Galactic Suburbia 29!
Diana Wynne Jones passed away.
Strange Horizons: dealing with the low numbers of female reviewers.
The Age on the poor numbers of women’s work being reviewed (in the literary “mainstream”), and coverage of a panel on the gender disparity, again in the mainstream.
Prometheus Awards nominees, from the Libertarian Futurist Society.
Authors, editors, and controversy: Running Press, Tricia Telep and Jessica Verday (links not necessarily linked to individuals).
Livejournal not so live this week.
Guest post: Aufleur and Rome
This is a guest post from the wonderful Tansy. Her second book, The Shattered City, has in theory been released recently but I’ve not found it yet (grr) 😦 . When she announced that she was going to do a Mighty Slapdash Blog Tour, I had to be a part of it – and since I got to choose her topic, I asked her to discuss the development of Aufleur, her fictional city. It’s one of the aspects I adored in Power and Majesty (the first book).
Aufleur and Rome
So, I fell in love with Rome nearly ten years ago, when an academic scholarship gave the the opportunity to spend a month there, in a little rental flat with my honey. By day, we went hunting statues of Roman imperial women, tramping across cobbled and concreted streets to various museums or archaeological sites. By night we practiced Italian recipes, copied from the restaurants we’d visited, and watched our landlady’s collection of classic Hollywood movies, or episodes of Charmed and Buffy dubbed into Italian.
Charmed is way better in Italian.
We weren’t great tourists. We barely managed to have a conversation with anyone except each other, and we didn’t shop for anything but groceries (and shiny museum books!). But we hovered in a strange, happy bubble together in the middle of an ancient city, ignoring every modern bit (I couldn’t even bring myself to visit an exhibition of my favourite Renaissance artist of all time because omg, mustn’t get distracted!) and choosing just to exist in the ancient and ruined parts of the city. Sadly these were also the bits with the most expensive sandwiches, but we survived. Later, when I began to write the Creature Court, and I needed a city, Rome was there for me. Not the real, actual city (this much became obvious when my poor mother tried to map the place) but am imaginary, dreamlike Rome, with all my favourite bits and features mushed together. Memories of walks on the Palatine and around the baths of Trajan and the Forum, and the Capitolini Musei, and along the river Tiber, and around the Teatro Argentina, swarming with cats (near which we had a lunch so accidentally expensive that we have since compared its cost to every extravagant meal we have bought in the years since) all poured into my strange, fantastical city. When Ashiol walked from Kelpie’s nest all the way to the Gardens of Trajus Alysaundre with his bare feet in Book One, I was there with him.
All this, of course, means that the city is a real thing for me, something I love, so it means something personal to me when I put it
in danger. Most of the characters in my books are either desperate to save the city, or so cynical and beaten down that they are ready to see it fall. They all have some kind of relationship with it – love, or hate, or loyalty, or resentment.
One of the first images I had in my head of Aufleur was a scene of Ashiol, standing in a wreck of a city, watching scars slide and fall off his skin at the same time as the city rebuilt itself around him…. While the scene didn’t entirely survive the final manuscript, I always knew that this would be the key point of my city, that it was damaged and destroyed and beaten every night, but that it would heal itself, brick by brick, when daylight came.
Until, of course, it didn’t any more.
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Tansy Rayner Roberts is the author of Power and Majesty (Creature Court Book One) and The Shattered City (Creature Court Book Two, April 2011) with Reign of Beasts (Creature Court Book Three, coming in November 2011) hot on its tail. Her short story collection Love and Romanpunk will be published as part of the Twelfth Planet Press “Twelve Planets” series in May.
This post comes to you as part of Tansy’s Mighty Slapdash Blog Tour, and comes with a cookie fragment of new release The Shattered City:
“You have a city to think of,” he said sharply. “One house shouldn’t matter. It can’t matter.”
“And that’s why you live underground, so you care about nothing?” Velody flared. “How would you feel if it was the palazzo that fell to the skybolts? If the Duchessa didn’t wake up one morning, and you knew exactly why? How many cups of wine would it take to drown that one out?”
