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beccatoriaSooo, finally getting around to posting about Razor, which I liked. But be warned, spoilers for the whole thing (and the extended edition) follow. And it's really really really long. Sorry. I just started typing and found it hard to stop even though I think I've repeated myself loads. I guess I'm getting back into the swing of this slowly...
Originally I was worried when I heard this was going to be about Pegasus. I liked that story, but I wasn't the world's biggest Cain fan and I wanted more new stuff. I wanted to move the story forward and see my favourite characters. Not guest stars and newbies.
I was wrong. This fits here perfectly. It's enough of a side adventure I don't feel cheated by not being told about it at the time. It's enough of a big adventure it bears its own story. But it's huge because of Kendra. And because of the hybrid. Which the Galactica crew never find out about. But it's such a large part of the story that it does need to be told even though it leads up to such a tiny moment.
So we need this story and we need to hear it from Kendra and on top of that, we need to hear it now, right before we jump back into the Starbuck-story.
To jump straight to my opinion of the extended edition, some of the new stuff I liked - like the extended sections with Young!Adama who the actor simply nailed. If I'd seen him independently of Oldama, I'd've though him horribly forced, but he just nails young EJO being youg Adama. So kudos there. Though I'm still unclear as to whether the historic cylon baseship escaped with the hybrid and the prisoners, or if the prisoners were being held in that shack thing we see Adama run out of and the shaking of the ground was a groundquake from the ship rising nearby. But whatever; not hugely important.
But I wasn't actually a fan of a lot of the other stuff they included. I think because I'm attached to this story as a minimalist one.
Explain too much and you lose the pointless, monotone, quiet tale of Kendra and her brutal legacy. I love that she refuses to explain. That she never once, not ever, reaches out to another person until right at the end, when an insane machine offers her forgiveness and he's the one she can speak to. And even then, it's a single, painful statement. One word. Does she want forgiveness? "Yes."
Her conversations with Kara when they dance around the point; both of them sneaking down to abuse substances and threaten each other and be just the same kind of person, separated by a razor-edge. It tells us enough. We don't need Kendra to start trying to talk about Cain to Kara, or Kara to bring up her mother. It belittles the weight of both of those women's relationships with...those other dead women. We don't need Kara to know what the hell Kendra's talking about when she hands her Cain's knife.
I think it's better when we don't. When Kendra simply is who she is. Passes on the legacy to someone who doesn't know what she's accepting; a beautiful parallel to the Hybrid's prophecy that Kara doesn't know exists.
A parallel between every moment in Kara's life leading up to her becoming so unstable she'll dive into a maelstrom and come back a prophet or harbinger of doom, is every moment in Kendra's life leading up to that moment of forgiveness and destruction and failed warning, which only adds to the sense that there's no point trying; no reasons, just actions. The nihilistic moment she shares with a dying machine.
Likewise I didn't think that Cain's backstory was necessary. Okay, it gives us one more reason she is how she is. But...I don't want one more reason. It's not enough to explain why, forty years later, she makes the choices she makes. I'm inclined to throw back at Cain and her angsty backstory the same thing that Lee throws at Kendra. I'm sure she was the only member of the military her age with a horrific story. The bravery of telling the story of a girl abandoning her sister is somewhat lost by the fact I feel the story was trying to hard to give us reasons we didn't need. Not that it's not a character-shaping experience, but just...I don't need the retcon right now. Again, I feel it's explaining too much in a story that has minimalism as its strength.
I loved this chance to see more Cain - and it was amazing to see her as a more three-dimensional human. But there's a certain element of, well, nihilism again. That she does what she does because that's the choice she makes and that's it. No reasons, just actions. She made the decision to look to her imperative; war. She made that decision and in that moment she stepped away from anything except the razor edge and...
...And I'm probably the only person who feels this way, because generally I know that stories and actions need motivations and plot and stuff, and generally I agree. But in this instance, I feel the power is in the madness. The power and the horror is in the fact that she just did it. That of course her decision wouldn't have felt right coming from another character, so obviously character portrayal is a part of this, but that we don't need to know. We just need to see her make that decision. Become Kurtzveil.
The power is in trying to see Kendra live in the space after that decision. The power is in the utter lack of any reason for anything. There comes a point when why you did something ceases to matter. It only matters that you did it.
