BSG 3.14 and travel announcement

[selenak]

My Aged Parent, bless, has decided to on an impromptu visit of Venice during the Carneval, and actually got a hotel from Thursday to Friday, which, if ten years old memories are anything to go by, are the best days to observe the Venetian carneval. Expect photos and a report when I'm back.

Also, re: BSG 3.14,The Woman King - firstly, it took me a day before I could figure out how the hell the title related to the episode (i.e. via the character of Mrs. King). Secondly...



I've seen this one called this season's Black Market, and I can see why, though I'd call it this season's Litmus as well. Because as with the season 1 episode Litmus, aka Adama Senior Does Not Like MacCarthyism, you don't really have a moral dilemma and the writing privileges. The audience knows the entire time that Helo is right and everyone else is wrong. You know, the much bashed Star Trek did this type of episode a couple of times, but it usually did it better. Usually, not always, because I definitely recognized something here - established characters are given a prejudice not previously associated with them so they and we can see the error of their ways via the point of view character. As when, for example, Ensign Ro in the episode sharing her name transferred to the Enterprise, and Riker, who had no problem through several seasons with Worf wearing his Klingon regalia over the Starfleet uniform, suddenly turns pendantic and intolerant and tells Ro she must abandon her Bajoran earring. So when I saw Chief Tyrol and Tigh suddenly blathering on about Saggiterrans when they never did before, I definitely had a case of deja vu.

Mind you: Saggiterrans (bear with my spelling, I'm writing by ear) have been established as somehow underprivileged by the rest of the Colonies before (via Bastille Day, and I'll get to a glaring point of omission very soon). But we never saw prejudice against them on display, and for the record, there was no previous indication they had tradition-based objections against medical treatment. (I was going to add Geminon was the planet established as fundamentalistic, but then The Woman King at no point says textually the objections of the Saggiterrans are based on their religion, so I'll let that slide.) So the anti-S-prejudice really comes across something solely whipped up so Helo can be the lone voice against it.

Note: the lone voice. Given that they had Richard Hatch for the episode available, and Zarek has been established as not only from S. but fighting against the exploitation of his home planet by the other Colonies from his first episode onwards, you'd think it would have occured to someone in the writing staff to let him be involved in this. Actually, I can see why they couldn't use Zarek for the plot as presented, because this would have made for a very short episode, given that Zarek is Vice President now. Mrs. King and other Saggiterrans suspect Dr. Robert, they go to their representative at the Quorum of Twelve, Tom Zarek (he still has that job, I assume, in addition to being VP, but even if he hasn't, he'd be the obvious choice), being Vice President, he can order Cottle to perform an autopsy immediately, end of story. And no chance for Helo to display lone heroism (or any type of heroism) at all. So Zarek couldn't be involved. Okay, but then at least couldn't we get an explanation why he wasn't? If, for example, the point of Zarek's one scene with Roslin in this episode was to show that - much like Roslin and Adama in other matters - he's been brought to a point where he is arguing/suggesting the very thing he fought against once (martial law, in his case) - this could have been tied to a scene where Mrs. King suggests trying to reach the VP and one of the other Saggiterrans says "no, Zarek is no longer one of us, he's one of them now, he won't listen". Which would have solved the problem and added to the substance.

Speaking of that scene, I did like it, despite Zarek taking the anti-civil liberty stance, because like I said - with Roslin stealing elections (something the Laura of bygone days would have been apalled by), Adama making military coups (s1/early s2) and treating Baltar exactly like the Circle had treated the people it executed (down to being willing to do the silent assassination thing in the end, if Roslin had said yes), Tigh killing Ellen and attacking Adama in front of others, I can see a theme of the older generation being brought to a point where each of them does what they once would have considered unthinkable. Also, it fits with yahtzee63's theory that Laura Roslin is Zarek's new cause, ever since New Caprica, and I'm on board with that. Lastly, the scene answered a question open since Collaborators - did Roslin keep her deal with Zarek and did she make him VP after he stepped down in her favour? Because back then, I saw a lot of people arguing that Zarek's action re: Circle nullified that deal. Am very happy to find out that this wasn't the case, that she went through with it, and that Laura's final words to Tom Zarek in Collaborators meant what I thought they meant instead.

