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Battlestar Galactica links and thoughts
There is an interesting interview with BSG scriptwriters Bradley Thompson and David Weddle here. No real spoilers for season 2, though you can make some guesses from the tone of their replies. Since speculation is fun, I give you the parts that were most intriguing to me:
Question: Can you give us any indication as to who ends up in control of the fleet as the new season begins -- President Roslin or the military (Adama or perhaps another officer)?
Weddle: No, I can't. But how do you think the civilian population will react to a military overthrow of their president? What actions if any will the Quorum of 12 take? And what can Laura Roslin do to save their democratic form of government from her jail cell? We will be examining these issues.
Thompson: The season begins where the last one ended -- Adama's shot. Following military chain of command, that leaves Tigh the man on the spot, especially since President Roslin is in jail and VP Baltar is stranded on Kobol. So the immediate fleet boss is clear. But how will the Quorum react?
Question: How about Apollo -- will he end up in the brig for all of Season 2?
Weddle: Can't tell you. But what does he do now? Does he help Roslin fight to save the government, or has the shooting of his father so traumatized him that he seeks forgiveness for his actions and abandons Roslin? Galactica needs him, he's one of their best pilots and they don't have many. Yet
he refused to obey orders and held a gun to Tigh's head. So what does Tigh do with him? These will not be easy conflicts for our characters to
resolve.
Thompson: He's one of our best pilots, and we don't have many. Maybe Col. Tigh will need him in a Viper more than [Tigh needs him to be
in jail] next to that traitor, Roslin. But then again, maybe not.
Question: How much will we learn in the first couple of episodes of Season 2 about the Cylons and their relationship with, or mission from, God?
Weddle: Baltar's spirituality and relationship with the Cylon God will continue to evolve. As it does, we will learn more. But the more we learn, the more questions we will have. It won't all be laid out in one nice, neat, easy-to-comprehend synopsis. Baltar's journey will reflect the spiritual struggles many of us go through over the course of our lives. He will have epiphanies, achieve a deeper understanding of Cylon theology, but also have crises of faith and be tempted to reject his role in God's plan.
Thompson: God reveals his plans in his own time.
Question: David Eick hinted in the TV Guide article of a major battle on Kobol. Will that happen early in Season 2?
Weddle: Can't answer that. But think about it. We have people stranded on Kobol. If Kara [Starbuck] can return from Caprica with the Arrow of Apollo, Laura will be determined to get to Kobol and open the Tomb of Athena. Does the military try to stop her? Do they cooperate? Do the Cylons give chase? Do they know about the Tomb? Or is this inside knowledge that will give us an advantage over them? Anyway you look at it, one thing's for sure: all roads lead to Kobol.
Question: Will Tom Zarek be a major character in Season 2? Have you heard whether any other veterans of the first "BSG" be have guest roles in
Season 2?
Weddle: Tom Zarek will definitely be back. He's a political force to be reckoned with. A secular humanist, he won't be enamored with Laura's newfound spirituality. But he's adamantly opposed to a military dictatorship. The new field of play will give this savvy political operative many opportunities. Expect him to do everything he can to exploit them. Yes, some other faces from the old series may show up. Then again, they may not.
Thompson: Haven't heard that anyone else wants to come aboard. Tom Zarek has a ship of his own and he's the representative of Saggitaron to the Quorum of 12. He's adamantly against the military dictatorship, so you can bet he'll have something to do next season.
Okay. Here's what these replies lead me to believe:
- Lee will first out of guilt abandon Roslin and get out of jail due to his pilot status. But he then will reconsider, especially if things go increasingly to hell without a functioning civilian government. This time, it won't be a spontanous action like his gun pulling, though; it will be an organized resistance.
- Zarek, as everybody and their dog has speculated already, will use the opportunity just given to him for what it's worth, and rally the civilians against the military, but then again he might use the opportunity in a way nobody has (yet) expected him to - by suggesting a temporary alliance to Roslin, with the intention to shoot her down (figuratively) later, using her "newfound spirituality" as an argument to discredit her to the people
- which would pose a great and intriguing dilemma for Roslin - would she ally herself with Zarek against Tigh? (I'm assuming Adama will be out of action for at least the first three or four episodes, judging by how long it took on the show for Kara's knee to heal.) To get out of jail and restore the government, even with the knowledge he's going to try and backstab her later? Or would she try to convince Tigh to let her out? One thing is for sure, I can't see her sitting idly in the brig.
- as opposed to many a fan, the writers of this show consider neither Baltar nor Roslin mad and fanatic respectively for (in quite different ways) having found religion; furthermore, Baltar in season 2 will be save from the degeneration into cackling one dimensional villainy plaguing certain characters on certain other shows which shall remain unnamed.
One thing I love about BSG is that all the characters screw up at one point, and all do things right and make mistakes. Fans being what they are - and I don't except myself - mistakes by favourites are easier excused than mistakes made by non-favourite characters, etc. Now I already wrote my big Laura Roslin defense post; she remains the most intriguing character of the show to me. (Not that I don't love the rest of the bunch as well.) So I was glad to find some excellent fanfic vignettes about her, set in the later episodes, this one and that one.
Some thoughts about the entire first season:
33, the very first episode, sets up various things which play out throughout the season. Six' mixture of sex, scare and mindmess tactics with Baltar in order to make him a believer in the Cylon God. Note that she says "I want us to have a child, Gaius", among other things. Now one could ask why, if this is so important to the Cylons, did she never try during the two years they were involved on Caprica? I think the answer is found in the importance the Cylons place on the idea of love. Six asks Baltar if he loves her in the miniseries, and he can't reply. Later, after Caprica!Boomer and Helo had sex, Six asks her "does he love you?", and Six and Doral both speculate about the feelings between Helo and Boomer. The hybrid child the Cylons are after has to be created through love, not just sex - that is the "next step" in Cylon evolution both Six and Boomer mention the season finale. And that is why Six during her two years with Baltar never got pregnant herself; she knew he was not in love with her, and she wanted to make him love her first. But Chip!Six wants to make him love God even more. Of course she has to utterly break him in the process, but hey. That is one of the traditional methods of conversion.
