BSG episode commentary: Occupation/Precipice
I finally got around to a second viewing of the season 3 premier and have written up my extremely long thoughts on the episode. and I do mean long.
So, some thoughts about the season opener arranged by character in no particular order:
The Cylons
Initially I found myself wondering if the Cylons were every bit as stupid as the humans they were shepherding. All that hand wringing over the insurgency? All the concern about the identities of the ring leaders? And who do those leaders turn out to be? Colonel Tigh, the former XO of Galactica and veteran of two Cylon wars; Chief Tyrol, the head of the labor union, Gaalctica’s deck chief who has been serving in the military since he was 18; and Sam Anders, the head of the resistance on Caprica.
Wow! I never would have seen that coming?
/rolls eyes
The problem, of course, is that the Cylons didn’t seem to see it coming either. Yes, they’d arrested Tigh, but they’d released him. And they’d never picked up either Tyrol or Anders despite the fact that they are both pretty logical suspects. Anyone with half a brain would have recognized them as the most likely suspects from day one. Hell, I would have brought in anyone who had served in the military for questioning. It’s a logical course of action. So why are they walking around? Simply put, because the Cylons want it that way. Or, to be more accurate, one faction does.
From early on, it becomes clear that there is dissent in the ranks of the Cylons. While Caprica Six and Boomer with their “peace with humans” agenda still hold sway, there’s growing disaffection, especially among the Brother Cavil models. Cavil remains as bloodthirsty as ever. He wants people to be rounded up and shot. He wants to whittle the humans down to a manageable - and biddable - number. He proposes 1,000, which would mean killing 40,000 or more. So much for peace and God’s love. He certainly seems to be enjoying himself. He’s downright whimsical in his dealings with Tigh, seems to take great delight both from interrogation and from the screwing - literal and figural - of Ellen. Peaceable co-existence is the last thing on his agenda.
Tensions are high and so is seems Cavil and his faction take action setting up Tigh to be the lynchpin. Cavil allows Ellen to sell herself to win his release, let’s her think he’s swayed by her sexual favors (which he clearly enjoys, but not that much) but it’s a ruse. Cavil knows Tigh is part of the insurgency, but releases him anyway. But first, he tortures him, takes his eye, twists him into an angry, bitter, violent man and then he sets him free. It’s the equivalent of poking a caged bear with a pointy stick. What do you think will happen when you open the cage door and set the bear loose?
Tigh responds predictably. Filled with rage, he wants revenge. The raids and bombings the insurgency has been using get more violent. From the webisodes we learn that Tigh has no qualms about hiding weapons in a temple or about hitting targets that will potentially result in civilian casualties, but now, he’s proposing something more extreme: human bombs aimed not just at Cylon targets, but at collaborators as well. He might claim he’s trying to creates distractions to keep the Cylons occupied while the Fleet prepares to return, but I don’t buy it and I’m pretty sure neither do Tyrol or Anders. Worse, though, he’s playing right into the Cylons’ hands and he doesn’t even realize it.
It’s bloody escalation and its exactly what Cavil wants because it allows him is escalate as well. Attack and counter attack. With each act of growing violence, the Boomer/Caprica Six faction looses ground. After all, its hard to preach peace and love when your charges are blowing the shit out of you and themselves.
This culminates in the order of execution of 200 humans. Here we see the balance of power shifting as the peace movement looses control. When Six continues to protest, more about the threats to Baltar than to the order itself, she’s killed, ending the debate in rather chilling but effective terms. Baltar signs the order and the humans are rounded up, many of them torn from their beds and their families in the dead of night. The point of this exercise is ostensibly to weed out the insurgency and to throw the fear of God into the humans, give them a taste of what they can expect if they continue to disobey. But is that really the purpose? I think not.
Look at the people they round up: Cally, Roslin, Zarek. None of them is a member of the insurgency. Cally and Roslin know what’s going on, but they’re not active participants. They neither plan nor execute missions. And Zarek has been warming a cell for 4 months so he’s clearly not one of them. So why these people?
Boomer gives us the clue. When she tries to spare Cally whether from a sense of guilt or loyalty, who knows, she warns Cavil that Cally is the wife of the head of the labor union and that her death will incite people. Cavil remains blasé. Why? Because that’s exactly his intent. That’s why he chose the people he did. He didn’t arrest Tigh or Tyrol or Anders, he arrested the wife of the head of the labor union who is the mother of a newborn baby; a school teacher and former president/prohet; the vice-president who chose imprisonment and possibly torture over collaboration. These are people whose deaths will outrage the populace and incite them to further violence. It’s not punishment or object lesson; it’s provocation.
If the point of this exercise was to warn the people of the danger of insurgency, they would have carried the executions out in public, in full view, pronouncing their crimes for all to hear. Instead, they hauled them away to be butchered far from prying eyes, but with the knowledge that word would surely get out. After all, they were loaded into trucks in broad daylight. People will have seen them taken away. They would also have seen the trucks returning empty of their charges. Once word spreads, outrage against the Cylon oppressors will reach a new high. New Caprica is a powder keg, and the Cylons have just tossed a match. Let the bonfire begin!