There's a negative space around the motivations of Cain and her crew that defies scrutiny. And I hated it the first time I saw Pegasus and Resurrection Ship. I found it lazy and boring. But here, we spend so much time with the characters; with Kendra and Cain and even Gina, that we go through those inarticulable choices with them. We (I) understand who they are even if I don't understand what they're doing and that's...a powerful thing to do. To portray that sense of a world gone mad and to show it's not chaotic or terrifying; it's very flat. It's very simple. It's just a matter of choosing. Of pulling a trigger and discovering your world didn't end. That it didn't matter. That nothing matters.
So I guess that having gone through that journey with Cain without knowing it was all down to this horrific thing she had to justify doing when she was just a kid, I dislike it being shoe-horned in afterwards. Because I find it lacking as a motivation. As I already spoke about at far too much length; I prefer her without motivation to having a weak one.
Plus, it screws with how old I imagine Cain is. In the flashbacks she could be eight, she could be thirteen. If she's eight, that makes her forty-eight now; just about as old as I can imagine her being. If she's thirteen that makes her fifty-three which really doesn't fit for me. Couldn't they have had her be in some other terrorist attack or something? We know that the Colonies had those. Having it all happen right on the Armistice Day is a little cheesy. We can buy Adama's story of that day since he obviously would have been in service at the time, and therefore doing something. But this too? Pfft.
If there's a message in this movie, for Kendra, for Cain, for Kara, it's that nothing matters. Who you are is a function of where you've been and what you've done and what you will do is a function of who you are. The world just is. You just are. As Kendra notes in the opening crawl, all you have are your choices.
Kendra chose to stick by hers even if she couldn't justify a damn one of them.
And that's interesting.
So curse you, extended edition, for making it less so!
Gina gets her own section of this entry because she's awesome and Tricia Helfer is awesome. And the moment when she aims the gun at Cain in that reverse-echo of her shooting her in Resurrection Ship is painful because both women nail it so hard. If there's any doubt that Gina really cared about Cain it's disolved then. Though really, I got that impression the first time round (which was really the second time around) when she shot her in the face.
Again, minimalist. Perhaps because Michelle Forbes and Tricia Helfer and the actress playing Kendra Shaw are all such great minimalist actors. And because when she wasn't being forced to extended-edition angst-it-up about her mom and such, Starbuck was being loud and raucus and STARBUCK which is a nice side-swipe at the dark tale and angsty behaviour one would expect from Starbuck in this situation when usually she's forced into Kendra's angst-ridden role.
Dammit I wish Kendra hadn't died, even though I knew she had to from the beginning.
Okay, having told the tale of the Violent Women, I'm now moving on to the Not-So-Violent Men. Namely Lee and Adama.
I enjoyed Lee in this because he was being competant and honourable and more like the Lee I remember who cares about things like due process, than the Lee that moons after girls and looks pained all episode. That said, he didn't really do that much until the end.
AND THIS IS THE BIT WHERE I GET TO HATE ON ADAMA AGAIN!
Because, really, these days, no review would be complete without that bit, would it?
And again, I feel I must really apologise to anyone out there who's an Oldama fan, because I used to count myself among you. Before he became a hypocritical ass.
The bit at the end pissed me off.
Adama comes along for the ride and promises not to steal the reigns. But he does anyway. Okay, I think, he's the Admiral and this is the military; he's allowed to do that. But then, after having stuck his fingers into Lee's command, he hands command back at a really tricky moment, that he got them into, and on top of that has the balls to act like he's the moral authority and he's reluctantly trying to teach Lee a lesson about the burdens of command.
I mean, Lee psychs himself up to make a truly horrible decision. Adama steals that choice away from him. Then when there's another horrible decision, Adama hands the decision back to Lee, not with a "I'm sorry that this ended up being just as crummy a decision as you just had to psych yourself up for, but it really does have to be your call," tone, but rather a condescending, paternalistic attitude of, "Sometimes commanding is hard, boy. Like now. When your Daddy half-takes-control and makes you make all the tricky decisions. But I'm worried you need a lesson about the burdens of being a commander, so I'm going to pass the decision to kill Starbuck on to you. Yup, that decision I just took away from you a minute ago. Only I'm allowed to risk the safety of the fleet for my favouriteson surrogate daughter."
It's not that he doesn't have the techincal authority. It's that from an audience's perspective (or at least mine) he comes off as a jerk. And even from an in-universe perspective I'd argue that as a good commander he could have phrased it better.
Plus there's that whole stupidly manufactured bit about it being Starbuck to stays behind. I was hoping there'd be some explaination in the extended edition, but no.
