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somedaybitchi'm wondering, honestly, why they didn't just kill Sharon outright, because really? you think after you kill her baby that she's not going to do everything in her power to hunt you down? that she's going to be able to put aside the fact that you killed her child, the child that she left the Cylons for because she knew the Cylons would use it? that she'd just somehow understand and keep helping you? that Helo could EVER forgive you? are you really truly that unbelievably STUPID?
i didn't see it as a plot hole, necessarily, but it confused me in the "well, what do you think you're going to do when it's done, yo?" kind of way. and i think it didn't strike me as a plot hole, or a logic flaw, because it kind of underscored the whole fear/snap decision thing that they still can't seem to get over. no one stopped to think beyond the initial decision.
and how much Helo love do i have right now? ohsoverymuch. he was willing to not only risk his life, and his career, AGAIN, but he was willing to leave the only world he ever knew behind to keep his child safe. oh yeah.
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Date: 2006-01-21 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 04:13 am (UTC)I have to say, the parents of the unboard kid are the only ones who behave toward it in a way I can believe.
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Date: 2006-01-22 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 07:35 am (UTC)Nodding head frantically here. But I guess if you think her emotions are just "programming" maybe you don't think about how if you did that to a human woman, she'd make you pay and you'd deserve it.
And so much in love with Helo here. Big dumb lug did good (I mean that affectionately. And I don't think he's really dumb so much as idealistic to the point of naive. But he is the BSG character most like a golden retriever in personality). I'm actually kind of curious as to what would've happened if Baltar hadn't interrupted. Would Adama have been willing to order the Marines to fire on Helo? Would he have gone along with Helo's idea of putting them in a Raptor? I can see him not being overly bothered if a Cylon got killed resisting orders, but Helo's human.
another thing (b/c I'm long-winded)
Date: 2006-01-22 07:46 am (UTC)I think they weren't thinking beyond the snap decision because Roslin is desperately ill (Woodrow Wilson?) and it's easy b/c there are no moral consequences to it. I am surprised that nobody besides Baltar brought up Sharon's value as a military asset, but I guess they were panicking. And dislike Baltar so shy away from his very practical point.
A lot of people have talked about how Adama's reaction was inconsistent, given his actions last week, but I don't think so, when you take his state of mind into account. He decided against the assassination because Cain was a *human*. She may have been a sociopath, a torturer and a murderer, but she was still human. If you kill her, you risk your own humanity, because a worthy species doesn't go around slaughtering each other, but if you kill a Cylon, well, it's still just a toaster. Adama's further away from thinking of Sharon (and by extension, her fetus) as just a "thing", either a useful tool or a dangerous machine to be destroyed despite all evidence to the contrary, than many in the Fleet, but he's definitely not there yet.
And just chiming in with the political here, I'm pro-choice, and precisely because of that, I think the idea of strapping a screaming woman down and forcing an abortion on her is morally reprehensible. Especially since they had no evidence whatsoever that the genetic abnormalities were in any way dangerous. They were just "odd". And while I'm not very surprised at Adama, and not at all surprised at Roslin, I *am* surprised at Cottle. His reaction in RS 1 suggested that he saw Sharon as a patient, not a machine. Don't the Colonials have some version of the Hippocratic oath? I'm fairly sure forcing a medical procedure on an unwilling patient is a violation of said oath.
But to Adama, Roslin, et al, it doesn't count. I think the creators are trying to show the disconnect between the audience's point of view and the characters' POV. Fisk last episode, saying with complete seriousness that Helo's reason for killing Thorne was ridiculous because you can't rape a machine. And in this episode, the attitude prevalent among almost all the human characters that because Sharon isn't human, her opinion as to what should happen inside her uterus is totally irrelevant, and far better to force an abortion on her than risk the slightest possibility that if her baby is born it might some day pose some nebulous threat. It's not like she's incubating a plutonium bomb.
Their attitude actually reminded me of a book I read once in which an expensive thoroughbred mare had been knocked up by a donkey. And the mare's owner had the equine veterinarian abort her because obviously her owner doesn't want her giving birth to a damn mule. But nobody bothered to ask the horse's opinion on the matter because, well, she's a horse! Of course it's up to the owner. I don't recall it being treated as a moral dilemma or anything, it was just a minor plot thread. I think it might've been a Dick Francis thriller. Most of his books are about horse-racing.
