BSG 3.17, Maelstrom
Mar. 9th, 2007 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakBe warned: poetry quotes ahead. Also, since this seems to be another "love or hate" episode, I'm on the love side of the fence.
No law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
(W.B.Yeats, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death)
This particular poem of Yeats has made me think of Kara Thrace, aka Starbuck before, but now it seems written for her. In fact, Yeats wrote it when the son of a friend died in the war. I always wondered whether the friend in question felt consoled or insulted and even more hearbroken. Note that for all the poetic rush, there is also, if you think about it, the same disregard that troubles most people whose loved ones commit suicide: the years to come a waste of breath? The years behind? What about *insert name of love and reason to live*?
And yet, and yet. In balance with this life, this death. There is a moment of perfect clarity there, call it zen, call it what you will, of balance, of focus and peace, and Kara achieves it just before her viper explodes.
(Incidentally, as to the question about whether or not Kara is, to use a Princess Bride term, mostly dead or really dead dead: cynical me thinks that depends on whether or not Katee Sackhof has a contract for the next season. They can bring her back in a couple of ways: her hand was on the eject button before we saw the viper explode, and the Cylon Raider was really there, Lee saw it, so it could have picked her up; she could be resurrected via supernatural ways - more about this episode confirming the existence of a supernatural force in the BSG verse later -; she could have fallen into whereever that maelstrom leads to. There is also the one-of-the-Final-Five option, but I don't think so; as with Baltar, it would make a lot of her storyline less interesting and senseless. Or she could be, you know, really dead dead. Again, depending on the contract.)
Back in season 2, when Adama ordered her to assassinate Admiral Cain, Kara asked Lee for his back-up, and I'm sure she thought they would both die in the attempt. (Surrounded by Cain's officers, how could they not?) But Adama withdrew the order at the last moment, and Lee wasn't there anyway; he was courting death elsewhere. Her second shot at life first resulted in her attempt to try something new; commitment and life, not death. She returned to Caprica, found and rescued Sam, started her first long term romantic relationship since Zak. Then there was the Lee interlude, which freaked her out and made her relationship with Sam Anders a marriage. But the past doesn't let go, and the Cylons came back, and with them Leoben. There was a Hades and Persephone quality to the time Kara spent with him in the underworld, err, the detention center; cherished, tricked, and a prisoner fed with pomegrate seeds. Leoben was the one who literary died as she killed him again and again, but something died in Kara as well, and when she came back to Galactica, she carried the underworld with her. She went through temporary patchups but spent most of her time lashing out.
Maelstrom presents each of her relationships coming full circle, in a way. There is the one with Adama; ever since he literary kicked the chair away under her and gave her an ultimatum, saying "you were like a daughter" and "no more", they hadn't been close. Better than at that point, certainly, but not back to their old closeness; in a sense, Kara had been replaced by Athena, the daughter who came fully formed, the embodiment of rebirth and second chances. But here, Adama has a conversation with Lee about her, with Lee saying that he thinks the only thing still holding Kara together is her identity as a pilot - being Starbuck, in a word. Meeting Kara afterwards, Adama addresses her as Starbuck in more than one way: literary, and because he replays their old nonsensical chat from the miniseries, the first words we hear either of them say. Bringing home the cat. She lights up, in her old Starbuck smile, and you can see her responding to this being taken back.
There is Sam, who once represented the chance of a new start - he hadn't known "Starbuck" or Kara before they met on Caprica, he had no preconceptions about her - but now has become something both deeper and more complicated. IMO, it says a lot about their relationship that Kara told him about her mother - I don't think she told anyone else (Leoben knew via other means) - and about Leoben's destiny talk. Kara used to use sex to avoid intimacy; with Sam, that didn't work, and in the end she stopped trying.