33 and its successor, Water, also shows the developing relationship between Roslin and both Adamas from where we left off in the miniseries. Roslin and the older Adama start to develop respect and a certain amount of trust for each other, but it's also clear that this is largely depending on them agreeing with their respective overall goals. Note that even when Laura is touched by the gesture of presenting her with a book, she doesn't tell Adama about her illness, presumably because informing him she only has a life expectancy of months would put her in a weaker position from the start, and she's very aware that as the military leader, he is holding the more powerful tools. (Hence her bluntly asking "are you going to stage a military coup?" in the mini.)
She does tell Lee, though, an episode after he showed his own vulnerability, the guilt he feels about destroying the Atlantic Carrier, to her. Lee Adama and Laura Roslin started to bond in the miniseries, and it's interesting that he never has a problem with her as an authority figure. Not that he follows her blindly; Bastille Day showcases Lee making a choice which isn't about taking sides with Adama or Roslin but about the principle of the law. And Roslin tells him she admires him for it. I don't think she's lying. He's valuable to her as an ally her and her "advisor on the military", no doubt, but beyond that I think she sees him as a possible successor in the long term. Because Laura Roslin is a long-term and big picture thinker (which plays into her later conflict with the older Adama), and very aware of her own mortality. And she just likes him. It's Lee pulling a gun on Tigh that makes her order a surrender in Kobol's Last Gleaming, because that changes the equation. It puts Lee in a situation where he has to kill his superior officer and his father's best friend (because you can bet Tigh wouldn't have ordered his men to surrender) and possibly later to actively fight against his father, it makes a "who blinks first" competition of wills into a bloodbath, and that's where she draws the line. As Lee represents the idealism which Laura has to mix with ruthlessness and pragmatism, it couldn't have been any other way. It's interesting to recall her line to Adama from Colonial Day, when he jokes about politics being as exciting as war: "Though in war, you only die once. In politics, you die again and again."
Which I think is a key to Roslin's viewpoint as a political creature, as opposed to Adama's military viewpoint, and a consistent trait of hers from the miniseries (when she rejects the glorious last stand scenario in favour of running away) onwards till the last episode of season 1. Any victory you gain is just tempory, but conversely, so is any defeat. If there is no other option or the price is too high to pay, you surrender, and plan for another day.
There are three main points in the season during which Roslin is at odds with Adama. One comes in You Can't Go Home Again, when he is willing to risk the entire fleet to save Starbuck and tries to justify this as "a military decision". This isn't just a mistake of his in the sense of him being irresponsible regarding the ca. 50.000 lives in the fleet but long-term wise for his relationship with Roslin. Because it makes his "this is a military decision" look like Adama's way of saying "this is what I want to do, and you don't get to protest". He also loses the argument, and bear in mind Tigh was willing to back Roslin up if she ordered Adama directly to stop the search. (Which she didn't; she shamed him into stopping it instead.)
The next point of disagreement comes after the Cylon Leoben has made his "Adama is a Cylon" accusation, which unfortunately coincides with Adama being all mysterious because he has found Tigh's wife Ellen and hopes to expose her as a Cylon. Roslin takes the accusation seriously enough to both immediately cause Leoben's death before he can spread it through the fleet and to allow for the chance it just might have been true nonetheless. (Though really, Billy = worst spy ever.) At this point, her medication also has started to produce the first side effects in the form of disquieting dreams. Note that in the first of Roslin's chamalla-induced dreams, she sees the military hunting for her. It expresses a remaining unease with the military and readiness to distrust which she consciously probably hadn't faced.
The third point comes of course in the big Kobol/Arrow of Apollo argument, about which I said quite a lot in the earlier mentioned post. It's the last, most serious, and most fateful point of contention, but it also builds on the earlier disagreements. To use the short version of my post: Roslin sees the long-term goal of reaching Earth, a safe haven, as justifying her decision to go around Adama when he won't agree to her plan about using the Raider, while Adama sees it as a personal betrayal. Because the irony is that Adama, who chastizes his son about having put "personal misgivings" first, is all about personal misgivings himself. His outraged argument to Tigh about why he's going to remove Roslin from power isn't "she acted irresponsibly" or "she discovered religion and therefore can't be trusted" (and keep in mind that Roslin never in her entire argument with Adama told him about the visions, or asked that he should listen to her because of them; he doesn't know about them, or about the chamalla, or about the cancer) - it's "she turned Starbuck against us" and therefore, she is dangerous. Well, sorry, Adama, but Kara is an adult woman. Who made a decision. And talked with you after talking to Roslin, at which point you could have come clean. Roslin didn't order or, or magically force her. And that probably hurts most of all.
Which brings me to Adama throughout the first season. Everything is personal to him, which makes him both likeable and frustrating. Whether it's the decomissioning of the Galactica in the mini (he definitely takes that personally), or the Kara versus the fleet scenario, Sergeant Hadrian and her investigation turning against him, or the two times when his son makes a very serious decision involving the law (Bastille Day and Kobol's Last Gleaming) - it is always a personal issue, rather than a political one. Not that he doesn't understand principles; of course he does. He has a very great respect for the law himself. It is Adama who brings up the danger of the military acting as police ("the people become the enemy"). But choosing long-term goals over people is not his natural instinct. Adama's solutions tend to be short term in nature. The people need a motivation and something to believe in? Tell them about Earth. Only he doesn't believe it exists and makes no serious efforts to find out, and probably hasn't considered in a year or two if there is still no Earth in sight and they're still running from the Cylons. The independent committee gets out of hand? Shut it down. (Which leaves the mystery of just who helped the Cylon agent unsolved, and boy does that ever come to bite Adama in the behind. ) The President breaks her promise to keep silent about Earth and convinces your adopted daughter to disobey you? Remove her from office, by force, if necessary. Never mind that the VP is someone you mistrust (and who's currently unavailable anyway), and the most likely person to win an election right now is someone you distrust even more because he's a former terrorist. And so on.
