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shallownessBSG
As ever, I watched three eps in one go, and the first two (Sacrifice, The Captain’s Hand) belong together, but the third (Downloaded) was something else. I knew that Helo/Caprica!Sharon baby’s birth would be a big deal, but I don’t think I expected the show to do something so dazzling narratively.
First, what felt like a slightly more integrated Apollo has adventures off the Galactica episodes in Sacrifice than Black Market. Billy misjudged things and proposed to Dee, and fair play, if she had feelings for someone else, she couldn’t say yes, but it set up Billy feeling he had to prove himself, doing something stupid and getting shot…fatally (Lee getting shot had zero tension about his recovery or even his will to live.) And by having Ellen, Lee and Billy at the bar, with the leaders gradually realising this, added personal stakes for Tigh, Adama and Roslin. Roslin’s grief at the end, after remaining so steadfast, and the horror of the older generation burying the young - there goes a potential civilian leader, there goes the future – cut.
At the same time, Adama using Sharon’s body seemed like a smart move, to get an in and buy enough time. Better than Kara’s not so smart move, OF COURSE, going in herself, unsurprisingly getting recognised, ruining the advantage Lee had got them and then inevitably there was a fire fight, people got killed and Lee got shot, which did become a little engine for angst for her, from the final scene where she was at least coming to approach him about accidentally shooting him, but saw that Dee was calling him to live and all, through to the next ep. And indeed, tendin to Lee, caused more angst for Dee and Billy.
Ellen is basically a cockroach.
The viewer, complicit in seeing Caprica!Sharon as a person, is all ‘but you can’t’ when any human emphasises that she’s ‘just’ a machine. Adama’s complicated feelings on the issue continued to come under scrutiny.
The abortion storyline in The Captain’s Hand felt a bit bludgeony, in part because it hasn’t really come up – well, Roslin definitely wasn’t supportive of a mother’s choice a few episodes ago - unlike the question of human survival and the birth rate. The idea of the scared young woman being her patent’s property was !!!! Adama getting involved in how the doctor on his (military) ship was running secret abortions for the fleet was fair enough. Acually, instead of the bludgeony stor about the two camps on abortion and juggling personal beliefs with vote etting with governing, the question of asylum would have been interesting in and of itself if they’d gone after stickin to the structure of the Colonies to build their political structure on, even though communities must be mixed on different ships, the survivors from each colony may vary wildly in nuber, and different ships have their own status…
Anyway, it was exacerbated by the election that Roslin was never expected to stand for. She and her new more political aide were smug about battling Varek, without realising he’s now in charge of the black market. Though she should have known better, Roslin got blindsided and stabbed in the back by Baltar. Don’t know that demanding to sestarections being dire made sense.
Meanwhile, the question of the Pegasus’s command came up. I didn’t remember the bit in the previously where Adama said he was promoting the chief engineer, because he was the best they had. My memory could be wrong as it was just an exchange of dialogue, but I wondered if it was a fake previously. Anyway, we hadn’t come across the chief engineer before. It made total sense that Adama was reluctant to give up his crew, but given who the Pegasi had been under, what they’d been through and done, hindsight suggests he should have done more mixing.
And it’s never been entirely clear to me what Captain Thrace’s position has been since Cane promoted her, but here she was, being Starbuck, still possibly not embracing her captaincy, on a ship run by an engineer (seriously, about his only defining character trait) who was doing it wrong, among Pegasi pilots who were having conflicts of interest all over the place.
So Apollo had to clean things up, and getting all my sympathy for having to deal with both Captain Unreasonable and Starbuck, And of course both he and Kara had FEELINGS about the state of them. Captain Unreasonable made the wrong call, boy howdy did he, and Lee had to step up to sort the mess out, while Captain Chief Engineer heroically sacrificed himself to make up for it.
And then Major Adama got promoted again, quicker than he should have, but deservedly, though it takes him off the Galactica, which will be interesting. *And I think Apollo not dying trumps the cursed nature of commanding the Peasus.) He and Kara hugged it out, and as ever, the gravitational pull of Lee/Kara is the biggest, sorry, Lee/Dee.
