BSG: Rapture
Jan. 22nd, 2007 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaDude, how bummed was I that this episode didn't include a single person getting suddenly whisked off to heaven. Unless you count Three. And heaven is a great big room full of boxes...
That said, I did enjoy this episode, so I'll do my usual thang and break it down by plotline (instead of by character this time).
The Lee/Dee/Anders/Kara quadrangle was done slightly better than I was expecting. I felt that Lee's comment, "If she's dead I'll let you," was more bravado than anything else, but I also thought that there was some genuinely well crafted drama in the situation. I felt Lee's decision to have Dee try to save Kara was genuinely because he had to find some way to pacify Sam or the whole of the defence would fall apart more than wanting his wife to risk his life for his...whatever she is. I appreciated Dee's attitude too - she isn't going to be aware of the complex motivations Lee has in sending her on the rescue, and then her buddy gets shot to shit. I thoroughly enjoyed her attitude which I found to be professional if cold, and the slap she gave Kara was just perfect. Lee's face at the end when he was hugging Dee was also perfect - so lost and confused and relieved and did more to explain his feelings for his wife than dialogue could. Let's just hope it continues being this interesting next week.
Helo/Athena/Hera. I'm going to assume that Helo had to shoot his wife because suicide is a sin. I'm also going to assume that he shot her in the chest or something and not the stomach like it sorta seemed because...way to doom your wife to a slow and painful death there, bud. I'm going to assume that Hera recognised Athena through the same spyware frequencies that the cylons seem to use to tell each other apart.
I thought Adama's attitude towards Helo was a bit rich, what with the sensitive information, because really, he gave her all that and decided to trust her. That was always going to be a threat if she died. Perhaps now things are different because when he gave her that commission he didn't know she was suddenly going to be destabilised by the news her daughter was alive, but it's not like he relieved her of duty at that point.
Helo's words to Roslin were nice, though I'd have added that everything she's done to find earth from the moment she sent lieutenant Thrace to retrieve the Arrow of Apollo was also an act of faith, and some of those acts of faith split and threatened the entire fleet. Which could be rebutted by the fact that Roslin's the president and Helo's not, but...it would also be a good point in terms of the complex cylon/human/religious situations both characters find themselves in. Roslin did not disappoint me in her "Yeah, I take responsibility for what I did," attitude.
Boomer/Hera. I feel terrible for saying this, but I wish Grace Park were a better actress, or perhaps I should just wish I understood her acting more (since some people don't seem to have a problem with it). In the earlier seasons, I always felt she did better with Athena than with Boomer, but since the start of the second season her Boomer has really improved, and here I thought her Boomer was much better than her Athena. I was with Boomer when she was saying, "Take Hera, I'm done with her. I'm done with all of this." Because I could feel her anger and pain - it's exactly the same anger and pain that was with her in Downloaded, except she's slowly had every last target taken away from her.
Athena stole her life once, and now, waltzing back in, magically calming this child that Boomer's been struggling with for months, she's stealing it again. There's no point caring for the Chief, she thinks, it'll just hurt her more. She knows he's moved on; she's tried to make her peace, to help Cally, she does want to be a good person, but it's still gotta hurt inside. Knowing that your whole life is gone, and your new life sucks, and your attempt to recapture a tiny, tiny fragment of that old life was met with complete failure. So yes. I understand her viciousness and her bitterness and her statements that she doesn't believe cylons and humans can live together. Because whether or not she believes that and whether or not she still cares about the Chief really isn't the point. The point is she needs to needle and whatever she can, she hurts and she wants to spread that hurt because she's tired of keeping it inside and waiting for some miraculous karmic balance to be restored. It's harder to imagine yourself as a human when you've returned to them, and they've spat at you.
But still, I thought threatening to break Hera's neck was too much. If she's that broken I'd like to have seen it. Also, I think she was bluffing, angry that she's paying the price of being a cylon and Athena isn't. It felt like a forced recall to the mini series.
Caprica is developing a murderous streak, isn't she? I mean, sure she could have just tied her up, or left her unconscious?
Caprica, as always, I love. Focused more on the survival of the child, having always been in love with a human, having lead the cylons to New Caprica perhaps with more honest intentions because while it was with the expectations of regaining her love and a part of her life among the humans, she also probably didn't have anything like the baggage of Boomer, with the hundreds of people who knew and felt personally betrayed by her. Regardless, I think it perfectly in character for her to put the life of the child and the future first. I think she's still beautifully and tragically lost without Gaius. I think she doesn't care who wins anymore, humans, cylons, she's had her illusions of both shattered. Gaius was supposed to love her, and he left. D'Anna was supposed to love her, and she left. Also, CAPRICA!SIX IS ON GALACTICA! THIS IS SO AWESOME!
