BSG, "Resurrection Ship"
Jan. 10th, 2006 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eye_of_a_catThis was my present to myself for reaching 5,000 words of my chapter. And it was a good present, better than watching Serenity to cheer myself up you bastard, Joss Whedon, I will never smile again. Except, something is bothering me.
On one hand, I like that BSG is so dark. I like that it doesn't just debate what humanity is via conversations with Cylons, but does it through very real, very graphic actions. I like that there's fewer than fifty thousand humans left alive in the entire universe, and they've divided themselves into two warring factions, and they don't look likely to get over themselves for the sake of the greater cause and fly off into the sunset in one big, happy fleet. And I like that morality here isn't a simple issue: that it's possible for Baltar to betray humanity by being the only one to show compassion to a tortured prisoner, and that people on the Pegasus have done things just as terrible as the Cylons in the name of protecting the same people they shot. I like that people here are capable not only of doing terrible things, but also of becoming terrible things.
On the other hand... you know that detective story cliche about the Man In Charge who throws the Heroic Detective off the case, because he Plays Things By The Book and doesn't have any room for the way the Heroic Detective is doing things? And how he exists purely to create extra tension when the Heroic Detective has to do things on his own? And how, not only is he an irritating, one-dimensional plot device in a uniform, but now you can't take anything else the story says about the condition of humanity seriously, because the author just took a short-cut right through all the ambiguity they want to talk about? Well. That.
Maybe there isn't a way to do the first thing without falling into the problem of the second thing somewhere along the route. How do you show the process that can turn people into monsters without showing monsters? And how do you make it a main point of the story without having it turn into a conflict between main characters? But, still, I can't help thinking that there must be a way to do it more carefully than that.
On one hand, I like that BSG is so dark. I like that it doesn't just debate what humanity is via conversations with Cylons, but does it through very real, very graphic actions. I like that there's fewer than fifty thousand humans left alive in the entire universe, and they've divided themselves into two warring factions, and they don't look likely to get over themselves for the sake of the greater cause and fly off into the sunset in one big, happy fleet. And I like that morality here isn't a simple issue: that it's possible for Baltar to betray humanity by being the only one to show compassion to a tortured prisoner, and that people on the Pegasus have done things just as terrible as the Cylons in the name of protecting the same people they shot. I like that people here are capable not only of doing terrible things, but also of becoming terrible things.
On the other hand... you know that detective story cliche about the Man In Charge who throws the Heroic Detective off the case, because he Plays Things By The Book and doesn't have any room for the way the Heroic Detective is doing things? And how he exists purely to create extra tension when the Heroic Detective has to do things on his own? And how, not only is he an irritating, one-dimensional plot device in a uniform, but now you can't take anything else the story says about the condition of humanity seriously, because the author just took a short-cut right through all the ambiguity they want to talk about? Well. That.
Maybe there isn't a way to do the first thing without falling into the problem of the second thing somewhere along the route. How do you show the process that can turn people into monsters without showing monsters? And how do you make it a main point of the story without having it turn into a conflict between main characters? But, still, I can't help thinking that there must be a way to do it more carefully than that.
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Date: 2006-01-10 10:10 pm (UTC)