Tigh
Oh man, I love me some rabid dog Tigh. He’s so very awesome in his bitterness and rage even if he has kind of gone off the deep end. From the webisodes it’s clear that he was already pretty hard core even before he was imprisoned, but now after his stint as a guest of the Cylons, he’s very much like an angry, wounded animal determined to inflict as much pain on his enemies as possible. While it’s a perfectly understandable - and human - response, it’s also unnerving, especially when it’s the de facto general of your army who has turned into rageful vendetta guy. Tigh is so focused on revenge - he says it’s about creating diversions to distract the Cylons in order to facilitate the rescue, but we know the truth - that he’s completely lost sight of the human cost. Willing soldiers, collaborators, innocent civilians are all fodder for his war. It’s a very scary thought and it’s pretty clear that both Tyrol and Anders think he has crossed the line but they don’t know how to reign him in. I really can’t wait to see how/if Mad Tigh is going to reintegrate into the Fleet. This is true across the boards, but I wonder if perhaps Tigh isn’t too damaged to be fit for “normal” society again. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Ellen
Elle, oh Ellen. I know I’m in the minority, but I’ve always kind of liked Ellen, crazy ho bag that she is. The thing with Ellen is, for all her drinking and infidelity, I’ve always believed that deep down she loves her husband, truly, deeply, if somewhat unconventionally. There’s isn’t a picture perfect marriage, but then, they’ve never been Ozzie and Harriet to begin with. It’s clear that Ellen is acting not from self-interest but from a desperate desire to save her husband. She let’s herself be used, first as a whore and then as a reluctant informant but always with the same goal in mind: keeping Tigh safe. Of course, when Tigh finds out - and I’m sure it’s a question of when, not if - he’s going to be horrified that Ellen betrayed the resistance for his sake. I think that will break him just that little bit more. Yay! Angst! It’s very easy to condemn Ellen’s actions, and I suspect most people will, but I wonder how many of us would act differently in her situation. Could you stand idly by when someone threatens the life of your spouse/lover/parent/child knowing that you have the means to save him/her/them. Yes, she betrays the resistance but in her mind Tigh comes first and I don’t think she could bear to live with the knowledge that she let him die when it was in her power to save him.
Baltar
He’s another character that I surpisingly find myself feeling sympathy for. Not lazy, drunken!whoring!missing year!Baltar who abdicated all responsibility and drowned himself in self-indulgence, but rather the poor schlub who wakes up one morning to find that the Cylons are at the doorstep and the Fleet has fled. What choice did he have but to surrender? Truthfully, none. Outmanned, outgunned, the Cylons could have annihilated them all in minutes. Surrender isn’t heroic, but then neither is lying down to die. And then in the aftermath, it’s much of the same. It’s unclear how actively he collaborated, how much coercion was used. The Cylons certainly bandied around the threat of death pretty freely. And, I suspect, denial was his friend. When he told Roslin that no one was tortured, I got the impression that that was something he told himself over and over again trying hard to believe it but not entirely succeeding. He knows he’s weak, that he’s a coward, but his options were limited. His death wouldn’t change anything. They’d just put someone else in the presidency and the status quo would continue. And then when he finally did take a stand and refuse to sign the death warrant, they literally put a gun to his head. Even then, he didn’t want to yield, though he did. There are bad times ahead. The civilians despise him, hold him accountable. As a number of people have noted, people refer to him not as Baltar, but as “Gaius Baltar.” It’s as if his name has become a kind of curse. I half expected people to spit and cross themselves after saying it. He may have done the only thing he could have done as far as he could see, but he’s going to be held accountable. The future looks very grim for him.
Roslin
Oh, how I love you, Laura now that you’re regained the brain cells that seem to have been killed off from the magic baby Cylon blood. Tough and sharp and shrewd as ever. I could have done without the dear diary moments - Hello giant exposition anvil! - but I love that she’s watching and recording and preparing for after. She refuses to give up hope and she and Tory are taking names in preparation for the eventual accounting. I love that she refused to support Baltar and speak out against the suicide bombings, abhorrent though she found them. And I adored that she slapped Tigh when he accused her of being a Cylon. She’s still one tough cookie and she won’t take shit from nobody, no the Cylons, not Baltar and certainly not Mad Tigh. In fact, maybe she needs to slap him more often since no one else seems willing or able to keep him in line. Roslin is made of awesome.
Zarek
And speaking of being made of awesome, I love that Zarek has been warming a cell for the last 4 months because he refused to collaborate. I had expected him to throw in with the resistance. After dedicating his life to the freedom of the people, I couldn’t imagine that he’d roll over and embrace the Cylon oppressors. He can be an ass at times, but on some issues he will not yield and I respect that. Prisoner of conscience; that must feel real familiar, eh Tom? I do wonder though that Roslin had no idea what had become of him. Her intel network much pretty much blow if she didn’t know that Zarek has been missing for 4 months. Oh well.
Gaeta
Poor, poor Gaeta. I just knew he was going to turn out to be a double agent. It’s a fairly repugnant role, playing at collaborator/boot licker by day while secretly funneling crucial intel to the resistance. It’s also extremely dangerous since if he’s discovered, he’ll be killed. And even if he isn’t, he’s still at risk from his fellow humans. When this is all over they’re going to be looking for revenge, and Gaeta is going to be a prime target. If Ron More kills him I will be pissed. /pets Gaeta
Helo
Oh Helo. You have dorky looking hair, but I love you. You’re still so very earnest and you love Sharon so much, I could forgive you anything. /pats Helo on his pretty, ill-coiffed head
Sharon
Well, you certainly seem to have embraced your new life and seem to enjoy spending lots of quality time with Papadama which is just very strange, but then, I guess it’s better than all that communing he did with your corpse. And you married Helo at some point? And now you’ve been sworn into the service. Awww…that’s sweet. I do wonder though how thing will play out once the refugees return. I suspect they’re not going to enjoy seeing the face of one of their oppressors day in and day out. I’d watch my back if I were you.
Boomer
Oh Boomer, bless your naïve, guilt ridden heart. I know you were trying to offer support and reassurance to Cally, but honestly? Did you really think she’d give a frak unless you could actually spring her from her cell? It’s lovely that you were trying to do the right thing, bonus points to you for being mature and compassionate, but when you’re facing a firing squad, compassion means squat. I applaud your attempts for trying to get Cally released but in the end, you’re pretty ineffectual. Thanks for playing though.
