An attempt to be less of a digital windbag
Feb. 8th, 2009 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenI 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?
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?
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Date: 2009-02-09 04:20 am (UTC)