the last two episodes of BSG I watched
Mar. 5th, 2021 08:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessBSG 3.14 The Woman King
I don’t understand the relevance of the title. But what a timely episode with questions of medical ethics and consent in an epidemic resounding with current discussions around vaccinations.
However, it took me a while to get over them stuffing something that patently had not happened on screen ’previously’ in the ‘previously’ bit. And I did hit pause and checked I hadn’t somehow skipped an ep. (Stop doing that so often! Plan better!)
Really loved that the focus landed on Helo’s character and was about him as more than Sharon’s love interest (as lampshaded) and how it fed into the New Caprica’s Resistance fighters’ ‘against the universe’ solidarity and the colonies’ role in everyone’s identity and bringing in the civilian part of the fleet. There was a nod to Roslin’s plan to try Baltar, with Verek warning of Dire Stuff happening, which made me feel small-minded for just snarking that Roslin was awfully sure of the verdict and went further thn what I’d previously forecast might happen. She and Tori had also come up with better surveillence for Caprica (who Athena called Six?) We finally got some of Gaius in her head. Caprica wasn’t sure what she was doing, but Roslin didn’t pick up on the similarity between her and Gaius talking to himself.
‘Previously’ Captain Agathon was assigned to look after civilian refugees housed on the Galactica, who included Sagittarians (I’d forgotten their quirks or, tbh, if we’d ever been exposed to them, which we must have been.) Anyway, they Did Not Like Doctors, but they were clearly sick. As a 2021 viewer, I was reeling off suggestions until we learned the specifics of their illness. Still, I would later query how they knew Hera – how did she get infected? – would react to it like a fully human baby, but minor detail. And then an overly stressed Helo, dealing with people who were sick but didn’t want to be treated and the other people thrown in their midst and getting sick and having to be treated seemed to speak too hastily to a grieving mother.
As it became more clearly about a dodgy doctor and racism without ethnicity being a factor, which is clever, and tying it into the prejudices against Helo (I mean, every time Tigh sneered about Sharon to Helo, it was TOO EASY to riposte about his oh so loyal wife, SORRY, ELLEN. NOT SORRY.)
I think my brilliant suggestion after he first went with his suspicions to his bosses and the military Doc was ‘Less testosterone would be helpful, dudes’, because even though he sometimes didn’t state his case impeccably, Helo was right, based on what he knew then, that the Bad Doc was making things more difficult than need be, but everyone (including Bill Adama, for shame, too right he should apologise later) was too caught up in Our People (Capricans, resistance fighters) good, ethics schmethics to listen to that. Liked that they showed Helo was already stressed before all this started, it was a demotion, and had tensions with Sharon as he listened to his conscience, his reason and what the mother was telling him i.e. that something was wrong.
Even a Bad Doc (played by Bruce Davison who I always associate first with X-Men) who was playing god ought to have paused before treating the Sagittarean wife of Apollo. And, indeed, he did.
But yeah, his dressing down from the Military Doc and Tigh admitting his error were satisfying, and Adama earning his salute instead of forcing it from Helo made the show return to its normal axis, and yet there was that final look between the grieving mother and Helo that acknowledged that this couldn’t bring her son back. I hope that they continue to develop the tensions between the colonies in the brewing brouhaha over Baltar (although logically, whither the alliances of the ships they’ve been on and how whether people were on New Caprica or stayed onboard complicate the old colonial ties? Of course, we mainly see it through the Galacticans, so there’s the military camraderie.)
3.15 A Day in the Life
Two main strands to the next episode that came together inevitably. I don’t think we’ve ever had a human have such a strong sense of imagining they were somewhere else based on memory communing with a ghost (other than whatever Gaius does with Six) before. But we finally met a version of Mrs Adama, as called up by Adama on their anniversary day. This had implications for his relationship with Laura and Lee, most of all, but also with his crew. The most explosive moment in this strand for me was Lee disclosing that his mother had been an alcoholic who had mistreated him and his brother after their father left her. It made so much sense. (As did Adama’s guilt, anger and grief at that.)
The other strand examined Tyrol andKallie’s Cally's ‘rough patch’ more closely, which was tied up in her wanting a family life, even if it couldn’t be as they’d panned on new Caprica, and him being her boss and husband and a father. I was with Cally about needing to consider baby Mike somewhat higher in that mix. But Tyrol made them work on what ought to have been a day off and the job went badly, dangerously wrong. And as they were about to be rescued (dangerously - I was legit worried for both or one of them because they’re second-tier characters, especially Cally) their lack of privacy for what could be their final words and Cally asking for Adama to find civilians to step in to look after their son hitting him as a father, Tyrol finally saw how selfish he’d been and admitted it. Guh. I was still worried until probably the point where Cally could reach out for their fingers through the glass.
And that rescue was genuinely gripping and I didn’t care that some of the best pilots were out there risking their lives for two of the people who help keep the ship running.
And there was Bill/Laura (promoted by ghostly Mrs Adama/part of Bill Adama talking to himself, which seems the surest analysis giving his neuroses about not reaching out to his son and sacfificing too much.) So, it undermines my previous mynon about what did happen on New Cylon, but at last they addressed the possibilities of what could have happened, and Adama realised that his previous decision to be the Admiral and nothing but after the boxing match wasn’t tenable. And Roslin was on the same page anyway, with the gift and all that was said, and so they seemed to agree to start something.