Six
I’m amused at how protective/obsessed you are with Baltar, but it would be nice if your concern extended farther than his welfare. He’s just no good for you. First he cheats on you and now he gets you shot in the head. Maybe it’s time to rethink your relationship.
Cally
Hehehe. Good old Cally, just as feisty as ever. I can’t imagine much that would be more terrifying than being pulled out of your home in the dead of night while your wailing baby is left behind and she is rightly angry and scared. And then when Boomer shows up and offers sympathy, well, I don’t blame Cally one bit for the verbal smackdown she delivers. She doesn’t have time for empty words.
Tyrol
Tyrol, you are always made of awesome. I feel bad for you after Cally’s arrest, but honestly? Actions have consequences. It was only a matter of time before your involvement with the resistance had repercussions of a personal nature. I still love you though. See above re: Tyrol and awesomeness
Duck
Aw, Duck. Sorry about the wife. Sorry about your suicidal despair. Sucks to be you.
Jammer
You are an idiot. Yes, I know, Mad Tigh and his increasingly violent and reckless tactics concerned you and rightly so, but did you really think joining up with the Cylons would be a better choice? You are stupid. You’re also doomed. Your ass will be getting kicked, methinks the only question is which set of boots will be doing the stomping.
Sam
Good to know that you’re not bitter about being left behind on Caprica. And yeah, while you’re bitching about Adama abandoning you, you might want to keep in mind that for all her determination, Kara didn’t launch the rescue mission singlehandedly. She couldn’t have done it without Adama’s full support, so STFU. Nice to know he isn’t wasting his time returning the favor and trying to find where the Cylons took her. I’m sure Kara will understand that your work for the resistance is far more important than her safety. Good luck explaining that, buddy.
Kara
Awww…Kara/Leoben OTP!!! God bless them, but they are the bestest couple ever, what with creepy, stalker Leoben and his mad obsessive love and Kara who keeps killing him over and over again. Good times. I do wonder though, about this whole “Kara Thrace has a destiny” thing since so far, it seems her destiny is to snuggle on the sofa with Leoben and listen to him spout half-baked pseudo philosophy. As destiny’s go, it’s pretty much the suck. I also wonder how the other Cylons feel about this. I mean, there they are trying to control the last of humanity and herd them into some sembence of order and while they do all the heavy lifting and make all the hard decisions, Leoben spends all his time, shacked up with Kara playing at domesticity. There are a total of 12 models, only 7 of which are “out” and one of them seems to serve no other purpose than to cozy up with Kara? I dunno; that seems a rather inefficient use of resources to me, but hey, I guess that’s why I’m not the Cylon god. Either that or the other Cylons are frakking sick of listening to Leoben and his crazy assed babblings and are, in fact, relieved to have off somewhere else.
I’m grateful that the whole “Kara is brainwashed” storyline plays out differently on screen. I love that Kara is still (mostly) compos mentis and is still fighting back. I do think, though, her time with Leoben is taking a psychological toll and that there is a nice shiny breakdown in her future. As for the little girl, I’m not as bothered by Kara’s reactions as some are. I don’t see it as a sudden appearance of a maternal instinct, as much as it is a manifestation of one of Kara’s darkest fears, namely that she will become her mother and harm any child that comes into her care. That Kara would have such fears is suggested by Simon in “The Farm” and is certainly logical. After all, children of abuse, are far more likely to abuse children in turn. And now this little girl is hurt, not by Kara’s actions, but by her inattention. It’s something that, I think, hits her very hard, so her response doesn’t feel out of line. As for her taking Leoben’s hand, well, maybe she’s having him on, or maybe it’s the first sign of StockholmSyndrome. After 4 months of playing this same game with Leoben, with being completely isolated from any huiman contact and being fully dependent upon him, it’s not unprecedented that Kara’s increasingly vulnerable to him. It’s not love, it’s not even acceptance, it’s more a kind of weary, hopeless resignation. She’s just tired of fighting this same battle over and over and after 4 months Leoben’s starting to finally wear her down.
Adama
“I don’t do grief.”
Excuse me while I laugh my ass off at that one. Dude, you totally do grief; you just do it really badly. This is the third time that the fate of humanity rests squarely in Adama’s hands alone, the third time he’d twisted up with grief and guilt and rage and is determined to set himself and his people on a course that is daring, reckless and potentially disastrous. The first time was in the miniseries when Adama was ready to fling his ship and his crew into a final battle with the Cylons, a battle that he had no hope of winning. Then it was Roslin who stepped in and made him see reasons, who told him the war was over and that he had an obligation to protect the remnants of humanity. And so he ran.
The second time is in early season 2 when a very bitter Adama, enraged by the betrayal of Roslin and Lee is ready to abandon a third of the fleet to their fate. They wouldn’t have survived without Galactica’s protection, as he well knew, but he was too angry to care. Then it was Dee who’d reminded him of his promise, that he needed to reunite their family. And so he did.
And now, we have a third scenario in which it comes down to Adama’s choice. This time it’s to mount a rescue mission against incredible odds, requiring a daring, reckless and potentially disastrous strategy. Adama is short and snappish and brooding, angry at his crew for failing to work a miracle, at Lee for his lack of cooperation, at himself for running. This time, however, the voices of reason aren’t holding much sway. The fact that he turns to Sharon, the Cylon who shot him, that an enemy is his advisor, confessor, moral supporter is disconcerting. He says he’s alone but he doesn’t seem to correlate his own actions with those consequences. As the Admiral, he was always alone, even more so with Tigh planetside, but his guilt and rage cuts him off even further.
