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vaznettiGood morning and Happy Hanukkah!
I've been browsing around without actually posting much, largely because typing anything but Yuletide fills me with guilt. (As BH reminded me, though, freaking out about Yuletide is something of a tradition for me. I have attempted to persuade him that this year it's different and worse, with no luck.)
We've also been rewatching BSG; we're up to Episode 5. Or 4, depending on how one numbers -- the one with the secret tribunals, anyway. It's an interesting episode. First we get Anders backing out of the tribunal, despite his fierce insistence on Ellen being executed back on New Caprica. Either the writers decided that didn't matter, or Tigh was simply too tactful to mention the hypocrisy; the latter strikes me as unlikely. It's not that I think that it's impossible or unlikely that Anders changed his mind, or that he would be wrong to do so. It just seems that he ought to have acknowledged that he was changing his mind, and such an admission would (to my mind) have strengthened his position.
Then, and even more interesting, the handover of power from Zarek to Roslin -- perfectly legal, but the dialogue makes it clear that the government of the fleet is essentially military rule papered over by constitutional maneuvering. At least, that's how I would interpret Adama's veto over who holds the presidency: Zarek gives up power because if he doesn't Adama will find some excuse to imprison him. Rather like Tigh and Roslin, back in S1. And that impression is strengthened by the immediate aftermath of Roslin's speech: a moment of silence, before Adama rises to his feet to start the deliberate clapping. What happens when they disagree? Should I assume that Roslin goes back to jail?
I don't think the writers had much thought for either of these problems, to be honest -- I don't actually think they know where the story is going at all. I actually thing that the BSG story arc is about as likely to come out making sense as, say, the Alias mytharc was. It doesn't mean that I don't enjoy the show, of course, but I can't say I respect it for the way that plot and character consistency may be sacrificed for cheap references to current events.
That turned out to be more negative than I meant it to -- but I'm going back downstairs to do some writing, and don't really feel like editing it.
I've been browsing around without actually posting much, largely because typing anything but Yuletide fills me with guilt. (As BH reminded me, though, freaking out about Yuletide is something of a tradition for me. I have attempted to persuade him that this year it's different and worse, with no luck.)
We've also been rewatching BSG; we're up to Episode 5. Or 4, depending on how one numbers -- the one with the secret tribunals, anyway. It's an interesting episode. First we get Anders backing out of the tribunal, despite his fierce insistence on Ellen being executed back on New Caprica. Either the writers decided that didn't matter, or Tigh was simply too tactful to mention the hypocrisy; the latter strikes me as unlikely. It's not that I think that it's impossible or unlikely that Anders changed his mind, or that he would be wrong to do so. It just seems that he ought to have acknowledged that he was changing his mind, and such an admission would (to my mind) have strengthened his position.
Then, and even more interesting, the handover of power from Zarek to Roslin -- perfectly legal, but the dialogue makes it clear that the government of the fleet is essentially military rule papered over by constitutional maneuvering. At least, that's how I would interpret Adama's veto over who holds the presidency: Zarek gives up power because if he doesn't Adama will find some excuse to imprison him. Rather like Tigh and Roslin, back in S1. And that impression is strengthened by the immediate aftermath of Roslin's speech: a moment of silence, before Adama rises to his feet to start the deliberate clapping. What happens when they disagree? Should I assume that Roslin goes back to jail?
I don't think the writers had much thought for either of these problems, to be honest -- I don't actually think they know where the story is going at all. I actually thing that the BSG story arc is about as likely to come out making sense as, say, the Alias mytharc was. It doesn't mean that I don't enjoy the show, of course, but I can't say I respect it for the way that plot and character consistency may be sacrificed for cheap references to current events.
That turned out to be more negative than I meant it to -- but I'm going back downstairs to do some writing, and don't really feel like editing it.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-16 04:38 pm (UTC)I know Yuletide is being beastly per usual and don't want to distract, but wanted to say: Blessings is wonderful and thank you again. Letter coming later this weekend.
Happy Hanukkah!
no subject
Date: 2006-12-16 08:54 pm (UTC)I think the first four episodes were stunning, but after that, everything went a bit to pieces.
Yuletide is done! I'm so pleased.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-17 03:14 am (UTC)Not pleased that the BSG writers aren't trying to write a coherent story, mostly because it would appear that they were. There are ways of making episodic tv with an underlying theme of "going in this direction, harried by this enemy" and they sort of did that in the first season at least and it worked fine. But that's not what they did this year. I think they got mired in their politics, which was an honorable thing to do, but needed the story to be coherent as well as apposite.
Babylon 5 did a stunning job of commenting on the wars over the breakup of Yugoslavia without losing track of his continuity.
But trying to build a social commentary about current events while building a mythos to sustain your own universe can certainly be tricky.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-17 10:44 am (UTC)But trying to build a social commentary about current events while building a mythos to sustain your own universe can certainly be tricky.
Yes, although as you say B5 managed to pull it off -- of course my sense was that the writers there took the fictional universe as seriously as (or more seriously than) they took the political story, so the whole thing never became unbalanced. And they were referring to a single modern dilemma, whereas BSG is all over the place, sometimes.
Rewatching the "genocide" episode, it struck me that all the commentary I read was about the humans, none at all about Three and Six torturing Baltar. Why do you think that was?
no subject
Date: 2006-12-17 01:30 pm (UTC)Also, in that totally calculating writerly way, it would mean a loss of torture as a semeiotic signifier for evil on the side of the bad, and loss of innocence, or sacrifice, or other reveals of character under duress on the side of the good that have made its expression in storytelling a powerfull tool of mythmaking.