GWC Re-Watch Frak Party: Resurrection Ship, Parts 1 & 2
It’s weektwenty-three of our planned off-season re-watch of the entire “re-imagined” BSG canon, and it’s time to move on to the season2.5 episodes “Resurrection Ship, Parts1 & 2.” So why not join us here for the GWC online frak party? There’s room for everyone, though you’ll have to bring your own snacks…
Feel free to jump in at any point with your comments on this week’s episode as the re-watch is by definition spoiler free. We’ll be in and out, but we’ll definitely take a look at your comments before we start next week’s podcast.
See you here all week!
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Great episodes. As a three-parter together with Pegasus they’re fantastic.
Just love the Adama-Roslin interaction.
Y’know, the more I see these episodes, it becomes clearer (to me anyway) that Cain KNOWS Kara is gonna assassinate her. Just soemthing abotu teh way she acts and reacts, especially when she hands Kara the phone, she has this look on her face. That, in addition to all the other stuff Cain has tols Kara about being ready when the time comes, makes me wonder…
Damn fine episodes there….
Dave
I have wondered before about where the tubs of goo really are. Presumably all downloading takes place on a Resurrection Ship. I mean, why else go to the trouble of making them?
But these ships are very glassy which is in contrast to the dark, spartan “Basestar Chic” surroundings we see every time there is a tub of goo. Plus, when the Resurrection Ship was destroyed I remember bodies flying out of the exploding glass walls…we don’t see the bodies in tubs of goo anywhere near glass walls.
I don’t see why they couldn’t have their tubs on a basestar since it seems like it has lots of wasted space anyway.
Anyway, this whole Pegasus arc was brilliant…especially the plots to kill Adama and Cain…man, were y’all on the edge of your seats the first time around?
I thought that the tubs of goo were on the Basestars…and they ordered the replacement bodies to be brought over when one of them died. Kinda like Chinese takout….”I’ll have a #3 to go!”
Oh, and I’m missing out on the Season 2 rewatch. 🙁 I loaned my sister & brother-in-law my DVD for season 1 and got them hooked. They now have returned season 1 and have borrowed season 2. So that’s 4 people I have gotten converted to BSG fans.
Gryper — That’s all right, if Universal doesn’t get on the stick, I guess I and probably more than a few others will be missing out on the Season 3 rewatch! C’est la vie…
I had a whole slew of notes I took while watching “Resurrection Ship,” but have lost them in the meantime. So I will just throw this out there for discussion:
What the frak is wrong with Starbuck?
I get that Cain shows her some sort of weird maternal affection that Starbuck never had as a child — e.g., Cain telling Starbuck, “I am so proud of you” — and that such approval from a mother figure must have been very empowring and validating and affirming. But, sweet Lords o’ Kobol, what the frak is Starbuck doing jumping down Adama’s throat at the funeral scene, saying that they are weaker and worse off without Cain than with her??!?! How ungrateful can you get?!?! It doesn’t even make logical sense: she says she admired Cain because Cain never second guessed herself, but in this very frakking episode, Cain second-guessed her decision to have Adama killed — and a good thing for everyone concerned, too.
Sorry, but I don’t buy it, and that moment where Starbuck turns on Adama with apparently no provocation marks the beginning for me of about a season and a quarter where BSG went WAY off the mark of the quality show it was for the first year and a half. I am already looking forward to the post-New Caprica episodes…
Radio Picon said:
But these ships are very glassy which is in contrast to the dark, spartan “Basestar Chic†surroundings we see every time there is a tub of goo.
Awesome! Basestar Chic: new on HGTV!
To say it looks “spartan”. Dude, the Spartans would kick the Cylon’s ass! “300” was an amazing movie!!! Maybe they are the 14th colony?
Mike P: I have season 3 downloaded on iTunes so I’ll be able to do the rewatch for that. 🙂
Timbuck: Agree that 300 is amazing. Just got my DVD back from co-workers, one (male) of which called it soft-core porn. I don’t agree with him on that but it certainly is a visual feast for us chicks. 😀
Timbuck Says: Awesome! Basestar Chic: new on HGTV!
Next week – the premiere of “Flip this Basestar”. Six, Baltar and Sharon are going to show us how to turn that Basestar eyesore into the biggest profit making beauty in the quadrant. It sounds simple, but sparks fly and tempers are high before the fixer-uppers sell to happy buyers. Next week on A&E
I started late in the re-watch, but now I’m ahead of it (just finished “Torn”) I gotta say that Pegasus Resurrection Ship, Parts 1 & 2 makes a great 3 part episode, and gets me lookin forward to Razor. As far as the Resurrection Ship, vs the Tub-o-Goo, I think the ships are where the bodies are made, then brought into the Tub-o-Goo for the download of memories, in order to turn a six into a Caprica Six. That’s all I gotta say bout that.
