An attempt to be less of a digital windbag

[trinityvixen]

I had to write a very long e-mail to clear up how I felt about Zarek and Gaeta over the last two episodes of Battlestar Galactica because I feel that the show decided for us how they were to be judged. I felt this same way about Admiral Cain. When you get down to it, I am in this position of freely admitting that all three were wrong and that I don't support what they did but that I still feel their contribution, their view on events was absolutely understandable. Zarek and Cain are more tainted than Gaeta, who, I felt, was pretty much right until he was wrong (which was when he knew Zarek was bad news but didn't break off the alliance). That is about as much as I want to get back into that meta. The e-mail was exhausting enough as was.

Gaeta's rebellion was necessary but perhaps too long in coming. There are three factions working from withing Gaeta's group: there are the give-me-liberty folk who don't appreciate Adama/Roslin calling all the shots all the time no matter what until the end of time; there are the rabidly anti-Cylon group (which includes people who take out personal disappointments/traumas on Cylons like Connor or Seelix or Kelly); and there are the Pegasus crowd who should have been addressed a long time ago but weren't.

That last group is a real kicker for me. We stopped acknowledging the plethora of problems your average transfer from Pegasus had back when Lee took over as Commander. After that? Pegasus just became a thing that happened that time. There are intra-Pegasus problems; why the frak have we ignored the inter-Pegasus/Galactica problems? Look at Laird--the first victim of the mutiny. He wasn't a Pegasus asshole the way Narcho and the rapist freaks were. He was a guy who fell afoul of Admiral Cain and her insanity. He got killed because Cain's rule meant you did your job or you died, so he did his job and died anyway because Zarek is all about "You do your job the wrong way and you die." Then you have the assholes that Cain promoted--the rapists--and you have the people she hardened, like Narcho. I don't believe Narcho is a really terrible guy for all that he sniped at Kara and almost blew up Roslin. He got his moment to tell Adama off but he didn't kill anyone and he didn't approve of killing anyone. I doubt he would have liked killing Adama on Gaeta's say so. Narcho believed in killing his enemy, and Adama wouldn't let him. Admiral Cain taught her men that the only way you could live and have any worth in a world where humanity was doomed anyway was to kill your enemy. Adama said otherwise and I don't think that message has really sunk if for most of the Pegasus crowd. I like that Narcho wasn't spitting and hissing about toasters; he is a racist, in his way, but it's not really because of hate so much as because of sorrow. He's losing the thing that kept him alive, and he's lost again by picking the wrong side. I pity him, I really do. The legacy of Pegasus endures.

I pity Gaeta, too, because I still think he's a hero. He made some really bad decisions, but he did a service in a way by bringing this all to light. The mistake would be to write off the monster that he stirred. Gaeta is the slow-burning sufferer who has consistently been in favor of civil rights. He's endured tyranny all this time and the constant disappointment of all his attempts to make better this stacked system. He can't be the only one, and he isn't as we've seen. It was too easy for the Fleet to chase after Roslin--oh, where is the President!? Why can't we hear her! Whatever you say, Madame President!--and too much focus was on that. Adama and Roslin won, but they had only a fraction of the Fleet really on their side. In the confusion, other ships just stayed out of it or even refused to help them. (The basestar lost its hiding place when ships moved away; other ships got ready to jump with Galactica.) Gaeta had a finger on the pulse of the Fleet, but Zarek put a choke-hold on his plans with his violence.

If Gaeta is remembered as a villain, it will be because nobody thought through this mutiny. It means no one reached out to make Narcho understand that he could safe without just killing, killing, killing. It means no one explained to Kelly that he has to let go of his racism because if he can like the Chief, he can probably like a few other Cylons, too. It would mean no one explained to the Cylons (again!) that they need to commit if their partnership will work and that they can't just be afraid all the time. You can't just fix Racetrack into not being an asshole after showing her laughing at Zarek's jokes and being disgustingly in love with him as the Commander-in-Chief. She has to make some kind of apologetic overture and someone has to apologize to her for never giving a shit that she was unhappy. Ditto Seelix. Someone forgive her, already. I doubt it will be Anders, so maybe Kara? It would take a lot for Kara to swallow that, though. I suppose Seelix's absolution will come with Anders not telling anyone that she betrayed him. If that's because he dies and doesn't get the chance to swallow her hatred, it will feel cheap because circumstance and coincidental accident prevented the confrontation from having to happen. He needs to be able to make the forgiving choice to let her go.