This, btw, shows why Adama and Roslin need each other; if either thinks they can do without the other, disaster follows. Never mind the reliability of visions question, the danger of someone always seeing the big picture like Roslin does is that they lose sight of the invidiual. Of individual relationships. The danger of someone only coming up with short-term fixings and always seeing everything in personal terms, like Adama does, is that it might very well get everyone killed in the long run. If Adama had been the sole voice of authority, humanity either would have perished in a glorious last stand back in the miniseries, or could have been wiped out by the Cylons while the Vipers were wrecked due to the Starbuck search. Otoh, Roslin isn't a military strategist; she couldn't have come up with something like the plan to take out the Cylon base in Hands of God, and she does need a voice (other than Billy's) questioning whether something like the retrieval of the Arrow of Apollo plan is worth the risk. Balance between them, like in episodes like 33 and Water, is to everyone's benefit. And we've seen where imbalance leads to.
Changing the Cylons from none-too-bright robots into Blade-Runner style androids allowed BSG to use them not just as opponents but ongoing challengers of what "being human" actually means. This was largely accomplished through the two Boomers, Six, and the Cylon Leoben, all distinct individuals. Again, I dealt with the two Boomers in an earlier post, so, quick summary: Galactica!Boomer, who is the central character in the second episode, Water is essentially the Manchurian Candidate. A tragic character, fighting against the Cylon within and ultimately being defeated by her programming. Caprica!Boomer is a Bond Girl, but the fate of G!Boomer allows for the interesting speculation that despite C!Boomer believing she turned against the Cylons out of love for Helo from her own initiative, it might not matter in the long run. After Helo's discovery of her Cylon identity, C!Boomer gets to make some important points. She is sentient. She has feelings. Helo rejects her as "not Sharon", but she is who Sharon always was. G!Boomer's desperate "I'm Sharon Valerii" when confronted with the other Boomer models makes a similar human assumption; that identity is tied to humanity. Either Sharon has as much sentience and emotional life as the humans around them. Do they also have the same free will? Which would also mean, in the case of C!Boomer at last, the same moral responsibility a human would have for participating in a genocide. But then again, the humans believe in the "cycle of time". Predestination and free will are two clashing concepts, just as free will and programming. Leoben, being interrogated by Starbuck, told her he could see the future. Which might have been simply a way to mess with her mind, or might have been the truth (or both). Does prophecy allow for free will?
In the show Babylon 5, every prophecy tends to become true, but in the way the people familiar with it least expect. In one of the episodes, the question of a universe allowing for prophecies that imply predestination also allows for free will is touched upon: "Prophecy is just a guess that comes true. Otherwise, it is a metaphor." The BSG episode Hand of the Gods introduces a prophecy which gets two very different interpretations, one by Elosha, the human priestess, after Roslin confides in her about her vision, and one by Six, given to Baltar at the end of the episode. Which one, if either, is the right one? Or was it just one big coincidence?
Sidenote here: Roslin and Baltar are the two characters who experience visions/hallicunations and are told that they have a destiny by third parties, Baltar throughout the entire season, Roslin in the last four episodes. Neither Roslin nor Baltar come up with the interpretation by their own. (Something which gets overlooked by commentaries accusing Roslin of setting herself up as a religious authority - she does no such thing. Instead, she asks the only religious authority around, Elosha, just what the visions might mean.) Both are initially sceptic, then won over, though it takes much longer for Baltar. Both, however, are won over by a very different thing. Baltar by the ongoing bait and switch between threats to his life and miraculous savings. His life being saved repeatedly by incredible events make him come around to believing that yes, there is a God and he might be his instrument. Meanwhile, Roslin gets convinced by a) a prophecy that confirms to her what she already knows but tried to fight against, her imment death, and b) the promise of salvation for her people, not herself. In a clear Moses analogy, Elosha recites that the prophecied leader will die BEFORE the people reach safety and the promised land/haven. There is a more subtle play to her ego, too, if you like, Becket's last temptation - her death will have meaning, instead of being just the random result of illness. But it's still a very different motivation.
The question of faith is something that gets increasingly important in the first season. Both faith in the sense of having confidence in someone - Lee doesn't believe his father has faith in him, for example - and faith in the religious sense. Faith, ultimately, isn't rational. (Thomas Aquinas not withstanding.) It can be used to justify horrible things; the Cylons certainly see their faith as justification for what they did to the humans. But it also offers motivation, hope, salvation in desperate situations. Adama creates faith in the survivors by promising them Earth, even though he doesn't believe in it. Roslin finds it, and gambles on it helping her to save humanity. Which, you know, it just might do. This doesn't mean she didn't make a mistake by breaking faith with Adama; but if you ask me whether Roslin's visions will turn out to have been the result of an Evil Cylon Plot (tm), solely endangering everybody instead of helping them to find Earth? I don't think so. Because religion in the BSG universe is more complicated than that.
Now for season 2. I'm starting to count the days already...
Question: Can you give us any indication as to who ends up in control of the fleet as the new season begins -- President Roslin or the military (Adama or perhaps another officer)?