So, in the land of BSG, the President is not the Commander and Chief? Roslin’s first reaction was to suborn a mutiny? Granted the three episode art I think is the best BSG ever! The two best lines are when Cain asks Starbuck, Do you always get what you want and so do you drink? What an answer pretty much and ONLY TO EXCESS!
Everytime I see the Resurrection ship I am reminded of Hallucigenia from the Burgess Shale Fossil formation http://www.ihs.issaquah.wednet.edu/Teachers/robles/hallucigenia.jpg
I guess proof of Cylon involvement with ancient earth 🙂
Mike P.: Starbuck turning on a dime in her opinions of Adama and Cain is weird. I think it can partially be explained in that Kara didn’t know everything that we do, in addition to having ulterior motives for respecting and agreeing with Cain. Nobody but Fiske and his marines *ever* finds out that Cain planned to kill Adama, though the President guessed it, so from Starbuck’s view, Cain didn’t flinch. And all Adama told Kara was to shoot Admiral Cain in the head–maybe he gave her a little more off-screen explanation, but we don’t know that for sure, and it couldn’t have been very detailed since Cain expected her back on Pegasus pretty quickly once she left her with Adama to explain the op. The only out-and-out bad thing Kara knows about Cain is that Cain transferred her and Lee to Pegasus, and we can assume that she knows about the Chief and Helo’s upcoming execution, since Lee does. For me, that would be enough to really, really not like Cain, but maybe it isn’t for Starbuck–or maybe it’s not enough to for her to justify killing Cain. It’s pretty unlikely that Kara knows about the Scylla, the murdered XO, or Cain’s general disregard for the civilian population because Kara has been insulated from that on Pegasus, without being integrated into the crew enough to hear about it through gossip.
Plus, in addition to being the odd, uber-strict maternal figure (maybe Cain reminds Kara of her own abusive mother in some weird way?), there’s a huge incentive for Kara to think Cain is a good leader: Cain wants to go back to Caprica, which would mean saving Anders, while Adama and the President think that’s not practical. As we saw in the first scene in the extended version of “Pegasus,” Kara is willing to put the remainder of the human race in an incredibly risky situation just to go back to get Anders (reminds me a bit of Adama and Lee in “You Can’t Go Home Again”).
Alternately, it could also be less a praise of Cain than of a slam directed at Adama for making her do something so apparently immoral as murdering a superior officer, and also in doing so, sullying her own image of her father-figure, making the speech more like her version of Lee’s attempted suicide/meltdown at the end of RS II.
Either QVC/HSN (dallas cable channel 75 which ever one that is) is selling some cool Star Wars crap. Like a 3-foot-across Millenium Falcon model. I thought of you guys. In my defense, I DID watch Resurrection Ship, Parts 1 & 2 and was aimlessly channel surfing wishing there was some BSG…
Kappa, those are some helpful thoughts on the Starbuck-Cain issue. Thanks for them. Maybe it is also the result of pent-up and unresolved anger over the Olympic Carrier and the lying about Earth. Still, it rankles me that she has transferred loyalty (effectively) so quickly from Adama to Cain.
I know I’m of a minority opinion, but two of my favorite characters are Lee and Helo. That’s why I noticed in the re-watch that these episodes are the point we see Lee enter a downward spiral that sent him to his ‘Whiney Lee’ phase. I always figured that Lee was more of a civilian-solder than the other characters in the series. As such it was never enough to just follow order, but he also needed an idealistic cause to fight for; and that cause was the preservation of colonial society. Upon learning that the President ordered the execution of Cain, I think he began to have his realization that the society he was serving to protect had finally disintegrated and all that was left was a war for survival. Subsequently, when they no longer even need to fight for survival and he is left to command a battlestar orbiting New Caprica for the rest of his life we see him hit rock bottom and enter the the ‘Fat Lee’ phase. As I said before, I hope that after ‘venting’ in The-Episode-that-is-not-to-Named: Part II that his character takes a new direction.
It also occurred to me that while Helo received a lot of craaaaaaaaaaap for his actions involving the Cylon virus, Adama is actually being similarly reckless here in his confrontation with Cain. Not that I disagree with it, but Adama was basically risking the annihilation of the whole fleet if he were to enter a shooting match with Pegasus. Seems a foolhardy move for the lives of only two people. Then again maybe Adama was bluffing and just trying to make a point to Cain, but that seems out of character, and he seems smart enough to realize that Cain (being a Tauron) is not the type of person you try to bluff.