And the entire Fleet needs to know what Zarek did. Let Zarek be the sin-eater. All nuance has been stripped from him, so he might as well be the villain and take upon him all the wrongness that Gaeta doesn't deserve. Zarek's done it before--he was willing to be the bastard who gave revenge a presidential seal of approval so that Roslin could be blameless when she was president again. That was nuance because he was willing to set aside his lust for power to give people the petty revenge that they needed as a pressure release. The people came first for Tom Zarek some times. They really did. But we needed a villain, and no Cylons were handy to dislike (all the ones that are left, with the possible exception of Tory "I AM TOTALLY A KILLER ROBOT AND I LIKE IT SHUT UP" Foster, are way too gentle). That's what the Cylons used to be--they used to be the sin-eaters for the Fleet. All the bad feelings in the Fleet were directed outward at the Cylons. Now you can't do that--airlock-happy D'Anna is stuck on Earth, the 1,4,5s are nowhere to be found--the Fleet turns on itself. We still need a sin-eater to take away the sting of hatred and guilt so that we can start anew. Zarek will have to be that man.

But not Gaeta. He didn't deserve this. The fact that Gaius Baltar can break bread with Gaeta and love him and cry for him proves that Gaeta wasn't the villain. Baltar knows from accidental villainy. Let Gaeta be absolved. If the Fleet just goes back to sniping at each other or, worse, pretending this didn't happen, Gaeta will still be damned. Let him be the release and let everybody frakkin' heal.

And I mean everybody. Anders can't die. For one thing, I really super annoyed that he had nothing to do in all this except be a victim. Unless his injury is going to very interesting places next week (which I doubt given the fact that next week we'll be distracted by Ellen Tigh's return), this seemed an unnecessary development. On the one hand, I like that Starbuck wasn't able to be bitter at him for covering up what he was and she just reacted naturally as she would have done for anyone she loved. She just ran to him and panicked a lot but stood by him. I've been waiting for something to come of that bombshell dropping on her for a while now. On the other hand, I'm rather annoyed that she fell to pieces and wasn't involved in the retaking of the ship after that point. I can't argue that it's out of character--she fell apart when she accidentally shot Lee way back in "Sacrifice"--but that it feels like less of a natural thing given how gung-ho she was about taking back the ship and how unimportant the Cylons in the brig (Anders included) were to her. She and Lee only went to the brig in search of Adama; the other Cylons had to be like "Hello? Want to get out of here before the death squad arrives?" before either Kara or Lee would stop screaming questions about where Adama was. (Lee, that ass, was up in Tigh's grill like he had anything to do with the marines marching him and not Adama off to the brig.)

Maybe Anders will die and he and Ellen will come back together. Or, worse, he won't. Because Ellen, given when she died, could have resurrected as the Hub was still in place (if the Final Five use the same system, which the promo semi-suggested they did what with the goo-tub). But the Hub is gone now. I think there could be great drama in the Cylons not only confronting their own mortality but the loss of one of their all-beloved Final Five. I would miss Anders, as he's generally cool and I like the impact of his being a Cylon on Starbuck, but I could understand losing him.

What I don't get is the fucking gorgeous Six out of nowhere that Baltar sleeps with. Okay, first off: MOST BEAUTIFUL SIX EVER. Bar none. She was lit, very consciously I assume, to seem an angel, in her impossibly long and textured and styled and beautiful hair and her pretty white outfit. She also had the innocence of a child, something we've not really seen in the Sixes as much as we have in the Eights. Sixes can be woefully amoral about some things that are outside of their experience, but they are always so driven, so sure of themselves. Angel!Six simpered like a child when Baltar pushed her away. (Not that he didn't find time to sex her up, thanks so much Michael Angeli.) She just didn't get that some times you have to feel bad to make the right choice, which is bizarre given how the 2/6/8 faction decided that they had to be mortal in order to live. You'd think those two revelations would be related, somehow. So, fucking gorgeous Six, but completely improbable everything else about her. She existed solely for Baltar to have a crisis of conscience...at. After his and Roslin's uncomfortable truth-telling session, I would have preferred he expend that guilt to someone like her. Or, hey, maybe Tory? With whom he's already had a complicated relationship and who would understand his acknowledgment of resentment for/guilt about his followers.

