention on New Caprica and being put in Galactica's brig seemed to trigger memories and he basically freaks out. He scratches at the walls until his fingers bleeds and mumbles incoherently. Chief basically appeals the humanity within Fenner to reveal where the pressure seals are so that he and Cabot can be released and Fenner eventually caves and tells him.
13) Chief goes back and replaces the seals but not before noticing that Milo isn't the only kid working on that ship. He goes back to Laura to plead their case.
Laura's sympathetic, but only to a point. She claims that there are children on ships across the fleet. That's just how it works out. In listening to the commentary, I think Ron Moore made a really interesting point about Laura's attitude about this. Does she want there to be child labor? Of course not. But she realizes the practical day to day realities of this fleet and that, yes, child labor is going to happen. It's a shift from how she probably would have dealt with a similar situation back on the colonies as Secretary of Education. She tells Chief that nothing about the fleet is ideal.
Tyrol suggests that jobs are being inherited. He asks if he can only train his son to be a deckhand because that's why Chief is and that's all Nicky can ever be and something about that kind of strikes a chord in Laura because, while class differences are just a fact of Colonial life, I think she is appalled about it developing into a caste system and there's something about how Chief says what he says that kind of brings it into perspective for Laura. She decides that they'll look at the census information and pull people who have jobs that would qualify them to work on the tylium ship to give some of the workers there a bit of a respite.
14) It sounds like a decent plan to me until . . . Well, the lottery isn't perfect because really obscure qualifications suddenly become really important. Like, there's a kid who worked on a farm for one summer and suddenly they're labeling him a farmer and telling him he can use heavy machinery. That's . . . not good.
15) So Chief, because he's a perpetual wanderer in this episode, goes to see Baltar to ask him about his book.
I think Baltar has seriously legitimate points, but, honestly, it kind of disgusts me that anyone in the fleet would read that book and agree with it. Because he's Baltar. Remember him? The guy you elected as president and frakked everything up? Traitor to the human race?
So I like that Chief is kind of one of the more sensical people about this and approaches Baltar as a bit of a skeptic, not because he disagrees with what Baltar's writing, but because he doesn't believe Baltar can actually speak to these experiences.
Now, I like this scene because it gives us some interesting insights into Baltar's character. He grew up in a small hamlet on Aerilon, on his family's farm. He was an intelligent kid and understood that he needed to get out so he changed his accent and, basically, his identity, for the chance to do what he actually wanted to do.
I think he gets it wrong, though, because I certainly don't think either Laura or Adama want to keep the working class down. I just think the fact of their lives in the fleet overrides social mobility when it means they lose people like tylium refiners or avionics experts.
One point I like that Baltar does make? Will the fleet ever be commanded by someone not named Adama? I definitely have had serious issues with Lee's constant promotions because it seems to be, as a viewer, that Lee hasn't always deserved what he's gotten, so yeah, I'd fist bump Baltar on that.
16) The Not!Farmer sustains a really bad arm injury after one of the machines jams and Tyrol's had enough. He goes all Norma Rae on us and shuts the entire thing down. He calls for a general strike of all working class people. That includes his deck crew back on Galactica.
Oh no you didn't, Chief!
17) Adama throws Chief in the brig and tells him that if he doesn't call of the strike he's going to put Cally against the wall and shoot her, seeing as how she's a mutineer. If Chief still doesn't cooperate, Adama tells him he'll start in on the rest of the deck crew.
Chief caves and calls off the strike.
So, two questions: Would Adama have actually killed Cally had Tyrol not stepped down? And who was right in this case?
I think that yes, Adama definitely would have killed Cally Tyrol had Chief not called off the strike. And I think it's because, in this case, Adama was in the right. A strike is an admirable idea but the military just can't function like that. As Adama says, often times the security of the fleet will come down to one person having to do something they don't want to do but do because it's an order. If people hesitate, people die. It's that simple. If Chief's crew learn that they can refuse orders, the whole chain of command breaks down. The military is a very different place from civilian life. The chain of command is there for a reason (and I realize this goes against some stuff I said way back during the Kobol arc in Scattered, Valley Of Darkness, and Fragged).
So, yes, I do think Adama would have killed Cally, if only to show the others that he wasn't bluffing. And yes, I do think that Adama was right. But Chief was right about the situation on the tylium ship and I definitely give thumbs up to Adama because as soon as he lets Chief out of the brig, basically tells him to go talk to the president.
18) Laura and Chief's conversation is a good and fruitful one. First of all, she basically makes him restart the Colonial Worker's Union, which he had been in charge of on New Caprica and they talk about things like maintaining their current work force, starting training programs, allocating low level maintenance to people like those on Colonial One.
19) Back on Galactica, Seelix's been accepted to flight school! She's now an officer! I unapologetically love this scene. I love everything about it. I love Starbuck's tough talk and I love how Chief knew it was going to happen and had Seelix's officer pips in his pocket. I love how Seelix is confused but really excited and I love that the rest of the deck crew salutes her, happy to see one of their own move on and up.
It's so rare that BSG has a happy ending. I'm almost in shock!
So, yeah, I loved Dirty Hands. I thought the stuff about the labor disputes and the emerging class/caste system was really interesting and I loved a lot of the character moments. I feel like I really got to know Chief and Baltar a lot better and there was some good fleshing out of Laura and Seelix. Even the really minor characters felt "lived in". I'm going to give Dirty Hands 4.5 out of 5 airlocks.