The other scene that made me happy was Caprica Six first with Athena and then with Head!Gaius. (Btw, given that James Callis is clean-shaven hear, does that mean the beard he sports as real!Baltar is fake, or will be from this point onwards, or that he'll be shaven as real!Baltar as well? *shallow*) We've still too little female-female interaction on this show, and this Sharon bonding with Six as well could be a really interesting relationship - it also means we get to see Athena interact with another Cylon in a non-hostile manner for the first time since her very early days on Caprica (the planet). The fact she calls her "Six" and not "Caprica" is interesting, especially since she does so casually, not as to make a point about Caprica Six not having a right to the name.

As for Head!Gaius, here's one thing I noticed: before Gaius Baltar and Caprica Six met in the flesh again, their respective imaginary friends only used the first person singular - for example, when Head!Six in Resurrection Ship I talked about going to the Pyramid Games on Caprica and buying two tickets, one for Baltar and one for herself, despite knowing he'd never join her, the "I" she talks about is clearly meant to be Caprica Six. Also, when Head!Gaius in Downloaded asks, after Three said something about the trial Caprica Six went through, "does she mean committing genocide or sleeping with me, because I thought you rather enjoyed sleeping with me", "me" is clearly meant to be Gaius Baltar. After Baltar and Caprica Six met again, however, the entities in their heads start to differentiate between themselves and their bodily counterparts, i.e. now, in this episode, Head!Gaius saying "you came to save him". On the other hand, real!Gaius and real!Six still have them all mixed up in their heads - in Taking a Break, Gaius says "she saved me, Caprica Six, shielded me with her body, she chose me of all men, but is she angel or demon, is she my own voice or..." he is talking of both Caprica Six and Head!Six at the same time, intermingling them, and Caprica Six clearly does a similar thing with the Baltar in her head and the one currently in another cell.

Meanwhile, the entities in their heads, while on one level based on how Baltar and Six were at the time of the miniseries, clearly have by now more in common with each other than with their physical counterparts - the unrelenting sarcasm, the mixture of cruelty and caring both Head!entities display, and the sharp diagnosis of what real!Baltar and real!Six respectively want. Which to my mind really does argue that they are both really one, and a third entity, for lack of a better term the Cylon God, who uses their images to communicate with Six and Baltar respectively.

Lastly: thank you, Lords of Kobol, for no more quadrangle of doom. Now can we please get on with the trial for Baltar? That's the plot I'm interested in.

Comments

[bimo.livejournal.com]

I had to skip your episode review, because my own watching of Battlestar Galactica hasn't that far progressed yet, but most important of all...

Have a fantastic trip to Venice!

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Grazie!

[kathyh]

I'm not envious of the Venice trip, no, not at all :) Have a great time.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Thank you, oh unenvious one! *g*

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Yayyyy Venice! Want to meet the Gazzettino's fashion editor?

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Alas, it would be wasted on unfashionable me. If my mother was coming along, sure, but otherwise...

[skywaterblue.livejournal.com]

Well, I have this theory that this episode should mostly be viewed as a responsa to "A Measure of Salvation", in which Helo kills the Cylons to prevent the Fleet from using them to commit genocide. At least in the States, there were a significant portion of the viewing audience with blogs who would gladly have seen Helo airlocked for that. (In fact, one of the disturbing things about the show here, in the States, was that up until the Occupation arc, a lot of its most ardent supporters were from the Neo-Con wing of American politics.)

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I could see that, and the Sagiterrons are definitely paralleled with the Cylons in this episode by Helo asking Sharon the "...so they stop for five minutes hating you" question.

I think this line's mostly filler

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

Apparently this episode was rebuilt in the editing room, which has something to do with why it doesn't make much sense.

Speaking of Star Trek, I was online with inlovewithnight as I watched this, rhapsodizing about how awesome it would be if Bones McCoy was there instead of Dr. Plot Device. Though arguably Cottle basically is Bones (he just needs a Spock, sigh. . .)

I'm not sure what the point was of Zarek being in this episode at all, and I wasn't sure that I bought his argument that the trial would be so divisive. Still, I'm not one to complain about a Zarek appearance, and I like you're point about people making the choices they never would have thought they'd make.

I didn't especially miss the Love Rhombus, though wouldn't this ep also have been a good chance to do a non-love plot with Lee? We know he's got a history of sympathy with the Sagitarron movement, plus he's married to one (and would have been really interesting to see him come out more sympathetic to their position than Dee was).

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

Also -- Venice, hooray!