But no, couldn't do that. Tory is stuck in evil bitch land. I guess it makes sense for her to advocate the Cylons jump away since her breaking with Roslin cuts her off from human support. But who made that asshole decision in the first place, huh, writers? Tory managed to be loyal to Roslin and not sell her out to Baltar despite the fact she was SLEEPING with Baltar (thanks again, Angeli!), so it makes total sense that she'd cut Roslin off at the knees once the Cylons whom she doesn't a) know, b) have a history with, or c) understand welcomed her. Sigh.

I loved Leoben working with Roslin, though. It's sad Tory couldn't be in there with them. She could have been the slightly-more-Cylon-but-still-pro-the-alliance Final Fiver the way all the other Final Fivers are decidedly slightly-more-human-but-still-pro-the-alliance. Instead, you have Roslin and the guy she promised not to airlock and then airlocked anyway being totally in love with her voice going out to the Fleet and wow, we're best friends forever now! It's totally gross and fabulous at the same time. And when did Leoben grow a beard? I guess this is a different one? Maybe there are entire cadres of Twos and Sixes just hanging back in the wings experimenting with hair growth now that they're all supposed to be unique butterflies and these are the only bodies they get. I mean, the Eights are definitely playing around with wardrobe choices, so why not practice not shaving or curling your impossibly perfect hair?

Another thing about Sixes: Tricia Helfer looks completely different as every single one. Her acting is foremost the reason for this. Chip!Caprica is so different from Caprica herself. The powerful Sixes on New Caprica voting to kill humans were different from Caprica and Chip!Caprica. Gina is special. Natalie is strong in ways unlike any of the others. You have six or seven different platinum blonde Sixes--the PTSD!Six, the one in this episode panicking over the viper shooting the basestar--and they're all different, different, different. I could tell who was who, even if they were lined up together not saying a word. And on top of that, Tricia Helfer has a face that just changes with each hairdo. Amazing. The Eights all look the same no matter who they are, so you can project onto them; that's why they're both great spies and really, really creepy friends/lovers. No one would ever get one Six confused with another. (Barolay did once, and look where that got her.)

I don't know what I want more: Ellen to come back pissed off that she was killed or freaked out that she's a Cylon. I definitely want there to be more an emotional response to her return, but I don't want to lose sight of the question of what makes the Final Five different from the other Cylons. I have this theory that the Final Five are impossibly old. That they've been doing this since Earth is a given, what with Tyrol's memory. (Which I absolutely trust because YAY I LOVE GALEN TYROL like the crazy robot-frakker that I am.) How are they doing it? They can't look just like themselves forever, right? Anders, Tyrol, Tory, and Tigh can't all be adopted or just people who showed up as adults. I have to believe that they are forced to go through full cycles of growth from a baby to an adult in order to watch and learn and know when the cycle of things happening before happen again. But then how is Ellen seemingly coming back at the same age as when she died? Did she respawn using the Hub's technology or another facility? Wouldn't someone have noticed if the Final Five had bodies in storage? If they come back as babies, how do they get to the parents that raise them?

So curious! But I still crave more emotional fallout. It would be great to do stories of Cylon-lovers and Cylons in parallel with Ellen's return and Anders' questionable status. Tigh and Ellen, regardless that they are both Cylons, are like my favorite couple ever and they have issues, Cylonicity aside. Then you have Starbuck and Anders and their totally not addressing the issue constructively and destroying themselves by still being in love despite it. Ahhh!!!

Tried and failed to be less verbose. This is why everyone is surprised I use Twitter, isn't it?

Comments

[avram]

We know Tigh looked younger back when he and Adama first met.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

We have no evidence that normal Cylons can't age; we just haven't seen whether they have or not because they've not been around for long enough to clearly tell.

And even if Tigh and the other four are exceptions in that regard as well, Tigh wouldn't have been too young when he met Adama. He would only have been as old as some of the Cylons appear to be now. Which means that if the Final Five constantly jump back in the exact same bodies, they could still just jump back to younger adulthood. Aging isn't proof that they go through puberty/physical maturity, just that they can get old. It should follow if they do one they can do the other, but, again, we have no evidence either way. And the only Cylon children we have are either half-human or unborn, so there is no way to tell just yet.