BUT Hera got born (aww), and Roslin panicked (I was sarcastic about needing some magic human/Cylon baby blood in case anyone else had cancer), and Six went ballistic at the threat to ‘our’ child, blaming Gaius for failing (ha! At least Roslin didn’t trust him on the adoption front, although the fake dead baby was a little reminiscent of using the wrong Sharon’s cadaver, but Baltar wasn’t really involved in all that.) Helo was heartbroken, Caprica!Sharon was rage-filled, although, again, ineffective, and Hera and her mother have no idea who she is, although I think Laura would have been better placed to have no contact with the kid at all if she hoped to keep it a secret.
BUT that wasn’t where things got massively interesting for we went back in time to see reincarnated Six AND SHE HAD HER OWN GAIUS IN HER HEAD, and it was fascinating to see Six be the vulnerable one, and Gaius the knowing one, angry at the genocide. And whatever is going on with them is its own thing, possibly part of God’s plan, but not the Cylons’, and just fun to watch the actors play with the dynamic.
Moreover, Sharon also got reincarnated (I’m not entirely sure about how and when some of her memories were downloaded into Caprica!Sharon, but let’s handwave), and she was more Sharon than Cylon, with FEELINGS about what she’d done (more general feelings about the Galactica than Chief, though it was romantic love that Reincarnated!Six played on), and not conforming.
And there was Lucy Lawless playing the Midwife!Cylon, and also having fun doing so, with her own motivations that Reincarnated!Six and Reincarnated!Sharon slowly came to understand, (never forget that Sharon killed a lot of her copies and even if they got reincarnated, shouldn’t that make it harder to keep on loving her?) Reincarnated!Six found out actual Gaius had survived and their teaming up to try to forge a different path is fascinating.
That was also running in conjunction with Anders and the Resistance still going after the Cylons. You know, seeing as they hadn’t got rescued yet. And he got spared, while survival dictated that the Midwife Cylon didn’t.
The show has definitely earned my trust that it can manage all these versions of characters crossing paths with other characters.
I wish I had taken in what numbers they had. Surely they go up to 12.
As ever, I watched three eps in one go, and the first two (Sacrifice, The Captain’s Hand) belong together, but the third (Downloaded) was something else. I knew that Helo/Caprica!Sharon baby’s birth would be a big deal, but I don’t think I expected the show to do something so dazzling narratively.
First, what felt like a slightly more integrated Apollo has adventures off the Galactica episodes in Sacrifice than Black Market. Billy misjudged things and proposed to Dee, and fair play, if she had feelings for someone else, she couldn’t say yes, but it set up Billy feeling he had to prove himself, doing something stupid and getting shot…fatally (Lee getting shot had zero tension about his recovery or even his will to live.) And by having Ellen, Lee and Billy at the bar, with the leaders gradually realising this, added personal stakes for Tigh, Adama and Roslin. Roslin’s grief at the end, after remaining so steadfast, and the horror of the older generation burying the young - there goes a potential civilian leader, there goes the future – cut.
At the same time, Adama using Sharon’s body seemed like a smart move, to get an in and buy enough time. Better than Kara’s not so smart move, OF COURSE, going in herself, unsurprisingly getting recognised, ruining the advantage Lee had got them and then inevitably there was a fire fight, people got killed and Lee got shot, which did become a little engine for angst for her, from the final scene where she was at least coming to approach him about accidentally shooting him, but saw that Dee was calling him to live and all, through to the next ep. And indeed, tendin to Lee, caused more angst for Dee and Billy.
Ellen is basically a cockroach.
The viewer, complicit in seeing Caprica!Sharon as a person, is all ‘but you can’t’ when any human emphasises that she’s ‘just’ a machine. Adama’s complicated feelings on the issue continued to come under scrutiny.
