And we're back
Apr. 13th, 2008 07:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixen...to talking about BSG.
I haven't done a rewatch of the episode yet so my opinions can be first and lasting impressions of the episode. It's been nearly two days since I saw it, with lots of fun had inbetween, so I have to assume that that which I do remember is that which made the biggest, most significant contribution to my impression of the series as a whole.
The Good:
-The Cylon civil war
Don't get me wrong, this is going to bite the new Six (Natalie) in the ass so hard, but I love this development. I've been asking myself why the "real" cylons are so marginalized since the show began. I understand, financially-speaking, it's not cheap to show off the metal models, but still. There was a comment made at the beginning of season three to the effect that Athena could walk right past the Centurions because they couldn't differentiate between her and another Eight. I wanted to know why. Desperately so. Because these are the machines that we know preceded the humanoid models. These are the reason the flesh Cylons have any opportunity or means to attack (and approach and become) humanity. Finding out that in addition to being marginalized and put behind the flesh models in terms of superiority that they've also been neutered? Eeep. I'm surprised the Raiders hadn't been similarly modded from the beginning. Very possibly, given how untouchable the Final Five Cylons are to the minds of the flesh models, they weren't supposed to even know the Raiders would be way of the missing Cylons.
But for a civilization that built itself on unity within models and consensus between lines, it's a sure clusterfuck to demote the powerful soldiers to common droids. Nonetheless, I doubt Natalie has learned Cavill's lesson any better, as the promo showed her having to say "please" to get them to follow her. If she wakes them to sentience and independence again, she must, once more, submit her actions to the vote. There's every possibility that these mechanoids, having seen how spectacularly made of fail the next generation has been, might wipe them out. They might be more interested in reconnecting to the missing five, too. Hmm.
-Baltar's very own Chip!Baltar
I don't believe that Baltar is a Cylon. They've gone through a lot of hoops to debunk that, starting with the first season and moving swiftly along to his suicide attempt where he himself recognized the finality of his death. I also think that it's entirely fair to saddle humanity with the responsibility of having produced Gaius Baltar and for humanity to have to acknowledge that his failings are the failings of humanity condensed into one person. (It's true.) I've always sort of believed that Chip!Six in his head is more or less a schizoid means of talking to himself. There have been a few misfires where it seems that Chip!Six is in possession of information Baltar could not know, but those are, on the whole, the rare goof. Otherwise, I could see her as the part of him that is still firing on all cylinders of the genius he started as in the miniseries. Baltar the hedonist and egotist has to weather the storms of paranoia and pride, and somewhere in the background, his intelligence is still working overtime to figure out the world. That it looks like Six is another touch of vanity, and that's what Chip!Baltar represents, too.
In fact, Baltar's Chip!Baltar is the ultimate vanity and the ultimate intelligence he possesses. Whether or not it is the same force as Chip!Six is irrelevant. Whatever it is, it recognized that the only way Baltar would pay very, very close attention to the extremely awkward situation with Tory was to appear as himself so that nothing could be thrown back at it. I am you, in other words, is what the appearance says, so you can't ignore what I know. Does he know that she's a Cylon? Probably not. Like with most interactions, Baltar is blessed with knowing exactly what approach to take because of the inner voice(s), and he can recognize what a personal coup it would be to win over Roslin's staunchest defender/innermost trusted ally. The fact that he looked fabulous doing it is a bonus.
-Adama and Roslin's fight
Had to happen. It always comes to blows when Roslin gets on his case about Starbuck, and she knows it. She's also glided for far too long on the credibility of being a person of spiritual importance. It's sucking hardcore to think she'd die, but I like how they both used that to hurt the other. The fact that he doesn't want to call his belief in the people he trusts faith is exactly because, when he does, she mocks him. She would love him to be a believer of her sort, but she can't cross the barrier to be a believer of his. It was cruel and amazing.