The owner's attitude seems logical to us b/c we don't extend human-style rights to horses, and anyway, it's not like a horse could tell us what it wanted even if it was capable of conscious thought. The difference between that and the Colonial attitude is that there is strong evidence that the "horse" in question *does* have conscious thought, and she was being quite clear about her wishes. But their attitude is entrenched, so it doesn't seem like a moral dilemma to them. The Cylons don't see slaughtering billions of humans as wrong, and the humans don't see that their actions here (and in the Pegasus arc) are similar to those of the Cylons, but in miniature. Yeah, the Cylons have been much more prolific, but the rationale and mindset are the same.
Re: another thing (b/c I'm long-winded)
Date: 2006-01-23 09:08 am (UTC)i would think that anyone would think the action reprehensible. i don't see any politics in it all.
Especially since they had no evidence whatsoever that the genetic abnormalities were in any way dangerous. They were just "odd". And while I'm not very surprised at Adama, and not at all surprised at Roslin, I *am* surprised at Cottle. His reaction in RS 1 suggested that he saw Sharon as a patient, not a machine. Don't the Colonials have some version of the Hippocratic oath? I'm fairly sure forcing a medical procedure on an unwilling patient is a violation of said oath.
again, i think it was speaking strongly to both Adama's having now come to trust Roslin fully as his CiC, and his still existing struggle with the medical fact that Sharon, and by extension cylons at large, are, whatever else, also human.
as to Cottle, while he's a doctor, he's also an officer in the military. i am also rather surprised that he didn't fight it more, but i think the abnormalities frightened him because he didn't understand them. but given his behavior the previous ep, i would have thought that he would have argued for more tests at least.
i think that this ep was possibly the most forced of any, and some of this is the hurries of production, being forced to get characters where you need them to be because you're running out of time.
and...
Date: 2006-01-23 09:08 am (UTC)and while i fail to see how the baby is *more* dangerous than Sharon herself - which is my problem with that whole thing - i don't think that what you posit there is irrational on the colonials' part. Sharon, no matter what else, is a cylon and therefore very much still a threat. she is pregnant with a cylon-human hybrid of some kind. that's scary.
The owner's attitude seems logical to us b/c we don't extend human-style rights to horses, and anyway, it's not like a horse could tell us what it wanted even if it was capable of conscious thought. The difference between that and the Colonial attitude is that there is strong evidence that the "horse" in question *does* have conscious thought, and she was being quite clear about her wishes.
i don't think the metaphor works because it *is* a horse...an animal spooked by empty plastic bags. which isn't to say that they should be treated callously, but at the same time, it's not the same thing.
But their attitude is entrenched, so it doesn't seem like a moral dilemma to them...
this i agree with completely. they are still unable to make the leap from what they created to what the cylons *re-created*. and really, i can't see that being an easy transition. they call themselves human, and claim superiority over humans, and yet they nuked 12 colonies worth of humans with no remorse whatsoever.
The Cylons don't see slaughtering billions of humans as wrong, and the humans don't see that their actions here (and in the Pegasus arc) are similar to those of the Cylons, but in miniature. Yeah, the Cylons have been much more prolific, but the rationale and mindset are the same
i don't think the rationale and mindset are the same at all. the *justifications* may be the same, as in the other isn't good enough or human enough or whatever, but the causalities are totally different. and that is precisely what i think is brilliant about the show....as i read elsewhere put, "the conflict among us caused by them."
the humans kept trying to make peace with the original cylons but they disappeared, re-emerging 50 years later to attempt total genocide with no provocation whatsoever. the cylons are in no way anything other than the enemy. they *butchered* the colonials like so much cattle.
the conflict, then, for the humans, is to retain their definition of humanity when provoked, by without and within, and not descend into something else.
it's made all the more compelling and complicated because the cylons believe they are divinely inspired by their god. in my personal world view though, if God had issues, He'd just handle it himself. calling it ordained is just a bullshit excuse because you're too fucking cowardly to take the responsibility yourself...and that works for both the cylons and the colonials. along that line, though, i did LOVE Sharon's answer to Adama, why *do* they deserve to live, precisely because the cylons fail to see the irony of the question.
Re: and...
Date: 2006-01-24 06:21 am (UTC)i don't think the rationale and mindset are the same at all. the *justifications* may be the same, as in the other isn't good enough or human enough or whatever, but the causalities are totally different. and that is precisely what i think is brilliant about the show....as i read elsewhere put, "the conflict among us caused by them."
I'm interested in what you think are the causalities.
Re: and...
Date: 2006-01-25 10:06 am (UTC)er, lemme think on this a bit so i avoid sounding like a dumbass. :D
thinky thoughts [long-assed reply]
Date: 2006-01-25 10:59 am (UTC)my read of Cain is that she snapped as a result of the attacks on the colonies and she went batshit insane. fully functional, but insane. a sort of Kurtz if you will. Cain is competent, inspired, even brilliant as a commander and tactician but what grounded her humanity was torn away. i never saw Cain as evil but deeply, deeply tragic.
