The survival debate! I know! There is the idea, let's survive this first and then pick up our morals, our dignity later. Nope. I agree with you, survival is no excuse to become monsters. I don't think either side asks whether they can live with themselves. Laura and Bill used to long ago. Laura used to carry her sins on slips of paper in her pocket and Bill used to say things about, 'living with it.' But that was then.
See, I think the reason why I'm so irked about the constant "we have to be worthy of surviving" schtick we get from Bill (or at least we used to in S3) is that I think the show does a really good job of this most of the time.
Because it makes me question my preconceptions. So, for instance, I absolutely agree that survival is no excuse to become a monster because then you haven't survived. Cain is proof of this. But that said, I also don't think that you have to prove your worthiness to survive. Survival is an inalienable right. But one sometimes you have to fight for.
So, for instance, when they were considering unleashing the Cylon plague before Helo killed the infected prisoners on the sly, I really didn't have much sympathy for Adama's position, and I basically was siding with Roslin (although I'd also note that the show didn't give us any reason to believe that it would actually do more than wipe out a couple dozen basestars at most). Because "we have to be worthy of surviving," is an absolutist argument in a situation where absolutes don't exist. Neither Roslin nor Adama wants to become Cain, but Roslin had an extremely potent point about being okay with history judging her because that would mean this all survived into history.
All I can really say for sure is, every time Adama argues against something for some nebulous reason like, "we have to be worthy of surviving," I want to smack him upside the head and say, "OKAY, WE'LL ALL JUST SIT HERE AND WAIT TO DIE THEN, SHALL WE?" because it puts everything into a binary context of Cain vs Pacifism, and even as a hippy pacifist, I know stuff ain't always that simple?
Blargh, see, this is what this show does to my brain. I'm sorry, I'm rambling incoherently now, and I'll stop.
But I did have something else thing to add! Firstly Sixes! Yes, we did get awesome Sixness with Natalie, and seeing Six in a different context was amazing. But I'm still sad that every time we might end up with more Caprica she's sidelined. First by Head!Six then by D'Anna, now by Natalie. It's not that I'd want to get rid of any of those characters or cut their screentime: they're all awesome. I just find it an entertaining meta-commentary on how forgotten Caprica is in-show. ;)
And Natalie! Natalie as leader. She was awesome, I do not understand why she had to die.
I do. I didn't understand for a while and I was very sad, but then I got it. And if anything, it made me sadder, even though I decided it was a legitimate creative deicision.
Natalie chose for the Cylon and she chose death. For every single one of them. Forever. That's massive. To quote Kendra, and to get at a strong recurring theme in the show - "You make your choices and you live with them, and in the end, you are those choices."
Natalie chose death for her entire race. You can't make that kind of a decision and not go first.
She claimed that for their lives to have any meaning, they had to die. So she did.
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Date: 2008-08-25 10:27 am (UTC)See, I think the reason why I'm so irked about the constant "we have to be worthy of surviving" schtick we get from Bill (or at least we used to in S3) is that I think the show does a really good job of this most of the time.
Because it makes me question my preconceptions. So, for instance, I absolutely agree that survival is no excuse to become a monster because then you haven't survived. Cain is proof of this. But that said, I also don't think that you have to prove your worthiness to survive. Survival is an inalienable right. But one sometimes you have to fight for.
So, for instance, when they were considering unleashing the Cylon plague before Helo killed the infected prisoners on the sly, I really didn't have much sympathy for Adama's position, and I basically was siding with Roslin (although I'd also note that the show didn't give us any reason to believe that it would actually do more than wipe out a couple dozen basestars at most). Because "we have to be worthy of surviving," is an absolutist argument in a situation where absolutes don't exist. Neither Roslin nor Adama wants to become Cain, but Roslin had an extremely potent point about being okay with history judging her because that would mean this all survived into history.
All I can really say for sure is, every time Adama argues against something for some nebulous reason like, "we have to be worthy of surviving," I want to smack him upside the head and say, "OKAY, WE'LL ALL JUST SIT HERE AND WAIT TO DIE THEN, SHALL WE?" because it puts everything into a binary context of Cain vs Pacifism, and even as a hippy pacifist, I know stuff ain't always that simple?
Blargh, see, this is what this show does to my brain. I'm sorry, I'm rambling incoherently now, and I'll stop.
But I did have something else thing to add! Firstly Sixes! Yes, we did get awesome Sixness with Natalie, and seeing Six in a different context was amazing. But I'm still sad that every time we might end up with more Caprica she's sidelined. First by Head!Six then by D'Anna, now by Natalie. It's not that I'd want to get rid of any of those characters or cut their screentime: they're all awesome. I just find it an entertaining meta-commentary on how forgotten Caprica is in-show. ;)
And Natalie! Natalie as leader. She was awesome, I do not understand why she had to die.
I do. I didn't understand for a while and I was very sad, but then I got it. And if anything, it made me sadder, even though I decided it was a legitimate creative deicision.
Natalie chose for the Cylon and she chose death. For every single one of them. Forever. That's massive. To quote Kendra, and to get at a strong recurring theme in the show - "You make your choices and you live with them, and in the end, you are those choices."
Natalie chose death for her entire race. You can't make that kind of a decision and not go first.
She claimed that for their lives to have any meaning, they had to die. So she did.