BSG: A Measure of Salvation and Hero
Dec. 1st, 2006 03:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieOK, I am going to post my thoughts on A Measure of Salvation and Hero before tonight’s Unfinished Business. Oooooh, barely getting it in under the wire, huh?
A Measure of Salvation
A.k.a. The ep that made my shippy radar go bust from overheating. Helo/Sharon EEEEEE!
But first about other issues.
I can see and understand both sides of the debate. I get, I viscerally get Apollo’s unrelenting desire to vipe out all of cylonity (he is an idealist and his solution has idealist’s inhuman inevitability). If one is ever justified in genocide, the humans of the show are. And this is not just revenge, it will prevent threats, will save them, will save Earth. So I get Apollo, even though he makes me want to take a step back, or a dozen.
But I get Helo’s position too. Because, like it or not, whatever their origin, Cylons aren’t just machines. They have individuality, they have that nebulous concept ‘a soul.’ In fact, if his Sharon is fully a person (and she is), then it’s really not like frying a bunch of machines. It’s killing a race of (for want of a better word) people. Some of whom never came in contact with a single human. Some of whom might have capacity for love and peace like his Sharon. In a way, it is the dilemma of ‘Collaborators’ writ large. I understand the desire for revenge, but I see the corrosive influences of it too.
It’s interesting that it’s Lee and Roslin on the same side with no doubts and Helo and Adama on the other. Lee and Roslin are rather similar in some ways, aren’t they?
But whoa. Helo suffocating the five Cylons? Dark and creepy and so making sense.
I remember the reaction to this ep was rather polarized but it made me love Helo more. Because he will stand up to Roslin and Adama at the same time and not fold. Because he will carry through what he thinks is right (whether it is or not is a separate question, see above). Of course, if Cottle did his job right they have a sample of that virus around so they can retry any time they want.
Oh, and that brings me to Helo/Sharon. Oh, this episode was SO GOOD on the shippy front. Helo’s acute awareness of Sharon being ‘second best’ to people v. his own belief in her utter humanity (yeah, can’t have a different word) is totally a foreshadowing to his actions later. I loved it when he was so angrily concerned in talking to Cottle, that he didn’t examine her yet because she is a Cylon. And then the scene where he found out she is OK and he came in and they had that totally awesome adorable hot kiss and almost went into horizontal human-cylon making out? LOVE.
GUUUUH.
I don’t have coherent thoughts, sorry.
And that whole conversation where he told her about the plans to wipe out the Cylons and he told her she was a person before she met him etc etc etc. And she told him she will always keep her word (to be loyal to humans) no matter what. I just love the complete love and loyalty and trust they have to each other. I think they are the only characters who, though their personal love, managed to transcend the human-cylon divide. He is a person and she is a person to each other. And the species is not an overcome obstacle, it’s literally immaterial.
I also love the scene at the end where he tells her that the first thing he wants to see in the morning except her face are the CIC lights and I love the matter-of-factness of his feeling for her implied in that statement. Or when she just holds him in that hug and he tells her he could never be without her.
Oh. My. God.
How much do I love my ship? With the OTP confessions and hot kissing and overcoming such innate things to be together. OMG.
Please don’t kill one of them, RM!
I buy why Adama doesn’t want to invstigate, btw. He was never keen on the idea in the first place and there is a risk that investigation will make this public and there will be random discussions of it through the fleet that are polarizing etc. Thus, no investigation.
Helo just got very very lucky.
Hero
I didn’t find this ep particularly interesting. It’s not a bad ep (though trying to figure out the chronology makes my head hurt) but there was nothing much in it that grabbed me.
So I’ll mention just a few things:
Interesting to see Saul Tigh begin to climb out of his pit. And I loved the Lee-Adama conversation. Lee is as distressed as Adama is and he tries to shift the blame from him. He is a good son. But he also needs to believe the war is rhe Cylons’ fault. And then I love the look on his face during the award ceremony. Lee can never have any comforting lies, can he? Not with Earth, not with this.
I do like that the blame for the war is not entirely on the Cylons’ shoulders. In a way, does it seem that Cylons did what the humans wanted to do but were stopped by Helo in the previous ep?