And then there’s that ugly confrontation with Lee. He’s completely at odds with Lee - nothing new there - but the degree of anger he directs at Lee is. Someone on my flist commented that the Adama men are very good at dumping on one another; they use each other as emotional punching bags. In a lot of ways, that exchange reminded me of Lee’s diatribe in the mini in which he vents at his father, blaming him for Zak’s death. I’ve always believed there was a lot of self-projection in Lee’s tirade. Yes, he blamed his father, but he also blamed himself. After all, Papadama wasn’t the only pilot/male role model in the family that li’l Zak looked up to. I think there is something of that same self-loathing being directed outward in Adama’s harangue here. When he calls Lee soft and weak, I can’t help but think that he’s also thinking of himself. After all, he’s the Admiral. He’s the man at the top, the one with final, ultimate authority. That he always believed the Cylons would come back is evident from the plan he and Tigh cooked up to have a Raptor listening in from orbit. And yet, even knowing the possibility existed, even expecting it, when the time came, Adama was unprepared. The Fleet - and him personally - was caught with its metaphorical pants down and was unprepared for a fight and so they were forced to flee for the second time. Although Adama says he doesn’t have time for regrets - he specifically dismisses Roslin’s concerns about whether they made the correct choice to flee the colonies in “Home, pt 2” - that has to haunt him. And now, he’s fleeing a second time, leaving behind “his” people, his former crew, the fleet he’d taken under his protection and he can’t live with that. So, Adama prepares a plan, brushing off Lee’s concerns about its recklessness and lashing out at him in the process. Adama’s words aren’t entirely off target, but they are vicious and hurtful and once again, reflect Adama’s own failing because both as a father and as an officer he should have pushed Lee harder, forced him into a role of readiness. Instead, he left Lee to his own devices and Adama is at least partially responsible for that. Still, I’m not expecting to hear any apologies issuing from his lips because well, that’s not the Adama way. Instead he makes a compromise: he tells Lee to take the Pegasus and the remnants of the civilian fleet, 2,000 survivors in all and head to Earth. The remnants of humanity will be safe for another day, but it also means the Galactica will once again be going it alone into the most daunting battle since they fled the colonies. It’s a decision that he may well regret.
Lee
Oh, Lee, what has Ron Moore done to you? Why does he hate you so? Of all the characters we see, Lee is the one who makes no sense. After a second viewing, I still find myself at a complete loss to make sense of this characterization. I get everyone else; I understand their motivations, their behavior, but with Lee I find myself unable to grasp how the character got bent this far out of shape to the point of being completely unrecognizable. I’m not talking about the weight, though Fat!Lee makes me weep. I can rationalize the weight gain - although it irritates me to no end that we, the viewers, have to rationalize behavior since Ron Moore seems completely disinterested in, you know, actually explaining it to us; it’s his job, to explicate radical changes in characterization, not ours, but apparently we have to pick up the slack on this one. I can well imagine how difficult the year of idleness might be for someone accustomed to action and activity, how Lee might begin to feel trapped by his rank; everyone else - with the exception of his father - gets to make a choice about whether to stay or go, but he’s stuck, those rank pinks like the proverbial millstone around his neck. So he might become frustrated and unhappy and eventually sink into depression because welcome to the rest of your life, floating in space, doomed to a life of idleness, redundancy and endless shifts. Talk about hopeless. It could well become unbearable. I get that. What I don’t get is why nothing has changed in the last four months.
Dee tells Lee that he’s a soldier that he needs a war. Except, that explanation is flawed. If that were true, things should be on a more even keel. With the return of the Cylons, everything changes, suddenly there’s a war again. There’s activity, action, people in need. Lee should be getting himself back in the fray, he should be reveling in it, except he’s not; he’s lethargic and ineffectual and seems completely disinterested in doing anything. And that’s where I find myself scratching my head in confusion and irritation. Lee as the reluctant soldier isn’t anything new. This is a theme that’s been brought into play again and again for the past two seasons. Lee’s deeply ambivalent about the military; he’s deeply ambivalent about his father and the effect the military had upon him. Yes, we know. The thing is, that ambivalence has always been tempered by a strong sense of duty, of a determination to do the right thing, no matter the personal cost. Lee has always put the needs of other before himself, he’s always tried to do what’s right. It’s one of his most fundamental characteristics. This is the man who put a gun to a superior officer’s head in a rather ill-considered, yet admirable attempt to thwart a military, yet suddenly, we’re confronted with a man who is surprisingly apathetic, who is self-absorbed, self-indulgent and completely out of touch. This just pisses me off. I hate when characters are gutted and warped solely or the purpose of fabricating drama. Ron Moore clearly wanted to pump up the conflict between Adama and Lee; unable to find a way for it to work organically, he just goes ahead and shreds a character in order to make it work no matter how out of character and illogical this sudden transformation might seem. If I want to see interesting characters get bent, spindled, mutilated and folded, I can read fanfiction. I expect better from canon, but obviously.
Dee also tells Lee that he doesn’t want to be his father and that he’s more like his father than he cares to admit. Yes, we’ve traveled down that road before as well. I’d always rather thought we’d put that issue to rest with “The Captain’s Hand.” Lee gets his father’s approval, gets to be as close to his father’s equal as possible. Lee actually seemed pretty content after that point in canon. From what little we saw, he seemed to have settled in and embraced his role and moved past that issue at least. Now suddenly not so much. Huh? Excuse me for being confused. By the way, Dee? You suck at pop psychology. Please be keeping your inane observations to yourself henceforward. I know you mean well, but telling your husband that you married him because he reminds you of his father is just icky and kind of twisted. There are already enough daddy issues in this relationship without bringing in your hero worship of his father. Way to kick a guy when he’s down. There was a time and a place for that particular harangue and this wasn’t it. Four months ago would have been nice. A year ago would have been even better. But trust me on this: there is never a good time to tell your husband that you married him because he’s a hotter, younger version of his father. Honestly, at this point, I’m not sure how Ron Moore expects to salvage this character now that he’s turned him into an object of derision. But then when tings like consistent characterization aren’t an issue, I suppose anything is possible.
