Battlestar Galactica 1.09: "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down"

[annathepiper]

At the specific request of kieri, and crossposted to my journal and bsg_women...


Okay, first and foremost: Cylon or not, Ellen Tigh needs to go right out the airlock. Can I get a "SO SAY WE ALL!" on that, folks? Because I mean, damn, that woman was repulsive. solarbird remarked that in more than one scene, she thought Ellen looked like a Joss Whedon Buffyverse vampire, and that was absolutely appropriate, because she was all about the devouring of her victim--who just happened to be her husband. Dara also added, "No wonder Tigh's an alcoholic!"

I had a chat with kathrynt about whether or not Ellen is really a Cylon. Kathryn thinks yes, on the grounds that the timing of her showing up is just too damned convenient, and also, sabotaging the XO would be a good way to deal a blow to the Galactica. Me, I say no, because:

• I don't want the show to go into "Cylon of the Week" mode.
  
• I actually like that at least one of the human characters could be that actively vile. It's very easy to go "that person is vile, they must be a Cylon"--too easy, in fact. And given what I've read about the intentions of the show's creators including presenting a more complex set of characters to the viewers, I'm thinking that should include humans who are actively, unmitigatedly awful.
  
• Everything we see out of Ellen strikes me as just too damned petty for what we've seen of Cylon behavior so far. She gets drunk. She gets giggly. She yells out childish things like "Bill Adama doesn't know where Eaaaaaaaarth iiiiis!" Every single confirmed Cylon we've seen so far has been way more serious and focused than she seems to be.
  
• She's trying to do the 'voracious temptress' thing, and we've already got a confirmed Cylon model doing that: Six. Who, I might add, blows Ellen right out of the water. And it doesn't strike me as likely that the Cylons, if they do really have only twelve humanoid models, would make two different models try a variation on the same overall theme.
  
• Unless she's a brand new Cylon model, it'd be too damned coincidental that the Cylons would have managed to slip her into Tigh's life however many years ago. I'm not saying they couldn't have--clearly, they managed to slip agents into various and sundry positions in human society even before the destruction of the Colonies--but it just strikes me as too much of a coincidence that two agents would be in positions to mess with the Galactica since we already have Boomer as a confirmed Cylon. It strikes me as redundant storytelling, and I think this show's better than that.
  
• I really like the idea of a subplot involving Tigh shaking off the destructive habits she'd lured him into before, and proving to her that she's not pulling that crap with him again--and relying on the strength of Adama's continued friendship and support to continue to pull himself together. It's a subplot that would lose absolutely nothing if she's human and just vile. In fact, I think it's better if she is human.

Kathryn made another remark I agree with, too, and that is extreme pleasure that the show has gone to such lengths to set up strong female characters--because now, when they throw us a character like Ellen Tigh, we know she's not meant to be awful just because she's a woman. She's awful because of her very own unique, personal abilities to be repulsive!

In the meantime, I had a thought while watching this episode, involving Caprica-Six. That thought is this: do we have any idea what happened to the physical form of the Six who was having the affair with Baltar before the attack? We saw her last when she was shielding him from the blast in his house, and next time we see Baltar, he's in the crowd of refugees ganging up on Boomer and Helo's raptor. Do we know if that Six's body got destroyed? Or is there any chance that the Six we've been seeing stalk Helo on Caprica is the same Six--or at least is the next physical receptacle for her consciousness? The reason I find myself wondering this is, she looked awfully damned troubled when Newscaster Cylon talked about love and how Caprica-Boomer was beginning to love Helo... and specifically when he mused on what that must be like. She reacted like she knows, and we've seen Six be really bothered when Baltar's ducked the question of whether he loves her.

Other random bits of commentary:

• I really liked the shocked and horrified look on Apollo's face when he realized Ellen was playing footsie with him under the dinner table.
  
• I liked that President Roslin followed up on that seed of doubt that the Cylon prisoner planted with her, trying to check out whether Adama is in fact a Cylon. I also like that that seed of doubt got stomped out of existence in the course of this episode. I don't mind that she got suspicious of him in the slightest, but I'm glad that it seems to have been a brief and fleeting thing. This is good, because Roslin and Adama really need to continue to work strongly together to keep the fleet together.
  
