BSG 3:16 Dirty Hands

[hazelk]

Apart from Bleak House, which I love beyond all reason, I’m not overly fond of Dickens. Maybe this episode should have been a six part BBC serial, as its major fault was the way it unravelled in order to all be tied up nicely at the end (not a mixed metaphor but is there a word for one that eats its own tail)?

Bleak House begins with a cinematic evocation of the fog of Chancery reaching into all sectors of society and the teaser had something of that feel. Focussing in on the deckhands at the beginning, close-ups of manual labour, greasy, sweaty, uncouth. a subtle bluegrass twinge added to the background music. Then tracking out with the raptor pilots, before zooming in on the President in her eyrie, from lowest to highest, ending explosively.

Roslin may have looked out like a princess in a tower but she was actually working, as the first exchange with Adama makes certain to clarify. It’s been over 51 days since the Cylons attacked and both are eager to set a course for earth. It’s been over 51 days since the Cylons attacked and the refinery workers are beginning to lose that wartime unrecompensated work ethic. Workers demand their case be heard but their foreman makes the diplomatic error of mentioning Baltar, which sends Roslin over the edge and she accuses them of extortion. Laura, oh Laura that was Adar’s argument when you were an education secretary prepared to resign over the teachers not being heard. You’re in his seat now, these people are not fellow professionals and there’s more than money at stake.

Cut to Cally and Tyrol. Cally taking the Esther Summerson role, no wonder everyone hates her. Nothing more nauseating than a Dickens heroine to the modern eye. She quotes Baltar too (and his memoir being called either “The little red Book” or, near as makes no difference, “My Struggle” is part of why I love Jane Espensen). Fandom seems confused that people like Cally would be reading it but see selenak’s post to be disabused of that scepticism.

Tyrol heads over to the dark satanic refinery and meets little Joe but is still the Masters’ man at this point and takes their side over that of the Hands. Chief that hurts, but it gets the machines moving and little Joe's underage secret is revealed. Tyrol wins a point about the dangers of a hereditary caste system forming but the solution brings him another Joe. Middle class Joe-who–wanted-to-be-an-architect and has a college boy’s sense of grievance about being relegated to peasant status.

Tyrol is finally tempted by Baltar’s book. I really think the book works brilliantly. It provides a genuine catalyst for seditious class war talk to make an appearance where before the tensions between knuckledraggers and pilots were apparent but not discussed. It reminds the audience how dangerous Baltar can be when he’s smart - it makes more sense that Zareck was afraid of a hurricane, he knows Gaius well. Most of all, it allows the unexpected but utterly convincing reveal of the playboy genius’s soil-tainted roots. I’m not quite sure what accent Callis was going for, rural Yorkshire mostly with a little generic yokel added in, still the concept of ten year old Gaius as Eliza Dolittle almost makes me want to commit fic.

Back at the refinery there a jam in the feed that Joe jumps in to fix. I thought it was twelve year old Joe first time around but it’s college Joe who gets industrially wounded (I thought he was going to die). The music cues, the full bluegrass, and Chief, my Chief, does the Captain Mal and steps up wreathed in light. I have no shame, it’s 1984 and the miners and Thatcher’s second term all over again. Maybe the whole union thing doesn’t have quite the same emotional pull in the US, too tainted by Mafia associations.

Roslin is no Thatcher and the whole thing ends with a rather odd pissing contest between Chief and Adama. Are they just going through the motions or not? It ends focussing on the restoration of the American dream for Seelix although I think there is some acknowledgement that the real problem isn’t just social mobility. One Gaius Baltar being able to bootstrap himself up to the top hardly alleviates conditions for the bottom dwellers who have to stay and clean up. Unless they could get robots to do it.

Comments

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Unless they could get robots to do it.

::laughing:: Yeah, cuz that worked so well the last time!