They have a great and plausible reason why she'd be flying the raptor. But staying behind? If you're talking about chance of survival, then Kendra should've stayed as she was already wounded. If you're talking about importance to the fleet, then Starbuck - as CAG and one of the fleet's only flight instructors - would surely outweigh a marine.
Which only leaves the idea that Lee didn't trust anyone else to actually be willing to stay and do the job. I have a vague problem with that because it means essentially that he's not sure people will follow the chain of command. But only a vague problem as there's a difference between sending someone on a very dangerous mission and flat-out asking them to die. There always will be. My main problem is more along the lines of, would three sentences, such as (only better phrased):
LEE: It'll have to be Starbuck.
ADAMA: Why?
LEE: I know Starbuck will stay and finish the job. Do you know any of those marines well enough to tell if they wouldn't refuse an order to commit suicide?
And it's important because it's not implicit. Because it might be implicit if I were on that bridge and not watching on television and not aware that this is fiction. But I am aware of those things, so when the main character is sent on a suicide mission when there are at least two more practical candidates I know it's just to ratchet up tension. And without some sort of lip service to explain this fact in-show, I resent being left to make things up to explain it myself. It breaks the fourth wall. This was a very lazy, "OOOOH TENSION!" moment.
It would have been better had Kendra simply realised what Lee would have to do and commed through to him to tell him she'd stay. Then given Kara the knife and ordered her out against her protests.
And finally Adama's comments about Cain at the end.
I really hated him saying, "From a tactical viewpoint it's hard to disagree with anything she did."
Because again, it's cheap and lazy. Because showing people doing horrible things because it's tactically advantageous is no longer cutting edge, but Adama says it like Ron Moore thinks we'll think it is. Even though we had that story in season two. We already know that.
On top of that, as Lee says, she santioned the murder of civilians. I'm all about the moral grey. I'm all about loving watching Cain even though she became a monster. But you know what? Screw it. She was a monster. The entire point of her existence is to show that. To show how you become that. How quiet it is. How pointless. How blunt. How one day, you just decide, there are no lines.
This story isn't about how she made a lot of choices that history could construe as acceptable. This story isn't about how you can take any viewpoint and apply it so extremely you can justify anything. This story isn't about sliding scales and how you can slip from one end to another and never know when you stepped over a line. This story is about the fact that you stepped over it.
And how you own the choice to do that after the fact. And how impossible that is. And how similar you can be to someone who hasn't stepped across that threshold (Kendra vs Starbuck).
This is a story about the madness of war. The horror and senselessness of the things you can do. And most interestingly the numb place you find yourself afterwards. The point is there is no justification.
So Adama stepping out with his trite pseudo-edgy commentary felt...like a letdown? It felt like what I saw in the story was far more interesting than what Ron Moore saw.
You don't need to suggest that "the bad guys might have a point," to be dark or interesting or morally confusing or philosophical.
Finally, to end my bitching about Adama, because believe it or not, I really do feel vaguely guilty about it, there was his reasoning about he could have so easily become Cain.
Bullshit, says I.
This is the guy who refused to let Roslin use the military as police. This is the guy Moore originally said he wanted to be an interesting counterpoint to Roslin by being more democractically minded while Roslin was more brutal. Like in Flesh and Bone. But...that seems lost lately.
He says he had the President in his face arguing for the civilian fleet. He didn't even acknowledge her as the President at first. If he were Cain he would have shot her. He made a decision to follow her lead consciously because he knew it was right. Because he saw Billy and Dee flirting and decided they'd better start having babies. Adama had civilians in his face. The fact it was the President was incidental. He had civilians in his face and he decided to protect them. When Cain had civilians in her face and they tried to tell her to follow her military mandate to protect them, she had them killed or kidnapped.
Then Adama says he has Saul Tigh keeping his tactics and conscience in balance. Okay, to that, I have only this to say: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA! Oh Adama, rarely has your stupid, homoerotic bias been more obvious.
Finally he talks about how Lee has an effect on his decisions. That I can buy. That was even kind of sweet.
In sum; it's really weird trying to defend the good character of a character I've started to despise from his own low opinion of himself. Oy.
Finally, I'm not sure what to think of Adama's prophetic visions when he stuck his hand in that ex-hybrid-bath-gunk.
