Shows that start with B

[selenak]

b5_revisited started their discussions of the Babylon 5 pilot The Gathering. If you're either an old fan or a new watcher, check the posts out; there is one with and one without spoilers, so if you're new, you have nothing to fear. Oh, Babylon 5. I love both my space station shows, the other being DS9, but right now, I'm all nostalgia for the last of the Babylon stations and the third age of mankind.

Meanwhile, the second half of Battlestar Galactica, season 4, has started.



First of all, I'm wondering whether or not to get my Ellen Tigh icon out of retirement, because I'm tickled to death and oddly pleased both by her being revealed as the fifth and by her and Saul Tigh as that most fanfiction-ish of concepts, reborn lovers who keep finding each other. If it had been Kara and Lee, I'd have thrown up. (Sorry. One of my true anti-ships, that one.) Adama and Roslin? Nah. My Laura Roslin would never shackle herself to just one person. But Saul the alcoholic and Ellen the promiscuous party girl, my Edward Albee couple on Galactica? YES. Sign me up. BSG doesn't do romance very well, in general, but it's good with established relationships, both friendships and affairs/marriages. And the scene with Ellen confessing what she did to save Saul's life and Saul killing her still makes me sob like a child.

As for Ellen as the Fifth Cylon: my crack theory had been that it was the Galactica itself and my more sensible theory that it was Felix Gaeta, but I wasn't married to either one, and I did wonder whether it wouldn't have to be a female character because three of the four are men already. Now, the most obvious suspect was Laura Roslin, and that I would have minded very much, because Roslin, like Gaius Baltar, is a character whose storyline and function in the overall narrative really is inseperable from them being human. (Though of course for different reasons with these two.) Also, I really disliked the variation of the Roslin-is-a-Cylon theory that positioned her as some kind of überwoman goddess pulling everyone's strings. Laura? Does not need this. She's awesome because she was a minor goverment official who had just been told she had cancer and then had to shoulder the responsibility for everyone left of the human race, and lived up to the challenge. Not because she was programmed for greatness. Ellen, on the other hand, is a character no one ever took seriously, save Adama who resented her for the hold she had over Tigh, and most people disliked, who was just plain not good at political manouevring the one time she tried (in early season 2) and who would always choose the individual (her husband) over the big picture (the resistance on New Caprica and the future of humanity) - Ellen, in short, the anti-überwoman, as the final Cylon? Yes.

(Also, it ends what is a very depressing episode on a note of hope. Like Tigh, I'm aglow in the sudden prospect of seeing Ellen again - without this negating the tragedy of her death and the choices they both made then, because boy, do they have things to talk about now. Saul/Ellen OTP!)

The big red herring and continuing mind game is what happened with Kara. The sci fi fan in me can think of three possibilities regarding what she found on Earth.
1) The Farscape model - when Kara entered the maelstrom in Maelstrom, it doubled her. And her ship. We'll never know which one crashed and which came back, just as there was no One True John when this happened in s3 of Farscape, they were both John.
2) Time Travel - we're actually seeing the same woman, but dead body! Kara is the future version. There was an anomaly which ensured Kara was thrown back in time, but she'll end up crashed sooner or later.
3) Deliberate cloning by a third party. There are still some cells unaccounted for from Caprica. As alive!Kara has all her memories, however, dead!Kara would have to be the clone.
All this being said? Loved Kara making her own pyre. And the fact Leoben, for the first time, is fresh out of answers and genuinenly freaked. There are no more oracles, I think, neither for Kara nor for Laura nor for Baltar nor for anyone; they have to find their own answers.

Dee: oh, Dualla. The writing didn't always serve you well - post-Home, when the Lee romance started - but when it did, as in your confrontation with Adama in Home I, when you called him out on just wanting you as an audience for his monologue, not as someone with her own opinion, you were splendid. Very much the quiet voice of hope through much of the show, and indeed literally the voice of the Galactica. Dee as the one to give up in the face of the horrible truth about Earth was in many ways the most devastating choice, and very effectively done, from her reaction to what she finds on Earth to her talk with Lee and her choosing to spend her last day happy to that quick pulling the trigger once Gaeta is out of the room. Speaking of Gaeta, since I've watched the webisodes I wonder whether the choice of Dee as the character to commit suicide isn't also due to Gaeta's storyline because her replacement, Hoshi, is Gaeta's boyfriend.

As far as a reply to the question "if you've found the promised land, and it's a nuclear wasteland, what do you do THEN?" is concerned, I thought it was an honest episode. They've all pinned so much hope on Earth, had considered it the answer to all their miseries, the place where they'd finally be safe and happy again, that to find it in such a state couldn't result in chin lifting and soldiering on immediately. Roslin not being able to say any calming words once she's back in the fleet but just withdrawing really brought it home. This is the first time we've seen Laura Roslin not just defeated, but beaten. Which she never was before, even when in various jail cells. And it's fitting this doesn't happen through the actions of one individual or even the entire Cylon race. She had made herself from a sceptic into a believer, she had gambled so much on the prophecies, on her visions, and now it looked like she has led the human race to nothing. And yet Roslin finds that one plant still growing in the wasteland, which might be a bit obvious a symbol, but it still worked for me.

Adama: now that was a bit over the top for me, perhaps because we've been through two devasted emo!Bill episodes already, Sine Qua Non (boo! hiss!) and Revelations (where I actually felt sorry for him). Also, trying to get Tigh to kill him is just screwed up and selfish beyond belief if you remember he saw first hand what killing Ellen did to Saul. This being said, I can buy he needed Tigh to ground himself and become the commander the fleet needs again.

New Questions: obviously, if Baltar is right and the Thirteenth Tribe of humanity were Cylons, we're still due explanations as to why five of them figured out how to do the download thing (with some millennia in between downloads) and the rest did not. I'm also reminded of the story we heard in s2 about the thirteenth god being expelled by the other twelve when he started claims of monotheism, or was that on the deleted scenes? Anyway: as a symbol of "we ARE the other", it's pretty powerful. Also, if I am a Cylon, I want to figure out how to do that projecting thing.