Doomsday Book: the sf and the medieval
This is the April book for the Women in SF Book Club. I’ve been trying to read each book a month ahead of time, here at the start of the year, because I just know I’ll fall behind at some point… and those who know me know that I am nothing if not a completionist and a perfectionist. It’s a failing. Eh.
I’ve never read a Connie Willis. I know, I know; another failing. Anyway, I picked this up from the library without knowing anything about it. The first thing I thought was OMG THIS IS HUGE (669 pages, to be exact). The second was HEY, this is actually a medieval book! I didn’t realise that… and it made me a bit wary, to be honest. I’ve just finished a masters in medieval history, and while that by no means makes me an expert in the time, it does make me wary when I don’t know how expert authors are, and whether I can trust them or not. I knew a few of my friends – especially Tansy – thought she was a wonderful author, so I wasn’t entirely dubious, but… you know…
So, I began. And to be honest, the first chapter did not work for me. I don’t mind being thrown into a world headfirst, but this was a bit nuts. And I’m not sure why, but none of the characters were immediately engaging, so I neither knew who they were nor (immediately) cared to find out. I was worried that this was going to be another book to struggle through so that I could an informed and scathing commentary when the Book Club came around (which is what will happen with Darkship Thieves tonight…ETA: now!).
But I kept reading.
At the end of the first chapter, Mr Dunworthy has seen his star pupil, Kivrin, sent off to the Middle Ages via a time machine (basically). In the second chapter, Dunworthy and his friends go off to the pub, concerned but trying to be positive about Kivrin’s chances; there’s some worry over how the whole event has been organised. And all of a sudden… I cared. I don’t know why. I can’t pinpoint a moment when the people began to matter, or when I began to be engaged with the individuals and their concerns. But I think it was in this second chapter, with the minutiae of life in Oxford; and then the third chapter, with Kivrin recalling how she got the gig to be sent back in time and then waking up in the Middle Ages. And the description of the environment, Kivrin’s reactions to it… it grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and forced me to keep reading. And keep reading. And I read the 669 pages in two days.
Some spoilers.
I really, really enjoyed the book. Obviously.
I initially expected that after the sending-back-in-time experience, there would be occasional flash-forwards to Dunworthy, but that mostly the book would be focussed on the medieval. I was wrong, of course. I’m not positive, but I think the book is almost evenly split between the near-future (from our perspective; it’s set in 2055, or so) and the past. I think I may actually have enjoyed the near-future section more than the medieval. It is riveting because there’s an illness – an influenza, perhaps the most obvious modern corollary of plague – rapidly taking hold of Oxford. When I first read the book I thought it was a much more recent publication than it actually is (1992) because of the way it imagines a population dealing with disease; it feels exactly like a book written post-swine flu. At any rate, it’s fascinating because although the disease is taking over the city, Willis is most interested in a couple of individuals and how they go about trying to ignore the disease and carry on with life – and, particularly, trying to figure out what has happened to Kivrin 700 years in the past. I enjoyed Dunworthy, and sympathised with his attempts at dealing with bureaucracy, and his concern for his student – although quite why he was just so concerned was unclear, and in fact a couple of times it made me a leedle uncomfortable, because it almost skirted the bounds of propriety. (Maybe that’s just me….)
The other reason I liked the near-future sections was for their utterly normal feel. The futuristic elements were quite muted: “the net”, whereby Kivrin was sent back in time (and others, too – it’s regarded as nearly normal); some aspects of government, such as the quarantine measures; and a few medical things that hardly warrant much attention. But it would be easy enough to ignore those, and read it as set in our contemporary world. It’s very believable and enjoyable.
Of the medieval sections I was, as mentioned above, more suspicious. I was beyond annoyed, by the way, with my copy of the book, which says on the front “Kivrin wanted to study the Black Death, not live it…” because actually NO, she was not interested in the Black Death, and by the way SPOILER!! since she only realises that she’s in the 1340s – twenty-odd years off the time she was expecting – MORE THAN HALFWAY THROUGH. Gah.
Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised with the medieval village Willis created. She didn’t try to do too much: staying in one village, with a fairly small number of people, and not really getting into the politics or anything was sensible on many levels, not least of which was allowing the reader to get to know and care about a smaller number of characters. I liked that Kivrin’s interpreting software didn’t work perfectly and that there were many surprises, large and small, about the realities of medieval life – things that historians do squabble about. Kivrin as a character didn’t really do much for me; she was likeable, and I sympathised when things went badly, but I didn’t ever entirely identify with her. Of the others, the only one for whom I felt much sympathy was the priest, Roche. The others were not developed enough for me to desperately want to understand. Perhaps the most telling part of my reading experience was that when the book flicked to the 21st century, I wasn’t that impatient to return to the 14th.
Tansy warned me that I would cry because of this book (actually, she told me to buy a box of tissues). I understand why she said this. However, I did not cry. There are probably a few reasons for this. The first might be that I was warned; the second may be that I am cold-hearted, as several people suggested! But third, and perhaps most to the point: I am a medieval historian. I know the reality of the Black Death. Nothing that happened to Kivrin, nothing that she experienced, was a revelation to me; there was no surprise in any of the events nor in people’s attitudes. I felt most sadness at some of the events in the near future. And fourth, I was also prevented from bawling because I read it too fast. I had to read it fast because I had to know what happened, but it meant that I didn’t form the emotional bond with the characters that I might have with a more leisurely read-through. Not that I’m regretting it; I thoroughly enjoyed the book and had enough of an emotional connection that I certainly regretted deaths and rejoiced at survivals. It’s also possible there’s a fifth reason that I didn’t cry: that Willis didn’t give me enough of the characters to make me want to cry. I think this is probably most true of the medieval characters; at least, they’re the ones I felt least attached to. I was closest to tears when I found that Dr Mary had died; that it happened while Dunworthy was unconscious, and that young nephew Colin has been so stoic through it all, was closest to being heart-breaking.
I think I understand why people rave about Willis. I have Blackout/All Clear on my to-read list, and it will definitely stay there… but it won’t get bumped up to must-read-or-will-cry level.
Arks are by definition redeeming
Look, it’s a Revelation Space novel. Seriously. This is not going to be a bad review.
Redemption Ark sort of takes up where Revelation Space leaves off, but uses quite a number of different characters to present the narrative. Where the Conjoiners were just another group of weirdos in the first book, here two of the main points of view are from Conjoiners – who end up having quite different takes on the events. There are a couple of familiar characters, happily – who have changed in some ways quite substantially, but of course in many ways stay the same – as well as some other new ones, including one of the most ‘normal’ characters Reynolds has used to present action in any of the Rev Space books.
The narrative? Revelation Space hinted at Inhibitors, a machine race of some sort tasked with inhibiting the development of fleshy sentience into the wider galaxy; Dan Sylveste, in his arrogance, rang their bell. <i>Redemption Ark</i> – along with a lot of side-stories – addresses how the people of Resurgam, as well as some other concerned galactic citizens, might deal with this particular threat to their existence. Actually, it’s worse than that, since most of the people on Resurgam have absolutely no idea what is going on. It’s the other people – with mixed motives – who have to take action on their behalf. Enter two very different Conjoiners, some hyperpigs, and ordinary space-faring citizens, and the race is on to decide who is going to get the weapons that alone might have a chance of dealing with that rather intimidating threat.
I love this stuff.
As I said, there are a lot of sub-plots going on. There’s the whole back-story of the Conjoiners (more on them later), there’s the sad story of Antoinette and how she ends up involved in all of this, there’s those recurring characters and what’s happened to them between books as well as what they’re doing now (se me avoiding spoilers?), as well as an update on Resurgam and Chasm City. It’s this depth, this chunkiness, that all manages to make sense and add to the overall story, that I adore about these books. If you stripped all this possibly-extraneous material out you’d have maybe a 250-300 page book (rather than 650-odd pages), and it would probably be quite good, but… it would be missing the marvellous detail, the feel of it being a messy and oh-so-real society, that I love.
