GWC Re-Watch Frak Party: Collaborators

Frak Party Archives BSG Frak Party Archive
#1

It’s week thirty-four of our planned off-season re-watch of the entire “re-imagined” BSG canon, and after a little time off to watch Razor, it’s time to move on to the season three episode “Collaborators.” So why not join us here for the GWC online frak party? There’s room for everyone, though you’ll have to bring your own snacks…

Feel free to jump in at any point with your comments on this week’s episode as the re-watch is by definition spoiler free. We’ll be in and out, but we’ll definitely take a look at your comments before we start next week’s podcast.

Note: Some readers/listeners asked us to leave comments open on the frak party blog post as they enjoy commenting more than forums. So if you have the time, keep an eye on the blog post every now and then, too, so we don’t leave 'em out in the cold.

http://www.galacticawatercooler.com/2007/12/10/gwc-re-watch-frak-party-collaborators/

#2

I was surprised that Anders and the Cheif were so “cold” when sentencing those people. Also, are you telling me Dad Adama didn’t realize that his XO, Cheif, and best pilots husband were always gone for a bit every day?

#3

Actually, I think Tigh wasn’t the XO at that point…he refers to the ‘Cylon Lover’ doing his job, meaning Karl Agathon.

I found them all a little frustrating doing their blame-storming during this period…the whole mess was their own fault for voting to settle on New Caprica in the first place.

#4

Which is what Gaida says. I thought that Adama re-instated Tigh. Still, how does he not know whats going on?

#5

They all have off-duty time. (Note that there are no cylon attacks during this period.) It seems pretty reasonable that they could cover their tracks.

Plus, remember that this was a sanctioned, if secret, group. Zarak might have made some fictional cover that they were operating under (morale restoration committee, or some-such nonsense.)

#6

Jammer deserved a trial.

Yes jammer collaborated with the cylons by joining the NCP, and yes he was in command of the unit that participated in the temple shooting.

However, Jammer had plausable defenses to the claim he was a collaborator. He joined the NCP to get the cylon troopers out of New Caprica City. Civilians were not deliberately targeted in the temple shooting incident (he claimed it was a tragic accident caused, in part, by the insurgents mixing with civilians).

Jammer also had a defense of mitigation. When he realized that the cylons were going to execute Roslyn, Cally, Zarek et al, he did what little good he could do in that impossible siutation, by letting Cally go. This act of courage should not be overlooked. If he had be caught, he would have been executed.

Now, I understand that there are good arguments that Jammer was a colloborator, and that he deserved to be executed. But the point is that he deserved a trial. A jury can weigh all of the evidence and then decide Jammer’s guilt or innocence. He never got a fair chance to defend his acitons.

He deserved better that to be murdered by a group of vigilanties.

By the way, these same vigilanties, in their rush to judgment, almost executed Gaeta, the man responsible for their rescue. This is why we have trials, so that ALL the facts can be considered.

#7

The main problem with Jammer’s “case” is that the one guy(forget his name. Son was killed in the raid) was personal and not objective.

#8

Lawyer Bill, I could not agree more. Jammer did not deserve to be judged the way that the Cicle ran things. I cannot help but feel, even after repeated viewings, that the Circle served nothing but their own hurt and anger. As Lee will remind us, that’s not justice. For that reason I do not think that any of their convictions were right. Clearly, Roslin’s blanket pardon allowed some of the hurt and anger felt throughout the fleet to fester- and it came out at Baltar’s trial. I have no idea what the better answer would have been, maybe only charging people for actual criminal acts, such as killing or assaulting a human, not for “collaborating.”

#9

Well, to be a Devil’s Advocate, he did get a trial.

Not a common-law trial, but he got one.

Hey, the landing bay isn’t part of the fleet proper.

When it’s extended beyond the FTL field.

Technically. You understand. Or do you want the airlock? (Am I the only one that was bothered by the waste of air in that airlocking excecution? Oxygen doesn’t grow on trees. Well, it does. But we don’t have any.)

#10

I wouldn’t have called that lynching party a trial…if it has to be done in secret without the public’s knowledge, then it’s more of a Soviet type thing.

