More Classic BG squee and Favourite Minor Characters: The Older Alpha Male
Wednesday night, at sarren & dragonfly8’s, where for the record they *asked* me to bring some classic Battlestar Galactica. I wasn't trying to force it on anybody...
The credits for “War of the Gods” begin to play.
zebra363: I love the music! Whee!!!!!!
dragonfly8: I love the music!!!
zebra363 & dragonfly8 to sarren: Don’t you love the music??
sarren (drily): I don’t know. I can’t hear it.
Later, Dragonfly disappears during the episode, only to return with - wait for it - Battlestar Galactica flight insignia!!! I was in the right place, no question.
I am sufficiently enthralled that my facial muscles hurt from smiling at the television and I wasted several hours this afternoon messing around with a screencaps program trying to make an icon of the Galactica taking off across the stars. (So far, close but no fumarello. It looks good in the program, but is black when I try to open it as a .jpg file.)
Adama has me thinking about similar characters in my other fandoms. Most of my fandoms feature someone like Adama - an ethically and morally upright older male in a leadership position.
My favourite moment in Pros has nothing to do with Bodie or Doyle: it’s Cowley, talking to the amusingly-named bad guy John Howard in Look After Annie:
Howard: You know, I've often thought, if you'd thrown in with me--
Cowley: With your bigotry? No, John. You and I are diametrically opposed. I respect you as a soldier, but for everything else about you--your ethics, your politics, the emotions you engender--I have a loathing of such depth you could never measure it.
I *love* that line.
Then there’s Isaac in Sports Night. His staff worship him (Dan to Isaac in The Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee Tech: "You don't think if Luthor ever showed you the door there wouldn't be about a hundred people lined up right behind you?"), he's got the right stuff (his editorial comment in that same episode) and he cares deeply for the people who work for him (Isaac to Dana in La Forza Del Destino: "At best you had maybe 2/3rds of the budget needed to do the job in a market that was oversaturated when you got there. If it goes down, you get up off the mat, you go to LA with Dan and Casey, and you try it again.").
To a lesser extent, there’s also Welsh in due South (who’s possibly better served by fanfic than the actual show) and Banks in The Sentinel. You could make a case for Lord of the Rings, too, but I don’t much like Gandalf and I don’t think Elrond qualifies.
BG gives this character a best friend, his second-in-command Colonel Tigh. I don’t slash them, but I like their interaction even more than Starbuck & Apollo’s. We get to see a long-term command partnership and friendship in action. Like Spock and Kirk in ST:TOS, Tigh calls Adama by his rank most of the time and by his name when extra emotion or urgency is implied.
In the pilot, Saga of a Star World, we learn that Tigh is unquestionably loyal to Adama: "Commander, if you think we should do it, then naturally I think we should do it. What is it that we’re about to do?”
There’s Tigh’s understated grief and fear when Adama is seriously injured in Fire in Space.
Baltar’s Escape has my favourite exchange of all, when Adama is a voluntary hostage on a shuttle and Tigh is temporarily in command:
Adama: Tigh, attack now!
Tigh: Adama, no time to explain. Launch at once! Repeat, launch at once!
Adama: It won’t work!
Tigh: (shouting) Adama, I’m in command! Launch!! (Adama decides to trust him and does so.)
In The Hand of God, it’s Adama’s decision to attack the Cylon base ship, but he shares the moment with Tigh:
Adama: Tigh, do you realise this is the first time since we fled the Colonies that we have the advantage? And even if we didn’t have the advantage, I’m tired of running.
Tigh: Adama. So am I.
Adama: Then let’s take her on.
When I was doing the career thing and changing jobs every few years, I think I was always looking for an Adama or a Cowley to work for. I was routinely disappointed, never found one and eventually decided I might be better off self employed! (Of course, I was probably looking in the wrong places. Multinational corporations? Investment banks? Accounting firms? What was I thinking?)
The credits for “War of the Gods” begin to play.
zebra363: I love the music! Whee!!!!!!
dragonfly8: I love the music!!!
zebra363 & dragonfly8 to sarren: Don’t you love the music??
sarren (drily): I don’t know. I can’t hear it.
Later, Dragonfly disappears during the episode, only to return with - wait for it - Battlestar Galactica flight insignia!!! I was in the right place, no question.
I am sufficiently enthralled that my facial muscles hurt from smiling at the television and I wasted several hours this afternoon messing around with a screencaps program trying to make an icon of the Galactica taking off across the stars. (So far, close but no fumarello. It looks good in the program, but is black when I try to open it as a .jpg file.)
Adama has me thinking about similar characters in my other fandoms. Most of my fandoms feature someone like Adama - an ethically and morally upright older male in a leadership position.
My favourite moment in Pros has nothing to do with Bodie or Doyle: it’s Cowley, talking to the amusingly-named bad guy John Howard in Look After Annie:
Howard: You know, I've often thought, if you'd thrown in with me--
Cowley: With your bigotry? No, John. You and I are diametrically opposed. I respect you as a soldier, but for everything else about you--your ethics, your politics, the emotions you engender--I have a loathing of such depth you could never measure it.
I *love* that line.
Then there’s Isaac in Sports Night. His staff worship him (Dan to Isaac in The Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee Tech: "You don't think if Luthor ever showed you the door there wouldn't be about a hundred people lined up right behind you?"), he's got the right stuff (his editorial comment in that same episode) and he cares deeply for the people who work for him (Isaac to Dana in La Forza Del Destino: "At best you had maybe 2/3rds of the budget needed to do the job in a market that was oversaturated when you got there. If it goes down, you get up off the mat, you go to LA with Dan and Casey, and you try it again.").
To a lesser extent, there’s also Welsh in due South (who’s possibly better served by fanfic than the actual show) and Banks in The Sentinel. You could make a case for Lord of the Rings, too, but I don’t much like Gandalf and I don’t think Elrond qualifies.
BG gives this character a best friend, his second-in-command Colonel Tigh. I don’t slash them, but I like their interaction even more than Starbuck & Apollo’s. We get to see a long-term command partnership and friendship in action. Like Spock and Kirk in ST:TOS, Tigh calls Adama by his rank most of the time and by his name when extra emotion or urgency is implied.
In the pilot, Saga of a Star World, we learn that Tigh is unquestionably loyal to Adama: "Commander, if you think we should do it, then naturally I think we should do it. What is it that we’re about to do?”
There’s Tigh’s understated grief and fear when Adama is seriously injured in Fire in Space.
Baltar’s Escape has my favourite exchange of all, when Adama is a voluntary hostage on a shuttle and Tigh is temporarily in command:
Adama: Tigh, attack now!
Tigh: Adama, no time to explain. Launch at once! Repeat, launch at once!
Adama: It won’t work!
Tigh: (shouting) Adama, I’m in command! Launch!! (Adama decides to trust him and does so.)
In The Hand of God, it’s Adama’s decision to attack the Cylon base ship, but he shares the moment with Tigh:
Adama: Tigh, do you realise this is the first time since we fled the Colonies that we have the advantage? And even if we didn’t have the advantage, I’m tired of running.
Tigh: Adama. So am I.
Adama: Then let’s take her on.
When I was doing the career thing and changing jobs every few years, I think I was always looking for an Adama or a Cowley to work for. I was routinely disappointed, never found one and eventually decided I might be better off self employed! (Of course, I was probably looking in the wrong places. Multinational corporations? Investment banks? Accounting firms? What was I thinking?)