I certainly don't think it's evidence that he's a Cylon. Not only hadn't they developed good human models at that point, but we know there's only one unrevealed Cylon. We also know that more than one human has had Cylon style visions under the influence of drugs, etc. Even if we assume that both the oracles are frauds and Baltar's insane, Roslin's getting visions, both literally prophetic and now oddly telepathic. And Roslin and Adama can't both be the final reveal.
So I'm more inclined (and actually very at peace) to go with the idea that it's another sign that this is a mystical universe. Like the occasional references to religion and Scully's immortality in The X-Files. So far I think the show's done a good job of mixing science and spirituality in terms of Cylon technology. So I have no problem with Adama being gifted with visions of the past upon sticking his hand in that goop. It was even kind of creepy. Plus, it's always interesting to give the atheist religious experiences.
I do wonder if it'll ever come up again, though.
Probably not...
Which concludes my review. Sorry it's both long and rambling and not very well organised. I know I spent a fair amount of time whinging. I think that's mostly due to tiredness as - if we're talking about the non-extended edition - I do actually really really like this piece.
I'd forgotten just how much I loved watching this show until I saw this. And...ugh. April? For real? That's just painful.
Originally I was worried when I heard this was going to be about Pegasus. I liked that story, but I wasn't the world's biggest Cain fan and I wanted more new stuff. I wanted to move the story forward and see my favourite characters. Not guest stars and newbies.
I was wrong. This fits here perfectly. It's enough of a side adventure I don't feel cheated by not being told about it at the time. It's enough of a big adventure it bears its own story. But it's huge because of Kendra. And because of the hybrid. Which the Galactica crew never find out about. But it's such a large part of the story that it does need to be told even though it leads up to such a tiny moment.
So we need this story and we need to hear it from Kendra and on top of that, we need to hear it now, right before we jump back into the Starbuck-story.
To jump straight to my opinion of the extended edition, some of the new stuff I liked - like the extended sections with Young!Adama who the actor simply nailed. If I'd seen him independently of Oldama, I'd've though him horribly forced, but he just nails young EJO being youg Adama. So kudos there. Though I'm still unclear as to whether the historic cylon baseship escaped with the hybrid and the prisoners, or if the prisoners were being held in that shack thing we see Adama run out of and the shaking of the ground was a groundquake from the ship rising nearby. But whatever; not hugely important.
But I wasn't actually a fan of a lot of the other stuff they included. I think because I'm attached to this story as a minimalist one.
Explain too much and you lose the pointless, monotone, quiet tale of Kendra and her brutal legacy. I love that she refuses to explain. That she never once, not ever, reaches out to another person until right at the end, when an insane machine offers her forgiveness and he's the one she can speak to. And even then, it's a single, painful statement. One word. Does she want forgiveness? "Yes."
Her conversations with Kara when they dance around the point; both of them sneaking down to abuse substances and threaten each other and be just the same kind of person, separated by a razor-edge. It tells us enough. We don't need Kendra to start trying to talk about Cain to Kara, or Kara to bring up her mother. It belittles the weight of both of those women's relationships with...those other dead women. We don't need Kara to know what the hell Kendra's talking about when she hands her Cain's knife.
I think it's better when we don't. When Kendra simply is who she is. Passes on the legacy to someone who doesn't know what she's accepting; a beautiful parallel to the Hybrid's prophecy that Kara doesn't know exists.
A parallel between every moment in Kara's life leading up to her becoming so unstable she'll dive into a maelstrom and come back a prophet or harbinger of doom, is every moment in Kendra's life leading up to that moment of forgiveness and destruction and failed warning, which only adds to the sense that there's no point trying; no reasons, just actions. The nihilistic moment she shares with a dying machine.
Likewise I didn't think that Cain's backstory was necessary. Okay, it gives us one more reason she is how she is. But...I don't want one more reason. It's not enough to explain why, forty years later, she makes the choices she makes. I'm inclined to throw back at Cain and her angsty backstory the same thing that Lee throws at Kendra. I'm sure she was the only member of the military her age with a horrific story. The bravery of telling the story of a girl abandoning her sister is somewhat lost by the fact I feel the story was trying to hard to give us reasons we didn't need. Not that it's not a character-shaping experience, but just...I don't need the retcon right now. Again, I feel it's explaining too much in a story that has minimalism as its strength.
I loved this chance to see more Cain - and it was amazing to see her as a more three-dimensional human. But there's a certain element of, well, nihilism again. That she does what she does because that's the choice she makes and that's it. No reasons, just actions. She made the decision to look to her imperative; war. She made that decision and in that moment she stepped away from anything except the razor edge and...