-Starbuck going crazy
I had chills for most of it. I could hardly breathe. Katee Sackhoff was amazing. Can't say ought else because there's nothing else to it. An amazing performance, excellent character pathos, good, good stuff.
-Adama hedging his bets
He gets it! He doesn't have to be an either-or guy any more! He can do what practicality tells him is right without abandoning his faith in his good people. Hurrah!
The Bad:
-Lee's going away parties
You're telling me that ANYONE likes Apollo that much? If I'm not mistaken, the man raising the toasts to him in the pilots' party is a Pegasus viper pilot, one noted to be a real prick in the one or two scenes he had back when we still had Pegasus. And HE likes Lee? What the hell happened to the hard-ball Pegasus assholes who hated everyone and everything that didn't understand them? Am I really to believe in the one year he had the ship he won them over? With what? His ability to slurp down all their godsdamn food?
And then the full military send-off. First of all, how DISGUSTING was it that Dualla was made to participate? (Let alone practically give him a blow job over how awesome he was for cheating on her and using her to get back that Starbuck.) Talk about classless. HE WAS ABANDONING HIS POST. I will not forgive it because I cannot. The entire point of the otherwise so-so episode "Final Cut" was that D'Anna's film (back when she was just a reporter!) showed that NO ONE EVER ASKED TO QUIT THE MILITARY SINCE THE COLONIES WERE DESTROYED. In fact! Civilians joined up! That's how we got, awesomely, Hot Dog and Kat (oh, I actually miss her; I never thought that would happen) and so on and so on. People who came and tried and DIED so Lee FRAKKIN Adama could quit to go "find himself" some place else? Dude, we haven't even seen anyone new join the Viper squad since Anders did. As I've said elsewhere, when a confused, possibly homicidal robot is the only recruit you can pull down, YOU CAN'T LET PEOPLE GO.
He's a quitter, and I won't forgive this. I just won't. He could be Johnny McAwesome out of uniform (I highly doubt it), and I still won't forgive this.
-Tory sleeping with Baltar
I might have bought this as an eventual development, but there were at least two or three scenes missing between Tory and Baltar talking in the canteen and she and he screwing. Because without some intervening evidence that she did a full 180 on the subject of HATING HIS GUTS, we went from Tigh suggesting she screw Baltar for information to her actually doing so. The lack of development between removes Tory's agency from the decision. Maybe she really was swayed by his talk about music or whatever, but we went from Tigh telling her she should prostitute herself against her will (tell me she actually looked happy to even be in the room with him, let alone talking with him, let alone interested in FUCKING him) to her CRYING as she did so. As such, there was no moment where Tory went, "Hey, this guy kinda speaks to something in me," or "Well, at least he's handsome," or "I haven't gotten any since yesterday, and he's definitely easy." ANYTHING. Any little thing where she, herself, a person not a pussy-on-command went to Baltar and threw him into bed with her.
That is so disgusting, I can't even think about it without wanting to reach through the screen and strangle the writer and director over their choices. The crying was gross, and it signifies that something gross was happening to her, too. Her excuse was flimsy (we've actually seen her onscreen pointedly NOT crying as she and Anders fooled around), and if Baltar were any sort of MAN he'd have pulled out and did whatever it took for her to stop feeling gross. Instead, he just kept at it and ignored all the signs that she was clearly not telling the truth with this "Oh, it's just a thing I do" shit. In addition, the entire blocking of that scene was meant to maximize the disgust factor. Not only did Tory not seem to be enjoying herself, no effort was made to show her having any agency even in the sex. For fuck's sake, HE LEFT HER BRA ON. I'm sorry but if you're going to ignore some highly suspect erogenous zones on your partner, you're showing them exactly how little you respect them.
Good thing he fixed all that by talking about God. That was hot. Really.
Promo for next week!
I love the complications of free will that seem to be cropping up now that the Centurion Cylons are aware, but little else about the promo made me that hopeful about the problems I've noticed in these episodes going away. For one, the only shot off of Galactica besides those of the Cylons was doing the zoom-in-on-the-secret-Cylon-flinching-when-people-talk-about-robots thing that was rampant in "He That Believeth In Me." In the promo! We're in trouble.