The boring battlestar of blabby Baltar continues to bore me. Baltar himself is only tolerable in small dozes and I don’t find Cylons very interesting by themselves.
A Measure of Salvation
A.k.a. The ep that made my shippy radar go bust from overheating. Helo/Sharon EEEEEE!
But first about other issues.
I can see and understand both sides of the debate. I get, I viscerally get Apollo’s unrelenting desire to vipe out all of cylonity (he is an idealist and his solution has idealist’s inhuman inevitability). If one is ever justified in genocide, the humans of the show are. And this is not just revenge, it will prevent threats, will save them, will save Earth. So I get Apollo, even though he makes me want to take a step back, or a dozen.
But I get Helo’s position too. Because, like it or not, whatever their origin, Cylons aren’t just machines. They have individuality, they have that nebulous concept ‘a soul.’ In fact, if his Sharon is fully a person (and she is), then it’s really not like frying a bunch of machines. It’s killing a race of (for want of a better word) people. Some of whom never came in contact with a single human. Some of whom might have capacity for love and peace like his Sharon. In a way, it is the dilemma of ‘Collaborators’ writ large. I understand the desire for revenge, but I see the corrosive influences of it too.
It’s interesting that it’s Lee and Roslin on the same side with no doubts and Helo and Adama on the other. Lee and Roslin are rather similar in some ways, aren’t they?
But whoa. Helo suffocating the five Cylons? Dark and creepy and so making sense.
I remember the reaction to this ep was rather polarized but it made me love Helo more. Because he will stand up to Roslin and Adama at the same time and not fold. Because he will carry through what he thinks is right (whether it is or not is a separate question, see above). Of course, if Cottle did his job right they have a sample of that virus around so they can retry any time they want.
Oh, and that brings me to Helo/Sharon. Oh, this episode was SO GOOD on the shippy front. Helo’s acute awareness of Sharon being ‘second best’ to people v. his own belief in her utter humanity (yeah, can’t have a different word) is totally a foreshadowing to his actions later. I loved it when he was so angrily concerned in talking to Cottle, that he didn’t examine her yet because she is a Cylon. And then the scene where he found out she is OK and he came in and they had that totally awesome adorable hot kiss and almost went into horizontal human-cylon making out? LOVE.
GUUUUH.
I don’t have coherent thoughts, sorry.
And that whole conversation where he told her about the plans to wipe out the Cylons and he told her she was a person before she met him etc etc etc. And she told him she will always keep her word (to be loyal to humans) no matter what. I just love the complete love and loyalty and trust they have to each other. I think they are the only characters who, though their personal love, managed to transcend the human-cylon divide. He is a person and she is a person to each other. And the species is not an overcome obstacle, it’s literally immaterial.
I also love the scene at the end where he tells her that the first thing he wants to see in the morning except her face are the CIC lights and I love the matter-of-factness of his feeling for her implied in that statement. Or when she just holds him in that hug and he tells her he could never be without her.
Oh. My. God.
How much do I love my ship? With the OTP confessions and hot kissing and overcoming such innate things to be together. OMG.
Please don’t kill one of them, RM!
I buy why Adama doesn’t want to invstigate, btw. He was never keen on the idea in the first place and there is a risk that investigation will make this public and there will be random discussions of it through the fleet that are polarizing etc. Thus, no investigation.
Helo just got very very lucky.
Hero
I didn’t find this ep particularly interesting. It’s not a bad ep (though trying to figure out the chronology makes my head hurt) but there was nothing much in it that grabbed me.
So I’ll mention just a few things:
Interesting to see Saul Tigh begin to climb out of his pit. And I loved the Lee-Adama conversation. Lee is as distressed as Adama is and he tries to shift the blame from him. He is a good son. But he also needs to believe the war is rhe Cylons’ fault. And then I love the look on his face during the award ceremony. Lee can never have any comforting lies, can he? Not with Earth, not with this.
I do like that the blame for the war is not entirely on the Cylons’ shoulders. In a way, does it seem that Cylons did what the humans wanted to do but were stopped by Helo in the previous ep?
The boring battlestar of blabby Baltar continues to bore me. Baltar himself is only tolerable in small dozes and I don’t find Cylons very interesting by themselves.