Weddle: No, I can't. But how do you think the civilian population will react to a military overthrow of their president? What actions if any will the Quorum of 12 take? And what can Laura Roslin do to save their democratic form of government from her jail cell? We will be examining these issues.
Thompson: The season begins where the last one ended -- Adama's shot. Following military chain of command, that leaves Tigh the man on the spot, especially since President Roslin is in jail and VP Baltar is stranded on Kobol. So the immediate fleet boss is clear. But how will the Quorum react?
Question: How about Apollo -- will he end up in the brig for all of Season 2?
Weddle: Can't tell you. But what does he do now? Does he help Roslin fight to save the government, or has the shooting of his father so traumatized him that he seeks forgiveness for his actions and abandons Roslin? Galactica needs him, he's one of their best pilots and they don't have many. Yet
he refused to obey orders and held a gun to Tigh's head. So what does Tigh do with him? These will not be easy conflicts for our characters to
resolve.
Thompson: He's one of our best pilots, and we don't have many. Maybe Col. Tigh will need him in a Viper more than [Tigh needs him to be
in jail] next to that traitor, Roslin. But then again, maybe not.
Question: How much will we learn in the first couple of episodes of Season 2 about the Cylons and their relationship with, or mission from, God?
Weddle: Baltar's spirituality and relationship with the Cylon God will continue to evolve. As it does, we will learn more. But the more we learn, the more questions we will have. It won't all be laid out in one nice, neat, easy-to-comprehend synopsis. Baltar's journey will reflect the spiritual struggles many of us go through over the course of our lives. He will have epiphanies, achieve a deeper understanding of Cylon theology, but also have crises of faith and be tempted to reject his role in God's plan.
Thompson: God reveals his plans in his own time.
Question: David Eick hinted in the TV Guide article of a major battle on Kobol. Will that happen early in Season 2?
Weddle: Can't answer that. But think about it. We have people stranded on Kobol. If Kara [Starbuck] can return from Caprica with the Arrow of Apollo, Laura will be determined to get to Kobol and open the Tomb of Athena. Does the military try to stop her? Do they cooperate? Do the Cylons give chase? Do they know about the Tomb? Or is this inside knowledge that will give us an advantage over them? Anyway you look at it, one thing's for sure: all roads lead to Kobol.
Question: Will Tom Zarek be a major character in Season 2? Have you heard whether any other veterans of the first "BSG" be have guest roles in
Season 2?
Weddle: Tom Zarek will definitely be back. He's a political force to be reckoned with. A secular humanist, he won't be enamored with Laura's newfound spirituality. But he's adamantly opposed to a military dictatorship. The new field of play will give this savvy political operative many opportunities. Expect him to do everything he can to exploit them. Yes, some other faces from the old series may show up. Then again, they may not.
Thompson: Haven't heard that anyone else wants to come aboard. Tom Zarek has a ship of his own and he's the representative of Saggitaron to the Quorum of 12. He's adamantly against the military dictatorship, so you can bet he'll have something to do next season.
Okay. Here's what these replies lead me to believe:
- Lee will first out of guilt abandon Roslin and get out of jail due to his pilot status. But he then will reconsider, especially if things go increasingly to hell without a functioning civilian government. This time, it won't be a spontanous action like his gun pulling, though; it will be an organized resistance.
- Zarek, as everybody and their dog has speculated already, will use the opportunity just given to him for what it's worth, and rally the civilians against the military, but then again he might use the opportunity in a way nobody has (yet) expected him to - by suggesting a temporary alliance to Roslin, with the intention to shoot her down (figuratively) later, using her "newfound spirituality" as an argument to discredit her to the people
- which would pose a great and intriguing dilemma for Roslin - would she ally herself with Zarek against Tigh? (I'm assuming Adama will be out of action for at least the first three or four episodes, judging by how long it took on the show for Kara's knee to heal.) To get out of jail and restore the government, even with the knowledge he's going to try and backstab her later? Or would she try to convince Tigh to let her out? One thing is for sure, I can't see her sitting idly in the brig.
- as opposed to many a fan, the writers of this show consider neither Baltar nor Roslin mad and fanatic respectively for (in quite different ways) having found religion; furthermore, Baltar in season 2 will be save from the degeneration into cackling one dimensional villainy plaguing certain characters on certain other shows which shall remain unnamed.
One thing I love about BSG is that all the characters screw up at one point, and all do things right and make mistakes. Fans being what they are - and I don't except myself - mistakes by favourites are easier excused than mistakes made by non-favourite characters, etc. Now I already wrote my big Laura Roslin defense post; she remains the most intriguing character of the show to me. (Not that I don't love the rest of the bunch as well.) So I was glad to find some excellent fanfic vignettes about her, set in the later episodes, this one and that one.
Some thoughts about the entire first season:
33, the very first episode, sets up various things which play out throughout the season. Six' mixture of sex, scare and mindmess tactics with Baltar in order to make him a believer in the Cylon God. Note that she says "I want us to have a child, Gaius", among other things. Now one could ask why, if this is so important to the Cylons, did she never try during the two years they were involved on Caprica? I think the answer is found in the importance the Cylons place on the idea of love. Six asks Baltar if he loves her in the miniseries, and he can't reply. Later, after Caprica!Boomer and Helo had sex, Six asks her "does he love you?", and Six and Doral both speculate about the feelings between Helo and Boomer. The hybrid child the Cylons are after has to be created through love, not just sex - that is the "next step" in Cylon evolution both Six and Boomer mention the season finale. And that is why Six during her two years with Baltar never got pregnant herself; she knew he was not in love with her, and she wanted to make him love her first. But Chip!Six wants to make him love God even more. Of course she has to utterly break him in the process, but hey. That is one of the traditional methods of conversion.
