Water Commentary
Jan. 18th, 2005 07:16 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
thepouncer.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
13thcolonyA brief episode summary is up at SciFi’s webpage. The gist of it is that Boomer wakes up soaking wet and has explosives and a detonator in her possession. When she goes to the small arms locker to return these things, she finds others missing. Later, while President Roslin is visiting Galactica, the water tanks on one side of the Battlestar rupture into space. Boomer goes to her lover, Crew Chief Tyrol, who helps her cover up her potential responsibility for the sabotage. The leadership of the Colonials has to handle the reality of water shortages and the future problems facing a ragtag fugitive fleet with no supply depots, while also balancing civilian and military priorities. And Baltar flirts with Starbuck over a game of Triad. Meanwhile, on Caprica, Helo and Boomer II supposedly evade Cylons and hear proof that some Colonial military has survived.
Boomer the Cylon, Boomer the Colonial
I had to rewatch this episode twice to decide exactly what was happening with Boomer. Partly, I think that Grace Park just lacks the acting chops to make her internal conflicts crystal clear, but I also suspect that the writing was left ambiguous. My take on Boomer is that she has a pilot persona that doesn’t know she’s a Cylon. And then there’s underlying programming to sabotage the humans however she can without being discovered. This would explain her fugue states where she loses time (see: exchange with perky Crewman Specialist Cally (thank god for IMdB), who also conveys with a smirk that the deck crew know about the ongoing fraternization between Tyrol and Boomer), and also the way that Boomer can’t see the results of her scans when she’s searching for water on planets. Pilot Boomer is freaked out by the proof of what she’s been doing, but can’t accept that they were her actions. Cylon Boomer could care less so long as she is able to hurt her enemy and remain safe.
This leads, of course, into the fraternization problem. Poor Tyrol is heading for a fall. His sweet Sharon is inexperienced, while he’s been in the service for ten years according to the miniseries. Even if she outranks him, he has more knowledge of life in the fleet. He accedes to her pleas at a cover-up, while still trying to guard the safety of his ship and crew. I can’t see this practice continuing. If Boomer keeps approaching him with weirdness, he’ll reach a point where he informs someone in command of her behavior. And if he goes to her with his doubts, I suspect he’ll be quite dead, quite soon.
Supply Problems
I was gratified that the show addressed supply problems so soon. The survivors have to be packed aboard their ships, some of which weren’t designed for long hauls, as Adama told Roslin when the one ship came to get water. Aside from water, Baltar’s calculations about the raw foodstuffs needed to keep the Colonials from going hungry had to stun everyone in a position of authority. They’re only ten days from the destruction of their civilization, they have no place to go back to, and they need how much grain and meat and vegetables?! The problems just keep piling on, and they have to solve them somehow, or the Cylons will have finished their genocide without firing an additional shot.
The discussions over the water tank sabotage and the supply problems also serve to illustrate the give-and-take between Adama’s military leadership style and Roslin’s civilian concerns. As a security policy analyst, I adore that the show is making this balance so explicit; when Adama told Roslin about the problems of having military act as police, and how it tends to transform the enemy into the people, I wanted to jump up and down. I suspect that Roslin’s assurance that she won’t “let that happen” will be empty.
Roslin’s rawness as a leader shows: she’s uncomfortable with pomp, and even her keen political instincts can’t enable her to read Adama’s intentions. For that, she needs her new “military advisor,” Captain Lee Adama. Please tell me that I’m not the only one who read “military advisor” as “lover”? When she says she needs him, I almost melted! Their interplay was one of my favorite parts of the miniseries and I’m so happy that it’s continuing. I half-expected her to pull him into a torrid embrace after they shook hands on Colonial One. (And if any of you were to write a missing scene about what happened after involving passionate sex in her quarters, I would be a happy reader. I’m just saying.)