Excellent post. I loved the way the beginning of the ep was edited, and the whole thing felt tighter to me than usual lately. But I have massive problems with the characterization lately, and this episode was no exception. All in all I feel like while each individual episode may hold together, the season is falling apart.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

The longer seasons really seem to have a problem with sustaining momentum, they hit the ground running from the paradigm shifts Moore likes to end his shows with but once that’s over there’s a big problem with marking time until the next big bang and this season things have gotten particularly sloppy. I mean showing those scenes that they just couldn’t figure out a way to fit into the actual episode was just plain unprofessional. Still it feels like they’re getting their act together as the ending approaches so I have hope.

ETA: I think my hard drive is about to go into heat death but I have finally got a draft of the Roslin vid together. Would you be OK to look at it if I put it up at yousendit?

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Still it feels like they’re getting their act together as the ending approaches so I have hope.

I have some, too, but at the same time, it'd have to be a really miraculous batch of season-ending episodes to make up for the mess of the season.

And yes, I'd love to beta your Roslin vid! Please to yousendit whenever you can. I may not have a chance to look at it right away, but I'm definitely interested in doing it.

[obsessive24.livejournal.com]

still the concept of ten year old Gaius as Eliza Dolittle almost makes me want to commit fic.
I would pay good money to read that. :D

Not up with my Dickens, so feel v. happy to be called to attention on that front. I too think the ending was too quick and too neat - it was a real shame they couldn't string it out for a big longer.

I have no shame, it’s 1984 and the miners and Thatcher’s second term all over again.
Ha! Best sentence I've heard all day.

Wonderful read as always. Cheers.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

The rain in Spain....

[abrakadabrah.livejournal.com]

I hated the episode.

Not a big Maoist fan.

Couldn't make myself rewatch.

Don't know who Esther Summerson is.

I think they should have shown a puppy getting hurt in the machine instead of that elitist kid. Because, *sheesh* everyone loves puppies.

Fandom seems confused that people like Cally would be reading it but see selenak’s post to be disabused of that scepticism.

The fact that it is being read, no biggie.

I don't have a hard time believing that people would read the book; but it strikes me as extremely odd that someone who had lived on New Caprica, and had not collaborated, would suddenly read a book by Balthar and realize it explained everything, and then buy his explanation of the world, which is just his spin.

For example, I just don't believe someone who was a resistance fighter in France or elsewhere during WWII, would afterwards, when the recovery from the war turned difficult and backbreaking and some famous collaborationist was in jail and had written a book about social ills in Europe pre and post war, would suddenly forget extremely recent history during which time they had suffered, been separated from their children, often been put in fear of their own death, and that of their spouse and child(ren) and many of whose friends had died fighting that evil.

It strikes me that this would have been a good role for Anders instead of Chief. He's already anti-military, so he wouldn't have minded sticking his thumb in their eye, and as an insurgent leader, there's a natural transition to union leader.

And why is chief suddenly in all the roles?

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I think it was more Marxist than Maoist and pretty conciliatory in its conclusions but since the strongest part of the episode was setting up the situation, it won’t have been everybody’s cup of political tea.

Esther Summerson was the heroine of Bleak House and probably not the best example of the point I wanted to make, there’s a little more to her than most of the ‘good’ women in Dickens. Little Joe was a pretty classic ‘puppy’ though.

With the book I don’t think they were saying that the people reading it had become followers of Baltar, in fact part of the reason it was effective is that they still despised him personally after reading it. The book was catalyst not cause. Just because Baltar is ‘evil’ doesn’t mean he can’t make a persuasive argument or articulate pre-existing discontents. The reverse is certainly true historically, the British rejected Churchill in the polls after the war in spite of his hero status.

It had to be Chief, the point wasn’t to be against the military but for the workers by the workers and Anders hasn’t been shown to be anything other than an ex-sports star in civilian life. Chief had been elected the Union leader on New Caprica so although the strike call completely followed dramatic rather than democratic conventions they could just about get away with it.