[fairest.livejournal.com]

That *was* the most gorgeous Six yet. I'm glad you came to this conclusion when you watched it as well. I was floored. :)

[negativeq.livejournal.com]

I agree that Angel!Six was breathtaking. How does Tricia Helfer get such gorgeous hair?

I nearly cried for Gaeta. He didn't deserve this. Adama and Roslin's anger at him felt so unjustified. They ALLOWED this situation to happen. And I can't shake the feeling that Gaeta was executed and not pardoned because he never made it into Adama's family circle. Since Adama has forgiven everyone else, including fuckin BALTAR.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Their anger at him stems from their sense of betrayal, which is totally unfair, I agree, as they started it. As I mentioned before, (http://trinityvixen.livejournal.com/606713.html) it's not fair, but it is how it had to happen. There has to be a point at which Adama says, "No more." Yes, it unfairly penalizes perennial outsider Gaeta, but Zarek and Gaeta went too far, especially in killing the Quorum but also by killing people at all when there are only so many left. Bizarrely, by killing people, Gaeta made the Fleet more dependent on the Cylons because their numbers become even more crucial to ensuring humanity has the numbers to keep going.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I may bitch about the plot contrivance that put her in a bed with Baltar, but she was stunning, and they lit her up to make sure you paid full attention. I was!

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Narcho, Racetrack, Seelix, etc

Okay, first -- I thought his name was Nacho. Eh.

Anyway, your analysis depends on them being characters, which frankly, I don't think they are. I don't think people understand what I mean when I dismissively say that someone is "not a character" -- it's just that that character is never allowed to exist or be developed in his or her own right. We have never gotten to see independent character development for all these people. In fact I'm surprised you can remember their names. Instead, they only show up when the Script Needs X, and bingo, their characters are magically transmogrified into whatever particular creature was required for that plot point.

When you are never developed as a character, but are only the go-to marble from the grab bag when the writers need someone to occupy some particular role in a story, you're Not A Character. Instead, you're nothing but an index or an awkward memento of the writers' lack of planning and poor control of their own storyline. And at that point, yes, I do find it difficult to believe in them as people I'm supposed to have any emotional attachment to at all.

Anyway, Anders won't die, because they're going to use the actor's scar. For him to have a scar, he has to live long enough for the wound to heal.

I pity Gaeta because I do not believe that his character transformation made much sense. He's bitter about losing his leg, sure; maybe they tried to do some ret-conning with him in a couple two-minute web-based errata sheets; but the Cylon God knows these writers have never bothered to think more than half an episode ahead of whatever major storyline decisions they were making at any given time, they obviously didn't *plan* any of this, and so the entire rebellion -- like much of the developments in this and in third season -- just doesn't grow organically out of the characters. I even saw how they tried to make it all happen reasonably, but I've just never bought it. I feel bad for Gaeta because I think he got used. I think they needed a warm body to pull off their rebellion plot, and I think he just happened to be the one they chose.
And I fully admit I could be wrong/overreacting to this. Maybe I'm not being fair; it's just how I feel this whole thing went.

I think that's all the steam I have, so I'll just have to wait for the next episode, which I suspect will be yet another round of "Is that what happened? Gee whiz!"

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

You have a good point about the difference between characters and archetypes and outright ciphers. However, I would argue that no matter the writers' lack of imaginations and over-reliance on simple cues to motivate people, there are characters behind the archetypes. I think BSG has been really good and providing motivation for things; I think the problem is more that their momentum, once lost, is next to impossible to recover.

This is because of both the series' lack of planning and the enormous gaps between seasons. If you watched it all at once, you'd be better able to believe the characters arcs as they emerge. As is, it's taxing enough for even my steel-trap show memory to pick faces and names. This is why I complained about never dealing with the fallout from Pegasus; we have half the military walking wounded but all we ever focus on are the Yay!Adama! crowd.