(Am I the only one that was bothered by the waste of air in that airlocking excecution? Oxygen doesn’t grow on trees. Well, it does. But we don’t have any.)

Yeah…never mind also that sci-fi shows always get it wrong…it’d be more of a pop, like a balloon, rather than a long whoosh that gives you time to do things and think about it :slight_smile:

The main problem with Jammer’s “case” is that the one guy(forget his name. Son was killed in the raid) was personal and not objective.

…that’s true too…he shouldn’t have been judging because he was too personally involved. Listening to them all pretend to sound impartial and un-biased made me feel a bit queasy…you could imagine it actually happening.

#11

Lawyer Bill, you pretty well summed it up. Gaeta is the perfect example of why they should have used the real Colonial justice system to try suspected collaborators; it may not be perfect, but it’s the best they’ve got, and a heck of a lot more accurate and fair than the Circle.

The point about Roslin’s blanket pardon fomenting anger is an interesting one that I’d never considered before. I wonder if, since the Circle was such a fiasco, she wanted to distance her administration from anything that could even remotely look like a collaborator witch-hunt, even if it was a fair tribunal or jury trial. (Finding a truly impartial jury would be tricky, eh?) Also, there aren’t that many people left, so I suppose it wouldn’t be smart to start airlocking people for crimes on NC that they likely won’t repeat in the Fleet.

You’re right that her decision definitely doesn’t quell the anger, though. It’s also ironic that Roslin herself loses sight of the principles behind this pardon when Baltar reappears. Not only should he probably be covered by the blanket pardon (yes, he was president, but it was a blanket pardon), but Roslin’s anger at Baltar is so intense that it blinds her to the big picture, which IMHO is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, causes of her bad decisions in S3, especially “Dirty Hands.”

#12

…they should have stuck with people who stayed with the fleet…at least they’d have a little bit of ‘impartiality’. The people who were abused in the camps and lost loved ones could never be impartial.

#13

What really bothers me is how much this non-justice system might have been applied fleet-wide. We’ve seen only sporadic evidence of any system of government outside of military ships, and I can’t help but suspect that the criminal justice system is a casualty of the Cylon attacks as well. If a group of vigilantes can form on Galactica and start spacing officers, one would guess there’s a trail of civilians from other, less diciplined and controlled ships all the way back to Caprica.

#14

Well, we would if somebody hadn’t left the botanical garden ship behind way back in season 1.

#15

That part always bothered me a bit…they’re standing around arguing about whether to leave the non-FTL ships behind, wasting time pretending to make important decisions…maybe if they’d said ‘Scatter!!!..run for your lives!..the Cylons are coming!..we’ll try to pick you up later’, they could have saved some of them…especially the botanical gardens.

#16

I think that they did do something like that. You just never heard it, b/c it was ultimately pointless. The <FTL ships were hosed. The Cylons had better jump tech than the colonials (arguably they didn’t know that, but the assumption that they had equal tech would lead to the same conclusion.)

To put it into real-world speak. Imagine someone tasked you with taking out the old guy in the rascal…

#17

ummm…old guy?..rascal?..eh? :slight_smile:

#18

http://www.rascalscooters.com/index.shtml

Yeah, those ships weren’t much better than sitting ducks.

#19

Well, old guys in rascals notwithstanding, if they scattered in all directions with the 10 minute head start or so that they would have had, with the pedal to the metal…some of them might have gotten away.

#20

But that would have caused a problem with the majority of the population that was on the planet. Telling them that they can’t judge because they can’t be impartial would, at best, leave them feeling disenfranchized, and at worst, really bring out the lynch mobs. They would think that the people that didn’t go through what they did are protecting the people that they know are guilty, and so are as big a problem as the collaberators.

When strong emotions are involved, it is extrordinarily difficult for people to remain rational, and that is with people that understand what is going on with their emotions. Most people don’t have that kind of control.

Rosalin is one of the few people that could calm the emotions of the New Caprica survivors, and even she lost it when Baltar was brought to trial.

A really tough situation that could actually have been a lot worse with people trying to “deal” with someone that they know is guilty, but that obviously bamboozled a jury with “evidence”.