YAY!!!! I was watching this yesterday while I wrote, and I was completely compelled by the way JB's face conveys the horror of what he's just done in the eyes close, eyes open part (which you have above.) He amazes me in his portrayal of Lee. It would be so easy to either overact that role or become two dimensional, but he pulls everything off with a depth of feeling only conveyed in his expression. *sighs*
His guilt over this incident speaks volumes about his character. He doesn't take things lightly. He uses to learn from them. The debate is so interesting to watch between Lee and Kara because as much as he is telling her to fire, he wants someone to tell him not to give that order if there is a chance of human life on that ship.
I think this is a fascinating moment for Lee, and it's awesome that we got to see it so early on, and that its aftermath lingered so long throughout the show.
There are so many things I enjoy about this scene:
1) I really like the fact that Lee disobeys orders at first, trying to give the civilian pilots every possible chance to comply with the order to halt. They've been ordered to keep radio silence for fear of Cylon viruses, but when the ship doesn't respond to Athena's blinking-light code, Lee decides to break radio silence on his own authority to make sure that the civilians know they are being ordered to stop. That was absolutely the right choice; it put himself and his own pilots at risk and involved the violation of a direct order, but he had to be sure that the ship's non-compliance was not the result of miscommunication. He goes through every possible warning, from semiphore to voice commands to Starbuck's warning shot, before he resigns himself to the fact that whoever is in control of that ship is not going to yield
( ... )
5) Finally, I find it interesting that this incident haunted Lee for years, whereas his actions in the miniseries when he urged Roslin to jump away and leave behind the civilians in sublight ships are never referred to again. He left behind thousands of civilians in the miniseries, many more than were on the Olympic Carrier, and he knew for certain what he was doing; he heard them screaming in those last seconds when the Cylon raiders jumped into their midst. Whereas it was always unclear whether there were actual passengers still on the Olympic Carrier. Yet, to him, there was a moral difference between leaving behind people who could not be saved, and actually killing them himself. I think every single soldier from the Admiral on down had to live with the necessity of leaving innocent people behind -- they left the colonies behind, they failed to protect almost the entirety of the human race. But failing to protect them wasn't the same as murdering them. But if there were people on the Olympic Carrier, then it was Lee who killed them
( ... )
Well, I think in the miniseries the decision to leave behind the sublight ships without waiting long enough to transfer their passengers onto FTL ships was presented as a pretty tough choice that had to be made. The pilot of Colonial One (and Doral, being his usual trouble-making self) argued strongly that they shouldn't leave until they had gotten all the civilians on board jump-ready ships. Lee said they couldn't risk waiting long enough to rescue those civilians, because if the Cylons came back while they were in the middle of rescue efforts then everyone would die. He basically said they had to cut their losses, and they couldn't afford to risk the majority of the fleet in order to save the minority. Roslin, perhaps having learned something from the last argument she had with Lee on the same subject, agreed this time to jump away immediately. But it was a tough choice, and no one was really sure how quickly the Cylons would come back, or whether they might have had time to save some more people if they'd tried
( ... )
I wonder too how Lee was effected not just by the active role in killing but the active role in the decision. In leaving the sublight ships behind was an active participant in the choice, while the Olympic Carrier was an order. Being ordered to do the killing seems very different than being part of a decision that gets people killed by te enemy.
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His guilt over this incident speaks volumes about his character. He doesn't take things lightly. He uses to learn from them. The debate is so interesting to watch between Lee and Kara because as much as he is telling her to fire, he wants someone to tell him not to give that order if there is a chance of human life on that ship.
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There are so many things I enjoy about this scene:
1) I really like the fact that Lee disobeys orders at first, trying to give the civilian pilots every possible chance to comply with the order to halt. They've been ordered to keep radio silence for fear of Cylon viruses, but when the ship doesn't respond to Athena's blinking-light code, Lee decides to break radio silence on his own authority to make sure that the civilians know they are being ordered to stop. That was absolutely the right choice; it put himself and his own pilots at risk and involved the violation of a direct order, but he had to be sure that the ship's non-compliance was not the result of miscommunication. He goes through every possible warning, from semiphore to voice commands to Starbuck's warning shot, before he resigns himself to the fact that whoever is in control of that ship is not going to yield ( ... )
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For Whom It Is Reserved by sangga Here's a snippet of the end ( ... )
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