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revdorothyl at 06:42pm on 20/01/2006
revdorothyl at 06:42pm on 20/01/2006(I've been meaning to post about this any time during the past week, but better late than never.)
This show just gets more and more multi-dimensional and HUMAN. Even Admiral Kane has her human side and her good points. And the mirroring between different characters just goes on and on.
I thought I was going to cry when Kane told Starbuck that she was so very proud of her, and on top of the previous week's episode, I couldn't help but think that though Starbuck looks up to Adama like a father-figure as well as commander, when Starbuck looks at Kane she sees herself, or what she could be with a few more years and a few less friends and loved ones behind her. For Starbuck, Kane was far more of a mother-figure than President Roslyn.
And speaking of mother- and father-figures, I was really impressed by the way that Apollo's apparent loss of the desire to live seemed to be triggered by the discovery that BOTH parental figures, Adama AND Roslyn, were prepared to violate everything he thought they stood for by ordering the assassination of Kane. I've seen that same dynamic in family therapy and counseling too often to doubt that such a "betrayal" under such stressful conditions could lead Apollo to that very, very dark place.
Meanwhile, this episode also suggested to me that a large part of what infuriated Adama and Kane about each other was that they each acted as a sort of dark mirror to the other, showing some suppressed or less-acknowledged part of their own make-up writ large upon a fellow battlestar commander. And yet, it was in some part the recognition of their alikeness, as they rejoiced over the successful outcome of the battle with the Cylons, that led them both to back off from their original murderous intentions, to grant each other the right to exist.
And as for the on-going issue about how you should treat Cylons versus how you should treat human prisoners, this episode brought it into even sharper focus than ever before, for me. At least from my perspective, it's never been about what the Cylons deserve or whether they're just as good as humans or not. Rather, it's about the slippery slope demonstrated by those Pegasus gorillas who decided to torture Helo and the chief: if you begin to think that it's okay to treat ANYONE or ANYTHING even remotely human-looking with such contempt and cruelty, then you're just a moment away from thinking it's okay to treat anyone whom you regard as in any way "Other" with that kind of barbarism.
Adama got it right, basically -- it's not about survival, but about being yourself worthy of being called "human".
Actually, it reminds me of one approach to studying the biblical book of Judges. In this particular scholarly viewpoint, you can trace the decline of Israel's faithfulness and relationship with God in general over the course of that book, by looking at the way the women in the book are treated: after Deborah the judge, who leads the battle and saves the day in chapters 4 and 5, it's a slow, steady decline, toward the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter and the rape and mutilation of the Levite's concubine (by which time, the women don't even have names anymore). It's the "canary in the coal-mine" theory, in a sense: a poison in society will show up first in how we treat the most vulnerable or those deemed to have less rights than others, but that's just a sign that we're all done for, if we don't make some radical changes.
This show just gets more and more multi-dimensional and HUMAN. Even Admiral Kane has her human side and her good points. And the mirroring between different characters just goes on and on.
I thought I was going to cry when Kane told Starbuck that she was so very proud of her, and on top of the previous week's episode, I couldn't help but think that though Starbuck looks up to Adama like a father-figure as well as commander, when Starbuck looks at Kane she sees herself, or what she could be with a few more years and a few less friends and loved ones behind her. For Starbuck, Kane was far more of a mother-figure than President Roslyn.
And speaking of mother- and father-figures, I was really impressed by the way that Apollo's apparent loss of the desire to live seemed to be triggered by the discovery that BOTH parental figures, Adama AND Roslyn, were prepared to violate everything he thought they stood for by ordering the assassination of Kane. I've seen that same dynamic in family therapy and counseling too often to doubt that such a "betrayal" under such stressful conditions could lead Apollo to that very, very dark place.
Meanwhile, this episode also suggested to me that a large part of what infuriated Adama and Kane about each other was that they each acted as a sort of dark mirror to the other, showing some suppressed or less-acknowledged part of their own make-up writ large upon a fellow battlestar commander. And yet, it was in some part the recognition of their alikeness, as they rejoiced over the successful outcome of the battle with the Cylons, that led them both to back off from their original murderous intentions, to grant each other the right to exist.
And as for the on-going issue about how you should treat Cylons versus how you should treat human prisoners, this episode brought it into even sharper focus than ever before, for me. At least from my perspective, it's never been about what the Cylons deserve or whether they're just as good as humans or not. Rather, it's about the slippery slope demonstrated by those Pegasus gorillas who decided to torture Helo and the chief: if you begin to think that it's okay to treat ANYONE or ANYTHING even remotely human-looking with such contempt and cruelty, then you're just a moment away from thinking it's okay to treat anyone whom you regard as in any way "Other" with that kind of barbarism.
Adama got it right, basically -- it's not about survival, but about being yourself worthy of being called "human".
Actually, it reminds me of one approach to studying the biblical book of Judges. In this particular scholarly viewpoint, you can trace the decline of Israel's faithfulness and relationship with God in general over the course of that book, by looking at the way the women in the book are treated: after Deborah the judge, who leads the battle and saves the day in chapters 4 and 5, it's a slow, steady decline, toward the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter and the rape and mutilation of the Levite's concubine (by which time, the women don't even have names anymore). It's the "canary in the coal-mine" theory, in a sense: a poison in society will show up first in how we treat the most vulnerable or those deemed to have less rights than others, but that's just a sign that we're all done for, if we don't make some radical changes.
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