The characters are of course a wonderful part of that messiness. The Conjoiners, it turns out, are a society created by one Galliana in an attempt to bring humanity ever closer to one another – by being conjoined by a neural network that allows people to communicate essentially telepathically, and see things that other people are projecting, and even read further into others’ minds than simply their surface thoughts. The idea was to create a transparent, and presumably egalitarian, society. It’s a lovely utopian vision, and there are of course dark hints that way back when it was being established – on Mars, 400 years prior to the book – that it caused wars with those afraid of that vision. I know I’ve read about that back story, somewhere; it might have been one of Reynolds’ short stories. In Redemption Ark the Conjoiners are represented primarily to the reader through Clavain – an early, somewhat unwilling recruit – and the paradoxically ambitious Skade. These two characters are developed thoroughly and, actually, quite messily; their motivations don’t always make immediate sense, they are conflicted, and they make horrendous decisions in the heat of battle. I love Clavain; I respect Skade but I would definitely want to keep her at arms’ length. Preferably someone else’s arms.
There are other new characters. Antoinette Bax, ship-owner and budding transporter, is the fairly naive and hapless everywoman (along with her partner Xavier) who gets dragged along almost against her will. She’s one of the few sections I think could have been excised without the overall narrative losing much complexity and wonderfulness (did I mention I love this novel?). Then there’s Scorpio, a hyperpig. The pigs get mentioned in Chasm City, but they don’t play much of a part; their backstory is fleshed out a little more here, but we still have to wait for another story – I think The Prefect? and one or two shorts – to get much detail. Still, the idea that a new intelligent species could have arisen out of human/pig experiments aimed at making human organ replacement easier is fascinating.
It’s a great book. There’s tension on a galactic scale, and on a personal level; there’s technology, and overcoming its limits in potentially dangerous ways; there are cameos from earlier books; there is witty dialogue, and hinted-at dark pasts, and just wonderful writing too. #fangirl
Wave your tentacles in the air
I LOVED this book.
Major disclaimer: I am no fan of Lovecraft. That is, I have never read any of the Cthulhu texts. I had a friend in high school who really got into them, but… yeh. My aversion to horror goes waaaay back, baby. So if there are clever and/or snide references to Lovecraftian characters, ideas, or themes, they swam right over my head.
Anyway.
I had no real idea about what this book would entail, except:
1. Tansy abandoned it for apparent lack of tentacle smut;
2. The other two books by Mieville I have read (Perdido St Station and The City & the City) I have adored;
3. There would be tentacles of some sort, even if it wasn’t smut.So I had few real expectations, except that I was hoping it would be as engagingly written as his other work. On this level, I was certainly fulfilled.
Mieville’s writing style really, really appeals to me. It’s not overtly fancy and obtusely “literary” – by which I mean that snide insinuation that the author is using fancy, opaque words for no good reason; rather, I know the words he uses, and they make sense, and they tell a story. But there is SOMETHING in the construction, something in the sentences he puts together, that is utterly enchanting. He is a delight to read. This particularly applies to his dialogue. Mieville captures the essence of different characters through their words with each other; he has a talent for the rhythm of conversation, without falling into annoying attempts at getting all the slang and dropped letters in there.
My delight at the dialogue brings me to one of the really interesting aspects of Kraken. In many ways, this feels like a snarky, conflicted, love-letter to London. As a big fan of the Natural History Museum I was way more pleased than I ought to have been to see how big a role that place played. And I really enjoyed Mieville’s imagining of London as the great Heresiopolis, with its own Londonmancers looking after it, and having a really distinct and important character in the book. In theory the narrative could have been set anywhere near the coast, but Mieville makes it a convincingly London story.