And while it was great to see that the secret Cylons aren't going to be secret for much longer, I have little reassurance in thinking that Cally might actually survive the next episode. This show has its brave moments, but I don't think they're going to do the truly daring thing and ask that that character be allowed to ponder the question of turning in her husband or standing by him. What makes me particularly despondent is the fact that it seems like the way she discovers the unfortunate truth leaves her to discover at least two of the secret Cylons' identities--it is Colonel Tigh who says the Chief needs to watch out that his wife DOES NOT DISCOVER THEY ARE CYLONS, DID YOU HEAR THAT CHIEF?--if not three. (Tory is seen in the promo, but does Cally see her? No idea)
This is the woman who shot Boomer. Yes, it was mostly because the Chief got in trouble because of her, but still. Cally is not Cylon-friendly. I understand how revolted she must feel, how easily she can imagine that her husband has known all along and has just used her to reproduce (I sincerely doubt Athena would be far from her mind). Someone twisting your heart and using your body like that is worse than anything they threatened Starbuck with in "The Farm" because of the deception. Nothing is more evil than making the people you do evil to believe that you do it out of love. (Ask Caprica and Boomer about that. In fact, don't.)
What I would like to see from such a reveal to Cally is this: she must deal with all these feelings and she must choose to do no harm. I'd like to see her walk to the precipice of deciding to lash out for this but choose to pull back. The show does it all the time, but Cally has already proved she will go that far. She's actually pretty hard core, all told. This woman risked blasting herself into a vacuum just for a shot to live. And survived. I'm impressed. What she needs to do to grow as a character is not to prove that she'll "go there," but to prove that she can resist the temptation to see things in black and white, to understand that the betrayal she feels does not mean that she has to hurt anyone to make it go away.
I mean, what are her options if she wants to punish Tyrol for being a Cylon? She can hurt him, herself, or the baby. I would hope that she would recognize her baby as human enough not to hurt it and maybe, just maybe, understand that that's how the Chief feels, too. She could hurt him--there's lots she could do to hurt him, especially as I get the sense that he wouldn't deny it if she started screaming that he was a Cylon at the top of her lungs. (He is capable of powerful guilt.) I'd like to think that, if not hurting her child is a given, this wouldn't happen, though. Because outing the Chief means admitting Nicky's a hybrid, too. She surely has seen how well that went over for Helo and Athena.
The last option, given the character's history, seems so unlikely that that is exactly what I'm afraid they'll do so that no one is "responsible" for Cally's death. If they do, I'll be mightily pissed off.
I haven't done a rewatch of the episode yet so my opinions can be first and lasting impressions of the episode. It's been nearly two days since I saw it, with lots of fun had inbetween, so I have to assume that that which I do remember is that which made the biggest, most significant contribution to my impression of the series as a whole.
The Good:
-The Cylon civil war
Don't get me wrong, this is going to bite the new Six (Natalie) in the ass so hard, but I love this development. I've been asking myself why the "real" cylons are so marginalized since the show began. I understand, financially-speaking, it's not cheap to show off the metal models, but still. There was a comment made at the beginning of season three to the effect that Athena could walk right past the Centurions because they couldn't differentiate between her and another Eight. I wanted to know why. Desperately so. Because these are the machines that we know preceded the humanoid models. These are the reason the flesh Cylons have any opportunity or means to attack (and approach and become) humanity. Finding out that in addition to being marginalized and put behind the flesh models in terms of superiority that they've also been neutered? Eeep. I'm surprised the Raiders hadn't been similarly modded from the beginning. Very possibly, given how untouchable the Final Five Cylons are to the minds of the flesh models, they weren't supposed to even know the Raiders would be way of the missing Cylons.