...And I'm probably the only person who feels this way, because generally I know that stories and actions need motivations and plot and stuff, and generally I agree. But in this instance, I feel the power is in the madness. The power and the horror is in the fact that she just did it. That of course her decision wouldn't have felt right coming from another character, so obviously character portrayal is a part of this, but that we don't need to know. We just need to see her make that decision. Become Kurtzveil.
The power is in trying to see Kendra live in the space after that decision. The power is in the utter lack of any reason for anything. There comes a point when why you did something ceases to matter. It only matters that you did it.
There's a negative space around the motivations of Cain and her crew that defies scrutiny. And I hated it the first time I saw Pegasus and Resurrection Ship. I found it lazy and boring. But here, we spend so much time with the characters; with Kendra and Cain and even Gina, that we go through those inarticulable choices with them. We (I) understand who they are even if I don't understand what they're doing and that's...a powerful thing to do. To portray that sense of a world gone mad and to show it's not chaotic or terrifying; it's very flat. It's very simple. It's just a matter of choosing. Of pulling a trigger and discovering your world didn't end. That it didn't matter. That nothing matters.
So I guess that having gone through that journey with Cain without knowing it was all down to this horrific thing she had to justify doing when she was just a kid, I dislike it being shoe-horned in afterwards. Because I find it lacking as a motivation. As I already spoke about at far too much length; I prefer her without motivation to having a weak one.
Plus, it screws with how old I imagine Cain is. In the flashbacks she could be eight, she could be thirteen. If she's eight, that makes her forty-eight now; just about as old as I can imagine her being. If she's thirteen that makes her fifty-three which really doesn't fit for me. Couldn't they have had her be in some other terrorist attack or something? We know that the Colonies had those. Having it all happen right on the Armistice Day is a little cheesy. We can buy Adama's story of that day since he obviously would have been in service at the time, and therefore doing something. But this too? Pfft.
If there's a message in this movie, for Kendra, for Cain, for Kara, it's that nothing matters. Who you are is a function of where you've been and what you've done and what you will do is a function of who you are. The world just is. You just are. As Kendra notes in the opening crawl, all you have are your choices.
Kendra chose to stick by hers even if she couldn't justify a damn one of them.
And that's interesting.
So curse you, extended edition, for making it less so!
Gina gets her own section of this entry because she's awesome and Tricia Helfer is awesome. And the moment when she aims the gun at Cain in that reverse-echo of her shooting her in Resurrection Ship is painful because both women nail it so hard. If there's any doubt that Gina really cared about Cain it's disolved then. Though really, I got that impression the first time round (which was really the second time around) when she shot her in the face.
Again, minimalist. Perhaps because Michelle Forbes and Tricia Helfer and the actress playing Kendra Shaw are all such great minimalist actors. And because when she wasn't being forced to extended-edition angst-it-up about her mom and such, Starbuck was being loud and raucus and STARBUCK which is a nice side-swipe at the dark tale and angsty behaviour one would expect from Starbuck in this situation when usually she's forced into Kendra's angst-ridden role.
Dammit I wish Kendra hadn't died, even though I knew she had to from the beginning.
Okay, having told the tale of the Violent Women, I'm now moving on to the Not-So-Violent Men. Namely Lee and Adama.
I enjoyed Lee in this because he was being competant and honourable and more like the Lee I remember who cares about things like due process, than the Lee that moons after girls and looks pained all episode. That said, he didn't really do that much until the end.
AND THIS IS THE BIT WHERE I GET TO HATE ON ADAMA AGAIN!
Because, really, these days, no review would be complete without that bit, would it?
And again, I feel I must really apologise to anyone out there who's an Oldama fan, because I used to count myself among you. Before he became a hypocritical ass.
The bit at the end pissed me off.
Adama comes along for the ride and promises not to steal the reigns. But he does anyway. Okay, I think, he's the Admiral and this is the military; he's allowed to do that. But then, after having stuck his fingers into Lee's command, he hands command back at a really tricky moment, that he got them into, and on top of that has the balls to act like he's the moral authority and he's reluctantly trying to teach Lee a lesson about the burdens of command.