I’m not sure if Bill’s gift of the law books (‘how convenient a place is ‘storage’) means that Lee will be chairing the committee after all. But the fleet needs lawyers…
ETA: And I've been spelling Cally wrong too. Thanks, Radio Times.
I don’t understand the relevance of the title. But what a timely episode with questions of medical ethics and consent in an epidemic resounding with current discussions around vaccinations.
However, it took me a while to get over them stuffing something that patently had not happened on screen ’previously’ in the ‘previously’ bit. And I did hit pause and checked I hadn’t somehow skipped an ep. (Stop doing that so often! Plan better!)
Really loved that the focus landed on Helo’s character and was about him as more than Sharon’s love interest (as lampshaded) and how it fed into the New Caprica’s Resistance fighters’ ‘against the universe’ solidarity and the colonies’ role in everyone’s identity and bringing in the civilian part of the fleet. There was a nod to Roslin’s plan to try Baltar, with Verek warning of Dire Stuff happening, which made me feel small-minded for just snarking that Roslin was awfully sure of the verdict and went further thn what I’d previously forecast might happen. She and Tori had also come up with better surveillence for Caprica (who Athena called Six?) We finally got some of Gaius in her head. Caprica wasn’t sure what she was doing, but Roslin didn’t pick up on the similarity between her and Gaius talking to himself.
‘Previously’ Captain Agathon was assigned to look after civilian refugees housed on the Galactica, who included Sagittarians (I’d forgotten their quirks or, tbh, if we’d ever been exposed to them, which we must have been.) Anyway, they Did Not Like Doctors, but they were clearly sick. As a 2021 viewer, I was reeling off suggestions until we learned the specifics of their illness. Still, I would later query how they knew Hera – how did she get infected? – would react to it like a fully human baby, but minor detail. And then an overly stressed Helo, dealing with people who were sick but didn’t want to be treated and the other people thrown in their midst and getting sick and having to be treated seemed to speak too hastily to a grieving mother.
As it became more clearly about a dodgy doctor and racism without ethnicity being a factor, which is clever, and tying it into the prejudices against Helo (I mean, every time Tigh sneered about Sharon to Helo, it was TOO EASY to riposte about his oh so loyal wife, SORRY, ELLEN. NOT SORRY.)
I think my brilliant suggestion after he first went with his suspicions to his bosses and the military Doc was ‘Less testosterone would be helpful, dudes’, because even though he sometimes didn’t state his case impeccably, Helo was right, based on what he knew then, that the Bad Doc was making things more difficult than need be, but everyone (including Bill Adama, for shame, too right he should apologise later) was too caught up in Our People (Capricans, resistance fighters) good, ethics schmethics to listen to that. Liked that they showed Helo was already stressed before all this started, it was a demotion, and had tensions with Sharon as he listened to his conscience, his reason and what the mother was telling him i.e. that something was wrong.
Even a Bad Doc (played by Bruce Davison who I always associate first with X-Men) who was playing god ought to have paused before treating the Sagittarean wife of Apollo. And, indeed, he did.
But yeah, his dressing down from the Military Doc and Tigh admitting his error were satisfying, and Adama earning his salute instead of forcing it from Helo made the show return to its normal axis, and yet there was that final look between the grieving mother and Helo that acknowledged that this couldn’t bring her son back. I hope that they continue to develop the tensions between the colonies in the brewing brouhaha over Baltar (although logically, whither the alliances of the ships they’ve been on and how whether people were on New Caprica or stayed onboard complicate the old colonial ties? Of course, we mainly see it through the Galacticans, so there’s the military camraderie.)
3.15 A Day in the Life
Two main strands to the next episode that came together inevitably. I don’t think we’ve ever had a human have such a strong sense of imagining they were somewhere else based on memory communing with a ghost (other than whatever Gaius does with Six) before. But we finally met a version of Mrs Adama, as called up by Adama on their anniversary day. This had implications for his relationship with Laura and Lee, most of all, but also with his crew. The most explosive moment in this strand for me was Lee disclosing that his mother had been an alcoholic who had mistreated him and his brother after their father left her. It made so much sense. (As did Adama’s guilt, anger and grief at that.)
The other strand examined Tyrol and
And that rescue was genuinely gripping and I didn’t care that some of the best pilots were out there risking their lives for two of the people who help keep the ship running.
And there was Bill/Laura (promoted by ghostly Mrs Adama/part of Bill Adama talking to himself, which seems the surest analysis giving his neuroses about not reaching out to his son and sacfificing too much.) So, it undermines my previous mynon about what did happen on New Cylon, but at last they addressed the possibilities of what could have happened, and Adama realised that his previous decision to be the Admiral and nothing but after the boxing match wasn’t tenable. And Roslin was on the same page anyway, with the gift and all that was said, and so they seemed to agree to start something.
I’m not sure if Bill’s gift of the law books (‘how convenient a place is ‘storage’) means that Lee will be chairing the committee after all. But the fleet needs lawyers…
ETA: And I've been spelling Cally wrong too. Thanks, Radio Times.
