None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.

[constance]

I just watched the season finale of Battlestar Galactica, and I know I should've watched it weeks ago, but it took me a while to get those last episodes downloaded. But now I've watched it, and I really really want to talk about it. I mean! Gosh!

I don't even know where to start, honestly -- I just feel all keyed up and agog and even though I sort of guessed some of the twists, in the way that I guess twists, one of about six possibles floating around in my head and one turns out to be right and I'm not convinced it's really going to happen until it does, that doesn't mean I didn't watch it all going down with my mouth hanging open.

Wait, I do know where to start. It occurred to me that things might be headed for cylonhood for the music-hearers as soon as I realized not everyone was hearing the music, and then all I really needed to do was make note of who was hearing it and who wasn't to guess who those cylons might be. And then when they started quoting lyrics and I realized what song they were hearing, I just started laughing, because.

Okay, you know, none of the Cylons ever really talk about their God in any way but the most nebulous and general way, as far as I can recall, but when they started quoting lyrics, I suddenly started laughing because more than just about anything in the world, what I wanted right then was for the Cylons' monotheism to be centered around Bob Dylan. I wanted "All Along the Watchtower" to be some kind of ancient sacred hymn.

So what did you think of the season finale? Please share, I'm begging you!

Comments

Re: damnit, should reupload fat!lee icon :-w

[tofty.livejournal.com]

All through the trial, I kept thinking, Baltar is a lucky SOB, to have Badger as a lawyer!

I sort of agree with Jim, though, about Lee. That is, I agree with both of you, to a degree. You're right that Lee's decisions are generally good ones, made using a moral compass that pretty much always points true north. But his kickass moral courage makes not for a decent military officer. In a military setting, one's own senses of right and wrong are expected to be subsumed to the collective. A military officer obeys orders first and asks questions later (if at all), and every time Lee is forced to choose between his individual preference and the military decision, he chooses his own preference; and no matter how good his instincts are (and they are very good indeed, all things considered), the fact that he ever considers his own wishes in the first place makes him a serious military liability.

I think he'd be better served as an advocate, you know? An attorney, or a legislator, or an abitrator of some sort. And I wonder if he doesn't feel the same way; I'm remembering a conversation between him and Tigh a while back, after the attempted coup, I think, where Tigh tells Lee that he's unfit to wear a uniform, and Lee agrees. (In fact, he says something like, "You're right, I am unfit. But so are you." Which is, you know, a good point.)

Re: damnit, should reupload fat!lee icon :-w

[octoberstory.livejournal.com]

I think he'd be better served as an advocate, you know?
Agreed, definitely. My admiration for him (romantic befuddlement notwithstanding) doesn't really admit his superiority as a military man--in fact, it kind of runs contrary to it, as you pointed out. Whereas J and I differed because he seemed to think that Lee's priorities made him a bad man, as opposed to a bad soldier. Or that the two were synonomous.

I think it bears remembering, too, that the stakes are so incredibly frigging high in the BSG universe that the characters and viewers must constantly revise their criteria for what makes a "good" soldier--or a "good" president, a "good" scientist, etc. In our reality, we all generally agree that a good soldier follows orders above all; there may be casualties as a result, unnecessary injuries, even mass destruction. Superior officers are capable of errors in judgment, but we agree that maintaining the integrity of the whole trumps individual objections because isolated incidents, however bloody, are preferable to anarchy.

But what happens when your margin for error shrinks to about 1%...that is to say, when one really bad mistake may lead directly to the end of humanity? Does a "good" soldier's moral imperative change when he believes that an order may be not just disastrous, but apocalyptic? What possible use can it be to maintain the integrity of the military chain of command if there's no humanity left for the military to protect?

But then, J would argue that it's in situations like that that the chain of command is MOST worth observing, and that if humanity has any shot at surviving then order has to be maintained on every level.

I don't know, I really don't know. That's what I love about this show. It's structured like a Greek tragedy (the pantheism and hubris and suggestions of a universe in which the laws of the Gods supercede the laws of man), but is otherwise totally modern in its treatment of men and women as flawed, loveable creatures with opposing instincts and free will to act on them. I like that there are so few easy answers.

Right, that's more than enough rambling about that.

Re: damnit, should reupload fat!lee icon :-w

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Hahah! Again, I'm running sort of in between the two of you, as to whether-and-how the military process (and other processes as well) should be altered. I believe they should be altered, actually -- behaviors and expectations and procedures that worked reasonably well in regulating a series of planets populated by billions of people are going to be cumbersome and counterproductive when you're talking about fewer than 50,000 people crammed on a (dwindling) handful of spaceships. I think that Lee is right to question the status quo -- but I think that the way he approaches changing it is dangerously impulsive, for a man who wields a good deal of authority.

IMO, Adama and Roslin are working through change much more effectively. They're slower off the mark (and in fact are often goaded into change by Lee, much as Adama in particular would be reluctant to admit that), but they're better about testing and talking about it together and with others. They are more flexible about subsuming their own most dearly-held principles to what they see as the common good, and so their adaptations in the world order are less cataclysmic, and less feckless as well. (Though they have their moments too, don't they? :D)