Both Apollo and the new President are still struggling with the destruction of the Olympic Carrier in the last episode, and I was a bit miffed that Roslin would regard the action as a potential mistake, since the Cylons haven’t found them since that point. Apollo’s remorse, I can see: as I said in my review of 33, the younger pilots trained to fight Cylons, not their fellow Colonials, and Apollo is new to his post as senior pilot. However, I did like Roslin’s story about what she’d learned from former President Adar about resolve in public and regret in private. By contrast, Commander Adama’s advice to his son is harsh: men take responsibility for their actions, full stop. I could almost see some of Lee’s innocence being stripped away at that point, and along with his post-traumatic stress flashback, I foresee a future hardened Apollo.
Baltar: Finder of Women’s “Special Beauty”
Baltar, of course, has to keep his hallucinations from becoming apparent to anyone else. Six teases and taunt him and they discuss his interactions with women, which were as selfish and pleasure-focused as one would think. Baltar has to make good on his Cylon detector, and I have to admit that I was never certain from watching the miniseries whether or not he’d invented one. Was his fingering of the media guy solely based on gut instinct? Or did he actually have some sort of method to find Cylons?
Lt. Gaeta is assigned to help Baltar with the Cylon detection system, disappointing the sex-obsessed Gaius, who had hoped for a pretty girl Friday. When he spots Starbuck playing Triad in the pilot’s lounge, he has to stop in for a game. I loved this scene – their flirtation and banter and the way he won with a better hand after intimating that his cards were lacking. From the miniseries, it’s clear that Starbuck is good at cards, but genius Gaius manages to beat her even though his initial stake is the jacket off his back. Also, yay for cubit currency!
Cylon-Occupied Caprica
The final scene with Helo and Boomer on Caprica provided some hints about why the Cylons would attempt to fool him with Sharon’s doppelganger rather than kill him outright. He hears military code over the radio, indicating some of his brethren have survived. Are they fighting a rear-guard action against the Cylon invasion? If so, the Cylons must have some use for Caprica in its own right, rather than just wanting to exterminate the humans. With Boomer II sticking close to Helo, she could discover the military remnants and lead the Cylons to their location.
This is a good place to digress into my questions about Cylons. Is Boomer on Galactica transmitting information back to a Basestar somewhere? Could they use her to find the Colonials? The lack of a Cylon incursion would seem to indicate not, but then there’s Boomer-on-Caprica, who knows enough about Helo to fool him into believing that she’s his Sharon. She knows that he was left behind: when did that information come to her? I can’t believe anything she tells Helo (my precious Karl! Don’t trust her!); she’s the definition of an unreliable narrator. Given all that, how does the Cylon information transmission work? Six told Baltar in the miniseries that her consciousness would transfer to a new body upon the old body’s destruction, but Adama believed at Ragnar Station that Leoben Conoy couldn’t do the transfer because of the blocking radiation. Too many questions!
I can’t wait until this Friday, when I hope some of them get answered.
Cross-posted to my LJ.
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Date: 2005-01-19 12:43 am (UTC)Of course I can not (will not) provide any insight. Just sayin', your patience is astounding. :)
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Date: 2005-01-19 01:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 01:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 02:39 am (UTC)I like the anticipation, too, both in relationships on the show and in my own viewing. Letting it build up makes it all the sweeter.
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Date: 2005-01-19 03:50 am (UTC)Yep, I will have to be all about the build-up now. But unable to rationally (or irrationally) discuss it here, and that bums me out. :(
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Date: 2005-01-19 03:48 am (UTC)I'd rather eat broken glass then go another day without more BSG!!
I'll be twitchin' for daaaaaays trying to come down off this sci-fi-hi.
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Date: 2005-02-12 09:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 01:32 am (UTC)Oh yeah, baby. The way she said it? Totally. I love those two together.
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Date: 2005-01-19 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 06:33 am (UTC)Triad was that wrestling-basketball game thing they played in speedos and bike helmets.
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Date: 2005-01-19 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 01:07 pm (UTC)Hell yes! Especially if they keep it secret and Adama starts falling for her too. *eg*
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Date: 2005-01-19 03:33 pm (UTC)