Hm, your comment is really making me think. I agree with queenofthorns that we aren’t being set up to side with the Cylons, but I think you do raise some very interesting questions about the behavior of the humans. I’d like to think (and the show so far seems headed this way) that we’ll ultimately be able to sympathize to some degree with anybody. The Cylons may always be the side that is much more in the wrong in terms of their genocidal actions, but individual Cylons might be revealed as admirable characters, just as individual humans can be horrible.
Very eerie point about Starbuck seeming like an expert interrogator. She certainly does. And we know that the colonies were not a utopian society, as Zarek’s (sp?) disaffection illustrates. All the same, I wonder if Starbuck’s expertise was a bit of an oversight in the writing. What I mean is, apart from this episode, I don’t see any signs that she’s being pointed out as that kind of hardened person. Then again, it’s early in the series, so we might just not have seen it till this episode.
I did feel that Starbuck was somewhat “redeemed” by her final sympathy for Leoben. Actually, the character whose actions bothered me most was Roslin, not least because she is so often set up as the “nice” lady, the one who doesn’t want the prisoners to be treated like slaves, etc. I can understand Roslin’s decision to kill Leoben. His attempt to discredit Adama certainly evidences his danger as a source of misinformation. What I have trouble with is her decision to kill him by spacing him. This seems like an unnecessarily cruel way to kill someone. Though it may be over relatively quickly, it still seems like a nasty way to die. If Leoben had to die, why not just put a bullet through his head? It seems almost as if Roslin was taking the position that he was just a thing to be put out with the trash. Maybe she was trying to convince herself of that, since her dream certainly gives her reason to have more personal feelings for him. All I can say is, her decision creeped me out (as it was probably meant to).
Re: Where are we headed...
Date: 2005-02-28 03:28 am (UTC)Very eerie point about Starbuck seeming like an expert interrogator. She certainly does. And we know that the colonies were not a utopian society, as Zarek’s (sp?) disaffection illustrates. All the same, I wonder if Starbuck’s expertise was a bit of an oversight in the writing. What I mean is, apart from this episode, I don’t see any signs that she’s being pointed out as that kind of hardened person. Then again, it’s early in the series, so we might just not have seen it till this episode.
I did feel that Starbuck was somewhat “redeemed” by her final sympathy for Leoben. Actually, the character whose actions bothered me most was Roslin, not least because she is so often set up as the “nice” lady, the one who doesn’t want the prisoners to be treated like slaves, etc. I can understand Roslin’s decision to kill Leoben. His attempt to discredit Adama certainly evidences his danger as a source of misinformation. What I have trouble with is her decision to kill him by spacing him. This seems like an unnecessarily cruel way to kill someone. Though it may be over relatively quickly, it still seems like a nasty way to die. If Leoben had to die, why not just put a bullet through his head? It seems almost as if Roslin was taking the position that he was just a thing to be put out with the trash. Maybe she was trying to convince herself of that, since her dream certainly gives her reason to have more personal feelings for him. All I can say is, her decision creeped me out (as it was probably meant to).