Gaeta's trajectory was also lost because we ignored him for all of season three and he just came into being an asshole in season four. The gaps just make it worse. But he has had a legitimate beef with Adama forever, and as negativeq pointed out, he's also on the outside-looking-in where it comes to Adama's affections for no reason at all. (It's because he wasn't a big enough of a screw-up, apparently. So he tried to screw up, but he overdid it.) Gaeta has been hard-used by everyone. He tried to change the world, and Baltar just banged chippies and then rolled over and surrendered. He tried to help the Resistance, and not only did they go crazy and murderous themselves, but half of the people involved then formed the Inner Circle and tried to shove him out an airlock. That the Inner Circle turned out to be half Cylon and one crazy pilot who kicked him for what the Cylons did to her did not help. (The Inner Circle was also authorized by Tom Zarek way back when, which is an interesting history to have between Gaeta and he before the mutiny.) Roslin then never punished anyone for it and the only person to sort-of apologize was the Chief. All of that was just left on a back-burner until a Cylon randomly shot him--resulting in an amputation--and his best friend (which was never dwelt on again after season one but which still appeared to be the case) blew her brains out. The motivation was there, it was just jump-started with too little association to the past.

I'm annoyed, too, don't get me wrong. One day, I'll watch the whole series back-to-back and see if it makes more sense. One thing I like about Joss Whedon, for all his other failings, is the sense he gives about always knowing what all his background characters are doing. He knows their motivations. But even when the authors don't know that stuff, we can freely speculate, given the clues and circumstances. That's how come I find Narcho interesting; why I can be angry with Seelix; or confused by Racetrack. A lot of their characterization is cut for time and to better fluff the twenty-odd central characters. But it's there if you look, and if you can argue it, I'll accept it. It can be different from my view, and that's fine so long as you back it up. You have a valid point about their not being anything but 2D props for the narrative. I think they're something more, but I can see how they're also, sorta that, too.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

A little bit more about characters, if you will indulge me:

I don't assume that the failings of the writers or the production team to put in character-defining stuff more often doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. What comes to my mind is Star Wars. Lucas is a total hack whose guiding motivation in his world-building was "Is this cool?" However, in doing cool shit, he managed to stoke interests in some of his creations to the degree that other writers with more curiosity could run with, and they did. Look at the enduring popularity of Boba Fett. Lucas never cared about him, but the fans did. SW serial writers did, and they built him up from the sketchiest of sketchy outlines of a character into a full person in his own right.

So if you can do that in fiction, you can do it in meta, which is what I do about BSG because I couldn't ever dramatize this show. This show's sense of drama is too difficult (for me, at least) to capture in words. For me, it's almost entirely about the acting, and the actors on this show sell the most impossible crap. If it were any other cast, this show would've capsized under the weight of its own improbability a long time ago. So I meta--I am able to consider performance choices in determining what the character motivation might have been in a scene. And I know I can trust the actors to convey all that the words and the plot cannot do in one hour because they are all really, really good.

For instance, with Narcho, the actor (Sebastian Spence, whom I love) chose to play him as not being overly hostile. He could have gone that way--he did earlier when throwing Starbuck off his shoulder. Instead, he went quiet, disappointed, inwardly angry but outwardly (almost unconsciously) sorrowful. So now I have to ask myself, why did this actor do that? What extra-diegetic information about his character did he receive that he performed this way as opposed to any other? I read from his performance what he wanted me to see, and I can then apply that to his character's history and draw conclusions about the character.

Of course, the problem with this is that my reading of his expression is entirely subjective, so I admit that I'm literally pulling my extrapolations out of nowhere except my opinion of his performance. I think that great actors can leave you guessing and have a performance open to interpretation. I'm fine with being wrong--I often am, and I can rewrite my views to compensate--but I won't necessarily be argued out of it unless there's a specific event that invalidates my opinion.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Battlestar

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

What extra-diegetic information about his character did he receive that he performed this way as opposed to any other?
Judging from the admissions we've had about this show -- like Dee not knowing her character died until rehearsal for that ep -- I'm guessing not much.