Baltar/Three/Crackiness. Bye Three. I'm really going to miss you. I also still have a really strong desire to vid "The Future" by Leonard Cohen to you, but I fear I'll lack the clips, the time, and the ability to cut down the song. Perhaps in a few months. I also hope you're not boxed indefinitely. Still, the cylons are running out of models pretty quickly. I mean, I really hope they explain to us WHY they aren't in contact with the final five. Plus now they've only got six of them left, four dudes and two girls, and one of the dudes never seems to show (Hi Simon!).
I don't have anything particularly deep to say about this because while I enjoy the bizarre messianic relationship between Baltar and Three, it was more of the same. Awesome, but still more of the same. Big tease about the final five and then a worldclass pistol-whip. GO CHIEF!
Starbuck/Destiny/Helo. This I enjoyed. I thought Katee Sackhoff's acting was very strong here. She takes to her "destiny" with bitterness and sourness but an almost disturbing focus. She doesn't deny it as I thought she would. (Though the naysayer in me would point out that if Tigh's assertion that "you've seen one supernova, you've seen them all," combined with the relative ease with which you can find images of the cosmos in our, less-spacefaring society, suggests that she could have seen that picture anywhere).
The point is, her overarching reaction was, "Yes. This makes sense. I believe this." This is what Leoben told her, and his sway over her is still huge.
Kara's always been screwed-up, and this season it's even more so. I've seen a lot of people over the net saying it's gone beyond now, and it's getting daft and too "emo". I disagree actually. It's like, if anything, I felt a little that way in some sections of the second season (never hugely, never enough to detract from anything), but in the third, I finally feel that the shit she's gone through and the issues she's been left with serve a purpose beyond generating sympathy for a maverick. It's leading somewhere and I feel this is a massive vindication of this. But it's someplace pretty...dark.
I said in my reaction posts to the first run of episodes this season that I thought Tigh needed to fail at redemption, that that was the ultimate, tragic and fulfilling end to the way he totally broke himself as a functioning human. I'm still disappointed that that hasn't happened, though I hold out some hope. He's pretty much gone back to his previous role of non-functioning human, but this time with an added eyepatch and minus a wife. When was the last time he did anything interesting? He was thrown completely outside of his minimal parameters of functionality when he returned to Galactica because of what had happened (see earlier posts), and all that's happened is he's been shoved back into those parameters and they're still a bad fit. We don't seem to be seeing that with Tigh (and I think we deserve to), but we ARE seeing that with Starbuck, who had much the same thing happen to her.
And I'm willing to consider that Starbuck's story neither has, nor needs, a happy end. Though considering she's a main character, I'm not totally sure how that'll play out. Either way, I predict strife. Yes, strife.
Next week - DUDE! Laura, I love you. And that is all.
That said, I did enjoy this episode, so I'll do my usual thang and break it down by plotline (instead of by character this time).
The Lee/Dee/Anders/Kara quadrangle was done slightly better than I was expecting. I felt that Lee's comment, "If she's dead I'll let you," was more bravado than anything else, but I also thought that there was some genuinely well crafted drama in the situation. I felt Lee's decision to have Dee try to save Kara was genuinely because he had to find some way to pacify Sam or the whole of the defence would fall apart more than wanting his wife to risk his life for his...whatever she is. I appreciated Dee's attitude too - she isn't going to be aware of the complex motivations Lee has in sending her on the rescue, and then her buddy gets shot to shit. I thoroughly enjoyed her attitude which I found to be professional if cold, and the slap she gave Kara was just perfect. Lee's face at the end when he was hugging Dee was also perfect - so lost and confused and relieved and did more to explain his feelings for his wife than dialogue could. Let's just hope it continues being this interesting next week.
Helo/Athena/Hera. I'm going to assume that Helo had to shoot his wife because suicide is a sin. I'm also going to assume that he shot her in the chest or something and not the stomach like it sorta seemed because...way to doom your wife to a slow and painful death there, bud. I'm going to assume that Hera recognised Athena through the same spyware frequencies that the cylons seem to use to tell each other apart.
I thought Adama's attitude towards Helo was a bit rich, what with the sensitive information, because really, he gave her all that and decided to trust her. That was always going to be a threat if she died. Perhaps now things are different because when he gave her that commission he didn't know she was suddenly going to be destabilised by the news her daughter was alive, but it's not like he relieved her of duty at that point.
