Battlestar Galactica 4.06 Faith
May. 10th, 2008 05:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakBest episode of the season so far.
And since I complained about the male-female ratio in terms of characters who get killed on this show when Cally died, I now have to point out that here, BSG gives us a lot of female characters interacting with each other and talking without either a) men or b) their lovelives being the conversational subject. I like, show, I like.
I loved both the main plot - Kara & Co. on board the basestar, which finally got us back to the Cylon civil war – and the subplot, Roslin bonding with a dying woman named Emily. Mary McDonnell was awesome (she usually is, but particularly here), and so was the actress playing Emily, whom I nearly didn't recognize as Nana Visitor. (KIRA!). Meanwhile, Tricia Helfer knocks it out of the ballpark by interacting with herself. Seriously, the scene with Natalie and the other Six was fantastic. Other than Leoben, who saw getting killed by Kara repeatedly as some kind of getting-to-know-you bonding ritual, Cylons have been shown to be affected by their deaths-and-resurrections traumatically before (both in a black humour way – Cavill bitching about the resistance letting him die slowly on New Caprica – and in a serious way, which the whole episode “Scar” was about, and of course in Downloaded. So a Six reacting as she did to a human who killed her on New Caprica is both plausible and good storytelling; and it deepens Natalie’s character as she has to face, as various other characters on BSG had to from the miniseries onwards, the dark side of being a leader. Having to sacrifice your own if the other choice will doom the rest.
Cylon identity is a big theme of the episode. The Eights, blaming the Sixes for their losses so far, want Athena to lead them but Athena proves she’s not just fixed in her loyalities when it comes to Cylons versus humans, where she chose the human side, but in general thinks that once you’ve chosen a side, you have to stay with it. (Personally, I’m a bit sceptical about the “my country, right or wrong” principle; but I don’t think she meant that you have to stay with a side once you’ve come to see its aims as wrong, since this isn’t the case here. The Eights just got scared about losing – understandably so, since this time it’s their lives, irrevocably gone if they die, on the line -; they don’t disagree ideologically with the Sixes.
Sam Anders shows another way: the challenge to change as a virtue. This episode has so many great continuity callbacks, and the fact he was one of the resistance leaders both on Caprica and New Caprica is one of them. His hatred for the Cylons was forged by personal experience, and finding out he was one didn’t automatically end this. (Bonding with Tyrol, Tigh and Tory is different; he knew them as humans first and knows they’re in the same position he’s in.) Here, he goes from reacting on instinct at the sight of a Cylon killing a human to the compassion he shows the dying Eight model, seeing this Eight not as a “skinjob” or a thing but as a dying person.
(Sidenote: not letting him touch the basestar control system means he keeps his secret a bit longer, but with the Threes about to be unboxed, this is clearly not for long. He didn’t look as panicked as the prospect as he would have earlier.)
Kara at long last snapped out of her depression and was at her best here, from doctoring Gaeta to bargaining with Natalie to talking with the Hybrid. Figures. Give the woman something to do, and she’s good. (And it’s good for the audience, too.) As to what the Hybrid meant by “end of the line”: I’m still going with my old guess. The end of humanity and Cylons as separate people because the only way out of this, other than mutual complete destruction, is union, as the children of both will not be able to carry vengeance against just one of their parents. (And the mutual revenge cycle was D’anna’s argument when Gaius Baltar challenged her to just let it go.)
Lastly and shallowly: I bet people were relieved to see Laura with her hair again in her dream, thus proving Mary M. didn’t really shave her head for the earlier scenes.
And since I complained about the male-female ratio in terms of characters who get killed on this show when Cally died, I now have to point out that here, BSG gives us a lot of female characters interacting with each other and talking without either a) men or b) their lovelives being the conversational subject. I like, show, I like.
I loved both the main plot - Kara & Co. on board the basestar, which finally got us back to the Cylon civil war – and the subplot, Roslin bonding with a dying woman named Emily. Mary McDonnell was awesome (she usually is, but particularly here), and so was the actress playing Emily, whom I nearly didn't recognize as Nana Visitor. (KIRA!). Meanwhile, Tricia Helfer knocks it out of the ballpark by interacting with herself. Seriously, the scene with Natalie and the other Six was fantastic. Other than Leoben, who saw getting killed by Kara repeatedly as some kind of getting-to-know-you bonding ritual, Cylons have been shown to be affected by their deaths-and-resurrections traumatically before (both in a black humour way – Cavill bitching about the resistance letting him die slowly on New Caprica – and in a serious way, which the whole episode “Scar” was about, and of course in Downloaded. So a Six reacting as she did to a human who killed her on New Caprica is both plausible and good storytelling; and it deepens Natalie’s character as she has to face, as various other characters on BSG had to from the miniseries onwards, the dark side of being a leader. Having to sacrifice your own if the other choice will doom the rest.
Cylon identity is a big theme of the episode. The Eights, blaming the Sixes for their losses so far, want Athena to lead them but Athena proves she’s not just fixed in her loyalities when it comes to Cylons versus humans, where she chose the human side, but in general thinks that once you’ve chosen a side, you have to stay with it. (Personally, I’m a bit sceptical about the “my country, right or wrong” principle; but I don’t think she meant that you have to stay with a side once you’ve come to see its aims as wrong, since this isn’t the case here. The Eights just got scared about losing – understandably so, since this time it’s their lives, irrevocably gone if they die, on the line -; they don’t disagree ideologically with the Sixes.
Sam Anders shows another way: the challenge to change as a virtue. This episode has so many great continuity callbacks, and the fact he was one of the resistance leaders both on Caprica and New Caprica is one of them. His hatred for the Cylons was forged by personal experience, and finding out he was one didn’t automatically end this. (Bonding with Tyrol, Tigh and Tory is different; he knew them as humans first and knows they’re in the same position he’s in.) Here, he goes from reacting on instinct at the sight of a Cylon killing a human to the compassion he shows the dying Eight model, seeing this Eight not as a “skinjob” or a thing but as a dying person.
(Sidenote: not letting him touch the basestar control system means he keeps his secret a bit longer, but with the Threes about to be unboxed, this is clearly not for long. He didn’t look as panicked as the prospect as he would have earlier.)
Kara at long last snapped out of her depression and was at her best here, from doctoring Gaeta to bargaining with Natalie to talking with the Hybrid. Figures. Give the woman something to do, and she’s good. (And it’s good for the audience, too.) As to what the Hybrid meant by “end of the line”: I’m still going with my old guess. The end of humanity and Cylons as separate people because the only way out of this, other than mutual complete destruction, is union, as the children of both will not be able to carry vengeance against just one of their parents. (And the mutual revenge cycle was D’anna’s argument when Gaius Baltar challenged her to just let it go.)
Lastly and shallowly: I bet people were relieved to see Laura with her hair again in her dream, thus proving Mary M. didn’t really shave her head for the earlier scenes.