So, some thoughts about the season opener arranged by character in no particular order:
The Cylons
Initially I found myself wondering if the Cylons were every bit as stupid as the humans they were shepherding. All that hand wringing over the insurgency? All the concern about the identities of the ring leaders? And who do those leaders turn out to be? Colonel Tigh, the former XO of Galactica and veteran of two Cylon wars; Chief Tyrol, the head of the labor union, Gaalctica’s deck chief who has been serving in the military since he was 18; and Sam Anders, the head of the resistance on Caprica.
Wow! I never would have seen that coming?
/rolls eyes
The problem, of course, is that the Cylons didn’t seem to see it coming either. Yes, they’d arrested Tigh, but they’d released him. And they’d never picked up either Tyrol or Anders despite the fact that they are both pretty logical suspects. Anyone with half a brain would have recognized them as the most likely suspects from day one. Hell, I would have brought in anyone who had served in the military for questioning. It’s a logical course of action. So why are they walking around? Simply put, because the Cylons want it that way. Or, to be more accurate, one faction does.
From early on, it becomes clear that there is dissent in the ranks of the Cylons. While Caprica Six and Boomer with their “peace with humans” agenda still hold sway, there’s growing disaffection, especially among the Brother Cavil models. Cavil remains as bloodthirsty as ever. He wants people to be rounded up and shot. He wants to whittle the humans down to a manageable - and biddable - number. He proposes 1,000, which would mean killing 40,000 or more. So much for peace and God’s love. He certainly seems to be enjoying himself. He’s downright whimsical in his dealings with Tigh, seems to take great delight both from interrogation and from the screwing - literal and figural - of Ellen. Peaceable co-existence is the last thing on his agenda.
Tensions are high and so is seems Cavil and his faction take action setting up Tigh to be the lynchpin. Cavil allows Ellen to sell herself to win his release, let’s her think he’s swayed by her sexual favors (which he clearly enjoys, but not that much) but it’s a ruse. Cavil knows Tigh is part of the insurgency, but releases him anyway. But first, he tortures him, takes his eye, twists him into an angry, bitter, violent man and then he sets him free. It’s the equivalent of poking a caged bear with a pointy stick. What do you think will happen when you open the cage door and set the bear loose?
Tigh responds predictably. Filled with rage, he wants revenge. The raids and bombings the insurgency has been using get more violent. From the webisodes we learn that Tigh has no qualms about hiding weapons in a temple or about hitting targets that will potentially result in civilian casualties, but now, he’s proposing something more extreme: human bombs aimed not just at Cylon targets, but at collaborators as well. He might claim he’s trying to creates distractions to keep the Cylons occupied while the Fleet prepares to return, but I don’t buy it and I’m pretty sure neither do Tyrol or Anders. Worse, though, he’s playing right into the Cylons’ hands and he doesn’t even realize it.
It’s bloody escalation and its exactly what Cavil wants because it allows him is escalate as well. Attack and counter attack. With each act of growing violence, the Boomer/Caprica Six faction looses ground. After all, its hard to preach peace and love when your charges are blowing the shit out of you and themselves.
This culminates in the order of execution of 200 humans. Here we see the balance of power shifting as the peace movement looses control. When Six continues to protest, more about the threats to Baltar than to the order itself, she’s killed, ending the debate in rather chilling but effective terms. Baltar signs the order and the humans are rounded up, many of them torn from their beds and their families in the dead of night. The point of this exercise is ostensibly to weed out the insurgency and to throw the fear of God into the humans, give them a taste of what they can expect if they continue to disobey. But is that really the purpose? I think not.
Look at the people they round up: Cally, Roslin, Zarek. None of them is a member of the insurgency. Cally and Roslin know what’s going on, but they’re not active participants. They neither plan nor execute missions. And Zarek has been warming a cell for 4 months so he’s clearly not one of them. So why these people?
Boomer gives us the clue. When she tries to spare Cally whether from a sense of guilt or loyalty, who knows, she warns Cavil that Cally is the wife of the head of the labor union and that her death will incite people. Cavil remains blasé. Why? Because that’s exactly his intent. That’s why he chose the people he did. He didn’t arrest Tigh or Tyrol or Anders, he arrested the wife of the head of the labor union who is the mother of a newborn baby; a school teacher and former president/prohet; the vice-president who chose imprisonment and possibly torture over collaboration. These are people whose deaths will outrage the populace and incite them to further violence. It’s not punishment or object lesson; it’s provocation.
If the point of this exercise was to warn the people of the danger of insurgency, they would have carried the executions out in public, in full view, pronouncing their crimes for all to hear. Instead, they hauled them away to be butchered far from prying eyes, but with the knowledge that word would surely get out. After all, they were loaded into trucks in broad daylight. People will have seen them taken away. They would also have seen the trucks returning empty of their charges. Once word spreads, outrage against the Cylon oppressors will reach a new high. New Caprica is a powder keg, and the Cylons have just tossed a match. Let the bonfire begin!