I totally appreciate what you're trying to say here, but I think that all credit is to the actors -- but even then, the credit should be in creating good television, not filling the credibility problems in the script. Acting is about making choices. In the absence of strong direction, you just sort of make up your own part, because no matter how minor your character, your job is to make it look believable, and your ego is committed to making that part important. So when you ask *why* Spence chose to play it that way--absent interviews or released information that tell me otherwise--I'm going to go with he felt like it was a more realistic or believable action on his part. He just decided that would be how he would play it, probably by filling in the holes in the role with parts of himself (that's what you do). Maybe the writers noticed and went with it; maybe they didn't; but I would classify this as actor's characterization, filling in the gaps, rather than as (writer's) character development. At the end of the day, it's the writers' job to come up with the characters. In ongoing series, great actors sometimes force the writers to reconceptualize the characters (Patrick Stewart, for instance, was absolutely brilliant at this, resulting in major scripted changes for Picard between Season 1 and the rest of the show), but I have a hard time crediting that in these writers, particular in minor characters who get no screen time except when they're needed as puppets. It's a testament to the acting that the holes in the writing are filled with the actor's real flesh and bones, but in my mind that's separate from the actual *show* (just as are, say, the camera angles).

To me, it's just like if we were talking about Shakespeare -- the work is the script, the play itself, while the rest is staging, which creates a subsidiary work that exists in the performance and should be considered on its separate merits. I am not a critic of BSG, the televised performance -- I think that for the most part, everyone involved has done excellent work with what was given -- but I am a resounding critic of BSG, the show/script. And my (by now, after seasons of nonsensical turns) contempt for the show/script has gotten to the point that while I find the performance enjoyable and engaging, I find it hard to take the televised work seriously given how laughable some of the scripted stuff is; and I certainly won't give the script that credit which is due to the performance and the performers.

But I think this is just a fundamental difference in perspective, judging from the other example you gave -- Boba Fett is enduringly popular because he's an excellent projection target for fanwank. He's OMG SPACE BOUNTY HUNTER SO COOL. So some fans became obsessed with that idea. And built him up into this godly-special figure, when, in the actual canon (equivalent here to the script, rather than the performance, or the social reception of that performance), before the salivating obsessives got their hooks in him, he was just some loser who got eaten by a sand worm. Basically, I view the promotion of Boba Fett from glorified-extra to critically-important-personage as a major strike against the Star Wars universe. I could even accept something like a Fanon!Boba who had some kind of consistent characterization that might be capable of having qualities, redeeming or no, but I categorically reject Lucas' crass capitalization on Fett's popularity to throw in the plainly stupid role of Django [or however it's spelled] Fett in creating the Stormtroopers, say, or Lucas' fan-service-pander of giving Boba lines in the "remastered" omg-buy-them-again new editions, etc... Changing the canon to accommodate this stuff? ick. (to be continued by twitterizing LJ comment limits)

Re: What We Talk About When We Talk About Battlestar

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

I suspect that we disagree on this point, and that that leads to a lot of the difference in how we view BSG as well. I respect very much the actors for filling in the gaps, but while I think that's necessary to create watchable television, I don't think it can save the story, the script--the work that I'm primarily judging or considering. At the end of the day, for me, if it didn't make sense on the page, then it doesn't make sense, the end. I very much respect the actor's efforts to turn it into something that makes sense--they almost get close sometimes--but that's a different thing, and while they (and my eyes' tendency to see faces in clouds) might make a whole, it's a separate thing.

And maybe that's totally not a valid way to approach movies and television -- and, strangely, I feel much less secure in applying it to movies, which aren't usually so... improvisational... as the last couple seasons of BSG have been.

Okay, I'm rambling now, but hopefully I've at least explained my feelings on this. I'm not saying that your interpretations are wrong, by any means; just that I think we're evaluating different works.

Re: What We Talk About When We Talk About Battlestar

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Distracted as I am with the performances, I can be at the edge of my seat through the show, and then afterwards, I'm ticking off innumerable continuity problems. So I totally understand the "the scripts are shit" reaction.

I also think that at this point, certain things are being revealed that put new spins on the old world they set up. A lot of those things are frustratingly contradictory (Hello, Cally's entire story; the Cylons having "a plan"). A lot of them you can work back into it and see that maybe it was a lie the whole time what you thought, and even though that's because it was unintentional on the writers' part, if you just consider that IT WAS ALL A LIE, it kinda blows your mind.

Or it just annoys you. I go back and forth on that depending on the episode. Most things involving Lee Adama and his special destiny annoy me. Anything with the killer robots? YES PLEASE. I was annoyed at the Final Five reveal this season, but now I'm ready for it. I just had to get over my shock that it was so mundane and I've come around to "Isn't it awesome that it's just a normal, normal person like Tyrol and the others?" I mean, they can totally spoil that for me, or it could be awesome. Despite their track record, I'd still say the odds are 50/50 on that one.