Adama and the Galactica didn't make the "right" choices because they're the heroes, they made the "right" choices [and plenty of wrong ones] because they had the grounding of their survivors, because they were forced into their perspective by Roslin. she bitchslaps Adama into the reality that they WERE NOT at war because the war was already over. the humans got their asses handed to them and were alive on a technicality. and Adama got reminded that the military exists for the sole purpose of serving its society, be it protectively or pro-actively.
the crew of the Pegasus didn't have that grounding because Cain took it from them. in her defense though, how many Roslins can there be? it was a ballsy call to run, to admit that the war was over and to get the fuck out, that all that mattered was the survival and preservation of their Society.
Cain never made that connection.
Roslin forced Adama to move past the rage and the revenge but Cain didn't have anyone to do that for her. Cain saw a war, and wartime decisions, and because she'd snapped from the overwhelming pressure of utter annihilation, all of her decisions made sense to her. [i think, that's why her "speech" to Kara rang so true. Cain wasn't evil, she was just broken and didn't know it.]
now jump to the treatment of Gina...lacking the perspective that the Galactica crew was forced into because of G!Boomer, the crew of the Pegasus saw nothing but machine. Gina was just a machine in human skin, but it didn't extend below the surface level to them.
look at Fisk talking to Helo and Tyrol when he breaks up the blanket party. Fisk is stunned at his crew, because Helo and Tyrol are officers in the fleet, and equally stunned at Helo and Tyrol because Boomer is "just a machine". and i don't think Jack believes that in a marginalizing sort of way, but genuinely, deeply; he doesn't get Helo and Tyrol because all he sees is machine. Gina and Sharon might as well be talking blow up dolls.
the Pegasus crew has no Sharon equivalent. no one that went to the Academy with her, no one that ate and worked beside her, trusted their life to her. Sharon was one of them until the day she wasn't. that gives the Galactica crew a whole different perspective on how human the cylons really are.
add that to their dealings with both Leobens and Spacey!cylon and not!Gina, and Helo's Boomer and you have a whole different world view. the Pegasus crew had none of that. Gina was just a cylon in disguise and that made her a machine and nothing else. they had no Baltar to examine a human!cylon down to the genetic level. they had no Sharon helping them on Caprica, no Sharon helping them on Kobol to get find the Tomb of Athena, to stop an assassination attempt [albeit for also selfish reasons.]
they have no frames of reference; not for human cylons and not for the retention of their own humanity. so, their causality isn't genocide, it's revenge. the Galactica's is self-preservation, and when they are stupid, it's revenge as well...Callie killing G!Boomer, Adama starting to choke out C!Boomer, Starbuck's initial treatment of Leoben, Sharon being kept in a cell.
i can't marry that to the Cylons. they came out of nowhere after ignoring the colonials' attempts at peace for 50 years and nuked the fuck out of every one of their planets. i can't see self-preservation there. i can't even see revenge there. that's flat out genocide. and one could even successfully argue patricide.
Re: thinky thoughts [long-assed reply]
Date: 2006-01-25 11:03 am (UTC)don't mind me while i make up new grammar.
Re: and...
Date: 2006-01-31 05:55 am (UTC)Sorry, didn't make myself clear. I didn't have a problem with it in the context of the book and in the unlikely event that I were ever to know any owners of expensive thoroughbred horses (the hay fever might present difficulties!) I wouldn't have any moral objections because, as you say, it's a horse. I mean, you don't beat it and you don't starve it, but it belongs to you and you get to make decisions on its behalf because, well, no reasoning capacity to make those decisions itself. Plastic bags are enough of a challenge without confusing it any further! I mean, as an owner you have an obligation to treat an animal well, but it's not a human. If my cat were really sick, I could tell the vet to euthanize it and the vet wouldn't say, "Well ma'am, for ethical reasons, I'll have to ask if your cat has made a living will." And if he did say that, I'd think he was high.
The point I was attempting to make, and wasn't being very clear on, I guess, was that the attitude displayed by the characters in the book (and it's really starting to piss me off that I can't remember which book it was. Next time I go to my mom's I'll have to look through all her Dick Francis novels and see which one it was. Or not, since it would probably take about a month. She has every book he's ever written. And I'm abusing parentheses) was similar to the attitude displayed by the characters in Epiphanies, but without the same logical basis. I mean, a Cylon is clearly not a horse. It's not a human, but it has consciousness and is capable of making decisions. Obviously some of those decisions are, um, really bad? I don't think there's a synonym for bad that adequately describes the decision to nuke twelve planets, and I know a lot of synonyms.
