more BSG impressions

[wombat1138]

So at this point, we've rented our way all the way through the first season of the new BSG and a few eps of the second season. I've been listening more than watching, due to multitasking the media consumption with modular origami. A few thoughts, doubtless well-duplicated in the horse-shaped crater that's been beaten into the ground since these eps first aired--

1.) When Starbuck landed on Caprica, why didn't she either have a bewildered moment of "Boomer, WTF are you doing here?" or also immediately conclude that Helo might be a Cylon copy as well?

2.) Ellen Tigh is a very poorly realized character. Her autocratic advice to her husband wasn't completely unrealistic-- iirc from Robert Massie, toward the end of the Romanovs' reign, Alexandra pushed Nicholas to clamp down rather than allowing more participation from the Duma-- but so far she isn't much more than a caricature of Lady Macbeth as dissolute sexpot. For that matter, the female characters generally seem to be falling into the easy categories of brittle blondes and earnest dark ladies.

3.) Jamie Bamber has a damn good American accent.

That is all for now.

Comments

[gregmce.livejournal.com]

Without giving anything away -- I always got the impression that beyond her initial introduction (and thus answering the question definitively "what drove Saul to drink?"), the writing staff had no idea what to do with the character, but liking Kate Vernon enough that they wanted to keep her around.

That said, it is a problem that is eventually solved by the writers clearly sitting down and saying, "Let's give her an actual storyline" and thus making her a lot more interesting and believable.

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

I should hope so. Among other things, I can't quite figure out what she sees in him-- from Saul's POV, she gives him a good excuse to break out the party hats, but in a society where it's clearly possible for women to achieve and hold power and status on their own terms, she shouldn't really need him as a cat's-paw for her own ambitions.

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

1.) When Starbuck landed on Caprica, why didn't she either have a bewildered moment of "Boomer, WTF are you doing here?" or also immediately conclude that Helo might be a Cylon copy as well?

Reasonable point, but I don't think Kara makes great mental leaps very often without prodding. (There's evidence for that later in the series, at least as I read it.) She might have assumed that Boomer had been sent after her, somehow, by Adama; and it's established here that she has quite a strong friendship with Helo, so her first instinct--reasonable or not--is to trust him.

Ellen Tigh is a very poorly realized character.

I would mostly disagree with that, particularly as the series goes along and we more shades to her; but it's true that her sexpot Macbeth quality never really goes away.

For that matter, the female characters generally seem to be falling into the easy categories of brittle blondes and earnest dark ladies.

You think? Kara's flawed, but quite strong; Sharon (#1) is a believable person stuck in an increasingly terrifying situation; Laura Roslin is possibly the best-drawn character on the show. Six is an archetype, of course, but the whole point of her--early in the series, anyway--is that she's not a character, just an image. Which may be emblematic of the Cylons as a whole. (This changes.)

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

She might have assumed that Boomer had been sent after her, somehow, by Adama

That's what I would've thought Kara's first reaction would've been-- but instead, she *immediately* concludes that Sharon (but not Helo) is a Cylon.

Perhaps "brittle" isn't quite the right word; not quite "cold", either. Bleh. Brain cell fall out backside of head. Admiral Helena Cain seems to be the exact opposite of Ellen Tigh, and I'm not entirely convinced by her characterization and circumstances either-- if she's the only female officer on the Pegasus, then yeah, she might've felt it was necessary to be extra-hardassed to keep the menfolk in line, but does the Galactica's crew have an unusual level of gender-integration, or is the Peg unusually gender-segregated?

As of midway through the second season, my main peeve is now the inconsistency of when/how individual remote Cylons pool their data together-- Sharon 2.0 has some of Sharon 1.0's memories, but not updated all the way to Cally's accidental weapons discharge; Baltar's own private #6 knew about Sharon 2.0's pregnancy, but (apparently?) not about the status of the #6 aboard the Peg; the supposed weapons dealer back at the original supply asteroid said that as soon as his current body was killed, all of his knowledge would be core-dumped back to Cylon Central so the base-stars would immediately know where the Galactica was when that happened, (but not before?); etc.

And why is Sharon 2.0 so much more self-willed than Sharon 1.0? Yes, she certainly has more conscious knowledge of her Cylon identity and her intended role, but would that nec'ly be enough to withstand the occasional override commands which Sharon 1.0 seemed to fall prey to? Or were 1.0's various acts of sabotage the result of an ongoing opportunistic pre-program ("Whenever convenient and clandestine, wreak mayhem") rather than occasional isolated activation signals ("At the next covert convenience, wreak mayhem and then resume identity amnesia")? In some cases, like (not) seeing water in the survey scans, she barely seemed conscious of her actions or in control of her own senses.

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

she *immediately* concludes that Sharon (but not Helo) is a Cylon.

She's seen more than one Sharon, but she's still only seen one Helo?

Bleh. Brain cell fall out backside of head.

You and your brain cell. If you haven't figured out by now not only that you're smarter than most of us mere humans, but that you're the primary (if slow-acting) inspiration for my own writing, you're right: it probably does need a slight cleaning.

(Yes, I contain multitudes.)

I didn't get the impression that Cain was the only female officer on Pegasus; I assumed she's a hardass because, dammit, she's a hardass (and trying to keep the majority of her crew alive).

Unless you're referring to what she allows to be done to Gina (and someone else, if you haven't seen the episode yet). Well, she expresses her reasons for that, and they're pretty deep-seated (and seemingly unrelated to gender per se, though one could certainly argue for unconscious stuff).

It's true that Cylons' access to their other iterations' memories seems to fluctuate a lot; that could be Moore being cagey and mysterious, or it could be the writers not being sure. I don't know if you've learned about Resurrection ships yet, but the presence or absence of one when a Cylon dies probably has a lot to do with how much the "network" gets from said Cylon. Note, however, that Leoben (the model they first meet on Ragnar Station) is established as consistently trying to mess with people's minds. Which is to say, he lies a lot.

I think you've answered your own first question about Sharons 1 and 2, willfulness-wise. Cylons seem to be partially shaped by their experiences. Sharon #1 spends years believing she's human, then gets more and more frequently blindsided by things that don't make sense, unless. When the Cylon programming she isn't aware of kicks in, it's pretty clearly subconscious--the "real" Cylon that's been buried by her sleeper-agent cover personality. Sharon #2 doesn't need a subconscious, because she goes in (at first) as a willing agent of the Cylons. It's just that her model seems to tend towards empathy; from the Cylon perspective, it's weak.