I mean, Lee psychs himself up to make a truly horrible decision. Adama steals that choice away from him. Then when there's another horrible decision, Adama hands the decision back to Lee, not with a "I'm sorry that this ended up being just as crummy a decision as you just had to psych yourself up for, but it really does have to be your call," tone, but rather a condescending, paternalistic attitude of, "Sometimes commanding is hard, boy. Like now. When your Daddy half-takes-control and makes you make all the tricky decisions. But I'm worried you need a lesson about the burdens of being a commander, so I'm going to pass the decision to kill Starbuck on to you. Yup, that decision I just took away from you a minute ago. Only I'm allowed to risk the safety of the fleet for my favourite
It's not that he doesn't have the techincal authority. It's that from an audience's perspective (or at least mine) he comes off as a jerk. And even from an in-universe perspective I'd argue that as a good commander he could have phrased it better.
Plus there's that whole stupidly manufactured bit about it being Starbuck to stays behind. I was hoping there'd be some explaination in the extended edition, but no.
They have a great and plausible reason why she'd be flying the raptor. But staying behind? If you're talking about chance of survival, then Kendra should've stayed as she was already wounded. If you're talking about importance to the fleet, then Starbuck - as CAG and one of the fleet's only flight instructors - would surely outweigh a marine.
Which only leaves the idea that Lee didn't trust anyone else to actually be willing to stay and do the job. I have a vague problem with that because it means essentially that he's not sure people will follow the chain of command. But only a vague problem as there's a difference between sending someone on a very dangerous mission and flat-out asking them to die. There always will be. My main problem is more along the lines of, would three sentences, such as (only better phrased):
LEE: It'll have to be Starbuck.
ADAMA: Why?
LEE: I know Starbuck will stay and finish the job. Do you know any of those marines well enough to tell if they wouldn't refuse an order to commit suicide?
And it's important because it's not implicit. Because it might be implicit if I were on that bridge and not watching on television and not aware that this is fiction. But I am aware of those things, so when the main character is sent on a suicide mission when there are at least two more practical candidates I know it's just to ratchet up tension. And without some sort of lip service to explain this fact in-show, I resent being left to make things up to explain it myself. It breaks the fourth wall. This was a very lazy, "OOOOH TENSION!" moment.
It would have been better had Kendra simply realised what Lee would have to do and commed through to him to tell him she'd stay. Then given Kara the knife and ordered her out against her protests.
And finally Adama's comments about Cain at the end.
I really hated him saying, "From a tactical viewpoint it's hard to disagree with anything she did."
Because again, it's cheap and lazy. Because showing people doing horrible things because it's tactically advantageous is no longer cutting edge, but Adama says it like Ron Moore thinks we'll think it is. Even though we had that story in season two. We already know that.
On top of that, as Lee says, she santioned the murder of civilians. I'm all about the moral grey. I'm all about loving watching Cain even though she became a monster. But you know what? Screw it. She was a monster. The entire point of her existence is to show that. To show how you become that. How quiet it is. How pointless. How blunt. How one day, you just decide, there are no lines.
This story isn't about how she made a lot of choices that history could construe as acceptable. This story isn't about how you can take any viewpoint and apply it so extremely you can justify anything. This story isn't about sliding scales and how you can slip from one end to another and never know when you stepped over a line. This story is about the fact that you stepped over it.
And how you own the choice to do that after the fact. And how impossible that is. And how similar you can be to someone who hasn't stepped across that threshold (Kendra vs Starbuck).
This is a story about the madness of war. The horror and senselessness of the things you can do. And most interestingly the numb place you find yourself afterwards. The point is there is no justification.
So Adama stepping out with his trite pseudo-edgy commentary felt...like a letdown? It felt like what I saw in the story was far more interesting than what Ron Moore saw.
You don't need to suggest that "the bad guys might have a point," to be dark or interesting or morally confusing or philosophical.
Finally, to end my bitching about Adama, because believe it or not, I really do feel vaguely guilty about it, there was his reasoning about he could have so easily become Cain.
Bullshit, says I.
This is the guy who refused to let Roslin use the military as police. This is the guy Moore originally said he wanted to be an interesting counterpoint to Roslin by being more democractically minded while Roslin was more brutal. Like in Flesh and Bone. But...that seems lost lately.
He says he had the President in his face arguing for the civilian fleet. He didn't even acknowledge her as the President at first. If he were Cain he would have shot her. He made a decision to follow her lead consciously because he knew it was right. Because he saw Billy and Dee flirting and decided they'd better start having babies. Adama had civilians in his face. The fact it was the President was incidental. He had civilians in his face and he decided to protect them. When Cain had civilians in her face and they tried to tell her to follow her military mandate to protect them, she had them killed or kidnapped.