I'm reading you loud and clear, and I want you to know that I share your frustrations. But when I stop taking the show creators' words for it, I enjoy the thing much more. That was what I was trying to get at with the Boba Fett example: left to Lucas, Fett is the clone of some ass-face bounty hunter who had A Tragic Past because he saw some Jedi chop Daddy's head off. If I stop letting Ron Moore tell me how I should feel about characters on this show--to the extent that I can (Hello, Cally again)--I enjoy it better

This is something I credit to my film class on interactivity in media. Basically, you, the consumer of a narrative, have total control over that narrative. You can stop your interaction at any point you choose. Base your conception on the DVD cover. Only read reviews. Never get past the first chapter. Only look at one panel. Never finish the book. I choose not to let Ron Moore go "Oh, we just said 'Fuck it' and picked names out of a hat" and let that ruin my show for me. It prickles a lot, and I can't always squeeze out that information, but I find I can enjoy it better without accepting that editorializing as canon. That's why fanon exists, no?

Re: What We Talk About When We Talk About Battlestar

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It's a testament to the acting that the holes in the writing are filled with the actor's real flesh and bones, but in my mind that's separate from the actual *show* (just as are, say, the camera angles).

So you would define the "show" by the script? I would define the "show" as being all-inclusive--the script, the performance, and the staging. Just keeping my terminologies correct before I go on.

You're right that there is a vast difference between something that is witty in the writing and told well in the offing. However, things that aren't written down still exist in the ether of world-building to a degree. It does feel like BSG uses characters and events to certain degree of randomness, often to the detriment of side characters. I just would argue that that doesn't mean that the side characters weren't operating in the spaces we don't see in interesting, full ways.

This last run, with the ridiculous caricatures on Team RAGING ASSHOLE, is a particularly bad example of never graduating characters from outlines, what with the rapists and the Pegasus crowd. However, I liked that with Narcho he brought up that, in fact, Adama and Roslin and the Terror Twins never addressed the problem either. It's almost like the writers are accusing themselves because they left in this part with Narcho. They basically admitted, yeah, we left you to twist in the wind, and since "they" write for the leaders of humanity, those leaders are implicated, too. It seems random, but I think a lot turned on that simple little speech.

I said that there should be a reckoning, an attempt to address the ugliness that Gaeta stirred up or else it would be pointless. Having the writers admit that they let Adama ignore the racism and petty criminality in the name of just keeping it together, even in just that scene, is pretty self-introspective for them. I would hope they would continue with that and recognize and return more and more to what Adama used to believe--that humanity has to be worthy of survival.

In re: Boba Fett:
Here, the problem is that Lucas returned to the well to poison it. He made Fett grizzled and almost a veteran in the Star Wars trilogy, which is a hard lure (l-oo-re) to pass up for fans. Fett had mileage on him that we didn't get to see (based on how dinged up his armor was alone). It's that sort of creative touch that can elevate a ZOMGAWESOMEBOUNTYHUNTERDUDE into a character. It is the detail that launched a thousand fanfictions. I don't believe for a second that Lucas had a backstory for this character, just that he knew enough technically not to make him shiny and new. Like Terry Pratchett says, it's the old guys in dangerous professions to watch out for--they've been able to survive in a job that tends to kill off the stupid and weak. Be afraid, be very afraid.

I think that same sort of worldly experience clings to each character on BSG, and I think a lot of the writers (as we've had proven) don't think far enough ahead to wonder if their bad-guy-of-the-week really would go from the limited experiences he/she has to this new place. I think you can argue a lot would (Narcho and the rapist fuckhole make total sense, for different reasons but ultimately because: Pegasus), some less so. I have yet to see a compelling argument for Racetrack being on Team RAGING ASSHOLE. She is definitely someone without a character for all that she has been around longer than the rest of the identifiable mutineers put together. They have places to take their rage; she never registered an opinion one way or another. It was just a way to pull your heartstrings--Oh no, not Racetrack!--and there the show failed to elevate her to character status. That's an example where I'd agree that the show doesn't have characters. She's a familiar face, that's it.