star-battle of the lactating machine mothers

by jebni on September 25, 2005

(Spoilerificus.)

Was I alone in finding “Season 2a” of Battlestar Galactica mightily uneven? In trying to tie up a bunch of loose ends, it seemed to lack all the grip of last season. But damn, to see Michelle Forbes back in a televised science fiction role after her near-miss with Global Frequency was awesome. And Lucy Lawless!

An idea you don’t expect from militaristic science fiction: “Pegasus” presents the timely vision that on a ship run so much more “by the book” than the Galactica, you get more “barbaric depravity”, not less — a deeply embedded symptom of the apparatus at work. Meanwhile, more than ever, the image of “the Cylon woman” is functioning outside the basic machinations of plot, and more as a pure symbol of prototypical sociality/empathy/ethics, along the lines of the replicants in Blade Runner or the constructs in Soderberg’s Solaris (which I wrote about a while ago). This is also distressing, because this really interesting quality only becomes most concrete when you see Cylon women presented as without agency — a kind of property, shared amongst men (e.g. the Boomer, Helo and Tyrol triangle), or in positions of absolute degradation (e.g. gang raped, i.e. shared amongst men). The passive, symbolic receptacle of “our” psychic investments. {Shiver}

The fact that Boomer is pregnant also throws up a whole vortex of whacky issues: the Cylon womb as a prototyping matrix — a reproductive tank of solution — for our ideas of the social and the ethical, the pregnant machine as a play on re/productive labour, etc. Kara escpaes her reproductive fate as an inseminated human woman, so we are left to resonate with Boomer as a machine mother. Simon said to me months ago that the etymological roots of the name “Battlestar Galactica” were interesting, but this is true now more than ever — from the Greek, galakt = milk, i.e. the Milky Way. So, the maternal. (Just so you couldn’t miss the point, Greek mythology has the Milky Way born in a rupture of the divine maternal body, as the breast of Hera is bitten by the baby Herakles, spurting milk across the sky. [I'll take it as coincidence that co-Executive Producer David Eick cut his teeth on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, which is how he knows Lucy Lawless].) I’ll stop now, it’s dizzying.

Best throwaway moment? (Shaking hands) “Captain Taylor.” “Kara Thrace.” “Captain Taylor.” Fucking asshole.

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6 comments

Yeah, I found it totally uneven arc-wise, if compelling within each episode. We just watched ‘Pegasus’ and it seems far and away the best episode this season. But, of course, I would say that: systemic depravity indeed! I liked how Eick confesses in the podcast that Cain;’s habit of no chairs in her office is ripped from John Bolton. But how did the Pegasus escape Cylon jamming, if it’s newer than Galactica? How can it continue to attack Cylon ships without being jammed? That whole conceit, that Galactica survived because of its age — seems to have vanished.

On Cylon women: I agree with you about the ethics/sociality aspect, and it is scary to realise that the female Cylon cohort, apart from Lucy-who-we’d-like-to-see-more-of, are both preoccupied witrh reproduction, actual or virtual. The abjected, tortured Six as a screen for Baltar to recuperate himself as ‘human’ — Tricia Helfer’s genius in that scene is to disappear herself back into the clothes and the bruises: she’s totally absent as ‘human’.

I thought the best moment was Adama’s snarl when he finds out about the executions. Just like a dog, in fact. Not, however, a dog that’s been shot.

by az on 27 September 2005 at 3:12 am. #

Also, “Pegasus” just made me think ‘bare life’ and ‘state of emergency’. Has David Eick been reading Agamben? Or has he just been thinking about Abu Ghraib?

by Az on 27 September 2005 at 3:42 am. #

But how crap was the lite-rock incidental music?? I thought they were going to break out into “Faith of the Heart” or something.

by jebni on 27 September 2005 at 4:17 pm. #

Note also that Boomer’s “maternal instincts” were activated very early via her “fostering” of Boxey, the orphan boy, in the mini-series. Which reminds me — best dialogue ever:

Colonel Tigh: Where’s your mother?

Boxey: Dead. Where’s yours?

by jebni on 27 September 2005 at 4:25 pm. #

You should have put a friggin spoiler warning on that post!

by The Art Life on 30 September 2005 at 10:00 am. #

Um. I did.

by jebni on 4 October 2005 at 1:19 pm. #