Then Adama says he has Saul Tigh keeping his tactics and conscience in balance. Okay, to that, I have only this to say: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA! Oh Adama, rarely has your stupid, homoerotic bias been more obvious.
Finally he talks about how Lee has an effect on his decisions. That I can buy. That was even kind of sweet.
In sum; it's really weird trying to defend the good character of a character I've started to despise from his own low opinion of himself. Oy.
Finally, I'm not sure what to think of Adama's prophetic visions when he stuck his hand in that ex-hybrid-bath-gunk.
I certainly don't think it's evidence that he's a Cylon. Not only hadn't they developed good human models at that point, but we know there's only one unrevealed Cylon. We also know that more than one human has had Cylon style visions under the influence of drugs, etc. Even if we assume that both the oracles are frauds and Baltar's insane, Roslin's getting visions, both literally prophetic and now oddly telepathic. And Roslin and Adama can't both be the final reveal.
So I'm more inclined (and actually very at peace) to go with the idea that it's another sign that this is a mystical universe. Like the occasional references to religion and Scully's immortality in The X-Files. So far I think the show's done a good job of mixing science and spirituality in terms of Cylon technology. So I have no problem with Adama being gifted with visions of the past upon sticking his hand in that goop. It was even kind of creepy. Plus, it's always interesting to give the atheist religious experiences.
I do wonder if it'll ever come up again, though.
Probably not...
Which concludes my review. Sorry it's both long and rambling and not very well organised. I know I spent a fair amount of time whinging. I think that's mostly due to tiredness as - if we're talking about the non-extended edition - I do actually really really like this piece.
I'd forgotten just how much I loved watching this show until I saw this. And...ugh. April? For real? That's just painful.
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Date: 2007-12-24 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-24 12:19 pm (UTC)D'oh!
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Date: 2007-12-24 12:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-24 01:23 pm (UTC)The UK release is December 26th though I'm not sure if that's the extended edition.
Huh - just checked Amazon and I think it is the extended edition.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Battlestar-Galactica-Edward-James-Olmos/dp/B000WISSOK/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1198502459&sr=8-1
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Date: 2007-12-24 11:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-25 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-28 08:47 pm (UTC)Why thank you. ;) I look forward to any thoughts you might have!
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Date: 2008-01-02 04:01 am (UTC)Her conversations with Kara when they dance around the point; both of them sneaking down to abuse substances and threaten each other and be just the same kind of person, separated by a razor-edge. It tells us enough. We don't need Kendra to start trying to talk about Cain to Kara, or Kara to bring up her mother. It belittles the weight of both of those women's relationships with...those other dead women.
I agree. I’m about half way through the DVD commentary and it sounds as if in early drafts of the script there would have been even more Kara/Kendra conversations. I think this is a perfect case of it’s better to show us then tell us and hasn’t the series, in Kara’s case at least, shown us enough?
Likewise I didn't think that Cain's backstory was necessary. Okay, it gives us one more reason she is how she is. But...I don't want one more reason. It's not enough to explain why, forty years later, she makes the choices she makes…..The bravery of telling the story of a girl abandoning her sister is somewhat lost by the fact I feel the story was trying to hard to give us reasons we didn't need.
The backstory scene didn’t change my opinion of Cain one bit. Sure, that experience might have hardened her and perhaps made her have zero tolerance for weakness, but, as you said, it was not enough to explain why she was the person she was. One of the strengths of BSG is that we learn a lot about characters from their interactions with others. I get Lee Adama from experiencing how he acts and reacts to Kara, Adama, Laura, etc. It’s why I didn’t suddenly need Dead Pregnant Girlfriend to help explain his depression or an abusive mother to clarify his desire for acceptance and love. If we couldn’t have a season to get to know Helena Cain and why she was, in simplistic terms, a cold hearted murdering bitch, then it was best to leave why she was that way up to our imaginations rather than giving us a clichéd childhood trauma which, yes, thousands of children probably experienced and didn’t turn out like her.
But in this instance, I feel the power is in the madness. The power and the horror is in the fact that she just did it.
You know what would have been fascinating? If we discovered that Helena Cain grew up with her family, that they were still alive at the time of the attacks, and yet she made the choices we saw her make. Then we would be left to wonder if she was just born that way or perhaps her parents or military shaped her to be that way.