Mike P: Yeah, I know what you mean. I understand why Kara might think the way she does, but I’m still mad at her for it.
Phil: You draw an interesting parallel. I’ve thought about how Adama, Lee, and Kara all take actions that put more people at risk than they help (generally relating to the Adama family mentality of “Never forget anything, and never forgive yourself”), but adding Helo’s actions into this category is a new twist. His action, if you accept the basic premise that the Cylons are close enough to being human that they deserve basic human rights, is even more noble than theirs, then, because he is saving a civilization that would like him, personally, dead, which would be a harder call to make than to save someone you love.
As for the craaaap Helo received, if you’re talking in-show, it’s most likely because those characters don’t buy into that basic premise, the same way that Fiske can’t understand Helo and Tyrol’s actions in these episodes because he thinks “You can’t rape a machine.” If you’re talking fans, it probably goes back to the old argument of it’s not *what* he did, but *how* he did it.
I suppose I should save this for “A Measure of Salvation,” but you’ve got me thinking now: *why* did Helo go about killing the infected Cylons in the sneaky way he did? He’s never been skittish about putting himself on the line in other situations. He doesn’t try to sidestep that Sharon is a Cylon, that he’s in love with her, or that she’s carrying his child when he meets Kara or when he goes back to the fleet. He doesn’t hesitate to burst into Sharon’s cell and beat the craaap out of the guards in “Pegasus.” He’s standing right out in the open, about ready to gun down the Admiral and Doc Cottle when they bring Sharon down to abort his child. He doesn’t try to cover up that he shot his wife to send her back to the baseship. So why break with this pattern of “I’ll follow my morals and my gut instincts, and I’m not going to hide it from anybody” to “A Measure of Salvation”? The only thing I’ve ever come up with is maybe he thinks he’s protecting Sharon by being sneaky, reasoning that if he walked down to the cell and took care of things in plain view, they might suspect Sharon of influencing him. Was Sharon in a raptor when the fleet was attacking the Cylons? I can’t remember. If so, then waiting until the attack was on would have given Sharon an alibi, too. Thoughts? Or maybe this is just something to think about until we hit “A Measure of Salvation” in the rewatch…
Good points Mike P. Mostly the craaaaaaaap I was referring to was what came from the fans. As far as why he went behind the backs of the powers that be, this was an instance where he pleaded his case with the highest authorities (The Prez and Adama) and was turned down (although he may have got the sense from Adama’s arguments that his heart really wasn’t into the plan either). In that case he had no option but to sabotage. He motivation for doing it secretly could be to protect Sharon, because he didn’t want her to be accused too or didn’t want to leave her alone with Hera while he was in the brig. Alternatively, he could have been doing it behind her back because he knew she was okay with releasing the virus on the Cylons. Then again, given the way he was reassigned to Dogsville it could be argued that there was nothing secret about who committed the sabotage.
I’ve always thought it would have been interesting to have seen what would have happened in the next episode ‘Epiphanies’ if Baltar had not realized at the last minute that the baby could have cured the Prez. The resulting conflict between Helo and Adama probably would not have been pretty if he had had to go through with terminating Sharon’s pregnancy.
Okay, I just finished up rewatching RSII, so here’s some quick thoughts:
1) BSG’s music is always great, but these two episodes really stand out. I especially love the music in the scene where Lee watches the exploding Cylon Fleet, but my favorite, favorite music of the series is Roslin and Adama’s theme, introduced in RSI and heard again at the end of RSII. I’ve always enjoyed watching Adama and Roslin’s changing relationship anyway, just because it’s unique and the two actors are phenomenal, but the music just tops it all for me.
2) Boy, Lee’s world view just falls apart when Adama tells him he and the President concluded assassinating Cain was the best course of action, eh? I wonder if he would have felt quite so badly if he’d known the whole story on Cain (like Kara, he’d been over on Pegasus, so he probably didn’t know everything that Adama and Tigh found out about the Scylla and her previous XO). I think it still would have messed Lee up pretty thoroughly, but maybe not quite as badly as it does.
3) For being evil, Cain still has some kind of crazy, weird charisma. When Kara makes the jibe about Cain wanting to execute Tyrol and Helo, she goes off on this really heartfelt, deep discussion of having put too many kids in body bags and not flinching–and never actually justifies why she’s for airlocking Tyrol and Helo! And, like Kara, I got so caught up in her rhetoric that I never even noticed how she skated past Kara’s complaint before.