Tigh
Oh man, I love me some rabid dog Tigh. He’s so very awesome in his bitterness and rage even if he has kind of gone off the deep end. From the webisodes it’s clear that he was already pretty hard core even before he was imprisoned, but now after his stint as a guest of the Cylons, he’s very much like an angry, wounded animal determined to inflict as much pain on his enemies as possible. While it’s a perfectly understandable - and human - response, it’s also unnerving, especially when it’s the de facto general of your army who has turned into rageful vendetta guy. Tigh is so focused on revenge - he says it’s about creating diversions to distract the Cylons in order to facilitate the rescue, but we know the truth - that he’s completely lost sight of the human cost. Willing soldiers, collaborators, innocent civilians are all fodder for his war. It’s a very scary thought and it’s pretty clear that both Tyrol and Anders think he has crossed the line but they don’t know how to reign him in. I really can’t wait to see how/if Mad Tigh is going to reintegrate into the Fleet. This is true across the boards, but I wonder if perhaps Tigh isn’t too damaged to be fit for “normal” society again. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Ellen
Elle, oh Ellen. I know I’m in the minority, but I’ve always kind of liked Ellen, crazy ho bag that she is. The thing with Ellen is, for all her drinking and infidelity, I’ve always believed that deep down she loves her husband, truly, deeply, if somewhat unconventionally. There’s isn’t a picture perfect marriage, but then, they’ve never been Ozzie and Harriet to begin with. It’s clear that Ellen is acting not from self-interest but from a desperate desire to save her husband. She let’s herself be used, first as a whore and then as a reluctant informant but always with the same goal in mind: keeping Tigh safe. Of course, when Tigh finds out - and I’m sure it’s a question of when, not if - he’s going to be horrified that Ellen betrayed the resistance for his sake. I think that will break him just that little bit more. Yay! Angst! It’s very easy to condemn Ellen’s actions, and I suspect most people will, but I wonder how many of us would act differently in her situation. Could you stand idly by when someone threatens the life of your spouse/lover/parent/child knowing that you have the means to save him/her/them. Yes, she betrays the resistance but in her mind Tigh comes first and I don’t think she could bear to live with the knowledge that she let him die when it was in her power to save him.
Baltar
He’s another character that I surpisingly find myself feeling sympathy for. Not lazy, drunken!whoring!missing year!Baltar who abdicated all responsibility and drowned himself in self-indulgence, but rather the poor schlub who wakes up one morning to find that the Cylons are at the doorstep and the Fleet has fled. What choice did he have but to surrender? Truthfully, none. Outmanned, outgunned, the Cylons could have annihilated them all in minutes. Surrender isn’t heroic, but then neither is lying down to die. And then in the aftermath, it’s much of the same. It’s unclear how actively he collaborated, how much coercion was used. The Cylons certainly bandied around the threat of death pretty freely. And, I suspect, denial was his friend. When he told Roslin that no one was tortured, I got the impression that that was something he told himself over and over again trying hard to believe it but not entirely succeeding. He knows he’s weak, that he’s a coward, but his options were limited. His death wouldn’t change anything. They’d just put someone else in the presidency and the status quo would continue. And then when he finally did take a stand and refuse to sign the death warrant, they literally put a gun to his head. Even then, he didn’t want to yield, though he did. There are bad times ahead. The civilians despise him, hold him accountable. As a number of people have noted, people refer to him not as Baltar, but as “Gaius Baltar.” It’s as if his name has become a kind of curse. I half expected people to spit and cross themselves after saying it. He may have done the only thing he could have done as far as he could see, but he’s going to be held accountable. The future looks very grim for him.
Roslin
Oh, how I love you, Laura now that you’re regained the brain cells that seem to have been killed off from the magic baby Cylon blood. Tough and sharp and shrewd as ever. I could have done without the dear diary moments - Hello giant exposition anvil! - but I love that she’s watching and recording and preparing for after. She refuses to give up hope and she and Tory are taking names in preparation for the eventual accounting. I love that she refused to support Baltar and speak out against the suicide bombings, abhorrent though she found them. And I adored that she slapped Tigh when he accused her of being a Cylon. She’s still one tough cookie and she won’t take shit from nobody, no the Cylons, not Baltar and certainly not Mad Tigh. In fact, maybe she needs to slap him more often since no one else seems willing or able to keep him in line. Roslin is made of awesome.
Zarek
And speaking of being made of awesome, I love that Zarek has been warming a cell for the last 4 months because he refused to collaborate. I had expected him to throw in with the resistance. After dedicating his life to the freedom of the people, I couldn’t imagine that he’d roll over and embrace the Cylon oppressors. He can be an ass at times, but on some issues he will not yield and I respect that. Prisoner of conscience; that must feel real familiar, eh Tom? I do wonder though that Roslin had no idea what had become of him. Her intel network much pretty much blow if she didn’t know that Zarek has been missing for 4 months. Oh well.
Gaeta
Poor, poor Gaeta. I just knew he was going to turn out to be a double agent. It’s a fairly repugnant role, playing at collaborator/boot licker by day while secretly funneling crucial intel to the resistance. It’s also extremely dangerous since if he’s discovered, he’ll be killed. And even if he isn’t, he’s still at risk from his fellow humans. When this is all over they’re going to be looking for revenge, and Gaeta is going to be a prime target. If Ron More kills him I will be pissed. /pets Gaeta
Helo
Oh Helo. You have dorky looking hair, but I love you. You’re still so very earnest and you love Sharon so much, I could forgive you anything. /pats Helo on his pretty, ill-coiffed head
Sharon
Well, you certainly seem to have embraced your new life and seem to enjoy spending lots of quality time with Papadama which is just very strange, but then, I guess it’s better than all that communing he did with your corpse. And you married Helo at some point? And now you’ve been sworn into the service. Awww…that’s sweet. I do wonder though how thing will play out once the refugees return. I suspect they’re not going to enjoy seeing the face of one of their oppressors day in and day out. I’d watch my back if I were you.
Boomer
Oh Boomer, bless your naïve, guilt ridden heart. I know you were trying to offer support and reassurance to Cally, but honestly? Did you really think she’d give a frak unless you could actually spring her from her cell? It’s lovely that you were trying to do the right thing, bonus points to you for being mature and compassionate, but when you’re facing a firing squad, compassion means squat. I applaud your attempts for trying to get Cally released but in the end, you’re pretty ineffectual. Thanks for playing though.