The narrative? Well, it’s not the most original aspect of the novel. It boils down to an approaching Armageddon and what can possibly be done about it. There is a somewhat hapless curator, a possibly obsessive Kraken devotee, some snarky coppers, and a whole raft of Big Bad Guys all running around getting in each other’s way. There’s a twist at the very end that I didn’t see coming – but then, I rarely do, unless they are glaringly obvious. It almost all takes place in London, and from memory it takes place over a relatively short period of time, too – maybe a couple of weeks. It’s all sparked off by a giant squid specimen going missing in a rather… fantastic… manner. Things go downhill for our heroes from there, until the whole world is nearly devoured by fire. OH NOES. While I’ve read end-of-the-world stories before, it didn’t matter much. I was genuinely unsure, on and off for the whole novel, about whether or how Mieville could redeem the world from the edge of the abyss (I’m not spoiling by saying whether he does or not!)
One of the few niggling problems I had was with the female characters (surely that’s not a surprise to anyone). There were only three women of any significance, and their significance isn’t large. There’s a female copper, who I will admit to being very fond of; she has an extremely foul mouth, a short temper, and a way of figuring things out. There’s Marge (short of Marginalia…), who I initially thought was going to be totally wet but turned out to have… not “hidden reserves,” but a determination that refused to be defused, even when ostensibly the reason for keeping on going had faded. She’s cool. And there’s a Londonmancer, too, who becomes significant towards the end, but she doesn’t have that much of a role. So… yeh. Coulda had more chicks.
Overall, this was a rollicking adventure, probably more like Perdido than The City but really nothing like either of them. I don’t think it’s as good as either of them, because the narrative isn’t quite as clever. But it’s possibly more fun – depending on what you’re looking for in your genre-reading.
Galactic Suburbia 28
News
Lambda Awards
Kristine Kathryn Rusch discusses the business of being an author
Woman wins award, man gets attention
Ian Sales’ SF Mistressworks & starts the SF Mistressworks meme
Hugo reminder: get your nominations in!
Galactic Chat
T SHIRTS
Tiptree!!
Feedback
Competition open for another fortnight – keep sending in entries! Email us with fave GS moment and what cake you ate.
What Culture Have we Consumed?
Tansy: Burn Bright, by Marianne de Pierres; Laid (ABC TV)
Alisa: Star Trek Enterprise Season 4, Fringe eps 11 -13,
Alex: Genesis, by Bernard Beckett; Redemption Ark, Alastair Reynolds; Version 43, Philip Palmer (abandoned)… Battlestar Galactica
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Under the Poppy
This is the second book I read as part of my guest stint on The Writer and the Critic. I’d never heard of Koja before, and all I had to go on was Kirstyn’s raving and Mondy’s disgust. Good times.
Looking around on GoodReads it’s clear that this book evokes strong reactions both ways in many people. And I too am riven by indecision about it. The writing is absolutely exquisite; Koja is a mistress of the evocative phrase, the perfect description. It’s a delight to read her prose. This delight may be the only thing that got me through the whole book, and even then I skimmed chunks of the last hundred pages or so. Because, sadly, the plot could not carry me, and the characters weren’t especially engaging either.
Some spoilers… but not very many.
The novel begins in a brothel in an unnamed town, probably at the tail end of the 19th century, somewhere in Europe. It’s owned by Decca and Rupert – not a couple – and as well as whores, Under the Poppy is proud to stage erotic dramas. Real-life drama occurs when Decca’s brother Istvan turns up, unearthing old hurts and catalysing all sorts of other problems. There’s a war in the offing, so there are soldiers in town, and some rather unsavoury characters who may be involved in the war in more ways than one….
