BSG 3.15: "A Day in the Life"

[annathepiper]

Been a while since I did a proper BSG post, so here we go! Kind of a soap-opera-y type episode to come back in on for commentary, and it weirded me out in some ways, surprised me in a couple others, and made me vaguely ill at ease in a few more.


I have to admit that it was a relief to see Starbuck not angsting, and even seemingly at ease in her brief exchange with Lee after the briefing. Even if it felt really frakking strange to see Starbuck not angsting. ;) And we all know that this is hardly going to last, don't we? We can't have Starbuck being too comfortable for too many episodes in a row, after all. I still am expecting to see Anders bite it in the season closer.

Anybody besides me get quite a bit creeped out by all that memory stuff going on with Adama thinking about his wife? I am absolutely dead certain that the writers did the whole thing that way to make us all think "AAAAAH BILL'S A CYLON", even while the saner part of my viewer brain staunchly insists that no, no, no, he's just got an extremely active imagination. Snicker. Or maybe his wife was a Cylon and she's still haunting his head like Hallucination!Six. >:)

The bits with Adama and Roslin, though, were quite charming. I am sure that all the Adama/Roslin shippers out there totally ate that up. Speaking of more things that seem just way too damned comfortable--this show's totally got me expecting to see something go wrong again to make them completely pissed off at one another.

The thing with Adama giving Lee the old law books--nice father/son mileage there. I liked that better than the Adama/wife pseudo-memory mileage, in fact, especially when Wife-in-Adama's-head started screaming about how he fucked up their family life while he was busy being such a great leader. We've seen this character conflict before with Adama; going over it again felt redundant.

Rescuing Callie and Tyrol from the airlock--very cool. I liked the shot of them being sucked out into space and caught by the raptor. Very, very neat. And yet at the same time, I find myself a little disheartened by this increasing plotline of Callie going all anti-military, especially now that we have had the teaser for next week with the Chief and her leading a strike. I mean, I can kind of see the concept of why Callie's going along that path as a character, but it's not making sense to me the way they're playing it out. I mean, hell, if she's getting that disenchanted with the military, enough that she'd insist that her son be raised by civilians if she and the Chief didn't survive the rescue, why is she still working the deck? Why did she and the Chief agree to take their old jobs back when they came back onto the Galactica in the first place, rather than seeking employment elsewhere in the Fleet?

Plus, I'm not seeing anything yet from Callie's perspective to make me sympathize with what she's thinking. Right now she's just coming across as hostile and cranky, with no real explanation as to why, which is not making me kindly disposed to her. Hopefully we'll see a bit more development on this next week.

Three more episodes to go, and then a season-closing two-parter. It'll be interesting to see how they wrap this season up, and how Baltar's trial is going to play out. I did like that they touched briefly on the preparations for this trial, and how they raised the interesting questions of which planet's laws they're going to use to conduct the trial.

Comments

[fleurdelista.livejournal.com]

I am sure that all the Adama/Roslin shippers out there totally ate that up

*grins* Yep!

[annathepiper]

Hee! It amuses me especially that right now, this seems to be the least angsty relationship on the show. Possibly because it's still in the early stages. ;) But I like that they're taking time with it, and I hope that they won't rush things. Unlike with Lee and Dee, I totally buy Adama and Roslin, and I want to see this go well.

[gilroycullen.livejournal.com]

she's just coming across as hostile and cranky
What are the odds that Callie is preggers again? And would the Chief be ready for it?

[annathepiper]

It doesn't seem very likely to me. Partly because I think that if she were actually pregnant again, we'd have seen some hints dropped about that on camera already--but more because we're already going down the route of seeing her priorities shift to caring for the one baby she and the Chief have already. Adding another in there wouldn't add anything to that plot.

[peregrine-ek.livejournal.com]

DO you think the Lee/Kara 'ship is dead? Because I'm still not sure it is, despite that episode that seemed to close the book on it.

[annathepiper]

I don't think it's dead yet, no--on the grounds that in last week's episode, I did catch a long look given to Lee by Kara, in a scene otherwise focused on him and Dee. Also on the grounds that Anders has continued to get hardly any camera time this season except in relation to the Quadrangle of Lurve, which continues to make me think he ain't long for this cast.

Of course, I thought they were going to bump him off in the Season Two finale, and they surprised me there, so. ;)

But really, just given my experience with the show, I can't buy them letting Starbuck actually settle down into a coherent and relatively angst-free relationship for very long. Which means that at some point either a) she has to have a huge knock-down drag-out fight with Sam, or b) he has to Die Heroically and Tragically. She's already had the huge fight with him, so I ain't seeing too much longer before we get option B.

[peregrine-ek.livejournal.com]

I figured it's only a matter of time till one of the spouses is killed off. Too bad. I kind of like Sam.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, I totally like Sam. But if they want to have any further advancement on the Lee/Kara front and keep Lee and Kara at least in the remote vicinity of honorable, they have to kill off either Dee or Sam and perhaps both.