Six
I’m amused at how protective/obsessed you are with Baltar, but it would be nice if your concern extended farther than his welfare. He’s just no good for you. First he cheats on you and now he gets you shot in the head. Maybe it’s time to rethink your relationship.
Cally
Hehehe. Good old Cally, just as feisty as ever. I can’t imagine much that would be more terrifying than being pulled out of your home in the dead of night while your wailing baby is left behind and she is rightly angry and scared. And then when Boomer shows up and offers sympathy, well, I don’t blame Cally one bit for the verbal smackdown she delivers. She doesn’t have time for empty words.
Tyrol
Tyrol, you are always made of awesome. I feel bad for you after Cally’s arrest, but honestly? Actions have consequences. It was only a matter of time before your involvement with the resistance had repercussions of a personal nature. I still love you though. See above re: Tyrol and awesomeness
Duck
Aw, Duck. Sorry about the wife. Sorry about your suicidal despair. Sucks to be you.
Jammer
You are an idiot. Yes, I know, Mad Tigh and his increasingly violent and reckless tactics concerned you and rightly so, but did you really think joining up with the Cylons would be a better choice? You are stupid. You’re also doomed. Your ass will be getting kicked, methinks the only question is which set of boots will be doing the stomping.
Sam
Good to know that you’re not bitter about being left behind on Caprica. And yeah, while you’re bitching about Adama abandoning you, you might want to keep in mind that for all her determination, Kara didn’t launch the rescue mission singlehandedly. She couldn’t have done it without Adama’s full support, so STFU. Nice to know he isn’t wasting his time returning the favor and trying to find where the Cylons took her. I’m sure Kara will understand that your work for the resistance is far more important than her safety. Good luck explaining that, buddy.
Kara
Awww…Kara/Leoben OTP!!! God bless them, but they are the bestest couple ever, what with creepy, stalker Leoben and his mad obsessive love and Kara who keeps killing him over and over again. Good times. I do wonder though, about this whole “Kara Thrace has a destiny” thing since so far, it seems her destiny is to snuggle on the sofa with Leoben and listen to him spout half-baked pseudo philosophy. As destiny’s go, it’s pretty much the suck. I also wonder how the other Cylons feel about this. I mean, there they are trying to control the last of humanity and herd them into some sembence of order and while they do all the heavy lifting and make all the hard decisions, Leoben spends all his time, shacked up with Kara playing at domesticity. There are a total of 12 models, only 7 of which are “out” and one of them seems to serve no other purpose than to cozy up with Kara? I dunno; that seems a rather inefficient use of resources to me, but hey, I guess that’s why I’m not the Cylon god. Either that or the other Cylons are frakking sick of listening to Leoben and his crazy assed babblings and are, in fact, relieved to have off somewhere else.
I’m grateful that the whole “Kara is brainwashed” storyline plays out differently on screen. I love that Kara is still (mostly) compos mentis and is still fighting back. I do think, though, her time with Leoben is taking a psychological toll and that there is a nice shiny breakdown in her future. As for the little girl, I’m not as bothered by Kara’s reactions as some are. I don’t see it as a sudden appearance of a maternal instinct, as much as it is a manifestation of one of Kara’s darkest fears, namely that she will become her mother and harm any child that comes into her care. That Kara would have such fears is suggested by Simon in “The Farm” and is certainly logical. After all, children of abuse, are far more likely to abuse children in turn. And now this little girl is hurt, not by Kara’s actions, but by her inattention. It’s something that, I think, hits her very hard, so her response doesn’t feel out of line. As for her taking Leoben’s hand, well, maybe she’s having him on, or maybe it’s the first sign of StockholmSyndrome. After 4 months of playing this same game with Leoben, with being completely isolated from any huiman contact and being fully dependent upon him, it’s not unprecedented that Kara’s increasingly vulnerable to him. It’s not love, it’s not even acceptance, it’s more a kind of weary, hopeless resignation. She’s just tired of fighting this same battle over and over and after 4 months Leoben’s starting to finally wear her down.
Adama
“I don’t do grief.”
Excuse me while I laugh my ass off at that one. Dude, you totally do grief; you just do it really badly. This is the third time that the fate of humanity rests squarely in Adama’s hands alone, the third time he’d twisted up with grief and guilt and rage and is determined to set himself and his people on a course that is daring, reckless and potentially disastrous. The first time was in the miniseries when Adama was ready to fling his ship and his crew into a final battle with the Cylons, a battle that he had no hope of winning. Then it was Roslin who stepped in and made him see reasons, who told him the war was over and that he had an obligation to protect the remnants of humanity. And so he ran.
The second time is in early season 2 when a very bitter Adama, enraged by the betrayal of Roslin and Lee is ready to abandon a third of the fleet to their fate. They wouldn’t have survived without Galactica’s protection, as he well knew, but he was too angry to care. Then it was Dee who’d reminded him of his promise, that he needed to reunite their family. And so he did.
And now, we have a third scenario in which it comes down to Adama’s choice. This time it’s to mount a rescue mission against incredible odds, requiring a daring, reckless and potentially disastrous strategy. Adama is short and snappish and brooding, angry at his crew for failing to work a miracle, at Lee for his lack of cooperation, at himself for running. This time, however, the voices of reason aren’t holding much sway. The fact that he turns to Sharon, the Cylon who shot him, that an enemy is his advisor, confessor, moral supporter is disconcerting. He says he’s alone but he doesn’t seem to correlate his own actions with those consequences. As the Admiral, he was always alone, even more so with Tigh planetside, but his guilt and rage cuts him off even further.