In theory, the plot could have been very interesting: love and personal hurt and betrayal in a time of war can have a lot going for it. And the fact that the novel is set in NoTime, and NoRealPlace, lends a lovely note of the surreal which is aided by the surreality of the Poppy’s dramatic presentations, and Istvan’s puppets. Sadly, though, the very subtlety that was quite engaging eventually made me very impatient. Very few issues were ever resolved (until the end, where perhaps too much was tied up too nicely for the general tone of the story (contrary, aren’t I?)), very little of any character’s background was ever fully fleshed out, and while I’m all for mystique there’s a line where mystique becomes so opaque as to be ridiculous. For me, Koja crossed that line.
This mystique affected both the plot and the characters. I enjoyed the technique of third-person narrative interspersed with first-person recollections of the past, or commentary on the current situation; that was very well done. However, there wasn’t quite enough back story for me to ever fully connect with the characters. And one of the main characters for whom I felt a great deal of sympathy – Decca – ends up being treated so poorly by Koja that I couldn’t help but feel offended on her behalf. Yes, Istvan and Rupert are incredibly complex and fascinating characters; but neither of them is very sympathetic (to my mind), and their tantrums got a bit wearing after a while. Unlike someone whose review I read (I don’t recall where), Rupert and Istvan will never be among my Top Romantic Pairs of All Time. I rolled my eyes at them too many times.
It wasn’t all bad, of course. The mystery of when and where was enough to drive me slightly wild, trying to figure out whether any of the events had genuine historical counterparts. Deeper than that, though, was what Koja was doing with Istvan’s puppets. The parallels between Istvan’s use of them in precipitating events and reactions in his audience, and the use to which Istvan himself was put (and others, too), was clever, subtle, and rather pointed I thought (in a good way).
Am I glad I read it? No, not really. The plot fell just short of engaging, although as I said the prose was swoon-worthy; and, although the sex wasn’t usually that graphic, it was just graphic or suggestive enough that it crossed out of my comfort zone.
Shakespeare, sex, and drugs
I read this because it was the book picked by Mondy for March’s Writer and the Critic podcast, on which I was the guest (which is full of spoilers for the book). It’s kinda my sort of book… and kinda really not.
I am a Shakespeare Fan. I love me some Bard. Not the comedies, though; I love the tragedies and the histories. Oh, and Much Ado, but that’s a whole ‘nother story (one involving Kenneth and Emma and Ben Elton and Michael Keaton and Keanu…). So, a book that alternates chapters about Will Shakespeare Greenberg, aspiring Masters student at UCal, with the late-teen years of William Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon, is in theory a very appealing one to me. And Winfield clearly knows (or got to know) his Shakespeare: there are allusions, and direct quotes, in I think every single chapter – and they all seemed effortless, too. I enjoyed the development of sixteenth-century Stratford. I’m not entirely convinced by man-whore Shakespeare, but I see the point from a narrative point of view, and it’s not a completely ridiculous suggestion. Overall it was a reasonably interesting portrayal of his early adulthood.
On the other hand, there was Will Greenberg. A book published in 2008 choosing the mid-1980s as its setting is kinda weird, although I understand why: Winfield was drawing (perhaps tenuous) connections between the persecution of Catholics by Elizabeth with the crackdown on drugs by the Reagan administration. The portrayal of a Masters student of literature was hugely stereotypical, sadly – although again I see the point from a narrative point of view, especially in terms of the drug use. It doesn’t help the view of Arts students in general though, and the idea that marvellous ideas come in a flash of lightning or drug overdose is just annoying and unhelpful. It may be that I am a prude, but I got bored by the descriptions of drug use and the explicit sexual content; it got in the way of telling the story.
So… not really my thing, actually. Certainly well written, in the early modern bits in particular; as a former history/lit student myself I found the brief discussion of literary theory, especially the bagging of New Historicism, pretty funny (I am a big fan of Stephen Greenblatt, one of the original proponents). But the characters weren’t that engaging and the story wasn’t that compelling.
