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

[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....