I agree with the ‘a woman Cylon couldn’t seduce a gay officer, but hope could’ meaning of BYBBQ’s I am a woman and a Cylon line. It makes more sense to me since Gaeta is apparently gay and all the Cylon/Human romantic relationships are based on some kind of extreme circumstance, except for Balthar’s.
I believe that the 8 first built trust with Gaeta non romantically, thought up the list plan, and saw an opportunity to further gain trust with Gaeta by engaging him romantically. All of that is just based on how I interpret the flashback scenes. Plus she is an 8 and always has to have a boyfriend. I base this predominately on wishful thinking because that makes the BYBBQ’s line that much more awesome.
Maybe Balthar pointed the BYBBQ down that path too by basically telling the Cylons how to manipulate his moral compass.
Nice podcast as always but to come back to the Baltar presidency.
Capitulating in new caprica was not a bad idea in the current situation. You are unprepared your back up from space is gone, the cylon are everywhere and could slaughter everybody in like 10 min. It’s one of the good decision like Roslin in the miniseries told Adama that the war is lost and we need to help the survivor (and making babies).
I cannot blame him for the death list too. At this situation even if most people would think they would prefer to eat the bullet. History is full of cases where surviving drive makes you do horrible things, even to good people. And since Baltar is the ultimate survivor of course he would sign. To him merit he did resist almost to the breaking point. They even had to shot the 6.
What he’s should have been airlocked for is :
The initial help to the cylons. Even if I can’t really totally blame him (have you seen the 6 model in red dress?) many good men would have fall for that. But as a egoistic selfish bastard he should have realized he gave up big secrets even to be with the 6 even if you don’t think cylon at the time it could have been a spy from another colony.
This one is the airlock case without possibility of parole : The nuke he gave the damaged 6 that blown up a couple of ships.
Back to Felix
We now understand why all the aggressiveness toward Baltar. He was not trying to destroy the man for his actions but for his own guilt and the fact that he known about it.
I think he was more using BBQ8 with good intentions even for her. The sleeping together was maybe more for her because he thought she felt terrible about the people they couldn’t save.
As for BBQ8 I’m sure the cylons where aware of her actions. The good old Lincoln proverb holds true. You kill a lot more enemies with a loving eight than with a gun (even if the original was more about fly and honey)
Oh and like Sean said I’m pretty sure Cavel will be in a world of pain when his 8 will betray him. Because that what they do. And I’m a little worried about Athena now.
I agree with those that above that Felix was not seduced by BYBBQ8. I suspect she was trying to seduce him all along, however he misinterpreted her advances as actual interest. Having known Boomer and the Sharon that would become Athena he may have deduced that the 8’s have a thing for Colonial officers. I think in his mind he was using her to get help releasing prisoners. Her point was that as a woman she could tell that he was gay and not romantically interested in her, and therefore pointing out that he gave her the list ‘hoping’ that she would do right by the Colonials.
The Trinity make an interesting point that Gaeta should have done a better job following up on what was happening to the people on the list. Maybe he didn’t have the ability to, which is revealing considering he was supposedly the second most powerful/influential human in the NC government. Does the apparent ineffectual role that he and Baltar actually had in the government absolve them at all of their supposed crimes?
I disagree. I think that Athena is the most “real” 8 we’ve seen in depth. Part of that is the depth that we’ve gotten with her over 4 seasons, but mostly it is that we have seen her make choices for a very broad range of reasons, including love, loyalty, anger, fear, parental love, professional duty, etc. Perhaps there is even a few betrayals yet lurking in her. Remember the encephalitis beacon and Lee’s plan to kill the Cylons? Her reaction there had at least 40 layers to it.
Crazy 8 is definitely a complicated lady Cylon, but I don’t think that she has managed to come off as having more depth than Athena in less than 30 minutes of screen time.
So, being one of the few resident queers, and being one of a small group of resident outspoken feminists, I have been paying a lot of attention to the Gaeta romance from an analytical perspective. The thing that I think that the writers get and portray really well is that sexuality is complicated. Gaeta is not heterosexual- we know that. We also know that human sexuality works more or less the same for the colonials as it does for us, but that colonial society isn’t judgy about it the way that many of our societies are.
Much as I want to see more tv normalcy of non-straight relationships, I have an even greater investment in seeing more honest depictions of sexuality in my entertainment. Given how complex sexuality is, and how sexuality intertwines with other human components to create some wild decision-making processes.
My point is that it isn’t clear whether or not Gaeta is 100% gay or whether he’s bisexual, or whether he’s almost always into men but every once in a blue moon gets drunk, fraks an 8, and gets a new tattoo. I think that the writer’s chose 8’s dialogue there to be purposely ambiguous so that it could be validly applied to a variety of interpretations. We’re not supposed to know the absolute truth, here, we’re supposed to think about it all. That’s why GWC is awesome- here we are, all thinking together.
Personally, I think it would be hard not to want to get with that 8 in that situation. She’s super hot, empirically attractive, and offering succor (physical and emotional) in a time of hopelessness and fear. Also, as Baltar’s main man, there probably weren’t too many hot resistance dudes who would get in his pants.
Yes and thinking on it the 8’s would probably well versed in the complexity of human sexuality since their purpose seems to be strategic coupling.
So maybe my interpretation makes less sense.
I just enjoy thinking that the BBQ kind of went to a more machine like point of view (“you are human, weak and delusional and I am going to point out why”).
The Michael and Denise Okuda commentaries are the BOMB!! The DVD extras with them on are also awesome. The LCARS for every post-80s Star Trek show is their design.
The Okuda’s also designed many logos for the Space Shuttle missions. At least I think I heard that somewhere. Don’t quote me.
They are the creators or technobabble and the keepers of continuity. So point your fingers their way when that doesn’t work out.
I don’t think they are working on the new movie but they are working on the digital remastering of the Original series.
Okuda invented the Klingon Language too I think. The first time I remember seeing his name was as the author of the Klingon-English/English-Klingon Dictionary—and that was before Next Gen even first aired.
The initial sentences (from STtMP) were done by James Doohan, who was a bit of a renaissance performer. (He did a LOT of the extra characters in ST:TAS)
Later Marc Okrand was brought in to flesh it out. (I think you’re conflating him and Okuda.)
Yes! Marc Okrand. That’s exactly who I was thinking of.
LOL: I love this line from that Wikipedia entry: Mind Performance Hacks [3] mentions learning a constructed language for reasons related to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis suggesting that knowing an alternate language may provide a different method of critical thought when tackling a difficult problem; the book mentions Klingon as one such language. Other mentioned languages include Lojban and Solresol, as well as a passing reference to Sindarin (Elf, J.R.R. Tolkien).
Yeah, they’re talking about me: I have both the Klingon-English dictionary and the Tolkein languages dictionary.
