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0dense(actually to be frank, Hadrian has found a real discrepancy in alibis for the time of a deadly explosion and she should have the ability to continue the trials. No she is not proceeding in court decorum, but simultaneously no it is not the same as a witch hunt to try and find who may have been responsible for the deaths of three people and injury of 13 others. Adama’s contempt for transparency when it demonstrates his own errors being framed as heroic …is nothing of the sort, really. But he never did care much for rule of law did he now. He’s making exceptions for his preferred officers because they’re vital to a survival effort, which makes Watsonian sense as a character decision, but blocking that as a just action? No and thank you)
Anyway, Battlestar Galactica! I got hooked back on it when I was doing my papers on like, AI and hermeneutics and mixed reality and socially-permitted personhood (>30 pages across my classes!) and it’s perfect, right? Well, it is a Trip lmao
Things That Were Evident To Me Watching Battlestar Galactica In the 2000s And Still Relevant 15ish Years Later:
Hera is probably up there with Gaius Baltar - the man who gave state secrets to his girlfriend and so allowed the Cylons to destroy the 12 Colonies - as paradigm shifters. The difference is that she's literally a baby the whole time. Gaius Baltar has agency and makes terrible life choices and is only a single iteration removed from direct responsibility for genocide. Hera just exists as the baby of a Cylon mother and human father. She's mixed. What a crime, right? Except it is. Because it's never really about the robots:
Since Hera is the firstfruit of miscegenation ... she is also the greatest threat of sameness. So President Roslin, as Mother Metropole, claims Hera as her own. Roslin worries about more than the Cylons' new reproductive abilities. For the colonial family romance to continue, Hera - and all who might follow after her - must remain different. So, despite Dr. Baltar's scientific appeals that Hera is "half-human," Roslin implies, like Moreau de St. Mery, that the tiniest drop of Cylon blood shows Hera is not at all human. "Allowing that thing to be born," she says, "could have frightening consequences for the security of this Fleet."
And what's more, after a treatment from Hera's stem cells cures Roslin's cancer,
Roslin accepts the blood of 'it' and 'that thing' within her - and yet does not consider herself as one part or even one drop Cylon. The greatest difference between Roslin and Hera is not in the skin or in the blood or any other racial indicator, but in the truth that one is an all-powerful political mother and the other is a helpless, colonized child. Roslin cements Hera's identity - and her own - in the colonial family romance by socially constructing and perpetuating this difference.
(Rennes 73)
(Rennes 73)
In a way, Hera was incandescently lucky that the Colonies fell after reaching Earth. In a race-hygienist society like that, when one family emerges as the first mover, they have little to no advantages, actually. Imagine the pushback that Baltar and Caprica would've faced, trying to express their relationship if the fleet hadn't been destroyed - they never could have done it.
But the point that the article doesn't touch on is an exogenous pov on Hera. In the text, she's a mixed cylon-human baby, but on screen, phenotypically, she's korean and white. She's not just an allegorically mixed kid, she’s on screen as part of an interracial family. That's pivotal, I think, to the point she makes in the narrative as delivered, because Sharon, the only Cylon to procreate with a human, is also the only model not to be white. I don't believe that was the point when Grace Park was cast, because Helo was supposed to die in the miniseries and so that family unit wasn't premediated. But the optics are there, at the end of the day, and they contribute to an extent that can't be erased, particularly to me as a mixed asian (chinese) and white kid. I wanted to be Jake Berenson or Ender Wiggin, back in the day, but I knew I was actually Hera.
(Related: I was in high school when the first Star Trek reboot came out. Less time for nuance makes for an easier message, and how much clearer does it get than "you are neither human nor Vulcan, and therefore have no place in this universe." But that's from a character's peers. It's awful, but lands much differently than hearing people in authority decide whether or not a baby should be allowed to be born because of its heritage. Narratively speaking, Spock is a mixed adult, but Hera is what people think of mixed kids.)
No one wants a mixed kid around, is the thing. It upsets all the social boxes. They’re so inconvenient like that. Or on the flipside, sometimes people will say things like that they want to have mixed kids, because multiculturalism is the way of the future, and so the mixed kid is a means to the end that they actually want in principle? That's not a compliment, actually.