There is Lee. Now as I mentioned before (a couple of times, ahem, sorry for harping on this), the last time we saw Kara and Lee being really good for each other was when they were friends in season 1, pre- dance at the end of Colonial Day. As a couple, they were toxic for each other and brought out each other's worst. But the quadrangle of doom ended, thank the Lords of Kobol, and lo and behold, we see that Kara and Lee can be good for each other again. He doesn't pressure her to love him any more; she doesn't use him to escape or hurt. Instead, they're simply there for each other, pilot and CAG, and it works. Kara saying she wants her photo next to Kat's doesn't result in Lee protesting she mustn't talk like that, or insisting she'd tell him what was on her mind, or grounding her, all of which the Lee of only a few months ago would have done. Their scenes together are the first focusing on them in nearly two years which I really, really enjoyed, and in which I felt great affection towards both of them.
Helo, too, arguably the most uncomplicated of Kara's relationships, the man she never had UST with and who is just her buddy who never judged her gets a moment. Ah, the reversal of fortune. When they met again on Caprica, Helo was lost among enemies and had just found out Sharon, the future Athena, was a Cylon (and pregnant); now he has a place on Galactica, a family, and Kara is the one who gets lost. Or does she? Because the episode is among other things a whole "finding yourself" quest.
The Oracle, Leoben; Kara's mother, whose name, the credit tell us, was Socrata: these are people who are part of that quest, and yet none of them are what they seem. I find the Oracle deeply intriguing; despite this not being the same actress (they probably couldn't get Amanda Plummer back on short notice), I'm assuming it's meant to be the same person whom Three - D'Anna who got boxed - saw on New Caprica. The Oracle sent Three on her quest to "the space between life and death", and in the tradition of oracles in myths both gave the truth and disguised it; Three had her moment with Hera, and later she did find answers at last, but she also ultimately found the closest thing to permanent death the Cylons have. Recognition, rapture, death; sounds familiar? Here, the Oracle points Kara back to Leoben and her mother. You confused the messenger with the message, she says, but the Oracle is a messenger herself, or is she a message? Both? Whose?
Several possibilities: when Roslin took the chamalla oracles and priests take (and which the Oracle offers to Three when she meets her), she was able to to have correct visions, at least one of which was shared by a Cylon - Leoben. Leoben, of course, is the Cylon who is the self-confessed madman among them, but "to be crazy is to see the face of God", or is it the other way around? Humans plus chamalla seem access something which Cylons plus madness can also access. A collective consciousness, the future, a supernatural force? Hm.
The other possibility is that the Oracle is one of the Final Five. (The fact Three did not recognize her as a Cylon doesn't mean anything, since Three back then did not know who the Finale Five were any more than the other Cylons did. However, when finally seeing their faces Three did recognize someone, and it could be the human Oracle she met before...) Which would make the Final Five's agenda nicely ambiguous. I've seen speculation that they're going to be the humans' allies, i.e. "good" Cylons to the others' "bad" Cylons, which seems too simplistic. Anyway, if the Oracle is one, she has sent a Cylon and a human each to enlightenment and death, so what does that make her?
Leoben - whom Kara dreams of and who then shows up in her head to guide her - is, as she ultimately states, not really Leoben. Any more than Head!Six is Capica Six, or Head!Baltar is Gaius Baltar. And yet they're all related to each other, and not just forms assumed. Someone is assuming, though; my money is on the Cylon God, currently. As Head!Leoben, Head!Six and Head!Baltar, and did you notice that Head!Six during Taking a Break dared Gaius to a suicide attempt, to, so he'd confront the truth about himself, his (human, not Cylon) nature? Leoben is mad and has seen the face of God, and he sees time as a stream to enter and leave; Kara tortured him physically, he tortured her emotionally; which makes him the perfect avatar to guide Kara back to her original hurt, the relationship with her mother. Incidentally, the fact the woman died of cancer adds a nice subtext to Kara's uneasy relationship with Roslin. And then there was the other female authority figure, Admiral Cain, military like Kara's mother, not just military but holding the highest rank one can achieve - as opposed to Socrata who never made officer - and providing praise and acknowledgement for Kara, to which Kara took like a duck to water.