Helo's words to Roslin were nice, though I'd have added that everything she's done to find earth from the moment she sent lieutenant Thrace to retrieve the Arrow of Apollo was also an act of faith, and some of those acts of faith split and threatened the entire fleet. Which could be rebutted by the fact that Roslin's the president and Helo's not, but...it would also be a good point in terms of the complex cylon/human/religious situations both characters find themselves in. Roslin did not disappoint me in her "Yeah, I take responsibility for what I did," attitude.
Boomer/Hera. I feel terrible for saying this, but I wish Grace Park were a better actress, or perhaps I should just wish I understood her acting more (since some people don't seem to have a problem with it). In the earlier seasons, I always felt she did better with Athena than with Boomer, but since the start of the second season her Boomer has really improved, and here I thought her Boomer was much better than her Athena. I was with Boomer when she was saying, "Take Hera, I'm done with her. I'm done with all of this." Because I could feel her anger and pain - it's exactly the same anger and pain that was with her in Downloaded, except she's slowly had every last target taken away from her.
Athena stole her life once, and now, waltzing back in, magically calming this child that Boomer's been struggling with for months, she's stealing it again. There's no point caring for the Chief, she thinks, it'll just hurt her more. She knows he's moved on; she's tried to make her peace, to help Cally, she does want to be a good person, but it's still gotta hurt inside. Knowing that your whole life is gone, and your new life sucks, and your attempt to recapture a tiny, tiny fragment of that old life was met with complete failure. So yes. I understand her viciousness and her bitterness and her statements that she doesn't believe cylons and humans can live together. Because whether or not she believes that and whether or not she still cares about the Chief really isn't the point. The point is she needs to needle and whatever she can, she hurts and she wants to spread that hurt because she's tired of keeping it inside and waiting for some miraculous karmic balance to be restored. It's harder to imagine yourself as a human when you've returned to them, and they've spat at you.
But still, I thought threatening to break Hera's neck was too much. If she's that broken I'd like to have seen it. Also, I think she was bluffing, angry that she's paying the price of being a cylon and Athena isn't. It felt like a forced recall to the mini series.
Caprica is developing a murderous streak, isn't she? I mean, sure she could have just tied her up, or left her unconscious?
Caprica, as always, I love. Focused more on the survival of the child, having always been in love with a human, having lead the cylons to New Caprica perhaps with more honest intentions because while it was with the expectations of regaining her love and a part of her life among the humans, she also probably didn't have anything like the baggage of Boomer, with the hundreds of people who knew and felt personally betrayed by her. Regardless, I think it perfectly in character for her to put the life of the child and the future first. I think she's still beautifully and tragically lost without Gaius. I think she doesn't care who wins anymore, humans, cylons, she's had her illusions of both shattered. Gaius was supposed to love her, and he left. D'Anna was supposed to love her, and she left. Also, CAPRICA!SIX IS ON GALACTICA! THIS IS SO AWESOME!
Baltar/Three/Crackiness. Bye Three. I'm really going to miss you. I also still have a really strong desire to vid "The Future" by Leonard Cohen to you, but I fear I'll lack the clips, the time, and the ability to cut down the song. Perhaps in a few months. I also hope you're not boxed indefinitely. Still, the cylons are running out of models pretty quickly. I mean, I really hope they explain to us WHY they aren't in contact with the final five. Plus now they've only got six of them left, four dudes and two girls, and one of the dudes never seems to show (Hi Simon!).
I don't have anything particularly deep to say about this because while I enjoy the bizarre messianic relationship between Baltar and Three, it was more of the same. Awesome, but still more of the same. Big tease about the final five and then a worldclass pistol-whip. GO CHIEF!
Starbuck/Destiny/Helo. This I enjoyed. I thought Katee Sackhoff's acting was very strong here. She takes to her "destiny" with bitterness and sourness but an almost disturbing focus. She doesn't deny it as I thought she would. (Though the naysayer in me would point out that if Tigh's assertion that "you've seen one supernova, you've seen them all," combined with the relative ease with which you can find images of the cosmos in our, less-spacefaring society, suggests that she could have seen that picture anywhere).
The point is, her overarching reaction was, "Yes. This makes sense. I believe this." This is what Leoben told her, and his sway over her is still huge.