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

The podcast commentary for this episode is actually really enlightening. Apparently the original idea was that this thing with the Saggiterrons (which I'm probably also hideously misspelling) was going to be part of a big, long arc... It was supposed to come out at Baltar's trial that one of the things he'd been involved in on New Caprica was some big slaughter of Saggiterrons. So the prejudices and such weren't supposed to come out of nowhere just for the purposes of this one story, they were supposed to be leading somewhere. Even Ron Moore said he thought they were a little overdone, but they wanted to hammer on them a bit, because it was going to be an important issue later. And I think Zarek originally had a much bigger role; apparently he was implicated somehow in whatever happened on New Caprica, and didn't want a lot of investigation into Saggiterron issues, I guess, because he was afraid of people digging too deeply into past stuff.

And then, after the episode had pretty much already been filmed, they decided to drop that whole sub-plot entirely, figuring it wasn't really working, and that Baltar'd done more than enough stuff to make for an interesting trial, anyway. Which is a real shame, I think. This episode's flaws might be more justifiable if it were leading up to something interesting, and it doubtless would have had fewer flaws if it weren't trying too hard to set stuff up for later.

Btw, Moore also said that they had to very carefully work the filming schedule around Callis' beard growth so that they could have both shaved!Baltar and beardy!Baltar, but that fortunately he has really fast-growing facial hair. He compared him to Homer Simpson and his infamous five-o'clock-shadow-ten-seconds-after-shaving.

Re: I think this line's mostly filler

[selenak.livejournal.com]

This episode's flaws might be more justifiable if it were leading up to something interesting, and it doubtless would have had fewer flaws if it weren't trying too hard to set stuff up for later.

True, though I can see why they wanted Baltar's trial to be about the things the audience knows already he's done.

LOL about the beard-timed filming!

Re: I think this line's mostly filler

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

True, I think it was a good call. It just would have been a bit better if they'd called it sooner. :)

[thirdblindmouse.livejournal.com]

The fact she calls her "Six" and not "Caprica" is interesting, especially since she does so casually, not as to make a point about Caprica Six not having a right to the name.

There are two reasons this makes perfect sense:
a.) We've heard D'Anna call her this, so Caprica Six must still be most importantly a Six in Cylon minds.
b.) Athena hasn't been a part of Cylon culture since Caprica Six became a hero. She wasn't even on New Caprica.

Meanwhile Baltar calls her Caprica Six, which is strange considering he knew her by a human name. He's clearly spent too much time among the Cylons.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

It's an intriguing contrast, though, to the Six model who interacted with Athena on Caprica before she defected and who showed her hostility towards her by calling her "Sharon", not "Eight" (with the Doral model pointing this out to her).

[thirdblindmouse.livejournal.com]

Inter-Cylon relations are a very interesting topic. If Athena calling Caprica Six "Six" rather than using a name that would identify her as an individual is a sign of friendliness (as per the Cylons' "culture based o­n unity"), then Athena is still very much a Cylon, just as Boomer is still very much a human. I've always wondered to what degree Cylons think of themselves as individuals. Was the Three who complained that Caprica bashed her head in with a rock the specific Three whose head it was, or was she speaking for the Threes collectively? How much is naturally shared between models? Athena clearly has some of Boomer's memories by the time she's imprisoned on Galactica (after Boomer has been downloaded), but she hasn't been in contact with any Cylon hub where she might acquire them. On the other hand, if it's something that automatically comes to her, why doesn't she gain inside information every time a baseship/anything containing Eights is blown up?

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I had hopes the title meant it was going to be a Laura episode. It could have been - it was a civilian problem. It could have been a Zarek episode, it could have been so many different and better episodes. If Doctor Roberts had simply been neglecting the Sagittarrons rather than actively killing them. Apparently there were plans to flesh out his motivations by tying them to writings about eugenics - shouldn't there be a scriptwriter version of Godwins law?

Which to my mind really does argue that they are both really one, and a third entity, for lack of a better term the Cylon God, who uses their images to communicate with Six and Baltar respectively.

Oh yes! I was so happy when head!Baltar began to do the Head!Six style physical seduction. All he needs now is to develop a baby obsession.

And yet the conversations both Gaius and Caprica have with their ghosts really do work as if they're talking to projections of themselves, as if the entity (whatever it is) were some kind of psychic symbioant, picking up the characteristics of its host and feeding them back along with whatever it's trying to communicate on its own account.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Eugenics would definitely have made things worse, not better. *shudders*