BSG 3.1-2:New Beginnings

[hazelk]

Occupation and Precipice

The new season starts off with a return to the super-episodic, almost novelistic style of storytelling that served the series so well in its beginning. Locations this time are the human settlement on New Caprica, the Cylon headquarters and the absent Galactica with what remains of the fleet. In the first two episodes the human resistance movement provides the main arcs. Occupation ends with a suicide bombing while Precipice closes on the cusp of a retaliatory shooting of the usual suspects.

The tone is a long way from Casablanca, beer but no bars, no Rick’s here, no music even. Do Cylons sing? Having unkillable robots as the occupying forces does provide a striking metaphor for the sense of powerlessness that fuels any terrorist movement, justified or not. No matter how many buildings are blown up, how many atrocities committed in the name of freedom, nothing changes, they’re always back, the same indistinguishable smug faces, the same outlandish and impractical clothes.

Equally realistic are the rifts forming between humans, collaborators do battle with resistance fighters and Laura Roslin turns her air lock dumping disdain for cylon prisoners against those who were once her own. It’s horribly necessary but at least her opposition to the suicide bombing bears some traces of the concern for falling population that misguidedly lead her to ban abortion not so long ago. She’s correct that something needs to be done to prevent falling into despair and complete appeasement but given the Cylon’s regenerative powers any action that reduces human numbers is counterproductive in the most direct possible way.

Suicide bombing is Colonel Tigh’s strategy, which he justifies by an old soldier’s argument. It’s his time to be the hero, hardened by torture he steps up to the place of an absent Adama but is psychologically just holding the fort for the old man’s return. His faith is justified in a confrontation between Adama and his steadily ballooning son (I get the feeling the writers enjoyed the fat jokes a little too much but who wouldn’t), where Lee rediscovers some the idealistic hope that seemed to die during the whole Pegasus affair.

Ellen Tigh seems set to scupper her husbands plans but from love not malice. Strange how effectively the loose sexuality that marked her as a villainess on first appearance gets spun into heroism, sleeping with the Cylon seemed at first to be her contribution to the Resistance, getting their leader a reprieve. Second time around it became clearer that, like the original Lady MacBeth, her first loyalty was to love. Love as a furnace that burns the wrong papers, not quite the world destroying passion of Baltar and Six but passionate love still gets a bad rap on this show.

From passionate to plain creepy and well Starbuck. Kara Thrace has come a long way. From the miniseries hot shot fighter pilot to kept woman hell with the Cylon who loves her. Everyday she kills him. The baby story is even stranger, can Cylon hybrids download when they die? Do Cylons ever have sex with other Cylons or does their God decree it a contraceptive sin? I’m hoping Baltar isn’t a Cylon because his downward journey is so much more delicious if he makes it to the bottom by his all too human self but they keep showing his ‘death scene’ at the beginning of every show. It’s either a big lie or maybe he’s something more interesting than just another sleeper agent. Maybe Caprica Gaius is the human template for a brand new model. He’s so individualistic that meeting other copies of himself might be the final thing to push him over the edge. Is there an edge left he can fall from?

Comments

[c-mantix.livejournal.com]

Ha! I guess I meant to reference the manner in which many of the less 'experienced' or 'humanised' Cylons seem to yearn for their hearts to soar and sing like that of their counterparts. Their pining, for lack of a better word, is very much like that of an tone-deaf person wishing to sing well. This notion always intrigued me as far as Data's musical instrument playing abilities were concerned. He could engage in artistic endeavour, but the product of his efforts wasn't considered true art. Even he didn't see it as such.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

A sort of phantom limb feeling? Except that they never had that limb in the first place.

I get that I think, that struggle with the idea of individuality, individual emotions because it's not that they have no feelings the Sharons love all the Sharons and they all feel something hate? pity? contempt? towards humanity as a whole but feelings directed at a single individual who the rest of the model may not care for at all are new and strange and yearnful?