Kara's always been screwed-up, and this season it's even more so. I've seen a lot of people over the net saying it's gone beyond now, and it's getting daft and too "emo". I disagree actually. It's like, if anything, I felt a little that way in some sections of the second season (never hugely, never enough to detract from anything), but in the third, I finally feel that the shit she's gone through and the issues she's been left with serve a purpose beyond generating sympathy for a maverick. It's leading somewhere and I feel this is a massive vindication of this. But it's someplace pretty...dark.
I said in my reaction posts to the first run of episodes this season that I thought Tigh needed to fail at redemption, that that was the ultimate, tragic and fulfilling end to the way he totally broke himself as a functioning human. I'm still disappointed that that hasn't happened, though I hold out some hope. He's pretty much gone back to his previous role of non-functioning human, but this time with an added eyepatch and minus a wife. When was the last time he did anything interesting? He was thrown completely outside of his minimal parameters of functionality when he returned to Galactica because of what had happened (see earlier posts), and all that's happened is he's been shoved back into those parameters and they're still a bad fit. We don't seem to be seeing that with Tigh (and I think we deserve to), but we ARE seeing that with Starbuck, who had much the same thing happen to her.
And I'm willing to consider that Starbuck's story neither has, nor needs, a happy end. Though considering she's a main character, I'm not totally sure how that'll play out. Either way, I predict strife. Yes, strife.
Next week - DUDE! Laura, I love you. And that is all.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-23 11:28 am (UTC)Not only has Boomer's old boyfriend moved on and married the woman who murdered her, he's had a child with that woman, when that was something Boomer had wanted for the two of them. And now there's a child in her life, and she ought to bond with with it, but that child is yet another reminder of how Athena has gotten everything Boomer wanted. And had a child with the wrong guy (and how weird would it be to find out that a close friend of yours, whom you grieved when you thought was dead, had become romantically involved with your clone, using your memories of your friendship as a springboard to that new relationship?) And Helo becomes yet another person who seems to have decided that Sharon Valerii 2.0 is an improvement over the original, and transferred all his affection to the copy.
Boomer's life sucks. Her big plan to get Cylons and humans to live in harmony totally failed, and now she's lost respect among her own people as well as having become firmly identified in the minds of her former friends as a member of the junta which ruled New Caprica with an iron fist. It's not just 'stuff I did when I was a sleeper agent and couldn't help myself' any longer. Finding out her replacement was the one to waltz into the Cylon HQ and grab the ship keys probably didn't help Boomer's mood post-New Caprica debacle either.
Bottom line, at least after she was downloaded she could comfort herself with the notion that people hated her because she was a Cylon. It wasn't her. It was the sleeper programming and the fact that she was part of a species that every human hated without caveats. Finding out someone who looks like you has gone to your old home and taken over your old life to the point that she's wearing a uniform. Well, that would be a blow. And now Athena's chased Boomer into her new home, has charmed Hera, and has gotten Boomer's only Cylon friend gushing over how special she is. And then comes the realisation that even after having found out from Boomer that she wasn't so accepted after all, Athena still intends to take the kid and go back to the humans.
However, I would've preferred to see this stuff onscreen, as opposed to having to extrapolate it and fanwank Boomer's actions until they started making sense. Hell, they could've at least put something in the fucking previouslies like they did back in S2 when they got lazy about continuity.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-23 05:21 pm (UTC)Yeah, it really sucks to be Boomer. Between you and Becka you've convinced me that this 'sudden' change in character actually makes sense - accept for the near neck snapping, I still don't buy that. The unfortunate part is, once again, the fans have to fill in a lot of blanks. At least we can do it more successfully than with Lee/Dee. But, like Lee/Dee, it seems that the Boomer storyline ended up on the cutting room floor. Promo shots for at least two eps showed Boomer with Hera on the basestar and did we see Boomer at all in any significant way between the New Caprica storyline and EoJ?
