Midweek BSG-Blogging
Good stuff from John Snead:
The new BSG is essentially a good show. However, when watching episodes like the most recent one, Black Market, it helps me to remember that the vast majority of the characters were not the best at what they did (at least prior to the death of their entire civilization). The crew of the Galactica are what you would expect of an aging ship commanded by a war hero being put out to pasture, whose 2nd in command was widely known to be an alcoholic - not the ship where you send the best people in the fleet. The absolute best you get are people like Starbuck who are highly skilled but too much trouble for anyone else. This also applies to almost all of the civilians. Phelan was a pretty crappy crime boss - he was way too quick to threaten people who were clearly dangerous to threaten and who could be approached in other ways. However, before the Cylon attack, I’m guessing he wasn’t a crime boss, at most he was some crime bosses personal thug - the high level crime bosses (along with 99.999% of everyone else alive) died in the attack, so he might well have been the highest-level member of organized crime still alive.
See his site for an interesting take on missed opportunities in the “child-selling angle” to the episode.
UPDATE: Cursed LiveJournal aliases. I mis-identified the author name in the first version of this entry. Now corrected.
Comment by Derek Copold —
January 30, 2006 @ 9:30 pm
A good TV show doesn’t require a lawyer to explain the plot holes.
His point about the second-rate (or even third-rate) status of Galactica’s crew is spot on but there are still a few too many holes in the story from the last episode, and contra to Elliot’s statements, nothing Phelan said or did made me consider him ”second rate.” He was running (and we assume had been running for a long time) a ship full of all sorts of goodies. Maybe he wasn’t the biggest boss around before the Cylon attack, but he was a ”macher.”
I think it’s better to just admit that this episode was weak, though not nearly as bad as the one before it.
Comment by Derek Copold —
January 30, 2006 @ 9:33 pm
Also, it’s important to remember that the one thing crime bosses excel at is looking out for number one. Like cockroaches, they excel at survival. Just because the best and the brightest in the fleet were waxed in the Cylon attack does not mean that the same can be said of the scum, who would probably be the first to get out of Dodge.
Comment by Barry —
January 31, 2006 @ 9:04 am
Derek, I agree. However, IIRC the Cylons started by trashing the Colonial Fleet with no notice, and then followed that up immediately by nuking all of the homeworlds. During all of this, destroying any ship which they came across. That’s a hard thing to dodge. Cockroaches are actually quite easy to exterminate; it’s just that most people don’t want to napalm their house to do so.
Comment by Derek Copold —
January 31, 2006 @ 10:09 am
Clearly, not every villain would be able to save himself. But I think the chance that a higher echelon criminal could are a little bit higher than, say, the best businessman. It certainly seems more plausible than Col. Tigh’s wife showing up, assuming she is actually human.
Comment by Mr. Obscura —
January 31, 2006 @ 3:28 pm
While Snead’s point is delightful, being addicted to Ron Moore’s podcasts has me convinced that the production team just isn’t that smart. But they have succeeded at creating a good show that is compelling enough that fanboys (like me) can create the most intricate reasoning to support theses of plot and character development that they didn’t notice or didn’t care about. The really big plot points were laid out in advance; the little ones (like the episode under discussion) are made up as they go along.
Comment by Hesiod —
January 31, 2006 @ 8:41 pm
I’m sorry, but can someone explain to me how you can be a crime boss in a fleet of ships, in space, on the run from the Cylons WITHOUT having the acquiescence of the military authorities?
It seems to me a simple matter of telling the crime boss to knock it off, or you will cordon off his ship with vipers until he cries uncle. Or, you ban all flights to that ship, and have a regular viper patrol making sure nobody approaches the ship.
It’s a lot easier to enforce an embargo on a spaceship than on land.
Another option is to send a contingent of Marines over there to confiscate all the valuable supplies such as medicines.
As for the ”everybody is second rate” angle, well what about Roisslyn? She was the education minister, remember? And she ”grew” into the job.
Comment by Jim Henley —
January 31, 2006 @ 8:46 pm
Hesiod: You’re mostly right, but what we saw Friday *was* the military getting involved and then telling them to ”knock it off.” The episode makes it clear that there are officers either complicit in the black market (Tigh) or trying to coopt it (Fisk). And by the end of it, a military authority (Lee) simply *plugs the bad guy in the head* and tells the next bad guy, ”This is what you can’t do from now on.”
Comment by Hesiod —
January 31, 2006 @ 9:51 pm
Yeah, Jim.
But one of the first things I’d do as commander of the fleet would be to inventory supplies, and make damn sure essential items such as medcines were strictly cotrolled by the ”Government.”
Even going so far as rationing.
Comment by Jim Henley —
January 31, 2006 @ 9:53 pm
Hey, go for it. But all those legendary WWII quartermasters will be laughing at you.
Didn’t you ever see M*A*S*H?
(Yes, I know that M*A*S*H wasn’t WWII. Work with me here!)
Comment by Hesiod —
January 31, 2006 @ 10:10 pm
Like I said, Jim.
It’s pretty easy to enforce rationing when you are on a spaceship, and you ain’t got nowhere else to go.
Rule of thumb: Hording or smuggling essential medicines=Capital offense.
You do it and you are jettisoned out an airlock (after a fair trial of course), on fleetwide TV.
Radar can’t horstrade with Spider down at the Eight Oh Sixty-Third for more penecillin.
Comment by Jim Henley —
January 31, 2006 @ 10:30 pm
Wow, man. This strikes me as paradigmatic liberal error on your part. It’s worth a separate post.
Comment by Hesiod —
January 31, 2006 @ 10:56 pm
Wow, man. This strikes me as paradigmatic liberal error on your part. It’s worth a separate post.
Ummm…nope. My idea would be a complete failure under normal circumstances.
The special situation of an isolated fleet of spaceships with a population of slightly less tan 50,000 (about a 10th of whom are military), makes enforcing such things more plausible.
Comment by Gary Farber —
February 2, 2006 @ 4:02 pm
Digressively, I take it you weren’t interested in the existence of all the BSG deleted scenes, or the Emma Bull mini-series critique (see bottom), and commenters rebutting it. That’s cool. I only mention the first because it will be scrolling off my front page soon, and the second because I didn’t otherwise mention it directly to you, and I might as well consolidate.
I’ll comment on the ep under discussion here when the DVD comes out. I’ve noticed on the 2.0 DVDs, by the way, also that the ”previously on BSG” clips often feature a few seconds not actually seen in the broadcast episode, as opposed to the full ”deleted scene” version.