33 and its successor, Water, also shows the developing relationship between Roslin and both Adamas from where we left off in the miniseries. Roslin and the older Adama start to develop respect and a certain amount of trust for each other, but it's also clear that this is largely depending on them agreeing with their respective overall goals. Note that even when Laura is touched by the gesture of presenting her with a book, she doesn't tell Adama about her illness, presumably because informing him she only has a life expectancy of months would put her in a weaker position from the start, and she's very aware that as the military leader, he is holding the more powerful tools. (Hence her bluntly asking "are you going to stage a military coup?" in the mini.)
She does tell Lee, though, an episode after he showed his own vulnerability, the guilt he feels about destroying the Atlantic Carrier, to her. Lee Adama and Laura Roslin started to bond in the miniseries, and it's interesting that he never has a problem with her as an authority figure. Not that he follows her blindly; Bastille Day showcases Lee making a choice which isn't about taking sides with Adama or Roslin but about the principle of the law. And Roslin tells him she admires him for it. I don't think she's lying. He's valuable to her as an ally her and her "advisor on the military", no doubt, but beyond that I think she sees him as a possible successor in the long term. Because Laura Roslin is a long-term and big picture thinker (which plays into her later conflict with the older Adama), and very aware of her own mortality. And she just likes him. It's Lee pulling a gun on Tigh that makes her order a surrender in Kobol's Last Gleaming, because that changes the equation. It puts Lee in a situation where he has to kill his superior officer and his father's best friend (because you can bet Tigh wouldn't have ordered his men to surrender) and possibly later to actively fight against his father, it makes a "who blinks first" competition of wills into a bloodbath, and that's where she draws the line. As Lee represents the idealism which Laura has to mix with ruthlessness and pragmatism, it couldn't have been any other way. It's interesting to recall her line to Adama from Colonial Day, when he jokes about politics being as exciting as war: "Though in war, you only die once. In politics, you die again and again."
Which I think is a key to Roslin's viewpoint as a political creature, as opposed to Adama's military viewpoint, and a consistent trait of hers from the miniseries (when she rejects the glorious last stand scenario in favour of running away) onwards till the last episode of season 1. Any victory you gain is just tempory, but conversely, so is any defeat. If there is no other option or the price is too high to pay, you surrender, and plan for another day.
There are three main points in the season during which Roslin is at odds with Adama. One comes in You Can't Go Home Again, when he is willing to risk the entire fleet to save Starbuck and tries to justify this as "a military decision". This isn't just a mistake of his in the sense of him being irresponsible regarding the ca. 50.000 lives in the fleet but long-term wise for his relationship with Roslin. Because it makes his "this is a military decision" look like Adama's way of saying "this is what I want to do, and you don't get to protest". He also loses the argument, and bear in mind Tigh was willing to back Roslin up if she ordered Adama directly to stop the search. (Which she didn't; she shamed him into stopping it instead.)
The next point of disagreement comes after the Cylon Leoben has made his "Adama is a Cylon" accusation, which unfortunately coincides with Adama being all mysterious because he has found Tigh's wife Ellen and hopes to expose her as a Cylon. Roslin takes the accusation seriously enough to both immediately cause Leoben's death before he can spread it through the fleet and to allow for the chance it just might have been true nonetheless. (Though really, Billy = worst spy ever.) At this point, her medication also has started to produce the first side effects in the form of disquieting dreams. Note that in the first of Roslin's chamalla-induced dreams, she sees the military hunting for her. It expresses a remaining unease with the military and readiness to distrust which she consciously probably hadn't faced.
The third point comes of course in the big Kobol/Arrow of Apollo argument, about which I said quite a lot in the earlier mentioned post. It's the last, most serious, and most fateful point of contention, but it also builds on the earlier disagreements. To use the short version of my post: Roslin sees the long-term goal of reaching Earth, a safe haven, as justifying her decision to go around Adama when he won't agree to her plan about using the Raider, while Adama sees it as a personal betrayal. Because the irony is that Adama, who chastizes his son about having put "personal misgivings" first, is all about personal misgivings himself. His outraged argument to Tigh about why he's going to remove Roslin from power isn't "she acted irresponsibly" or "she discovered religion and therefore can't be trusted" (and keep in mind that Roslin never in her entire argument with Adama told him about the visions, or asked that he should listen to her because of them; he doesn't know about them, or about the chamalla, or about the cancer) - it's "she turned Starbuck against us" and therefore, she is dangerous. Well, sorry, Adama, but Kara is an adult woman. Who made a decision. And talked with you after talking to Roslin, at which point you could have come clean. Roslin didn't order or, or magically force her. And that probably hurts most of all.
Which brings me to Adama throughout the first season. Everything is personal to him, which makes him both likeable and frustrating. Whether it's the decomissioning of the Galactica in the mini (he definitely takes that personally), or the Kara versus the fleet scenario, Sergeant Hadrian and her investigation turning against him, or the two times when his son makes a very serious decision involving the law (Bastille Day and Kobol's Last Gleaming) - it is always a personal issue, rather than a political one. Not that he doesn't understand principles; of course he does. He has a very great respect for the law himself. It is Adama who brings up the danger of the military acting as police ("the people become the enemy"). But choosing long-term goals over people is not his natural instinct. Adama's solutions tend to be short term in nature. The people need a motivation and something to believe in? Tell them about Earth. Only he doesn't believe it exists and makes no serious efforts to find out, and probably hasn't considered in a year or two if there is still no Earth in sight and they're still running from the Cylons. The independent committee gets out of hand? Shut it down. (Which leaves the mystery of just who helped the Cylon agent unsolved, and boy does that ever come to bite Adama in the behind. ) The President breaks her promise to keep silent about Earth and convinces your adopted daughter to disobey you? Remove her from office, by force, if necessary. Never mind that the VP is someone you mistrust (and who's currently unavailable anyway), and the most likely person to win an election right now is someone you distrust even more because he's a former terrorist. And so on.