Since you brought up Athena using Helo's memories of Boomer, I've been wondering for awhile now if it's really Athena Helo is in love with? It seemed to me his feelings for Boomer were very strong before she left him behind on Caprica. Not knowing she was a Cylon, he accpeted Athena as her, as the woman he loved, as soon as he saw her. But have he or the writers stopped to think that his wife is not the woman he fell in love with? That's not to say he doesn't love Athena, but she is a very different person from Boomer. And what if Athena had never gotten pregnant? There's a lot of unanswered questions there.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 11:19 pm (UTC)Re: Boomer/Chief/Cally, goodness only knows. And I'm betting that'll be shelved for a while, since Boomer seems to be embracing her inner Cruella de Vil right now. Taking a Break, however, would indicate that Lee and Dee don't have the only marriage that's haunted by ghosts, although Tyrol and Cally seem to be doing a better job of coping. I would feel more sure about anything in the Tyrol/Boomer (or even just Tyrol & Boomer, as in interaction) field if we'd gotten one scene of them interacting during the Occupation. I mean, I'm guessing it wouldn't have been a pleasant scene, but she was there four months and they never spoke? So I guess the writers are keeping their options open re: Tyrol.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-09 09:09 pm (UTC)Re: Tyrol/Boomer interactions, they do have one very brief, weird interaction in the Resistance webisode series. I say weird because it basically amounts to Tyrol hanging around the jail and Boomer...I can't even recall. Making smalltalk basically. Chief was trying to get some info from her and I think she was being friendly but saying she didn't have any. It was weird and a bit awkward, but also looked liked they'd gotten over the worst of the weirdness. I dunno. Like Boomer was still in the "I'm trying to be the most understanding cylon ex-girlfriend EVAR!" mode. And Tyrol was in a "Find allies where you can and don't mention it to your wife," sort of mood.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 11:39 pm (UTC)Anybody more analytical probably couldn't have coped with the cognitive dissonance of having genocidal in-laws, expecting a science project baby, and knowing there are hundreds of copies of your wife/girlfriend wandering around. Not to mention the whole thing where they never actually met until he'd been stuck on Caprica for a week, but he thought he knew her from his memories of another copy, and she knew him from having inputted those memories into her own consciousness.
It's also possible that being rescued by Athena intensified Helo's existing feelings for the person he thought she was. Human beings thrive on encouragement, and her supposedly going AWOL to launch a suicidal rescue mission would presumably make him think that Boomer wanted to save him more than she wanted to be with her boyfriend on Galactica. Whether her feelings were platonic or romantic, she picked him. Or so he thinks. Not to mention the fact that existing feelings would likely have been intensified by spending a lot of time together, adrenaline rush as they tried to evade the evil Cylons, find other humans, and locate a convenient fallout shelter with tons of supplies. I think whichever Cylon came up with the 'plot' of this experiment had seen a fair number of romantic movies!
All kidding aside, the experiment was trying to engineer a human falling in love with a Cylon, not just take advantage of that love. Their view of Helo comes from pre-war Boomer. Who either knew Helo had a thing for her and politely ignored it, or saw him as a close platonic friend, but the other Cylons viewing her memories thought that friendship could be a springboard for the experiment. Athena, Six, and Doral don't know he loves her, and after throwing them together, engineer scenarios in order to test him.
Now, that's kind of irrelevant, because maybe Helo loved her all along and just had a good enough poker face that Boomer didn't realise the extent of his feelings. And merely transferred those feelings to the new "Boomer". Which would be creepy. But given that a fair bit happened between 1.01 and his declaration in 1.07, maybe the Cylons meddling added some baking powder to his existing feelings. One hopes,t o minimise the creepiness.
As for what if she hadn't gotten pregnant, I think the sequence of events suggests the pregnancy was just one factor, i.e. Helo's actions in between realising she's a Cylon and her breaking the news of the pregnancy. He has a prime opportunity to kill her at the start of 1.12 but manages only to wound her despite being close to her and having plenty of time to aim, what with her putting down her own gun and just standing there waiting (suicidal ideation? Taking a calculated risk that Helo won't be able to kill her in cold blood?).
But in the next scene they're both elsewhere and her wound's been bandaged. He's really mad but he seems to want to keep her around as a hostage (also so he can yell at her, fire warning shots at her, and make her sit in the rain). By the start of 1.13, however, they've moved to the museum, and that move was entirely the hostage's idea. And the hostage no longer seems worried that he'll follow through on his threats and actually shoot her. He doesn't want her dead, he wants her there to snipe at. That all happens pre-revelation. So I'm guessing even if the experiment hadn't worked, he would've come around eventually. Would've taken longer, because he wouldn't have had the psychological crutch of the pregnancy, but his actions suggest he was already looking for a reason not to kill her or run away from her.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-23 06:00 pm (UTC)Between promo shots that never made it into the episodes and some of Grace Park's comments in the interviews on the SciFi media player, I'm fairly certain more of this was present but cut. Unfortunately, as you note, it really robs Boomer of her character arc. I mean...I do get it, as shown above. And I didn't have to spend too long thinking about it (neck snapping notwishtanding). BUT, the character deserved more detail than the shorthand she got.
As to the rest of your post, thanks for putting it much more eloquently and with much better grammar than me. :)