I don't think the point here was for Kara to forgive her mother. It wasn't her mother she confronted, any more than Leoben was Leoben. It was a part of herself, the part her mother formed, the woman who, as the Oracle puts it early on, hurts everyone she loves deliberately. Kara never forgave herself, and kept proving to herself she was just as much of a mess as her mother always said she was, and not worthy of love or forgiveness. She didn't forgive herself for falling for Leoben's last mind game, either. And who knows how she felt about the original torture which started it all. That's what she needed to do before coming to any kind of peace; look at the part of her that belonged to her mother, at the part that responded to Leoben, and forgive herself.
No law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
(W.B.Yeats, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death)
This particular poem of Yeats has made me think of Kara Thrace, aka Starbuck before, but now it seems written for her. In fact, Yeats wrote it when the son of a friend died in the war. I always wondered whether the friend in question felt consoled or insulted and even more hearbroken. Note that for all the poetic rush, there is also, if you think about it, the same disregard that troubles most people whose loved ones commit suicide: the years to come a waste of breath? The years behind? What about *insert name of love and reason to live*?
And yet, and yet. In balance with this life, this death. There is a moment of perfect clarity there, call it zen, call it what you will, of balance, of focus and peace, and Kara achieves it just before her viper explodes.
(Incidentally, as to the question about whether or not Kara is, to use a Princess Bride term, mostly dead or really dead dead: cynical me thinks that depends on whether or not Katee Sackhof has a contract for the next season. They can bring her back in a couple of ways: her hand was on the eject button before we saw the viper explode, and the Cylon Raider was really there, Lee saw it, so it could have picked her up; she could be resurrected via supernatural ways - more about this episode confirming the existence of a supernatural force in the BSG verse later -; she could have fallen into whereever that maelstrom leads to. There is also the one-of-the-Final-Five option, but I don't think so; as with Baltar, it would make a lot of her storyline less interesting and senseless. Or she could be, you know, really dead dead. Again, depending on the contract.)
Back in season 2, when Adama ordered her to assassinate Admiral Cain, Kara asked Lee for his back-up, and I'm sure she thought they would both die in the attempt. (Surrounded by Cain's officers, how could they not?) But Adama withdrew the order at the last moment, and Lee wasn't there anyway; he was courting death elsewhere. Her second shot at life first resulted in her attempt to try something new; commitment and life, not death. She returned to Caprica, found and rescued Sam, started her first long term romantic relationship since Zak. Then there was the Lee interlude, which freaked her out and made her relationship with Sam Anders a marriage. But the past doesn't let go, and the Cylons came back, and with them Leoben. There was a Hades and Persephone quality to the time Kara spent with him in the underworld, err, the detention center; cherished, tricked, and a prisoner fed with pomegrate seeds. Leoben was the one who literary died as she killed him again and again, but something died in Kara as well, and when she came back to Galactica, she carried the underworld with her. She went through temporary patchups but spent most of her time lashing out.
Maelstrom presents each of her relationships coming full circle, in a way. There is the one with Adama; ever since he literary kicked the chair away under her and gave her an ultimatum, saying "you were like a daughter" and "no more", they hadn't been close. Better than at that point, certainly, but not back to their old closeness; in a sense, Kara had been replaced by Athena, the daughter who came fully formed, the embodiment of rebirth and second chances. But here, Adama has a conversation with Lee about her, with Lee saying that he thinks the only thing still holding Kara together is her identity as a pilot - being Starbuck, in a word. Meeting Kara afterwards, Adama addresses her as Starbuck in more than one way: literary, and because he replays their old nonsensical chat from the miniseries, the first words we hear either of them say. Bringing home the cat. She lights up, in her old Starbuck smile, and you can see her responding to this being taken back.
