BSG S2 DVDs
Sep. 10th, 2006 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hazelkJust seen the first seven episodes of S2, which seems as good a point as any to pause and review. At this rate I might actually be up to speed by the time the third season airs. It's a dizzying prospect.
These episodes follow on directly from KLG, the season 1 finale. The hallucinogenic babylicious ending turns out to have been a hallucination (thank the gods), Six has just changed the style of her appearances. The settings are more dreamlike and obviously symbolic (Adama takes the baby to the river in a dark reflection of the Moses story) while the representations of Gaius himself are more realistic or at least contemporary. Those dreamlike qualities got me thinking for the first time that Six might be an artefact of Gaius’s psychosis, so it was cool when that was raised in Home II. Jumping ahead though.
Plot developments in KLG split the action into three colour-coded locations, Galactica (noirish), Kobol (irridescent green) and Caprica (gold – it’s stopped raining). On Galactica the shooting of Adama puts Tigh in command, his inadequacies as a leader mirror those of Crashdown on Kobol while his relationship with Ellen makes that of the the other Macbeths (Baltar and Six) look healthy and well-adjusted by comparison. Their issues are comparable but Six is more patient and Baltar less lumpen.
On Kobol there’s an obviously better candidate for the leadership, Chief Tyrrol, but the situation on Galactica is complicated by the civilian-military conflict and the show plays the weaknesses of both types of organisation well. Military chains of command are too rigid, democracy muddled and more open to manipulation. Roslin plays the faith card very interestingly. She seems to believe there may be something in the old stories and the existence of Kobol backs that up (having eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth) but is even more confident in the power of those beliefs to provide the foundation for a political power base and as a mechanism for generating hope. The latter is a lesson she learned from Adama in the miniseries, here he’s shown to be a good deal more cynical about religion, her being prepared to stake her faith and Starbuck’s services in the arrow of Apollo seems to have genuinely convinced him that she’s insane. Irony good.
On the issue of the portrayal of faith, one slightly uneasy observation is that the Geminon, the fundamentalist colony seems to be a black planet and I’m not sure if that’s deliberate or an oversight. Also the way they decided to play Six and Sharon responding to “toaster” as if to a racist epitaph (in fact stating this explicity) seems at odds with the colour-blindness thatappeared to operate on Galatica and had suggested that race was an outgrown issue in this society. Or that it could be more a civilian problem or an elephant so unmentionable as to be invisible.
The whole arrow of Apollo business still strikes me as too Tomb Raider to really convince but there seem to be more online complaints about the baby factory in The Farm (too X-files) and I was fine with that. When you like a storyline it’s easy, even fun, to think of ways even the silliest aspects of it could work. Love being necessary for hybrid conception? Cylon identity seems to be transferred into mature brain cells and isn’t necessarily encoded in DNA. Maybe love, or rather faith that one is loved, is necessary to trigger downloading the necessary patterning factors into the germline, whatever form they take. In any case the whole series is based on taking the cheese and playing it for real in term of how people would react if it were and that side of things is still holding up brilliantly. Everyone has layers, Tigh can be competent (remembering old tactics), Roslin duplicitous (when she orders Sharon thrown out of the hold). Helo is as dumb as post but his trust in Sharon seems to be justified and Gaius can be Six’s definition of a man but as cowardly as ever he was.
These episodes follow on directly from KLG, the season 1 finale. The hallucinogenic babylicious ending turns out to have been a hallucination (thank the gods), Six has just changed the style of her appearances. The settings are more dreamlike and obviously symbolic (Adama takes the baby to the river in a dark reflection of the Moses story) while the representations of Gaius himself are more realistic or at least contemporary. Those dreamlike qualities got me thinking for the first time that Six might be an artefact of Gaius’s psychosis, so it was cool when that was raised in Home II. Jumping ahead though.
Plot developments in KLG split the action into three colour-coded locations, Galactica (noirish), Kobol (irridescent green) and Caprica (gold – it’s stopped raining). On Galactica the shooting of Adama puts Tigh in command, his inadequacies as a leader mirror those of Crashdown on Kobol while his relationship with Ellen makes that of the the other Macbeths (Baltar and Six) look healthy and well-adjusted by comparison. Their issues are comparable but Six is more patient and Baltar less lumpen.
On Kobol there’s an obviously better candidate for the leadership, Chief Tyrrol, but the situation on Galactica is complicated by the civilian-military conflict and the show plays the weaknesses of both types of organisation well. Military chains of command are too rigid, democracy muddled and more open to manipulation. Roslin plays the faith card very interestingly. She seems to believe there may be something in the old stories and the existence of Kobol backs that up (having eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth) but is even more confident in the power of those beliefs to provide the foundation for a political power base and as a mechanism for generating hope. The latter is a lesson she learned from Adama in the miniseries, here he’s shown to be a good deal more cynical about religion, her being prepared to stake her faith and Starbuck’s services in the arrow of Apollo seems to have genuinely convinced him that she’s insane. Irony good.
On the issue of the portrayal of faith, one slightly uneasy observation is that the Geminon, the fundamentalist colony seems to be a black planet and I’m not sure if that’s deliberate or an oversight. Also the way they decided to play Six and Sharon responding to “toaster” as if to a racist epitaph (in fact stating this explicity) seems at odds with the colour-blindness thatappeared to operate on Galatica and had suggested that race was an outgrown issue in this society. Or that it could be more a civilian problem or an elephant so unmentionable as to be invisible.
The whole arrow of Apollo business still strikes me as too Tomb Raider to really convince but there seem to be more online complaints about the baby factory in The Farm (too X-files) and I was fine with that. When you like a storyline it’s easy, even fun, to think of ways even the silliest aspects of it could work. Love being necessary for hybrid conception? Cylon identity seems to be transferred into mature brain cells and isn’t necessarily encoded in DNA. Maybe love, or rather faith that one is loved, is necessary to trigger downloading the necessary patterning factors into the germline, whatever form they take. In any case the whole series is based on taking the cheese and playing it for real in term of how people would react if it were and that side of things is still holding up brilliantly. Everyone has layers, Tigh can be competent (remembering old tactics), Roslin duplicitous (when she orders Sharon thrown out of the hold). Helo is as dumb as post but his trust in Sharon seems to be justified and Gaius can be Six’s definition of a man but as cowardly as ever he was.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-16 04:39 am (UTC)That's an interesting way of thinking of them -- I'd seen it more easily with Tigh but yeah, it exists in many places.