And then there’s that ugly confrontation with Lee. He’s completely at odds with Lee - nothing new there - but the degree of anger he directs at Lee is. Someone on my flist commented that the Adama men are very good at dumping on one another; they use each other as emotional punching bags. In a lot of ways, that exchange reminded me of Lee’s diatribe in the mini in which he vents at his father, blaming him for Zak’s death. I’ve always believed there was a lot of self-projection in Lee’s tirade. Yes, he blamed his father, but he also blamed himself. After all, Papadama wasn’t the only pilot/male role model in the family that li’l Zak looked up to. I think there is something of that same self-loathing being directed outward in Adama’s harangue here. When he calls Lee soft and weak, I can’t help but think that he’s also thinking of himself. After all, he’s the Admiral. He’s the man at the top, the one with final, ultimate authority. That he always believed the Cylons would come back is evident from the plan he and Tigh cooked up to have a Raptor listening in from orbit. And yet, even knowing the possibility existed, even expecting it, when the time came, Adama was unprepared. The Fleet - and him personally - was caught with its metaphorical pants down and was unprepared for a fight and so they were forced to flee for the second time. Although Adama says he doesn’t have time for regrets - he specifically dismisses Roslin’s concerns about whether they made the correct choice to flee the colonies in “Home, pt 2” - that has to haunt him. And now, he’s fleeing a second time, leaving behind “his” people, his former crew, the fleet he’d taken under his protection and he can’t live with that. So, Adama prepares a plan, brushing off Lee’s concerns about its recklessness and lashing out at him in the process. Adama’s words aren’t entirely off target, but they are vicious and hurtful and once again, reflect Adama’s own failing because both as a father and as an officer he should have pushed Lee harder, forced him into a role of readiness. Instead, he left Lee to his own devices and Adama is at least partially responsible for that. Still, I’m not expecting to hear any apologies issuing from his lips because well, that’s not the Adama way. Instead he makes a compromise: he tells Lee to take the Pegasus and the remnants of the civilian fleet, 2,000 survivors in all and head to Earth. The remnants of humanity will be safe for another day, but it also means the Galactica will once again be going it alone into the most daunting battle since they fled the colonies. It’s a decision that he may well regret.
Lee
Oh, Lee, what has Ron Moore done to you? Why does he hate you so? Of all the characters we see, Lee is the one who makes no sense. After a second viewing, I still find myself at a complete loss to make sense of this characterization. I get everyone else; I understand their motivations, their behavior, but with Lee I find myself unable to grasp how the character got bent this far out of shape to the point of being completely unrecognizable. I’m not talking about the weight, though Fat!Lee makes me weep. I can rationalize the weight gain - although it irritates me to no end that we, the viewers, have to rationalize behavior since Ron Moore seems completely disinterested in, you know, actually explaining it to us; it’s his job, to explicate radical changes in characterization, not ours, but apparently we have to pick up the slack on this one. I can well imagine how difficult the year of idleness might be for someone accustomed to action and activity, how Lee might begin to feel trapped by his rank; everyone else - with the exception of his father - gets to make a choice about whether to stay or go, but he’s stuck, those rank pinks like the proverbial millstone around his neck. So he might become frustrated and unhappy and eventually sink into depression because welcome to the rest of your life, floating in space, doomed to a life of idleness, redundancy and endless shifts. Talk about hopeless. It could well become unbearable. I get that. What I don’t get is why nothing has changed in the last four months.
Dee tells Lee that he’s a soldier that he needs a war. Except, that explanation is flawed. If that were true, things should be on a more even keel. With the return of the Cylons, everything changes, suddenly there’s a war again. There’s activity, action, people in need. Lee should be getting himself back in the fray, he should be reveling in it, except he’s not; he’s lethargic and ineffectual and seems completely disinterested in doing anything. And that’s where I find myself scratching my head in confusion and irritation. Lee as the reluctant soldier isn’t anything new. This is a theme that’s been brought into play again and again for the past two seasons. Lee’s deeply ambivalent about the military; he’s deeply ambivalent about his father and the effect the military had upon him. Yes, we know. The thing is, that ambivalence has always been tempered by a strong sense of duty, of a determination to do the right thing, no matter the personal cost. Lee has always put the needs of other before himself, he’s always tried to do what’s right. It’s one of his most fundamental characteristics. This is the man who put a gun to a superior officer’s head in a rather ill-considered, yet admirable attempt to thwart a military, yet suddenly, we’re confronted with a man who is surprisingly apathetic, who is self-absorbed, self-indulgent and completely out of touch. This just pisses me off. I hate when characters are gutted and warped solely or the purpose of fabricating drama. Ron Moore clearly wanted to pump up the conflict between Adama and Lee; unable to find a way for it to work organically, he just goes ahead and shreds a character in order to make it work no matter how out of character and illogical this sudden transformation might seem. If I want to see interesting characters get bent, spindled, mutilated and folded, I can read fanfiction. I expect better from canon, but obviously.
Dee also tells Lee that he doesn’t want to be his father and that he’s more like his father than he cares to admit. Yes, we’ve traveled down that road before as well. I’d always rather thought we’d put that issue to rest with “The Captain’s Hand.” Lee gets his father’s approval, gets to be as close to his father’s equal as possible. Lee actually seemed pretty content after that point in canon. From what little we saw, he seemed to have settled in and embraced his role and moved past that issue at least. Now suddenly not so much. Huh? Excuse me for being confused. By the way, Dee? You suck at pop psychology. Please be keeping your inane observations to yourself henceforward. I know you mean well, but telling your husband that you married him because he reminds you of his father is just icky and kind of twisted. There are already enough daddy issues in this relationship without bringing in your hero worship of his father. Way to kick a guy when he’s down. There was a time and a place for that particular harangue and this wasn’t it. Four months ago would have been nice. A year ago would have been even better. But trust me on this: there is never a good time to tell your husband that you married him because he’s a hotter, younger version of his father. Honestly, at this point, I’m not sure how Ron Moore expects to salvage this character now that he’s turned him into an object of derision. But then when tings like consistent characterization aren’t an issue, I suppose anything is possible.