But for a civilization that built itself on unity within models and consensus between lines, it's a sure clusterfuck to demote the powerful soldiers to common droids. Nonetheless, I doubt Natalie has learned Cavill's lesson any better, as the promo showed her having to say "please" to get them to follow her. If she wakes them to sentience and independence again, she must, once more, submit her actions to the vote. There's every possibility that these mechanoids, having seen how spectacularly made of fail the next generation has been, might wipe them out. They might be more interested in reconnecting to the missing five, too. Hmm.
-Baltar's very own Chip!Baltar
I don't believe that Baltar is a Cylon. They've gone through a lot of hoops to debunk that, starting with the first season and moving swiftly along to his suicide attempt where he himself recognized the finality of his death. I also think that it's entirely fair to saddle humanity with the responsibility of having produced Gaius Baltar and for humanity to have to acknowledge that his failings are the failings of humanity condensed into one person. (It's true.) I've always sort of believed that Chip!Six in his head is more or less a schizoid means of talking to himself. There have been a few misfires where it seems that Chip!Six is in possession of information Baltar could not know, but those are, on the whole, the rare goof. Otherwise, I could see her as the part of him that is still firing on all cylinders of the genius he started as in the miniseries. Baltar the hedonist and egotist has to weather the storms of paranoia and pride, and somewhere in the background, his intelligence is still working overtime to figure out the world. That it looks like Six is another touch of vanity, and that's what Chip!Baltar represents, too.
In fact, Baltar's Chip!Baltar is the ultimate vanity and the ultimate intelligence he possesses. Whether or not it is the same force as Chip!Six is irrelevant. Whatever it is, it recognized that the only way Baltar would pay very, very close attention to the extremely awkward situation with Tory was to appear as himself so that nothing could be thrown back at it. I am you, in other words, is what the appearance says, so you can't ignore what I know. Does he know that she's a Cylon? Probably not. Like with most interactions, Baltar is blessed with knowing exactly what approach to take because of the inner voice(s), and he can recognize what a personal coup it would be to win over Roslin's staunchest defender/innermost trusted ally. The fact that he looked fabulous doing it is a bonus.
-Adama and Roslin's fight
Had to happen. It always comes to blows when Roslin gets on his case about Starbuck, and she knows it. She's also glided for far too long on the credibility of being a person of spiritual importance. It's sucking hardcore to think she'd die, but I like how they both used that to hurt the other. The fact that he doesn't want to call his belief in the people he trusts faith is exactly because, when he does, she mocks him. She would love him to be a believer of her sort, but she can't cross the barrier to be a believer of his. It was cruel and amazing.
-Starbuck going crazy
I had chills for most of it. I could hardly breathe. Katee Sackhoff was amazing. Can't say ought else because there's nothing else to it. An amazing performance, excellent character pathos, good, good stuff.
-Adama hedging his bets
He gets it! He doesn't have to be an either-or guy any more! He can do what practicality tells him is right without abandoning his faith in his good people. Hurrah!
The Bad:
-Lee's going away parties
You're telling me that ANYONE likes Apollo that much? If I'm not mistaken, the man raising the toasts to him in the pilots' party is a Pegasus viper pilot, one noted to be a real prick in the one or two scenes he had back when we still had Pegasus. And HE likes Lee? What the hell happened to the hard-ball Pegasus assholes who hated everyone and everything that didn't understand them? Am I really to believe in the one year he had the ship he won them over? With what? His ability to slurp down all their godsdamn food?
And then the full military send-off. First of all, how DISGUSTING was it that Dualla was made to participate? (Let alone practically give him a blow job over how awesome he was for cheating on her and using her to get back that Starbuck.) Talk about classless. HE WAS ABANDONING HIS POST. I will not forgive it because I cannot. The entire point of the otherwise so-so episode "Final Cut" was that D'Anna's film (back when she was just a reporter!) showed that NO ONE EVER ASKED TO QUIT THE MILITARY SINCE THE COLONIES WERE DESTROYED. In fact! Civilians joined up! That's how we got, awesomely, Hot Dog and Kat (oh, I actually miss her; I never thought that would happen) and so on and so on. People who came and tried and DIED so Lee FRAKKIN Adama could quit to go "find himself" some place else? Dude, we haven't even seen anyone new join the Viper squad since Anders did. As I've said elsewhere, when a confused, possibly homicidal robot is the only recruit you can pull down, YOU CAN'T LET PEOPLE GO.