BSG rewatch: Unlimited access
2.8: Final Cut
This episode interweaves the repercussions of what has become known to the Fleet as “the massacre on Gideon” – when Tigh sent marines in to get their supplies, and they opened fire on civilians – with the sort of episode I didn’t think we’d get on BSG: the behind-the-scenes, daily-life one. Both of these strands are made possible by a new character, D’Anna Biers, played by Lucy Lawless.
D’Anna is investigating the ‘massacre’, and will potentially put out a very damaging (for Tigh, and Galactica) report. To counter this, Roslin and Adama invite her on to Galactica, with unlimited access to the crew, so that she can get a sense of what it’s like for them – and report on that to the rest of the Fleet.
This is a very clever thing for Roslin and Adama to do, of course; the theory is that finding out that the pilots who protect you are human, and have their own fears and dreams, will make the Fleet more sympathetic towards them and more forgiving. It’s also a clever piece of writing for the show, because unless you introduced a psychologist character, or showed them having fairly uncharacteristic D&M conversations with each other, showing the sort of emotional turmoil we get here would have been very difficult indeed. As a result, we get to hear why Cat has been taking stims by the fistful, and we get to see Dee trying to put a brave face on everything, as well as a few other character insights. I love Felix Gaeta more and more with each episode – he’s so competent, and calm, and yet in this episode, he talks quite frankly about why he smokes and what his plans had been before the attack. Oh, and seeing Baltar so desperate to get interviewed is quite frankly.
Meanwhile, Ellen has been terrified by some graffiti in the cabin she shares with Tigh, and a shuttle Tigh was meant to fly on develops a problem that would have killed him and the crew if it had taken off. It turns out that the man who led the Gideon mission has been sent a little bit nuts by the event and its repercussions, and is seeking vengeance through Tigh. It’s an interesting insight into the ramifications of acting as a soldier, and the conversations had by various people about how to react to the events – from Adama, and Tigh, as well as others – show that the writers were not trying to paint anyone as wholly good or bad. I was a bit disappointed with just how patriotic and triumphalist the episode got in the end, though; it verged on nauseating.
The very, very end of this episode is chilling. A theatre, with the human-looking Cylon models watching D’Anna’s footage… and D’Anna there, reassuring them that yes Caprica-Sharon is doing well, and the baby is still alive.
CYLON!!
BSG stats:
- Starbuck in the brig: 1
- Baltar in the brig: 1
- Women Baltar shows interest in (not including Six): 4
- Women Baltar actually gets to sleep with: 2
- Baltar religious conversions: 2
- Different sexy dresses worn by Caprica-Six: 14 (and one sports outfit)
- Apollo sides with President against Dad: 4
- Number of Cylons viewers know about: 6
- Number of Cylons humans know about: 2 (and Starbuck an additional one)
- Roslin has a vision: 3
- People deliberately thrown out the airlock: 1 (+3 threats)
- Ships lost: 1
- Ellen gets suggestive: 3
- Starbuck and Apollo do fisticuffs: 1
- Starbuck and Apollo kiss: 1
BSG: Putting the band back together
2.6: Home, part 1
Starbuck, Helo and Caprica-Sharon make it back to Kobol and the 24 ships that have followed the President back there. Apollo, of course, goes slightly insane on seeing Sharon, his father only just recently coming around from being shot by the original. The President threatens to throw Sharon out of the airlock, to Helo’s obvious horror, and then she mentions that she knows where the Tomb of Athene is… which buys her some time. Things are not all hunky-dory among this rebel crew, of course: Mr Meier, Zarek’s off-sider (played by the same guy as played one of the nastier Jericho characters), keeps encouraging Zarek to consider what might happen out there to, say, Apollo and/or the President. Now that they have the Arrow, Roslin takes a crew down to Kobol to search for the Tomb and thus the way to Earth. Everyone is terribly suspicious of Sharon, of course… and the fact that she saves them from a Cylon ambush actually doesn’t help very much. It’s always possible to see something like that as still being self-serving.