4) Why *did* Admiral Cain “flinch,” not give Fisk the “case orange” command? Did conditions somehow change, or are we supposed to believe she had a genuine change of heart? Or was she just biding her time? Maybe she knew that if she went after the Commander too soon, she’d lose Kara’s allegiance, which would be bad both because Cain seems to be thinking Kara could be her protege and because she knows that Kara probably wouldn’t have a big problem shooting her in the head in the middle of CIC if somebody on Galactica got on the wireless and said Pegasus marines had opened fire on Adama.
And a bit of speculation. I don’t think the cover art options for “Razor” are classified as spoilers, but if anybody does think them so, stop reading. Anyway, on one of them, there are six characters standing, and though they’re pretty small, it would appear that they are Starbuck, Lee, Adama, Cain, the new character, Kendra Shaw, and one other woman in a white lab/doctor’s coat. Now, it would make sense that Gina would have a fairly prominent role in at least the pre-reunited fleet part of the storyline, and since we didn’t even see any other women on Pegasus during this arc, let alone get to know them as characters, this woman in the lab coat is likely Gina. My theory is that Gina might have been the doctor on the Pegasus. We know Cain has a back problem; maybe she went to the doctor a lot, and the two became friends or confidantes (or more, if we’re to believe an interview–I think with Jamie Bamber…), giving them a personal connection that would nudge Cain toward her evilness when Gina turned out to be a Cylon.
Anyway, I just love this arc. It’s got drama, action, really human moments, huge surprises, major dilemmas, and even manages to squeeze in a tiny bit of hope now and then. Wonderful all the way around.
“Okay, I just finished up rewatching RSII, so here’s some quick thoughts:”
Thanks, Kappa. Get back to us with a full write-up when you get a chance.
Kappa, I too was asking myself your number 4 question, “why *did* Admiral Cain ‘flinch’ and not give the ‘case orange’ command?” My feeling is, it was all about Kara. Cain was forming a strong emotional attachment with her, and she knew that killing Adama would put an end to that forever.
I also noticed Cain’s back problem for the first time in the rewatch. She seems to be in chronic discomfort or pain. Maybe she carries her Evil in her neck and shoulders.
Was anyone else fascinated by Cain’s emotional reaction when Gina is about to kill her? Namely, that she would show any emotional reaction at all, but if anything, I would have expected anger, resentment, and defiance. Possibly fear. But not sadness. Her eyes fill with tears when Gina says, “You’re not my type.” For what is she grieving? Simply the imminent loss of her life? Her unfinished work?
Maybe, but it seemed to me like a personal reaction to Gina and her past rejection and betrayal, and perhaps more evidence of a deep and powerful relationship between the two. If it does turn out in Razor that they were lovers, I will have mixed feelings about that revelation. On the one hand, it would make for an interesting story. On the other hand, I would hate for the first confirmed gay character in BSG to be the most evil character in the series to date. In which case, we may have to have another conversation about cultural stereotypes.
Pike: Do I sense a hint of sarcasm? 🙂 I know, somehow I always sit down at the keyboard intending to only have short thoughts, but as soon as I get to typing, they kind of run away with me…
Maybe I’ll get the chance to post more on RSI later, but uni is kicking my butt lately. Thanks to all for making this board such an interesting, intelligent, inviting, and fun place to be!
If the problem with Lee and Kara is that they didn’t know everything, why didn’t Adama and Roslin tell them the whole story once Cain had been murdered by Gina? At that point, who is it gonna hurt for the truth to get out? Maybe it would have even helped the surviving Pegasus crew get assimilated into the fleet if there had been something along the lines of the Truth & Reconciliation hearings held in South Africa post-Apartheid.
The only person not to “flintch” was Gina. Why casue as a human race we a not perfect. We think, about what we do and why we do it, even in the military. The only reason Cane is dead, is beacause cylons don’t “flintch” – Go GINA!
Dave- I know what you mean, man. How could she not at least be suspicious. You know when Kara is quiet and sweating bullets that something not cool is up. And you know that because she told Fisk to do the exact same thing that she’s well aware what’s up.
And what’s eerie is that I have this feeling that her “don’t flinch” advice still stands. Y’know? Obviously, she thinks if Kara tries anything it’ll work in her [Cain’s] favor in the end, but it’s just so much creepier because you know she wants to see if Kara’s got the guts to go through with it.