There is Sam, who once represented the chance of a new start - he hadn't known "Starbuck" or Kara before they met on Caprica, he had no preconceptions about her - but now has become something both deeper and more complicated. IMO, it says a lot about their relationship that Kara told him about her mother - I don't think she told anyone else (Leoben knew via other means) - and about Leoben's destiny talk. Kara used to use sex to avoid intimacy; with Sam, that didn't work, and in the end she stopped trying.
There is Lee. Now as I mentioned before (a couple of times, ahem, sorry for harping on this), the last time we saw Kara and Lee being really good for each other was when they were friends in season 1, pre- dance at the end of Colonial Day. As a couple, they were toxic for each other and brought out each other's worst. But the quadrangle of doom ended, thank the Lords of Kobol, and lo and behold, we see that Kara and Lee can be good for each other again. He doesn't pressure her to love him any more; she doesn't use him to escape or hurt. Instead, they're simply there for each other, pilot and CAG, and it works. Kara saying she wants her photo next to Kat's doesn't result in Lee protesting she mustn't talk like that, or insisting she'd tell him what was on her mind, or grounding her, all of which the Lee of only a few months ago would have done. Their scenes together are the first focusing on them in nearly two years which I really, really enjoyed, and in which I felt great affection towards both of them.
Helo, too, arguably the most uncomplicated of Kara's relationships, the man she never had UST with and who is just her buddy who never judged her gets a moment. Ah, the reversal of fortune. When they met again on Caprica, Helo was lost among enemies and had just found out Sharon, the future Athena, was a Cylon (and pregnant); now he has a place on Galactica, a family, and Kara is the one who gets lost. Or does she? Because the episode is among other things a whole "finding yourself" quest.
The Oracle, Leoben; Kara's mother, whose name, the credit tell us, was Socrata: these are people who are part of that quest, and yet none of them are what they seem. I find the Oracle deeply intriguing; despite this not being the same actress (they probably couldn't get Amanda Plummer back on short notice), I'm assuming it's meant to be the same person whom Three - D'Anna who got boxed - saw on New Caprica. The Oracle sent Three on her quest to "the space between life and death", and in the tradition of oracles in myths both gave the truth and disguised it; Three had her moment with Hera, and later she did find answers at last, but she also ultimately found the closest thing to permanent death the Cylons have. Recognition, rapture, death; sounds familiar? Here, the Oracle points Kara back to Leoben and her mother. You confused the messenger with the message, she says, but the Oracle is a messenger herself, or is she a message? Both? Whose?
Several possibilities: when Roslin took the chamalla oracles and priests take (and which the Oracle offers to Three when she meets her), she was able to to have correct visions, at least one of which was shared by a Cylon - Leoben. Leoben, of course, is the Cylon who is the self-confessed madman among them, but "to be crazy is to see the face of God", or is it the other way around? Humans plus chamalla seem access something which Cylons plus madness can also access. A collective consciousness, the future, a supernatural force? Hm.
The other possibility is that the Oracle is one of the Final Five. (The fact Three did not recognize her as a Cylon doesn't mean anything, since Three back then did not know who the Finale Five were any more than the other Cylons did. However, when finally seeing their faces Three did recognize someone, and it could be the human Oracle she met before...) Which would make the Final Five's agenda nicely ambiguous. I've seen speculation that they're going to be the humans' allies, i.e. "good" Cylons to the others' "bad" Cylons, which seems too simplistic. Anyway, if the Oracle is one, she has sent a Cylon and a human each to enlightenment and death, so what does that make her?
