A Tale of Two Boomers

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Hello there. First, but certainly not last post in this community, which I've been lurking in for a while now.


Reading commentaries on the two incarnations of Sharon Valerii, aka Boomer, with whom we get presented in the first season of BSG (discounting random Boomer models which exist to illustrate there are more around), I noticed that basically everyone favours Caprica!Boomer. Just a theory, but my guess is the reason lies somewherein audience expectations regarding certain very familiar romantic/sexual storylines. C! Boomer’s storyline is straightforward. She knows exactly what she is (a Cylon), as opposed to Galactica!Boomer, which gives her greater self assurance. After sex and various hardships, she falls in love with the human she is assigned to, and changes sides, helping him to escape his enemies for real after having pretended it at the start. In short, she’s a Bond girl. Though Helo is somewhat more clueless than the traditional James Bond. The reassurance that sex and true love will make a girl from the bad guys’ camp convert to the good guys for love of her hero is something nice and comfortable and wished for.

G!Boomer, on the other hand, offers no such assurance. She starts out full firmly in the good guys’ camp as far as she knows, but gets increasingly full of self-doubts, caused by the ever less repressible awareness that she is not what she always believed to be, a human being. Her romance with Tyrol does not help to convert her to anything; on the contrary, it only brings them misery, and the supreme irony is that it would have if she had been nothing but a human, because of their respective positions. Tyrol helps her avoid discovery in the short term, but shared danger and secrecy draw them apart, as opposed to bringing them together a la Helo and C!Boomer, and it does not help her with her basic problem at all, which remains the same. Sex and romance do not save the day, or cause the turning of sides. It fails. By episode 12, Sharon is so isolated and in despair that she makes an attempt to commit suicide to stop herself from what she can feel will overtake her soon, her inner program. In short, G!Boomer is not a Bond girl. She’s the Manchurian candidate. This is anything but reassuring to the audience.

I see the two Sharons as complimentary, but to me, G!Boomer is the more interesting because she’s the one for whom I can see no happy ending, and whose insecurities and emotional messiness is real to me in a way that C!Boomers are not. Because I know my Bond girls, and how their story goes. Same with the respective romances. The one between C!Boomer and Helo was predictable, and ever so slightly offensive (to me) because of the whole hero converting bad girl via the magic of sex and hero-(Helo-)ness not so subtext. The one between G!Boomer and the Chief, otoh, did not belong in the region of Bond or other action films. They loved each other. It didn’t help. The last thing Sharon says to Tyrol in the first season, “Chief, you’re dismissed” , and him saluting, both echoes their cheerful pretense of formal interaction in the miniseries and sums up in a final sad note why their relationship failed. It made me hurt for them both. Which the most successful love stories all do.

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I should explain here that this post was originally caused by someone requesting 100 words on Boomer/Tyrol as part of a current meme, which in turn caused me to think about a couple of other aspects exceeding the meme format.

Grace Parks as an actress: I agree that she's not as good as the rest of the ensemble, but she's not bad, either. I thought she did a great job in scenes like Boomer finding water, or the discovery of Kobol this week, or in her conversation with Baltar. So there is definite room for improvement in the long run.

because G!Boomer doesn’t KNOW she’s a Cylon, she’s never making a choice, other than entirely subconsciously, to be either what she is (a Cylon) or what she’s been reared to me. That’s why Baltar, who is well aware of what he is, fascinates me, because I see him constantly choosing a course of action; Boomer’s path seems more predetermined and not so much from her own volition if that makes sense, and for me that is a far less interesting tale.

Here I agree - i.e. that Baltar who does make a choice and keeps making it is more interesting - but I was comparing Boomers. Regarding the question of free will: I suspect we'll discover via the Boomers whether or not the Cylons have it in future seasons, because season 1 does not yet offer the answer (imo, and yes, I've seen KLG 2 as well). As the lack of free will would make them less interesting, I guess we'll find out they can develop it at least, i.e. exceed the sum of their programming.

[reginaspina.livejournal.com]

I was comparing Boomers.

Heh! I wasn’t very clear, actually and went haring off on that Baltar tangent. What I meant was that Caprica Boomer is more interesting to me because she is AWARE of her Cylon identity, and so we see her making conscious choices. I think the actress could have been better at conveying her emotional turmoil, and that is part of the reason why, until the last few episodes, I find the Caprica storyline a little dull, but it is more intrinsically interesting to me to watch someone who is aware of her “dual” nature struggle against it, than to watch Galactica Boomer, who has no idea that she is “the Manchurian Candidate” aboard ship. HER struggles are not internal ones (yet, though perhaps that will change). That’s what I meant when I said that my preference for C!Boomer really isn’t anything to do with the love-story one way or the other – it’s just her self-awareness that I prefer.

[elz.livejournal.com]

HER struggles are not internal ones (yet, though perhaps that will change).

I think they are, though - as early as episode 2, she knows that either she's a Cylon or she's being controlled or brainwashed, and I don't think she ever forgets that, even though the story doesn't always highlight it. Eventually, she can't discuss things with Tyrol anymore, and she has to decide what to do. Turn herself over? (She already had Baltar test her.) Leave? (And go where?) Kill herself? That's all she's left with, and whether or not she's 100% certain of her identity, I think that's definitely a conscious choice that reflects a desire to protect the people around her.

(Whether or not it's a *free* choice is another question, and one that applies to both Boomers. And to Baltar. And, if this is really a story about predestination, to all of the characters.)

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

I had been thinking about Galactica Boomer, because really, she kind of disappeared after Water, didn't she? She's been around, but I can't recall offhand any major focus on her until KLG1. We see her from time to time - petting the Cylon Raider, discovering "Cylon" scrawled on her mirror, piloting the Raptor - but it's been incidental to the main thrust of the storytelling. Which has made it hard for me to follow her struggle after she realizes that she caused the explosion in Water. Although, now that I think about it, I really wonder how much her programming has *allowed* her to know. Does she come to a sharp conclusion or are there fuzzy portents making it past her "you are a human" directive?