BSG 4.05 The road less travelled

[hazelk]

I’ve been having this brainworm about last week's episode that the Gaius parts could have ben some kind of later day “Judgement of Paris.” The part where Paris has to decide who of Athena, Hera and Aphrodite is the fairest and by choosing Aphrodite and her offer of Helen’s love sets off the whole Trojan War.

In Escape Velocity Gaius is visited by three women, Tory, Roslin and Six and they each want something from him (even though it’s probably not the same thing). It’s easy to align Six with Aphrodite, goddess of love, and Laura with Hera, Queen of Olympus. Tory as Athena is trickier; she’s not the wisest but as a Cylon she has sprung direct from the mind of her creator and the pain-pleasure she offers is scientifically calibrated. Gaius rejects it and Tory/Athena with it despite having embraced the whole pain=pleasure equation with a fervour back in S3. Then, however, it wasn’t a game and had the added ingredient of real fear. He’s not afraid of Roslin/Hera either and although she plays him beautifully, leaving him visibly gagging for more, it has no lasting effect. Roslin, I think, doesn’t get Baltar. She’s afraid of him because his unlikely political successes suggest someone who is either very lucky or very smart at getting power and once he has it will hand humanity over to its enemies in a heartbeat but she doesn’t know about the Six factor. Gaius/Paris chooses not Roslin but Six who offers him real pain and through it love, the grace to be loved in spite of his transgression, even because of them. She inspires a sermon close enough to certain strains of Christian mysticism that even in the real world Jacob at TWOP falls for it hook, line and sinker. However, when Gaius says somebody in the universe loves him he’s not being mystical – he’s staring right at her. While she looks at Tory, which is interesting. Also interesting that her power seems to be growing tangible, a side effect of worship maybe. Whatever the case Gaius’s choice seems unlikely to launch 1000 ships since there probably aren’t that many left in the universe but it could still end badly.

This week I agree with selenak – they’ve been playing the universal self-loathing line too long and it’s losing impact. Mathais’s death felt like nothing after Callie’s and we’d already seen Chief hit bottom in his “demote me” speech. The rapprochement with Gaius seemed symbolic, possibly of the mooted cylon-human alliance that the mutiny seems to have scuppered and that together with Lebonen’s return should have been huge but felt like treading water somehow. I think I’d rather have seen what actually went down in the cylon civil war than had it reported second hand. Starbuck struggling with herself has been done to death but I did like the matter-of-fact way she accepted the mutiny and her whaling on Lebonen for Mathais’s sake. She may not be an angel of light but she does seem a little older and less self-involved than previously.

Comments

[abrakadabrah.livejournal.com]

Agree with you until you got to the line about Starbuck being "a little older and less self-involved than previously".

I don't know what else to call a ship's captain who is totally involved with excavating now lost feelings of mystical oneness with a planet, all the while, for all practical purposes ignoring the mutinous temper that has been festering for weeks under her so-called command, though she seems to have been allowing Helo to do all the work. Also, the fact that she can't tell that Helo is more positively disposed to her than Gaeta - who has been openly hostile to her since her mysterious return - makes her seem even more out to lunch. As far as the audience goes, all we've seen her do since she gained command is hang out, alone in her cabin, and paint. And be excessively rude to her staff and spend no time trying to deal with them and their issues. And also examine charts feverishly. Also alone.

Speaking of which, I find the fact that there is no airconditioning, to heighten the sweaty feverish feeling, as though they can't afford the fuel, and there is no other tech, rather ludicrous. After all, space is *cold*, not tropical.

I dunno. Season 4 BSG is just not coming together for me, in part because of the reasons that selenak outlined. Also, nothing is happening. It's all depressing character studies.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I'm OK with depressing character studies but in this episode they seem to have hit the same problem as mid S6 Buffy - they're running on character rather than plot arcs but all their arcs have peaked. This episode only had Kara, Galen and Gaius in focus and none of them were doing much we hadn't already seen. On the other hand it could be first-half-of-a-twofer syndrome and everything will look better next week.

As for Kara, being less self-involved is rising from a low base but I took her calm acceptance of the mutiny to show that she had been quite aware it was brewing. Much as at the end of Scar she showed that she did remember all the dead pilots' names. She knew but she hadn't the leadership skills to win a skeptical crew over to trusting her blind intuition -but I think that pitch would be difficult even for a natural politician. I also don't see her obsession with re-finding earth as inherently self-centred, certainly not in the same way as her previous self-destructive streak. I get the sense of her wanting to find Earth as a mission, something much bigger than she is.

[abrakadabrah.livejournal.com]

This episode only had Kara, Galen and Gaius in focus and none of them were doing much we hadn't already seen.

Yeah - though I have to say I don't see why Chief suddenly decided, after New Caprica, that Baltar was not so bad after all. So Baltar first crosses the line with him, trying to exploit him, then makes a sincere apology - which is somewhat new territory for Baltar, except that in the interim Chief has gotten no less useful - and all of a sudden
Chief reconciles and shakes his hand.

One can't even say that Baltar is the first person to reach out to Chief, since Adama did in the previous episode, but Chief was intent on alienating him because he didn't want to be put in a position to wreck equipment subconsciously anymore. Still, this is not enough, IMO, to turn him into an acolyte. Though I suppose chief and Callie and Baltar did share that moment down on whichever planet where Baltar shot Crashdown and saved Callie's life.

However, it seems like the writers are relying on a really short attention span of the audience to forget the horror that was New Caprica and the fact that Chief plotted over and over to help kill Baltar by suicide bombs and other ways.

As far Kara, oh I think the project of finding earth is important to her. I just don't think that brooding in her room while letting the crew continue to feel mutinous for days and weeks is such an intelligent way to go about command. I can't recall if we have seen her in command before unsupported by the military structure and away from Galactica. I'm not remembering it if we have. She seems far more of an effective lone operative to me than a command leader. She and Helo were on Caprica together - but she wasn't in command. I think she is not so effective at leading.

-but I think that pitch would be difficult even for a natural politician

Well, Adama did it in the mini-series, didn't he. Claimed Earth as the destination.

She knew but she hadn't the leadership skills to win a skeptical crew over to trusting her blind intuition -but I think that pitch would be difficult even for a natural politician.

I think the problem is the thread of the intuition is lost - so there's nothing to lead them with - she has to wait,
passively, until it resumes. Though I don't understand why she didn't jump backwards, duplicating the pathway that Galactica took to places where she had felt it more strongly. All that shrieking and hollering about going the wrong way, and now her internal compass has become demagnetized, so to speak.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I never got the impression that Chief blames New Caprica on Baltar in the way Tigh or Roslin does. As far as I remember there was just one suicide bombing that Baltar was the target of. After all Baltar was a puppet, the real enemy were the Cylons. Chief also had the benefit of watching Gaius fall apart on Kobol. I think he despises him but doesn't hate him, he thinks he's a slippery two-faced wanker but basically more of a prat than an evil genius. Prat or not Gaius didn't just reach out to Tyrol with platitudes about Cally being a good woman - he admitted he didn't know her from Eve and left it to Tyrol to define her.

All that shrieking and hollering about going the wrong way, and now her internal compass has become demagnetized, so to speak.
I wonder if it works more like chemosensitivity than magnetism - it can tell her if she's 'warmer' or 'colder' by trial and error but can't compute a direction from a single point. Also the target may not be Earth but her infamous Destiny- it lead her to Lebonen not to the Solar system.