Agh. The more things change, the more they never do.
Things That Were Not Evident To Me Then, But Aren’t Surprising Now:
Well. Back when I first watched BSG, I was in approximately junior high, and I did not know Politics, so coming back to this show as a politically active young adult, and realising the cultural influences it had, is a Trip. The depth of post-9/11 commentary alone is both a surprise and not, but makes for very interesting watching. I'm getting a refresher on the plot, but also the whole new experience of watching a context-relevant piece of media. The memorial wall and line of staff asking after their unaccounted-for loved ones are particularly strong references just in the first episode, but there's also the whole particular military atmosphere of 2000s sci fi. (Stargate was the big name for us, as a longitudinal expression of shifting cultural paranoias and mores, through all the eons of SG1 and Atlantis.)
It does make sense, after all - sci fi is always an allegory for something else; robots and aliens are never just robots and aliens, etc - but it's still weird to look back and realise just what it was I was enjoying so uncritically once upon a time. But I’m also realising the specific Iraq and Bush references. The real icecube down my back was her direction to stay the course, towards the end of Water. But religiously-motivated hero-complex war Presidents are religiously-motivated hero-complex war Presidents, especially when their administrations directly bounce off of a national crisis, and it would’ve been harder and less interesting for the writers to detangle than use. Or in other words,
For Roslin, religion is a uniting principle, a vehicle of hope and inspiration and solidarity. For Bush, it is a weapon of division, a tool for drumming up fear and hysteria. Yet if Roslin’s use of religion - in her campaign and her presidency - is admirably moral, it still doesn’t win her the election. She sticks to her beliefs and is open with the people, but she is unable to convince them to stay the course and re-elect her.
Fearing the dire consequences of a fleet run by the slimy, conniving Baltar, she tacitly authorizes her staff to use any means necessary to ensure her victory - she rigs the election. ...This decision compromises her moral integrity, aligning her more closely with the absolutist attitude of Bush. The implication for both presidents is that while they believe in their divine destiny, they may not have control or free will in shaping how it is fulfilled.
(McHenry 227)
And that’s not even touching the Wretched of New Caprica, because season 3 is the only one I don’t have yet (dvds, you know it!). I’m also told that Tyrol makes Mario Saivo allusions, so I’ve got to find it all the more. But it’s also an occupation arc that came out in 2006, so again with it being harder to dissociate than take in context. Civil liberties. Who needs ‘em.
Also, Head!Six using fear and reprisal as motivation for repentance and avowal of faith is about as subtle as a brick. And that one can’t be pinned on the ambient Mormonism when you could spin a wheel of valid options to be calling out. But when the prosthelytizing gets too much, watching Baltar’s scenes to wonder just what on earth he looks like to people who don’t know he’s hallucinating wildly is hilaarious.
What the Fuck:
The series bible from 2003:
Lee & Laura
His position as Laura's trusted advisor will bring him closer to her emotionally than he is to his own father. She will let him in on her secret and he will make it his personal mission to find a way to treat her illness without anyone - even his father - finding out the truth. Perhaps most unexpected of all, Lee will develop a budding attraction for Laura on a personal level — an unexpected quality of their close interaction and one that actually makes him a quasi-rival to his father, increasing rather than decreasing their conflicted relationship.
His position as Laura's trusted advisor will bring him closer to her emotionally than he is to his own father. She will let him in on her secret and he will make it his personal mission to find a way to treat her illness without anyone - even his father - finding out the truth. Perhaps most unexpected of all, Lee will develop a budding attraction for Laura on a personal level — an unexpected quality of their close interaction and one that actually makes him a quasi-rival to his father, increasing rather than decreasing their conflicted relationship.
Me: lmao I don’t remember any of that
Water: (playing nothing so much as a soft and promising melody (it’s the leadup into one of the gayatri mantra variations, and for the life of me I can’t find it on the soundtrack but it’s the 4/4 g'8 c''4 b'8 c''8 a'4 g'8; c''8 c''8 d''8 c''8 b'8 c''8 a'4))
ROSLIN: I don't want to add to your burdens, however. I have a request. I would like you to be my personal military advisor.
