delga | { this is how democracy dies }

Hello. I am delgaserasca and I will be your fangirl for the day.

You have to admire BSG - last week, euthanasia; this week, the consequences of misplaced power. Crashdown's death was dramatically powerful but interesting for a whole other set of reasons. Firstly, though, you could consider the episode title to be something of a spoiler in itself:

frag (frăg) Slang.
n.
A fragmentation grenade.
tr.v., fragged, frag·ging, frags.
To wound or kill (a fellow soldier) by throwing a grenade or similar explosive at the victim. (Terms comes from Vietnam; an unpopular leader would be killed, his detah blamed on enemy fire and no one would speak up because he was unpopular; nice touch with Baltar and Tyrol at the end, there, I thought, when lee asks how Crashdown died).

In fact, the fact that Baltar killed Crashdown is the least intriguing part of the interactions on Kobol (the Lord of the Flies scenario is expected, of course); the philosophical consequences, as outlined by Six, are far more interesting. Her claim that one of them, during the attack, would turn against the others is questionable. Are we to assume that was Crashdown? Or was it Tyrol? How about Baltar himself? I mean, he’s the one who actually shot the guy, right? Also, if Six turns out to be a figment of Baltar’s imagination, then her claim is most likely not to an accurate precognition but a manifestation of Baltar’s paranoia; if she is real then you have to question how she knew about what would happen or if it was a lucky guess (i.e. she was counting on the ‘fact’ of human blood lust). Six tells Baltar that she will be his conscience; that his ability to kill is an element of his humanity.

Actually, what is that? It’s definitely a new parameter for measuring your humanity, isn’t it? I mean, as a whole, people don’t even count killing as a factor as it’s something that isn’t unique to humans – animals do it too; it’s not a distinguishing characteristic. But that begs the question – is it a characteristic that distinguishes humans from Cylons? Is that what Six is implying? And if this Six is fake, are those words what Baltar thinks she would say, what she’d actually say or what Baltar thinks of the human race? Are the Cylons implying that they don’t need to kill to survive? I suppose they are: they don’t need to eat and anyway, human killing goes beyond the necessity to survive by means of consuming meat. I like how whenever Baltar points out that the Cylons also kill, Six points out that humans taught them this. If you take this in a very literal way, Six is saying that the humans in the fleet caused their own problems by creating the Cylons in the first place. Which I guess is the delineation of the series, isn’t it?

Moving back to the Galactica (and Mary McDonnell’s awesomeness aside), the political arena is complicated. Not only is Tigh beginning to call the ship his own but the implementation of martial law is an outrageous move that I’m pretty certain Zarek will have something to say about. Not just that but Tigh’s motivations for calling it are completely selfish. He did it to avoid losing the upper hand to Roslin and because he was losing control over the Quorum. He wasn’t smart enough to rectify the situation so he put out a banner that screamed “I’m in charge”. Unlike Adama’s motivations for imprisoning Roslin, which were, whether or not we agree with him, about military decisions Tigh’s decision comes down to the fact that he doesn’t have the balls to be in command. Which is sad for him because he knew it and he never wanted to be there. That being said, the ramifications will be enormous, of course. Can’t wait to see where this is headed!

In related news, that d/l took very little time. Have nearly d/l Stargate 803, too :)