This, btw, shows why Adama and Roslin need each other; if either thinks they can do without the other, disaster follows. Never mind the reliability of visions question, the danger of someone always seeing the big picture like Roslin does is that they lose sight of the invidiual. Of individual relationships. The danger of someone only coming up with short-term fixings and always seeing everything in personal terms, like Adama does, is that it might very well get everyone killed in the long run. If Adama had been the sole voice of authority, humanity either would have perished in a glorious last stand back in the miniseries, or could have been wiped out by the Cylons while the Vipers were wrecked due to the Starbuck search. Otoh, Roslin isn't a military strategist; she couldn't have come up with something like the plan to take out the Cylon base in Hands of God, and she does need a voice (other than Billy's) questioning whether something like the retrieval of the Arrow of Apollo plan is worth the risk. Balance between them, like in episodes like 33 and Water, is to everyone's benefit. And we've seen where imbalance leads to.
Changing the Cylons from none-too-bright robots into Blade-Runner style androids allowed BSG to use them not just as opponents but ongoing challengers of what "being human" actually means. This was largely accomplished through the two Boomers, Six, and the Cylon Leoben, all distinct individuals. Again, I dealt with the two Boomers in an earlier post, so, quick summary: Galactica!Boomer, who is the central character in the second episode, Water is essentially the Manchurian Candidate. A tragic character, fighting against the Cylon within and ultimately being defeated by her programming. Caprica!Boomer is a Bond Girl, but the fate of G!Boomer allows for the interesting speculation that despite C!Boomer believing she turned against the Cylons out of love for Helo from her own initiative, it might not matter in the long run. After Helo's discovery of her Cylon identity, C!Boomer gets to make some important points. She is sentient. She has feelings. Helo rejects her as "not Sharon", but she is who Sharon always was. G!Boomer's desperate "I'm Sharon Valerii" when confronted with the other Boomer models makes a similar human assumption; that identity is tied to humanity. Either Sharon has as much sentience and emotional life as the humans around them. Do they also have the same free will? Which would also mean, in the case of C!Boomer at last, the same moral responsibility a human would have for participating in a genocide. But then again, the humans believe in the "cycle of time". Predestination and free will are two clashing concepts, just as free will and programming. Leoben, being interrogated by Starbuck, told her he could see the future. Which might have been simply a way to mess with her mind, or might have been the truth (or both). Does prophecy allow for free will?
In the show Babylon 5, every prophecy tends to become true, but in the way the people familiar with it least expect. In one of the episodes, the question of a universe allowing for prophecies that imply predestination also allows for free will is touched upon: "Prophecy is just a guess that comes true. Otherwise, it is a metaphor." The BSG episode Hand of the Gods introduces a prophecy which gets two very different interpretations, one by Elosha, the human priestess, after Roslin confides in her about her vision, and one by Six, given to Baltar at the end of the episode. Which one, if either, is the right one? Or was it just one big coincidence?
Sidenote here: Roslin and Baltar are the two characters who experience visions/hallicunations and are told that they have a destiny by third parties, Baltar throughout the entire season, Roslin in the last four episodes. Neither Roslin nor Baltar come up with the interpretation by their own. (Something which gets overlooked by commentaries accusing Roslin of setting herself up as a religious authority - she does no such thing. Instead, she asks the only religious authority around, Elosha, just what the visions might mean.) Both are initially sceptic, then won over, though it takes much longer for Baltar. Both, however, are won over by a very different thing. Baltar by the ongoing bait and switch between threats to his life and miraculous savings. His life being saved repeatedly by incredible events make him come around to believing that yes, there is a God and he might be his instrument. Meanwhile, Roslin gets convinced by a) a prophecy that confirms to her what she already knows but tried to fight against, her imment death, and b) the promise of salvation for her people, not herself. In a clear Moses analogy, Elosha recites that the prophecied leader will die BEFORE the people reach safety and the promised land/haven. There is a more subtle play to her ego, too, if you like, Becket's last temptation - her death will have meaning, instead of being just the random result of illness. But it's still a very different motivation.
The question of faith is something that gets increasingly important in the first season. Both faith in the sense of having confidence in someone - Lee doesn't believe his father has faith in him, for example - and faith in the religious sense. Faith, ultimately, isn't rational. (Thomas Aquinas not withstanding.) It can be used to justify horrible things; the Cylons certainly see their faith as justification for what they did to the humans. But it also offers motivation, hope, salvation in desperate situations. Adama creates faith in the survivors by promising them Earth, even though he doesn't believe in it. Roslin finds it, and gambles on it helping her to save humanity. Which, you know, it just might do. This doesn't mean she didn't make a mistake by breaking faith with Adama; but if you ask me whether Roslin's visions will turn out to have been the result of an Evil Cylon Plot (tm), solely endangering everybody instead of helping them to find Earth? I don't think so. Because religion in the BSG universe is more complicated than that.
Now for season 2. I'm starting to count the days already...
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First what an Excellent post and consideration of broader picture with just enough 'finer focus' to make sense!
Second, could it be that the prophecy is true/ right for BOTH? We are struggling with the basic premise that humans are bound to Cylons by the act of creation. Cylon evolution being at the Teen Rebellion stage questions the religion of the parent and reinterprets / digs a bit deeper. The prophecy / writings / visions may all be True but have a meaning that is not only intended for Both but is also needed by Both.
Cylons *need* humans for 'the next step'... will the humans now suddenly find they *need* Cylons to survive?
It's such a Groovy Show and you articulated some of the basics of Why so well!