LEE: I'm sorry. My father is the senior military officer. He should advise you.
ROSLIN: No, I don't mean to go behind your father's back. Nothing like that. I'm not looking for military advice. I'm looking for advice about the military.
ROSLIN: That little insight about your father making a gesture, that really helped me. It made me reassess the man. I would appreciate more of those insights. And you can keep your day job at the C-A-G.
LEE: It's pronounced "CAG."
ROSLIN: Do you see why I need you?
LEE: So who's going to tell my father?
ROSLIN: Well I was thinking that that would be your first assignment.
LEE: Somehow I knew you were going to say that.
ROSLIN: Thank you, Captain.
LEE: I'm sorry. My father is the senior military officer. He should advise you.
ROSLIN: No, I don't mean to go behind your father's back. Nothing like that. I'm not looking for military advice. I'm looking for advice about the military.
ROSLIN: That little insight about your father making a gesture, that really helped me. It made me reassess the man. I would appreciate more of those insights. And you can keep your day job at the C-A-G.
LEE: It's pronounced "CAG."
ROSLIN: Do you see why I need you?
LEE: So who's going to tell my father?
ROSLIN: Well I was thinking that that would be your first assignment.
LEE: Somehow I knew you were going to say that.
ROSLIN: Thank you, Captain.
Me, having picked up a thing or two about musical cues and scripts laying groundwork for relationships and also being an actor being given a dynamic to keep in the background of a building scene since 2003: *spittake*
Apparently that wasn’t cut out as early as I had thought it would have been!! Obviously it didn’t last long, but what a concept. There’s still a good handful of episodes in the beginning of s1 that end with Lee and Roslin having some sort of heart to heart and I don’t ship it but I spent long enough with the company to know when a scene is being developed. Wild, man, am I glad they didn’t stick with that one in the romantic sense - precedent for Lee’s political career is so much more interesting.
So that's what I'm watching to unwind from finals! Obviously, I've chilled out, because here's works cited for my own entertainment! Quotes from:
- Rennes, Magali. "Kiss Me, Now Die!" Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy, ed Josef Steif and Tristan Tamplin. Open Court, 2008. Pp. 63-76.
- McHenry, Bryan. “Weapons of Mass Salvation” Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy, ed Josef Steif and Tristan Tamplin. Open Court, 2008 Pp 221-231
- Emphases retained. Print, and recommended for BSG through the lens of philosophy/politics, albeit not so much philosophy through the lens of BSG. In the same volume, also recommending the Wretched of New Caprica, by Dan Dinello, for the New Caprica / occupation / Guantanamo / show trials discussion, and The Razor’s Edge, by Sara Livingston, not because I personally endorse Lakoff’s family models but because it’s very good character meta. Also, there’s one article, Dreamers in the Night, that takes the form of a fic, and is Hilarious to find in an anthology like this!
- Hyperlink to Buzzfeed Video. "The Try Guys Take An Ancestry DNA Test" Youtube. Zachary Kornfeld gesturing at a map and exclaming that he hopes his "babies are, fuckin', from everywhere". 20 May 2017. https://youtu.be/N06g2kc1Dxo?t=543. Zach's just a case example of the sentiment I mean. Related, at 2:35, Eugene pointing out that white people keep wanting to be mixed, which is another whole can of worms and also I hate ancestry tests in general so.
- For more on Spock, I've taken a glance at but not actually quoted Lindsdey, Natasha. "Illegible and Unacceptable Representation: The Liminality of Spock in Star Trek (2009)" The Kelvin Timeline of Star Trek: Essays on J.J. Abrams' Final Frontier, ed Matthew Wilhelm Kapell and Ace G. Pilkington. McFarland, 2019. Pp. 151-165. https://books.google.com/books?id=9vWKDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false it just looks cool
- Moore, Ronald. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: Series Bible. NP. 17 December 2003. http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Battlestar_Galactica/Battlestar_Galactica_Series_Bible.pdf The Sacred Texts!