And yeah, of course the idea of a Cylon/human hybrid is justifiably scary to the Colonials. But as you also point out, the baby is no more scary than Sharon is. Roslin's decision seems to be based on, "Well, I know *I'm* ruthless enough to put an infant out an airlock if it proves to be a danger to the Fleet, but Baltar isn't, and Adama's been a big softie at times in the past.So, better get rid of it just in case before I die, so I can screw Adama's courage to the sticking point if he gets all emo about it."
Which from a pragmatic point of view makes total sense. And Roslin is very pragmatic. Neat reversal of expectations how the real hard-ass is the civilian woman who kisses her enemies for the reporters and serves other enemies tea, while the "soft touch" who makes decisions out of emotion rather than pragmatism is the grizzled old war vet Adama. But it only really works if you see the pregnant being i question as equivalent to a horse in terms of how much you have to take its wishes into account.
And I'm still not entirely clear on why they didn't just put Sharon out an airlock and save the anaesthetic. I mean, as you said in your original post, she'll be of no more use to you whatsoever afterwards. Unless you want to keep her around for experiments, which again gets into tricky ethical territory.
Re: another thing (b/c I'm long-winded)
Date: 2006-01-23 10:05 am (UTC)Well, I didn't at first either, but there were some idiots on TWoP and Skiffy going, "Why are posters getting so upset? The Colonies have a different culture. Maybe abortion isn't a big deal to them."
And the logical response of "Don't be a fucking blind idiot. Can't you tell the difference between an elective abortion and medical rape?" wasn't having any effect. I mean, morally speaking, there's not really any difference between what the Cylons were doing in "The Farm" and what the Colonials were doing in "Epiphanies." The difference is one of scale.
So, yeah, that's why I felt the need to clarify. I should've remembered that people on LJ are smarter. I don't know why I ever bother going to those boards. I don't do it especially often, and every time I do I swear I'll never do it again.
Good point about the rush to cram in all the plot maybe being why some characters were being somewhat OOC. I mean, there really should've been a Roslin/Apollo scene, given how close they used to be. Or at least there should've been someone commenting that it's odd Apollo hasn't gone to see Roslin, given that she's near death. BSG can be really sloppy at times. It's still a lot better television than most shows, but it drives me nuts when an ep has these obvious holes, and I *know* they could've pulled the episode off better if they'd put more effort into it (because in other eps they've done a fabulous job). But yeah, as you say, they're on a very tight schedule, which probably explains some of the sloppiness.
Re: another thing (b/c I'm long-winded)
Date: 2006-01-23 10:23 am (UTC)well, that's not necessarily an invalid point, actually. we have no idea if it *is* a big deal or not. HOWEVER...
...I mean, morally speaking, there's not really any difference between what the Cylons were doing in "The Farm" and what the Colonials were doing in "Epiphanies." The difference is one of scale.
i think that was also part of the point of the subplot, and probably would have been the better, or more effective, response.
...I don't know why I ever bother going to those boards. I don't do it especially often, and every time I do I swear I'll never do it again.
fandom boards are scary, scary places. repeat after me....
Good point about the rush to cram in all the plot maybe being why some characters were being somewhat OOC. I mean, there really should've been a Roslin/Apollo scene, given how close they used to be. Or at least there should've been someone commenting that it's odd Apollo hasn't gone to see Roslin, given that she's near death.
ah, but is it? Apollo post-the assassination plan is to Roslin what Starbuck was post-learning Adama lied. the idea to hit Cain coming from Roslin of all people was what irrevocably broke Apollo, i think. so, from that perspective, i'm not surprise at all.
that said, however, yeah, it should have been somehow covered more explicitly, but again, i can see the running out of time problem there.
BSG can be really sloppy at times. It's still a lot better television than most shows, but it drives me nuts when an ep has these obvious holes, and I *know* they could've pulled the episode off better if they'd put more effort into it (because in other eps they've done a fabulous job). But yeah, as you say, they're on a very tight schedule, which probably explains some of the sloppiness.
too, though, it's also possible that what a given fan sees as sloppiness or plot holes or weak plotting, was intentional on the parts of the writers. this is really the first ep where it's bugged me. but then, in the interests of full disclosure, i have no issues with Anders, the Resistance plot line, or the Anders/Kara pairing whatsoever. so...possibly 6 of one, half a dozen of the other on any given day and depending on your perspective?