• Baltar is going further and further into la-la land. And Starbuck catching him going at it with his imaginary girlfriend was priceless.
  
• Is Baltar actively sabotaging his own results--I mean, did he mess with the detector to make it report all green? Or is he just telling everybody arbitrarily that all the tests are coming back 'human'? We saw the thing report 'Cylon' for Boomer, after all, and we know he hasn't seemed to have told anybody about that yet.

In conclusion... so far, the weakest of the episodes I've seen. This one wasn't bad, to be sure, but it can't compare to the much stronger episodes we've had so far. I think an occasional dose of silliness and levity is not inappropriate, but here's hoping it stays only occasional.

Comments

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

So Say We All!

[annathepiper]

Testify, brother!

[solarbird]

Heh.

Yes, it is.

Nearly the same premise (a slight change in that the Cylons were created by humanity, rather than another species - however, that was actually the very-first original premise, before Glen pulled his punch and decided that was too damn grim and then made them aliens, and then turned them back into robots created by aliens), a lot of the same characters, a very different take.

The first episode of the ongoing series (first thing after the two-part "miniseries" that started the thing) is online on the sciffy channel's website for free and legal downloading. It's called "33."

One of the things I like about it is that you need to pay attention. I like that in a show.

[annathepiper]

Dara and I are both highly into the new BSG now, and Mimi and Paul both have been watching episodes with us on one night or another as they get caught up on what they've missed. :) We can provide tapes if you need 'em!

[annathepiper]

Our viewing nights lately have been Wednesdays (as Meems come over to watch with us) and Fridays or Saturdays (with Paul). This means Dara and I wind up seeing episodes multiple times, but that's QUITE OKAY, because just about all of the episodes are just That Good.

Tomorrow night we're watching episode 3 with Meems and Paul, as well as the pilot episode of Lost, which Paul has been recommending to us.

But if you want to get into BSG, I HIGHLY recommend you start with the miniseries first, which is rentable. This is definitely shaping up to be one of those shows where you will be behind if you try to come in on an episode that's further along in the season. If you'd like to arrange a night to come to MurkNorth and watch that, though, that'd be splendid. :)

[kieri.livejournal.com]

If you go to:

http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/

there's a red banner across the top that says 'Click here to watch the first episode online'. Click it. :) That'll take you to '33'. :)

[annathepiper]

Ohhh yeah, there's a WHOLE LOT that's different in the new BSG--including that the Cylons know how to mimic humans in this version. The Big Shiny Metal Robots are still around, too, but mostly used as enforcers and to launch ground attacks. They look different from the Cylons in the old series, though the miniseries that introduced the new show DID have a nice callback to the Cylon appearance from the original--in the new one's timeline, those Cylons were the ones that appeared in the first Cylon War against humanity, set forty years prior to the events in the series.

They've evolved a lot since that point. ;)

[kieri.livejournal.com]

And a belated So Say We All!

You can just tell that that woman has shenanigans galore ready to throw around. She's trouble waiting to happen, and it's the long-term sort of trouble that's sneaky and damaging and really personal. She's so great. I love loathing her. :)

And I concur on her not being a Cylon, simply because we've already got a ton of humans to love and not one to really hate (even at his weaseliest, Baltar is at least amusing and is quite frequently sympathetic) until Ellen Tigh came along.

I desperately want a screen-cap of Apollo's face in that shot to make an icon with. Or just someone else to make the icon for me. The caption, "Waughg!" would work. :)

(next week's episodes is one of my _favorite_, by the by. It's really good. Look forward to it!)

[annathepiper]

Yeah, Baltar may be increasingly batshit crazy, amoral, and too damned fascinated with hot blonde Cylon babes, but he remains oddly sympathetic. I am seriously digging that, especially since the original Baltar was so 1-d.

I also am seriously digging that I STILL don't know whether Baltar's Imaginary Girlfriend is all in his head or whether the Cylons are still actively messing with him. ^_^

And thanks for the alert about the next episode! The preview looked good, indeed!