The abortion storyline in The Captain’s Hand felt a bit bludgeony, in part because it hasn’t really come up – well, Roslin definitely wasn’t supportive of a mother’s choice a few episodes ago - unlike the question of human survival and the birth rate. The idea of the scared young woman being her patent’s property was !!!! Adama getting involved in how the doctor on his (military) ship was running secret abortions for the fleet was fair enough. Acually, instead of the bludgeony stor about the two camps on abortion and juggling personal beliefs with vote etting with governing, the question of asylum would have been interesting in and of itself if they’d gone after stickin to the structure of the Colonies to build their political structure on, even though communities must be mixed on different ships, the survivors from each colony may vary wildly in nuber, and different ships have their own status…
Anyway, it was exacerbated by the election that Roslin was never expected to stand for. She and her new more political aide were smug about battling Varek, without realising he’s now in charge of the black market. Though she should have known better, Roslin got blindsided and stabbed in the back by Baltar. Don’t know that demanding to sestarections being dire made sense.
Meanwhile, the question of the Pegasus’s command came up. I didn’t remember the bit in the previously where Adama said he was promoting the chief engineer, because he was the best they had. My memory could be wrong as it was just an exchange of dialogue, but I wondered if it was a fake previously. Anyway, we hadn’t come across the chief engineer before. It made total sense that Adama was reluctant to give up his crew, but given who the Pegasi had been under, what they’d been through and done, hindsight suggests he should have done more mixing.
And it’s never been entirely clear to me what Captain Thrace’s position has been since Cane promoted her, but here she was, being Starbuck, still possibly not embracing her captaincy, on a ship run by an engineer (seriously, about his only defining character trait) who was doing it wrong, among Pegasi pilots who were having conflicts of interest all over the place.
So Apollo had to clean things up, and getting all my sympathy for having to deal with both Captain Unreasonable and Starbuck, And of course both he and Kara had FEELINGS about the state of them. Captain Unreasonable made the wrong call, boy howdy did he, and Lee had to step up to sort the mess out, while Captain Chief Engineer heroically sacrificed himself to make up for it.
And then Major Adama got promoted again, quicker than he should have, but deservedly, though it takes him off the Galactica, which will be interesting. *And I think Apollo not dying trumps the cursed nature of commanding the Peasus.) He and Kara hugged it out, and as ever, the gravitational pull of Lee/Kara is the biggest, sorry, Lee/Dee.
BUT Hera got born (aww), and Roslin panicked (I was sarcastic about needing some magic human/Cylon baby blood in case anyone else had cancer), and Six went ballistic at the threat to ‘our’ child, blaming Gaius for failing (ha! At least Roslin didn’t trust him on the adoption front, although the fake dead baby was a little reminiscent of using the wrong Sharon’s cadaver, but Baltar wasn’t really involved in all that.) Helo was heartbroken, Caprica!Sharon was rage-filled, although, again, ineffective, and Hera and her mother have no idea who she is, although I think Laura would have been better placed to have no contact with the kid at all if she hoped to keep it a secret.
BUT that wasn’t where things got massively interesting for we went back in time to see reincarnated Six AND SHE HAD HER OWN GAIUS IN HER HEAD, and it was fascinating to see Six be the vulnerable one, and Gaius the knowing one, angry at the genocide. And whatever is going on with them is its own thing, possibly part of God’s plan, but not the Cylons’, and just fun to watch the actors play with the dynamic.
Moreover, Sharon also got reincarnated (I’m not entirely sure about how and when some of her memories were downloaded into Caprica!Sharon, but let’s handwave), and she was more Sharon than Cylon, with FEELINGS about what she’d done (more general feelings about the Galactica than Chief, though it was romantic love that Reincarnated!Six played on), and not conforming.
And there was Lucy Lawless playing the Midwife!Cylon, and also having fun doing so, with her own motivations that Reincarnated!Six and Reincarnated!Sharon slowly came to understand, (never forget that Sharon killed a lot of her copies and even if they got reincarnated, shouldn’t that make it harder to keep on loving her?) Reincarnated!Six found out actual Gaius had survived and their teaming up to try to forge a different path is fascinating.
That was also running in conjunction with Anders and the Resistance still going after the Cylons. You know, seeing as they hadn’t got rescued yet. And he got spared, while survival dictated that the Midwife Cylon didn’t.
The show has definitely earned my trust that it can manage all these versions of characters crossing paths with other characters.
I wish I had taken in what numbers they had. Surely they go up to 12.