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Moreover: Kobol is referred to by the Cylons and the humans as the "beginning of us all", where "gods and men lived in harmony". Their version of Eden. In one of the deleted scenes, we get the fellowing fascinating information:
Tigh: Why did we leave Kobol? I've forgotten.
Elosha: One of the Gods wanted to be more important than the others. And thus the war between the Gods began, and men left Kobol.
Six (who is listening with Baltar): Blasphemy. There has always been only one God.
If this ends up as canon in season 2 (i.e. if there is an onscreen scene using the same idea), you have a story of mankind leaving Eden not because of something they did, but because of something the beings they worshipped did. And the solution to that conflict might have be union, the acceptance of both visions as complimentary, not contradictory. Note that so far the Cylons aren't the only ones who show exclusive tendencies and "we're right, you're wrong" interpretations; both Starbuck and Helo get very upset when a Cylon talks to them and invokes religion, claiming that this is just for humans.
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The victor writes the history sort of thing? Good point.
At one point Gods were united 'as one' and now they are worshiped separately, except by Cylons who returned to the very beginning so to speak?
Cylons *want* divine intervention, live to be in harmony with it. Humans are *afraid* of it, are suspicious of divine intervention as a trick or story meant to mislead them.
Perhaps the above is part of the human reason - something left over from Fleeing the 'battle of the gods'. It's interesting thoughts to twirl around your finger for sure!
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The "Roslin = big picture" vs "Adama = personal" conflict is interesting, too, because it's a neat inversion of the usual male and female roles we see in a lot of drama. We'd normally expect the female character to be the one whose point of view is more focused on the personal/individual level and the male character to be the one more inclined to be too concerned with principles/the big picture at the expense of the personal.
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(Though I suppose if you are one of the guys in the fleet waiting for Adama to break off the search for Starbuck before you get killed... Hm. Might have found my "Common Man" story.)
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And -- going off at something of a tangent -- you have to wonder how much slack Adama cut Starbuck during those two years on the Galactica between Zak's death and mini. My suspicion is that she wouldn't have survived in a more rigorous environment (ie somewhere that wasn't an elderly Battlestar tagged for decommissioning, serving under a commander she was personally close to). I'm sure there were a number of people on the Galactica who had reason to be resentful of her favoured position.
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And in the younger generation, I think we get that more traditional breakdown - Starbuck is loyal to people (to Adama, most of all) and when her loyalty is challenged, it throws her entire being sort of out-of-kilter. Apollo is loyal, first and foremost, to principles (and we saw that the one time he sides with his father, against Roslin, to try and find Starbuck, it's a bit of a disaster). I don't think he takes Roslin's part in KLG2 because he has a personal commitment to her (unlike Billy) - in fact, I think part of the reason he goes along with Adama's coup attempt for so long (instead of, as people have suggested, expressing his misgivings aboard "Galactica" - but would anyone have listened?) is because he thinks, until he SEES Roslin, that Adama might be right. And then once he sees her, he realizes Adama's dead wrong, because she's not crazy or unfit for duty.
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Whereas Roslin knows in Bastille Day that the decision he made wasn't about him having issues with Adama or herself. They usually (not always) "get" each other. And I agree of course that his decision in KGB wasn't about personal loyalties, either; it was about realizing what was erally happening, i.e. a military coup against a president not unfit for duty.
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It's so interesting (and kind of sad to me, for Lee) that this woman he's known for approximately two months knows and understands him better than his own FATHER does. Sigh! I love the relationship between Adama and Lee - it's so deeply messed up - you can see that they love each other and yet they do NOT understand each other at all.
And even though I disagree with the prophecy thing (I feel that it must be much more complicated than Roslin think it is, or else why wouldn't they just find Earth as soon as Starbuck returns with that arrow, you know?), I still adore Roslin! (even though I was a little angry with her in KLG1)
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This is what I love about this show ... all the characters screw up, sometimes spectacularly, but they still manage to be sympathetic.
Everything is personal to him, which makes him both likeable and frustrating.
You’re right, and this is probably the reason why I love Adama, even when he’s wrong. Roslin is an incredibly strong character and very interesting, but I don’t connect with her emotionally the way I connect with Adama, and I think this is why. Roslin did what she thought was right in asking Starbuck to go to Caprica, and Starbuck is certainly an adult and capable of making her own decisions. (And I love Tigh reminding Adama, “no one coerces Starbuck”. He may not like her, but I think he does have a certain amount of respect for her, and he sees her more objectively than Adama does.) But it still hurts to see Starbuck and Adama turned against each other.
And I think you’re right ... they both work best when they’re balanced against each other. And when something upsets that balance, things tend to go very wrong very quickly.
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Yes. Tigh is an intriguing character in his own right, and I'm fascinated by the prospect of seeing what he'll do in this horrible situation when the spotlight is on him, when the next season begins.
And I think you’re right ... they both work best when they’re balanced against each other. And when something upsets that balance, things tend to go very wrong very quickly.
Which is why I think it's important that both screw up in the final two-parter. If only one of them had, the result, once the dust clears, would have been a permanent alteration of the power balance, but as it is, they both have something they need to make up for, and that the other needs to forgive.
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The thing that's always been so complicated and fascinating is, if the writers intend to keep Roslin around longer than her diagnosised six months - in other words, they either cure or find some fancy way to put her cancer into remission - what does that do to her faith and the prophecy itself? I can almost imagine a plot where there's a treatment available, and she KNOWS it could work, but it working goes against this new faith she has.
Note that in the first of Roslin's chamalla-induced dreams, she sees the military hunting for her. It expresses a remaining unease with the military and readiness to distrust which she consciously probably hadn't faced.