[abrakadabrah.livejournal.com]

The conclusions were conciliatory, true - I suppose the whole thing felt a bit warped to me, however, from the opening scenes of the President and the Admiral coming across unlike themselves, as though some photo effect had rippled them into a goofy view of them. They just seemed off to me.

And the plotline felt forced and therefore manipulated; I guess there was one brief reference to this situation in some episode at some point - at least that is all that I recall. And then fullout, so the pilots and the Admiral are viewed as representative of the oppressor class.

Were they the oppressor class, I wonder, when they were all getting radiation poison, flying flight after flight, and leading the entire fleet to safety. They seem to work their asses off a great deal of the time, while the engineers get to toil at home, near their loved ones, and are not risking their lives at all moments.

So I still don't get Callie's beef. They are all undermanned and at war.

I'm wondering whether civilians going on strike during WWII - especially in regard to industries needed for the war - was illegal.

As for Brits rejecting W.Churchill after the war. I still find it odd, and it apparently broke his heart.

As for the Maoist comment, I was thinking not of the strike, but of the solution, which was "to reeducate" the cultured and educated classes. I don't doubt that a solution would be necessary for a civilization stuck in this kind of ongoing crisis situation, I just felt manipulated by the plot of this one, and the cultural revolution solution. And perhaps even by the fact that BSG needs "a dire situation" every single week - I thinkk they could lay off of that for a while. I'm finding it a bit tiresome the last several episodes.

Mara

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I wasn’t quite sure about Adama’s threat to have Cally shot at the end. Too much too soon and also unnerving realworldwise because of the history of governments bringing in the army against strikers – Churchill allegedly talked about turning machine guns on the General Strikers in 1926. Adama does go in for theatrics to make a point as with the Kara/Tigh showdown earlier in the season and given how he immediately told Tyrol he could see Roslin once he’s backed down they must have planned that but I think it was ill judged all the same.

However, unlike the anti-Sagitarionism of The Woman King, I thought this situation had set-up up the wazoo. Pilots/deckhand class differentials have been apparent since Tyroll/Boomer’s illicitness, and the time of Kobol with the unspoken conflict between the out-of-his-depth officer who wanted them to mount a suicide attack on the cylon post and Tyrol. The memories Roslin had of her last meeting with Adar were all about turning the troops on striking teachers ‘pour decourager les autres,’ which suggests an pretty uneasy relationship between the government and labour. This is a society that until 40 years ago had robots to do it (or the richer part of it)’s dirty work and that work wouldn’t have gone away when the robots rebelled. You have to wonder who got drafted in to do and where they came from. Then there was the Union Tyrol was urging to throw themselves on the gears of the machines on New Caprica before the Cylons came, the way no-one seems to blink when Adama promotes his own son, Kat needing to steal another identity to become a pilot, the ragging on Tyrol for giving the deckhands a night off to see the boxing…

The pilot deckhand conflict is indicative of class issues but the workers grievances are not so much with the pilots but the political and officer classes. Cally specifically pointed out that poor colonists didn’t get to be *officers*. And the issue isn’t one of who works the hardest, it who has the power to choose to do so. Last episode Roslin could decide to take a day off, Cally couldn’t. If the pilots feel overstressed they can talk to Adama and he can talk to Roslin, the tilium workers explicitly didn’t have that. Not through malice or prejudice, through just not being there where the politicians can see them.

Strikes were illegal in wartime I’m pretty sure but all the industries were nationalised, rationing was in place and the army was something of a social leveller compared with the segragation of 1930s Britain. I think that was a big part of why Churchill was rejected, people didn’t want to go back to a status quo not fit for heroes whoever told them otherwise.

A good point about the re-education and I did think it might prove more problematic than it sounded given the initial resistance of architect boy to the whole idea. I took that more as a sort of roundabout metaphor for levelling things through taxation and socialised medical services, less coercive methods of ensuring the middle classes have a real stake in community provision.