Leoben - whom Kara dreams of and who then shows up in her head to guide her - is, as she ultimately states, not really Leoben. Any more than Head!Six is Capica Six, or Head!Baltar is Gaius Baltar. And yet they're all related to each other, and not just forms assumed. Someone is assuming, though; my money is on the Cylon God, currently. As Head!Leoben, Head!Six and Head!Baltar, and did you notice that Head!Six during Taking a Break dared Gaius to a suicide attempt, to, so he'd confront the truth about himself, his (human, not Cylon) nature? Leoben is mad and has seen the face of God, and he sees time as a stream to enter and leave; Kara tortured him physically, he tortured her emotionally; which makes him the perfect avatar to guide Kara back to her original hurt, the relationship with her mother. Incidentally, the fact the woman died of cancer adds a nice subtext to Kara's uneasy relationship with Roslin. And then there was the other female authority figure, Admiral Cain, military like Kara's mother, not just military but holding the highest rank one can achieve - as opposed to Socrata who never made officer - and providing praise and acknowledgement for Kara, to which Kara took like a duck to water.
I don't think the point here was for Kara to forgive her mother. It wasn't her mother she confronted, any more than Leoben was Leoben. It was a part of herself, the part her mother formed, the woman who, as the Oracle puts it early on, hurts everyone she loves deliberately. Kara never forgave herself, and kept proving to herself she was just as much of a mess as her mother always said she was, and not worthy of love or forgiveness. She didn't forgive herself for falling for Leoben's last mind game, either. And who knows how she felt about the original torture which started it all. That's what she needed to do before coming to any kind of peace; look at the part of her that belonged to her mother, at the part that responded to Leoben, and forgive herself.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-09 03:53 pm (UTC)That scene with the Oracle (and I don't believe that she is meant to be the same one who spoke to and guided Three, although I do believe that the same voice, as it were, spoke through both of them) made me shiver. And that almust imperceptible touch of having tears streaming unnoticed down her face as she held Kara's hands... wow. It's the subtle things like that that really make an impression on me.
This was the first episode in a long time that I've actually enjoyed the Kara-Lee interaction and it's because they weren't demanding anything of each other, they were simply there. It was more like the friendship we've seen between Kara and Helo than the angst-fest we've become used to between Kara and Lee.
I keep seeing everywhere that people are up in arms because Kara committed suicide. She didn't. She finally came to understand what Leoben and the Oracle told her. She's been shown from the beginning to be a fairly spiritual person and that finally came to the fore in this episode. She had faith that she really did have a destiny and that it wasn't to simply die, but rather to pass through death and, as Leoben told her, see what lies between life and death.
Anyway, this was an excellent review. I enjoyed reading it.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-09 05:22 pm (UTC)I also loved the reflections on her face (from the scrying bowl), as if we were seeing her from under water.
This was the first episode in a long time that I've actually enjoyed the Kara-Lee interaction and it's because they weren't demanding anything of each other, they were simply there.
Same here.
She's been shown from the beginning to be a fairly spiritual person
Kara is the one (human) person we see pray in the mini, when she thinks Lee is dead, and her prayer for Leoben's soul at the end of Flesh and Bone is such a striking scene, too. I always thought it was such a unexpected (in a good way) choice, to give her that trait in seeming contradiction to her brash devil may care persona, but it's always been there, and she was looking for something from the start, too.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-09 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-09 05:29 pm (UTC)For what it's worth, I currently think she will be, but definitely next season and it will be kept very secret in advance to torment viewers some more. If this was her final episode, though, it was a good one, and Katee S. pulled all the stops in her performance.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-10 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-10 06:24 am (UTC)Your analysis of the episode is really interesting, and it brings up some questions about her relationships that I hadn't considered before, especially the ones with Roslin and Cain.
I quite love the thought that the 'head' characters might be a manifestation of the Cylon god. Oh, and what if the oracle is one of the final five? Wow, I'd never thought of that possibility.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-10 07:03 am (UTC)Most of what they say might be things the subconscious of their "carriers" knows already, but not all; they also have tidbits of information that Baltar or Kara don't know, and their behaviour towards their "subjects" is eerily similar. Hence my current speculation.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-16 10:15 pm (UTC)I'm undecided if they are the Cylon God, though.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-17 05:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-17 01:40 pm (UTC)