Dude- I gotta say too that I watched these two episodes last weekend on a car trip (I was not driving, Audra 🙂 ] Anyway, I’m like an excitable kid during them. They are so excellent and tense and suspenseful even after I know what happens. I remember the first time I madde my sister see these episodes and when Roslin does her little whispery, “You’ve gotta kill her.” My sister was like WTF!
For me, more so than Starbuck’s seeming departure from the norm (as Radio Picon illustrated above), it was Roslin who seems a little bit OOC in this episode.
I get that she’s hardened up considerably by this point and I know that it made the scenes so much more dramatic that it was Roslin suggesting assassination, and also that it sort of highlights the moral shift between the stances of Adama and Roslin, but still. If there’s one thing that bugs me a teeny bit it’s this.
I just don’t by that the woman has gotten to the “let’s kill her” level yet.
Im shocked beyond anything any words can say. Our president has oked a mutiny in her own military. And you people are for this! There is a chain of command. There are way for Roslin to deal with Cain. Ordering her to be killed is not one of them. What if Bush ordered the Admiral of the 5th fleet to be shot. We would have him out of office faster than you can say monica.
Gray & David B: Perhaps in this case Roslin’s office is not quite an analog to the US Presidency. For example the Governor General of Canada is formally and officially the Commander-in-Chief of Canadian Forces. Such is symbolic as actual control is in the hands of the Prime Minister, Minister of National Defence, and Chief of Defence Staff. For as regulation as RADM Cain is in this scenario I can imagine that frankly Laura Roslin did not have a legal leg to stand on to fire Cain. Assassination, while a very messy matter, was probably the only practical option that existed in that paranoid situation.
To: “The Alpaca Header”, I would asume and we all know what happens when we assume, that people who lived on caprcia. (yes I know my spelling bites the big one), were from the united states, back here in realty. We will need to check with Lawler bill on that one. But I can’t get over Laura our president telling her comander to kill someone. Guess it does happen in real life, we just don’t know about it.
I tend to agree with The Alpaca Herder. If Roslin were Commander in Chief as well as President, then the whole argument over what to do with the raider at the end of Season 1 would have gone down differently, wouldn’t it? Couldn’t Roslin have just told Adama, “Nope, sorry, but the raider is going back to Caprica to get the Arrow of Apollo. I’m sure you can come up with another plan to blow up the baseship.”? I’m not saying that she was within her presidential powers to order Cain’s assassination, by any means, but it’s tenuous to assume that her powers are like the U.S. president’s, even though it is tempting because so much of the language and symbolism surrounding her presidency looks and feels so familiar.
Character-wise, it’s a big jump for Roslin, though. Maybe it’s because she’s dying and she wants to make sure the civilian Fleet is in a position to survive after she dies, thinking Baltar won’t be able to stand up to Cain if push comes to shove?
Actually, Kappa, Baltar had Cain wrapped around his finger. Remember that long but rational explanation he gave for not torturing Gina anymore? Brilliant! And Cain went for it completely.
True, he wasn’t quite ready to accept the responsibility of the position of President at this point (that comes next week in Epiphanies), so maybe he would’ve flinched. But maybe the master manipulator in him would have come out to defend the fleet from Cain as he did Gina. A Cain/Baltar showdown–there’s some entertaining speculation.
Very impressive arguments from you guys.
Without diving too far into the fray I’m going to cop-out and confess and make myself less impressive by half by saying that I wasn’t really getting into the ethical/ legal problems with the assassination or even the comparative structure of government.
I just thought it seemed really out of character for Roslin of all people to be suggesting assassination at that particular point.
I think Dave B was correct in saying that the Roslin we were familiar with up to this point would have used any means at her disposal to get rid of Cain in a way that wasn’t quite so , uh, fatal.
Stroogie- I think Cain didn’t necessarily buy into Baltar’s behavioral science dissertation 100 %. That look on her face as he’s earnestly urging her to try a different path tells me she found the man to be everything she probably detests. He’s obviously brilliant but decidedly not in complete control of his faculties and even his speech. She’s seen him lose focus during their short conversation and I think she finds him a bit like a parlor magician. She’ll glean the information he can offer but she’s not depending on his success.
He’s a scientist. And while Cain appreciates reason and logic, she probably sees him as a civilian loose cannon capable of insight, yes, but not invaluable to her authority.
I think at that point the torture/confinement of Gina had gone beyond any kind of rational, meaningful hope of success.
Cain almost seems laconic if not downright condescending when talking with Baltar; as if she doesn’t fully expect any useful information to be extracted with the carrot or the stick.
Just my opinion. 🙂