He's a quitter, and I won't forgive this. I just won't. He could be Johnny McAwesome out of uniform (I highly doubt it), and I still won't forgive this.
-Tory sleeping with Baltar
I might have bought this as an eventual development, but there were at least two or three scenes missing between Tory and Baltar talking in the canteen and she and he screwing. Because without some intervening evidence that she did a full 180 on the subject of HATING HIS GUTS, we went from Tigh suggesting she screw Baltar for information to her actually doing so. The lack of development between removes Tory's agency from the decision. Maybe she really was swayed by his talk about music or whatever, but we went from Tigh telling her she should prostitute herself against her will (tell me she actually looked happy to even be in the room with him, let alone talking with him, let alone interested in FUCKING him) to her CRYING as she did so. As such, there was no moment where Tory went, "Hey, this guy kinda speaks to something in me," or "Well, at least he's handsome," or "I haven't gotten any since yesterday, and he's definitely easy." ANYTHING. Any little thing where she, herself, a person not a pussy-on-command went to Baltar and threw him into bed with her.
That is so disgusting, I can't even think about it without wanting to reach through the screen and strangle the writer and director over their choices. The crying was gross, and it signifies that something gross was happening to her, too. Her excuse was flimsy (we've actually seen her onscreen pointedly NOT crying as she and Anders fooled around), and if Baltar were any sort of MAN he'd have pulled out and did whatever it took for her to stop feeling gross. Instead, he just kept at it and ignored all the signs that she was clearly not telling the truth with this "Oh, it's just a thing I do" shit. In addition, the entire blocking of that scene was meant to maximize the disgust factor. Not only did Tory not seem to be enjoying herself, no effort was made to show her having any agency even in the sex. For fuck's sake, HE LEFT HER BRA ON. I'm sorry but if you're going to ignore some highly suspect erogenous zones on your partner, you're showing them exactly how little you respect them.
Good thing he fixed all that by talking about God. That was hot. Really.
Promo for next week!
I love the complications of free will that seem to be cropping up now that the Centurion Cylons are aware, but little else about the promo made me that hopeful about the problems I've noticed in these episodes going away. For one, the only shot off of Galactica besides those of the Cylons was doing the zoom-in-on-the-secret-Cylon-flinching-when-people-talk-about-robots thing that was rampant in "He That Believeth In Me." In the promo! We're in trouble.
And while it was great to see that the secret Cylons aren't going to be secret for much longer, I have little reassurance in thinking that Cally might actually survive the next episode. This show has its brave moments, but I don't think they're going to do the truly daring thing and ask that that character be allowed to ponder the question of turning in her husband or standing by him. What makes me particularly despondent is the fact that it seems like the way she discovers the unfortunate truth leaves her to discover at least two of the secret Cylons' identities--it is Colonel Tigh who says the Chief needs to watch out that his wife DOES NOT DISCOVER THEY ARE CYLONS, DID YOU HEAR THAT CHIEF?--if not three. (Tory is seen in the promo, but does Cally see her? No idea)
This is the woman who shot Boomer. Yes, it was mostly because the Chief got in trouble because of her, but still. Cally is not Cylon-friendly. I understand how revolted she must feel, how easily she can imagine that her husband has known all along and has just used her to reproduce (I sincerely doubt Athena would be far from her mind). Someone twisting your heart and using your body like that is worse than anything they threatened Starbuck with in "The Farm" because of the deception. Nothing is more evil than making the people you do evil to believe that you do it out of love. (Ask Caprica and Boomer about that. In fact, don't.)