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Date: 2008-01-02 04:02 am (UTC)Adama comes along for the ride and promises not to steal the reigns. But he does anyway. Okay, I think, he's the Admiral and this is the military; he's allowed to do that. But then, after having stuck his fingers into Lee's command, he hands command back at a really tricky moment, that he got them into, and on top of that has the balls to act like he's the moral authority and he's reluctantly trying to teach Lee a lesson about the burdens of command.
I mean, Lee psychs himself up to make a truly horrible decision. Adama steals that choice away from him. Then when there's another horrible decision, Adama hands the decision back to Lee, not with a "I'm sorry that this ended up being just as crummy a decision as you just had to psych yourself up for, but it really does have to be your call," tone, but rather a condescending, paternalistic attitude of, "Sometimes commanding is hard, boy. Like now. When your Daddy half-takes-control and makes you make all the tricky decisions. But I'm worried you need a lesson about the burdens of being a commander, so I'm going to pass the decision to kill Starbuck on to you. Yup, that decision I just took away from you a minute ago. Only I'm allowed to risk the safety of the fleet for my favourite son surrogate daughter."
OK, did you read my post because I said EXACTLY the same thing, only with slightly different, but equally pissed off wording. I LOVE YOU! And Adama is pretty much dead to me. Short of him taking another bullet in the chest to save Lee and declaring on his deathbed what a horrible father he was and that he regrets not telling him how much he loves him and how proud he is of him I don’t know how he can redeem himself in my eyes.
Which only leaves the idea that Lee didn't trust anyone else to actually be willing to stay and do the job. I have a vague problem with that because it means essentially that he's not sure people will follow the chain of command. But only a vague problem as there's a difference between sending someone on a very dangerous mission and flat-out asking them to die.
Since Lee is so new to the command and he knows there is a distrust of the Galactica people in general and perhaps a dislike of him in particular I can see him being hesitant to trust anyone but Kara to carry out his order, particularly since his order means sacrificing one's life.
But I am aware of those things, so when the main character is sent on a suicide mission when there are at least two more practical candidates I know it's just to ratchet up tension.
Yeah, it was a very TV moment as in, “OMG, LEE MUST ORDER THE WOMAN HE LOVES TO DIE!” Eh.
This is the guy who refused to let Roslin use the military as police. This is the guy Moore originally said he wanted to be an interesting counterpoint to Roslin by being more democractically minded while Roslin was more brutal. Like in Flesh and Bone. But...that seems lost lately.
Nothing to add accept Good Point!
Adama had civilians in his face. The fact it was the President was incidental. He had civilians in his face and he decided to protect them. When Cain had civilians in her face and they tried to tell her to follow her military mandate to protect them, she had them killed or kidnapped.
While I do think Roslin and Lee and even Tigh have guided Adama for the better at times (when he’s not being a stubborn asshole), Adama never for a second considered killing civilians. Sure, he thought about taking Galactica and attacking the Cylons and leaving the fleet behind, but he was foolish enough to think he could encounter some measure of victory and then come back to the fleet. He always cared, it’s just that he may have been blinded by anger for a moment.
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Date: 2008-02-23 11:31 pm (UTC)I totally agree about Cain's backstory. ugh, what clumsy, cliched storytelling. and I only sort of half paid attention to the extended edition while showing it to friends.
I found the portrayal of Cain in Razor to be quite incoherent. I like that you interpret that as a positive thing -- as its own nihilistic brand of war narrative. the movie came with an insurmountable structural problem, which is that they set out to somehow tell Cain's story in a way that presumably would complicate or humanize her, but within the show's economy she must remain basically incomprehensible and inhuman as the foil to the Adama-Roslin contingent. if the idea is that she's just like them, ultimately, the whole show makes even LESS sense. and yeah,
I really hated him saying, "From a tactical viewpoint it's hard to disagree with anything she did."
also, because it's BS! proceeding with an attack when it turns into a suicide mission is NOT tactically savvy. if RDM wanted us to sympathize with Cain's choices on some level, they needed to look less dumb and meaningless, actually have some payoff in terms of helping humanity survive. but of course they couldn't, as per the paradox above.
I'm not complaining. I love Cain! I loved Razor. it was exactly what I needed it to be. SUPER GIRLSLASHY! without otherwise being overly awesome. I wrote about it some in the introduction to my BSG chapter.
my favorite aspect of this post is how it helped me understand and appreciate your vid, which I already loved, so much more! Hummingbird Song perfectly captures your reading of Cain and Kendra, here -- the nihilism. it's so neat to see the two critiques, in words and in pictures, as a pair.