Back at the main fleet, Adama seems to be losing it a bit. He’s back in charge but he is far more wounded than he would like to admit by Apollo’s desertion of him. He chooses a new CAG – one that Tigh is very much against, with good reason it turns out, since his inattention nearly gets Cat killed on a training op. Having been invited to speak with him frankly, Dee tries to encourage Adama to see that putting the Fleet back together should be of paramount importance. He dismisses her, but eventually realises he was right and announces their return to Kobol. Of course, the real question is just what will he do to Roslin, Apollo, and everyone else who ‘abandoned’ him?
This episode doesn’t sound like a particularly exciting one, but once again it’s the seemingly little moments of tension that really make this show amazing. Roslin’s duplicity in stopping Helo from threatening Apollo and then ordering Sharon’s death is a remarkable demonstration of her ruthlessness. Adama not immediately coming back to full strength and being visibly affected by the loss of people to Kobol is a slightly uncomfortable reminder that this man, who is in charge of the safety of humanity, is himself frail and flawed. Apollo is incredibly pleased to see Starbuck – perhaps more than he should be – and even gives her a kiss on the lips. Plus, it’s a two-parter, so you then have to go straight on to…
2.7: Home, part 2
Once again this episode has two narrative tracks. One is on Kobol, as Adama finds the President and they fulfil her mission; but the other is on Galactica and centres on Baltar.
Baltar is getting increasingly frustrated with Six; she has told him that their child will be born in Galactica’s brig, and Baltar just can’t stomach that. Six gets so frustrated with him, in turn, that she next appears to him looking completely different: hair straight and slicked back, little make up, and instead of her trademark slinky dress she looks like she’s just back from the gym. In this guise she laughs at him and tells him that he is indeed going nuts, and she is his sub-conscious mind playing tricks. The possibility of insanity is played up by the cinematography, because there are a number of shots of Baltar, mid-conversation, talking to an empty room. This has rarely happened in the past, except perhaps at the end of a conversation. Baltar then goes off to get his brain scanned, looking for a Cylon chip, but of course there isn’t one…
Meanwhile, on Kobol, Adama – and Billy, whom Adama decided was a good addition to the team looking for Roslin – do indeed find the Indiana-Jones-wannabes. Adama of course has a very bad reaction to Caprica-Sharon… and the Chief, who is also along, perhaps as bad. It’s all very fraught really. They spend a bit of time reconnecting, camping in the rain, and then tramp off looking for the Tomb. Meier is working on Sharon, getting her to agree to killing the old man (again). When they finally get to the tomb, Sharon double-crosses Meier – shooting him – and willingly surrenders to Adama, to prove that she is working of her own free will and not because she is programmed. No one much really believes her, although I think Adama is troubled by it.
The episode ends with entry into the tomb, and our heroes being shown how to reach Earth: it’s the place where all of the constellations representing the Twelve Colonies are visible in a certain way in the sky. Now, this is slightly problematic from an astronomical point of view, but it is beautifully done for the show. I love that the main pointer for them, from where they are, is the Lagoon Nebula – because I’ve seen that, through my telescope. So we conclude with hope: the President is reinstated, martial law is over, and we know (kinda) how to find Earth. Hurrah! … although Caprica-Sharon is in the brig, Helo and the Chief are going to have some serious issues, and Baltar is… well, Baltar. Good times.
BSG stats:
- Starbuck in the brig: 1
- Baltar in the brig: 1
- Women Baltar shows interest in (not including Six): 4
- Women Baltar actually gets to sleep with: 2
- Baltar religious conversions: 2
- Different sexy dresses worn by Caprica-Six: 13 (and one sports outfit)
- Apollo sides with President against Dad: 4
- Number of Cylons viewers know about: 5
- Number of Cylons humans know about: 2 (and Starbuck an additional one)
- Roslin has a vision: 3
- People deliberately thrown out the airlock: 1 (+3 threats)
- Ships lost: 1
- Ellen gets suggestive: 3
- Starbuck and Apollo do fisticuffs: 1
- Starbuck and Apollo kiss: 1
Randomly Yours, Alex 