I heard a rumor that there are deaths to come at the tail end of this season, too, which also makes me wonder whether Dee and Sam are on the chopping block.

[wrog]

I can't buy them letting Starbuck actually settle down into a coherent and relatively angst-free relationship for very long

Oh, I dunno. I could see it turning into a Wash/Zoë kind of thing eventually -- even if it would take a while to get there.

And yes, that would be completely ripping off Joss Whedon, but he needs to be ripped off more.

[annathepiper]

Heh! I do agree that more people should look to Whedon for inspiration, though in this case, nah, I'm still not sure I see it. Not because I don't think Kara could eventually get her shit together--we still do have occasional gleams of her going in that direction, even in this season--but more because by the very nature of this show, if there's going to be any stable, long-term relationship, it ain't going to involve Starbuck.

The writers may surprise me in this, but I doubt it. ;)

[annathepiper]

Yeah really, "forty-nine days without a Cylon sighting" really kind of amounts to "the writers are flailing around going SHIT, now what?"

Me, I'd rather like to see some explanation for why the hell the Cylons are the slightest bit interested in making Earth their new homeworld. I still haven't seen adequate explanation for that aside from "because they just wanna".

Yeah, intellectually, I can kind of see the concept of where they're going with Chief and Callie, as I mentioned--it's just that it's not resonating with me on a viewer-satisfaction level.

And really, that's kind of where I've been for the last few episodes, hence my failure to post much about BSG the last few weeks!

[starsongky.livejournal.com]

The whole "Bill's a Cylon" thing was definitely creepy to the max. When he first woke up and there was a quick flash of a blonde in his bed, our first thought was "Whoa, the Old Man's bangin' Starbuck!" We even went back later frame-by-frame to make sure it wasn't her.

Nice touch the way his wedding photo kept changing. When he as in realtime it was an octagonal frame, like all the other papers on the show - which they had a lot of this episode - but in the flashback/fantasy it was a rectangle.

And unless I missed it, Grandpa's law books were rectangles too, so maybe corners mean "really old printed stuff" in this 'verse.

[annathepiper]

Ooh, I hadn't quite twigged 'Starbuck', but the look of somebody in Colonial military casual duds from the back did make me go 'Buh?'

And ooh, I didn't get the thing with the photo. Cool!

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm a long way behind in watching BSG, can you tell? XD

how they raised the interesting questions of which planet's laws they're going to use to conduct the trial.

That actually bugged me, because it's been years now since the exodus started. In all that time on the fleet, in all that time on New Caprica, they never had any crime? Nobody ever stole anything, or got mad and stabbed one another? The question of which law the fleet operates under should have been resolved within the first couple of months, and some kind of rudimentary legal system set in place - probably not at the level that could deal with a Baltar trial, but at least some intelligent well-respected people serving as the equivalent of magistrates.

The Roslin/Adama thing is cute :-)

[annathepiper]

First reaction: very good point all around.

Second reaction: hrmm. I could see a scenario where the best compromise they could hammer out would be that the laws of the offender's home colony would be the ones that prevailed. Or, alternately, the ones of the victim's. I could totally see that they couldn't just pick one colony's laws to prevail--given that the only mention I've ever heard of anything that applies to all twelve Colonies are the Articles of Colonization. We haven't seen any sign of system-wide laws that apply to everybody.

And in the Fleet situation, I would be absolutely not surprised in the slightest if the members of the Quorum of Twelve in fact insisted on applying the laws of their homeworlds in criminal cases on a case by case basis. It might be one of the few things they could do to help the people in the fleet maintain at least some hint of their individual worlds' heritages.

In Baltar's case, though, this is so totally a global case that I'm not sure that they could just apply the laws of Caprica and have done with it. They'd have to invoke the Articles, I expect.

Guess we'll find out when the trial plot starts up in earnest next week!

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

Using the laws of the offender's home world would make some sense. The victims' is less likely, because I can't see them trying a thief twelve different times to include everyone he stole from. Good point about the Quorum.

I disagree on Baltar, though - the law is the law, the whole point is that it applies to everybody the same, no matter who you are, and it has to be seen to work that way, even if in reality it doesn't XD. If the fleet has decided that offenders are tried under the laws of their homeworld, it would be hard to justify making a special case for Baltar without setting up a lot of nasty precedents. They'd be foolish to do it.

[annathepiper]

Dara also brought up the possibility of looking at whatever ship the transgression took place on, and whatever world it was registered to, those laws apply. So if, say, it's a Gemenon ship, Gemenon laws are invoked. I could see that too.

*nods thoughtfully re: Baltar* We'll have to see how they play this. If Dara's suggested scenario is the one they're using, then Baltar is still a weird case, since his crimes were on New Caprica and not on a specific ship.

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

I like that. That's cunning, and gets round all my problems :-) Particularly since the concept of law on New Caprica probably hadn't been properly developed before the Cylons invaded, and nobody would be suggesting they use the Cylon version of law XD