BSG thoughts of the moment
Jan. 15th, 2011 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snick_backupIn which I am predictable, and other occurrences.
I was already liking Caprica!Boomer much better than Galactica!Boomer, and Helo/Caprica!Boomer was (and is still) my only ship on the show. C!Boomer was angsting about her secret identity, she was defying her entire racial heritage, there was running and hiding, and also apparently I just have a soft spot for Tahmoh Penikett (despite his fiendish foiling of my usual memory for spelling). And then C!Boomer turns up pregnant (because is a woman capable of throwing up on TV without being pregnant? nope, that's one of those privileges our gender just doesn't have), and of course then this becomes totally my storyline.
I totally was not expecting G!Boomer to shoot Adama. Huh. Well, that just isn't going to smooth C!Boomer's transition into the fleet at all.
I don't see how anyone ships Kara/Lee when all their banter is clearly sibling banter. They tease each other about hygiene, for goodness' sake. "I clean up good sometimes." "Oh, yeah, well let me know when it's one of those times."
Then again, I'm boggled at Kara's failed attempt to sleep with Gaius (although, granted, she was sending plenty of signals), so clearly she and I do not think alike in this area.
Billy stood up to the President and yelled at her! And then stood at her side in the middle of an armed standoff! I adore Billy.
Tricia Helfer is really tall. Not Jamie Lee Curtis or Geena Davis tall, but still: tall.
I've been really enjoying the, hmm, Bechdel moments on this show, especially between Roslin and Starbuck. They get together and they talk about torture or finding Earth or just for a hug after a successful mission, and it makes me happy. G!Boomer goes off to plant a nuke on the Cylon starbase, and her only shipmate is female. Starbuck shows up in Delphi to nab the golden arrow, and it's Six that comes to smack her down. (Actually, that felt a bit more like fanservice than anything else, but then practically every scene with Six feels like fanservice, so it's hard to judge.)
Last, non-spoilery thing: One of the elements of this show that most intrigues me is that its universe is apparently not operating on a purely naturalistic basis. Laura Roslin appears to be having actual, accurate visions, as predicted by prophetic scripture. This is totally counter to basically all SF I have ever encountered; generally, naturalism is one of SF's founding premises and one of its key differences from fantasy. Fantasy has gods and magic; SF has ascended beings and far-future technology. Fantasy has prophecy, and SF has precognition. The difference is often not in the furniture, precisely, but in the attitudes towards it: however supernatural something is, in SF, there is always a rational explanation buried back there somewhere. This difference in treatment is why Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun is considered SF despite swordplay and giants and legends, and it's why the eventual discovery of spaceships on McCaffrey's Pern is so jarring. The fact that BSG is apparently defying this convention is very interesting indeed; I very much look forward to seeing where they go with it.
I was already liking Caprica!Boomer much better than Galactica!Boomer, and Helo/Caprica!Boomer was (and is still) my only ship on the show. C!Boomer was angsting about her secret identity, she was defying her entire racial heritage, there was running and hiding, and also apparently I just have a soft spot for Tahmoh Penikett (despite his fiendish foiling of my usual memory for spelling). And then C!Boomer turns up pregnant (because is a woman capable of throwing up on TV without being pregnant? nope, that's one of those privileges our gender just doesn't have), and of course then this becomes totally my storyline.
I totally was not expecting G!Boomer to shoot Adama. Huh. Well, that just isn't going to smooth C!Boomer's transition into the fleet at all.
I don't see how anyone ships Kara/Lee when all their banter is clearly sibling banter. They tease each other about hygiene, for goodness' sake. "I clean up good sometimes." "Oh, yeah, well let me know when it's one of those times."
Then again, I'm boggled at Kara's failed attempt to sleep with Gaius (although, granted, she was sending plenty of signals), so clearly she and I do not think alike in this area.
Billy stood up to the President and yelled at her! And then stood at her side in the middle of an armed standoff! I adore Billy.
Tricia Helfer is really tall. Not Jamie Lee Curtis or Geena Davis tall, but still: tall.
I've been really enjoying the, hmm, Bechdel moments on this show, especially between Roslin and Starbuck. They get together and they talk about torture or finding Earth or just for a hug after a successful mission, and it makes me happy. G!Boomer goes off to plant a nuke on the Cylon starbase, and her only shipmate is female. Starbuck shows up in Delphi to nab the golden arrow, and it's Six that comes to smack her down. (Actually, that felt a bit more like fanservice than anything else, but then practically every scene with Six feels like fanservice, so it's hard to judge.)
Last, non-spoilery thing: One of the elements of this show that most intrigues me is that its universe is apparently not operating on a purely naturalistic basis. Laura Roslin appears to be having actual, accurate visions, as predicted by prophetic scripture. This is totally counter to basically all SF I have ever encountered; generally, naturalism is one of SF's founding premises and one of its key differences from fantasy. Fantasy has gods and magic; SF has ascended beings and far-future technology. Fantasy has prophecy, and SF has precognition. The difference is often not in the furniture, precisely, but in the attitudes towards it: however supernatural something is, in SF, there is always a rational explanation buried back there somewhere. This difference in treatment is why Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun is considered SF despite swordplay and giants and legends, and it's why the eventual discovery of spaceships on McCaffrey's Pern is so jarring. The fact that BSG is apparently defying this convention is very interesting indeed; I very much look forward to seeing where they go with it.