Something that just struck me: what if she was also prophecizing her own imprisonment in KLG2? Because they looked awfully like the strike team that boards Colonial One. (Of course, if their culture's anything like ours, the image of a SWAT team isn't exactly an unfamiliar one. But STILL.)
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I wondered this as well when I saw them boarding and thought of the hovering basestar and the 'wilderness of Kobol'.... It *might* be another affirmation for her - or indication that the visions are actually real and not *drugs* (I really choke over alternative medicine being looked at like some LSD she's dropping to go ask Alice). It's still close enough to coincidence for folks to dismiss it as well - Roslin included.
The writers (& obviously me) love all this ambiguity.
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I like your idea of this posing a great dilemma to Roslin. To bring up T.S. Eliot again, Becket's last temptation is to die as a martyr, for the wrong reason, i.e. because of the glory that martyrdom brings, not any longer because of the principle he worked for. So this might be the big character test for Roslin: first events appear to prove her right, i.e. they find a clue on how to reach Earth, and then she's confronted with a cure which might not be permanent but does exclude her as the prophecied leader, thus taking the meaning of her death away again. Is she able to give that up?
what if she was also prophecizing her own imprisonment in KLG2? Because they looked awfully like the strike team that boards Colonial One.
Ooooooh, good point. After all, the other element in her dream, Leoben sucked away by vacuum, became true as well, and in both cases you could also take the disbeliever position and call it self-fulfilling prophecies on her part. (As she orders Leoben's death and risks the conflict with Adama.)
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The BSG episode Hand of the Gods introduces a prophecy which gets two very different interpretations, one by Elosha, the human priestess, after Roslin confides in her about her vision, and one by Six, given to Baltar at the end of the episode. Which one, if either, is the right one? Or was it just one big coincidence?
I didn't think the two interpretations were in conflict. Elosha quotes a verse of scripture that says the dying leader will be given a vision of "serpents number two and ten as a sign of things to come." Six quotes a different one, "led by serpents numbering two and ten," which she (or rather Baltar) interprets as referring to the Vipers. The assault on the refinery is the thing to come of which Roslin's vision is the sign, so the two interpretations actually reinforce each other.
That correspondence makes me lean toward believing that the prophecies have a real predictive value, independent of the Cylons' manipulating events to correspond with them. I can imagine that the Cylons managed to put a chip in Roslin's head at some point prior to their invasion and are feeding her specific visions, but it's harder to imagine how they could have manipulated events so precisely that there'd be exactly twelve Vipers in the final assault.
As for the Arrow of Apollo, I still suspect the clue to Earth's location will turn out to be a metaphorical arrow rather than a literal one. I thought it was going to have something to do with Lee, but now I'm wondering if it has something to do with Kobol's sun. Those ruins do bear a vague resemblance to Stonehenge; maybe there's an alignment coming up?
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Good point.
As for the Arrow of Apollo, I still suspect the clue to Earth's location will turn out to be a metaphorical arrow rather than a literal one. I thought it was going to have something to do with Lee, but now I'm wondering if it has something to do with Kobol's sun. Those ruins do bear a vague resemblance to Stonehenge; maybe there's an alignment coming up?
Could be both. My guess is: Starbuck comes back with the literal arrow. Roslin somehow, and I think via Lee, convinces them to let her go down to Kobol and try and open the Tomb of Athena with it. This works, but the result at first doesn't seem to provide any clues about Earth... instead, it provides them with some information of just what caused the theological split, the "war between the gods" referred to in a deleted scene - after all, it is the TOMB of Athena - which resulted in the current Cylonic monotheism versus human polytheism situation. Then, when they've given up the hope to find something about Earth, the metaphorical clue will kick in, either via allignement or because of something Lee did.
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At the risk of shamelessly fangirling this post, I so enjoyed your analysis of the Adama-Roslin balance. I agree that they need each other, and I found it fascinating to watch them trust each other to some degree but how it only takes them so far.
Lee Adama and Laura Roslin started to bond in the miniseries, and it's interesting that he never has a problem with her as an authority figure.
I think he played an extremely important role in her staying the president in the first place, actually. It's on three separate occasions that he backs her up in the pilot, out of a mixture of respect for the law and respect for her as a person, and the way he accepts her authority has ramifications beyond their personal relationship. I don't think he gave that hours of thought, but he set the precedent for accepting her authority right there at the start.
I imagine things would have gone very differently if the first (relatively high-ranking) representative of the military she'd have had to deal with after being sworn in had gone, '43rd in the line of succession? Secretary of Education? Yeah, right.'
Any victory you gain is just tempory, but conversely, so is any defeat. If there is no other option or the price is too high to pay, you surrender, and plan for another day.
This is just excellent.
Which brings me to Adama throughout the first season. Everything is personal to him, which makes him both likeable and frustrating.
Exactly. I like him a lot, even as I think he's dead wrong in KLG. And I found that contrast fascinating. To me, he's clearly not a guy who's in favour of a military dictatorship or unaware of the dangers. I was just saying to someone else that I think in theory, from an outside perspective, he might even agree with what Lee is saying in the episode. (The scene between him and Roslin talking about using the military as police is one of my favourites, because it makes that aspect of his character clear and it adds that extra layer to their balance: Roslin wants him to trust her that she will keep the military from going too far, even if the immediate question is, 'How?') But he's really not about theory, or the big picture, when it gets personal, and it's a huge blind spot.
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Absolutely. To the detriment of everyone concerned (as without Roslin, Adama would have gone for that Last Stand At Ragnar option), but if it had been someone who would have done what Doral expected Lee to do, try to take over from her (by force if necessary) and refuse to acknowledge her authority, that's where the human race would have ended up. And you're right, it's certainly a huge reason why she trusts Lee more than she trusts his father right from the start.
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