What I would like to see from such a reveal to Cally is this: she must deal with all these feelings and she must choose to do no harm. I'd like to see her walk to the precipice of deciding to lash out for this but choose to pull back. The show does it all the time, but Cally has already proved she will go that far. She's actually pretty hard core, all told. This woman risked blasting herself into a vacuum just for a shot to live. And survived. I'm impressed. What she needs to do to grow as a character is not to prove that she'll "go there," but to prove that she can resist the temptation to see things in black and white, to understand that the betrayal she feels does not mean that she has to hurt anyone to make it go away.
I mean, what are her options if she wants to punish Tyrol for being a Cylon? She can hurt him, herself, or the baby. I would hope that she would recognize her baby as human enough not to hurt it and maybe, just maybe, understand that that's how the Chief feels, too. She could hurt him--there's lots she could do to hurt him, especially as I get the sense that he wouldn't deny it if she started screaming that he was a Cylon at the top of her lungs. (He is capable of powerful guilt.) I'd like to think that, if not hurting her child is a given, this wouldn't happen, though. Because outing the Chief means admitting Nicky's a hybrid, too. She surely has seen how well that went over for Helo and Athena.
The last option, given the character's history, seems so unlikely that that is exactly what I'm afraid they'll do so that no one is "responsible" for Cally's death. If they do, I'll be mightily pissed off.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-14 01:39 am (UTC)Baltar's Inner Baltar, therefore, is probably a representative of the Devil, appealing to Baltar's selfish nature.
On the other hand, Ron Moore has implied that Caprica-Six's Inner Baltar is a devil figure, so maybe I've got that wrong. Maybe both Virtual Baltars are diabolic.
(All this God and Devil stuff was pretty explicit in the original series.)
My take on Tory sleeping with Baltar is that she still hates him. She's doing it just for the information. So there was no moment where she decides he's a little appealing.
Hey, Baltar's had sex with three out of four female Cylon models. He needs to hook up with an Eight for the full set.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-14 02:11 am (UTC)As for Tory, there are two ways what we saw happen happened. Either she decided for herself, regardless of Tigh's lewd commentary, that sleeping with Baltar was the best way to get at the information he might have; or else Tigh's suggestion and Baltar's surprising sympathy got to her in a moment of confusion and preyed upon it to put her in the position. Neither are especially flattering to the lady in question, but only the former would imbue Tory with any agency of own. Since they failed to show her making such steps towards Baltar of her own volition, it comes across as having been Tigh ordered her to sleep with Baltar and it implies that she's useless for anything else. That is gross. And so incredibly insulting a backtrack into misogyny for a show that at least attempts to rise above it.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-14 02:50 am (UTC)Well, yeah. It'd be hard to write a definite answer that'd be more interesting than the ambiguity.
it comes across as having been Tigh ordered her to sleep with Baltar and it implies that she's useless for anything else. That is gross.
Is ordering a woman to sleep with a man she hates any worse than ordering a man to be a suicide bomber?
I don't read it as misogynistic (on the show's part; I'll buy that Tigh's a woman-hater) because it seems to me that the writers recognize and acknowledge the crappy situation Tory's in. If anything, I think Baltar's Cult of Hotties is more misogynistic on the writers' parts.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-14 03:05 am (UTC)Um, yes? Because Duck was never ordered to be a suicide bomber. He was suicidal as was--he described himself as having nothing to live for after the Cylons killed his wife. Anders spent A LOT of time making sure that this was the choice that Duck wanted, not just what Col. Tigh thought would work as an offensive. If Tory took it upon herself to sleep with Baltar, then scenes in the intervening time before their first meeting where she still found the thought abhorrent and the act needed to be in place. As it is, it appears as though she neither thought of anything else nor attempted it. The implications are gross.
And it is misogyny if the best the show's writers (writer, actually, as this particular episode's author is NOTORIOUS for upsetting the gender neutrality of the show with his contributions) could come up with for getting info from Baltar was to throw Tory at him. So, so gross.