I’m not complaining that Starbuck was taken captive in the universe itself. I’m complaining that she was taken captive in the meta-universe, when it was meta-implied that she would be one of the leaders of the resistance – blaming the writers, not the characters, I guess.

Honestly, I don’t think you’re giving the writers enough credit. I’ve been mulling this over quite a lot, and I think I may have figured out what the writers are doing with Starbuck. I think they’re using her captivity and the various ways that she has to find of resisting while still in captivity (because, of course, Starbuck is as likely to stop fighting the cylons as she is to stop breathing) as part of a comparative study in how human beings respond to extreme oppression. Tigh, Anders and Tyrol represent one means of resisting. Their methods are the blunt instrument, the archetype of physical resistance. Starbuck, while still very physical (having killed Leoban five (?) times), she has also adopted methods that are more mental, more reliant on deft and subtle means of using her horrifying situation to undermine the cylons. That, at least, is where I think where they’re going.

Remember at the end of the last episode where she takes Cassie’s hand and also takes Leoban’s? Did you have a moment of “what the fuck” in response to that too? That’s the natural response, since it seems completely contrary to her character to surrender so suddenly and so completely to circumstance. I don’t think she has surrendered. I think where the writers are going to go with that is toward her using deceit to get Leoban to think she’s relented, so that she can get in a position where she can do real harm to the cylons. Not a bad idea on her part, especially since it has the potential to cause substantially more harm than anything Tigh, Anders, and Tyrol are doing.

So, why have Starbuck be the one in captivity?

Honestly, I don’t think it has anything to do with the prototype of the woman as passive. Nor do I think it has anything to do with the actions of Tigh and his group.

In part, I think Starbuck’s captivity has to do with her sex, insofar as Leoban’s obsession with her would not exist – would likely wouldn’t – if she weren’t female.

Beyond that, however, I think the key issue is that Starbuck has hurt the cylons in ways that no one else has. If you look back through the series, who has undermined the cylon cause in quite as many effective ways as Starbuck? Who escaped the farm and made sure it was destroyed? Who captured and tamed the raider? Who retrieved the arrow of Athena? Who was able to penetrate the defenses around Caprica not once but twice? And the list goes on. Given all of that, it shouldn’t be the least bit surprising that the cyclons who take her first and try to co-opt her first. And given the character’s nature, as demonstrated through the course of the series, it’s not the least bit surprising that she would find new ways to resist. “Fight until we can’t fight any more.”

Socraticsilence says:

So, am I the only one who see’s the season setting up a big redemption arc for Baltar

I think there’s absolutely a very good chance that may be where they’re going. And it would fit too. The writer’s haven’t followed the original series to any major extent, but there are certain thematic elements and certain character elements they’ve carried over. In the original series, there was a redemption arc for Baltar, and I think that’s one aspect they may well adopt for this series. And based on where they’ve been so far, I think this redemption arc is likely to be better executed and more compelling than the one in the original series.

The season premier did actually do some depressingly typical things with gender roles. The women are busy teaching, staying home with the baby, and frakking for favors while the men play sports, plot resistance, run the battlestars and do almost all the decisive action in the episode.

Oh, come on! Explain to me how any of these things are out of character here. Laura is out of office and she was a teacher back on Caprica. Ellen Tigh is Ellen Tigh, and I don’t think Cally is gonna hand the Chief the baby and sign up to be one of the ones with semtex underroos.

Tigh is the highest ranking human, Anders has 9+ months of being a resistance fighter back on Caprica, and the Chief has ascended himself up to the head of the labor union. Of course they’re the core group of insurgents. Anders’ second, Jean Barolay, is active in the resistance and I’m just sure you completely forgot about the second suicide bomber.

And all this is in the framework of a show that had a female Admiral outranking Adama, A woman for President, female priests, and Starbuck (the BEST viper pilot, unless you count Kat) re-imaged as a woman. Yet one extra long episode without the quota and you are already whining. You’re as bad as those R’s saying “librial bias in the media, BSG is too much like Iraq” idiots.

PLN Says:

Still, even if they were lazy in other ways, it was reasonably bold to turn the good guys into not-even-remotely-subtle stand-ins for the Iraqi insurgents. I mean, Tigh as Zarqawi?

Heh, you don’t want to have the show turn into another space opera, now do you? Visiting another planet in this weeks episode? To keep things exciting they turned the entire show upside down.

Raincitygirl Says:

I mean, ‘insurgents’ and ‘insurgency’ are not generic catch-all terms

They seem to be created and added to the language as a “neutral” term that lies somewhere between “freedom fighter” and “terrorist”. Of course with the political discourse it didn’t exactly stay neutral for very long.

zuzu Says:

1) How could it be a surprise that Starbuck had an ovary removed? I dunno, she spends time unconscious in a Cylon hospital used for breeding and wakes up with a mysteriour scar where her reproductive organs are, and they don’t have Doc Cottle give her a physical? You’d think they’d want to check for Cylon implants at the very least.

Good point. But at the tail end of Resistance Starbuck said that she “didn’t want to know”. Denial?

2) Just how does the resistance NOT know that their source is Gaeta (and can we discuss my new crush on him? Especially with the longer, curlier hair?) when there are very few people with access to the kind of documents they’re receiving, and at the top of that list is Gaeta?

Heck, if Baltar would have been stoned to death the moment he walked outside the security fence, how is Gaeta allowed to just roam around New Crapica City leaving the Pentagon Papers?

4) Tigh made a reference to Roslin being in charge once they get rescued, but she just said nothing. Later, in the Great Escape-style scene at the prisoner massacre, Roslin called Zarek “Mr. Vice President.” If that’s the case, and Baltar is removed from office, Zarek takes over. Expect Tigh, terrorist, to resist having Zarek, terrorist, as President. I do think the Roslin-Zarek relationship is going to get interesting, especially if they both escape together.

Perhaps Baltar asked for, and got Tom’s resignation. (Heck we still call Marion Barry “Mayor” out of protocol.)

Darleen Says:

I think it’s silly to try and read a Cylon=America Humans=Iraqi terrorists parallel. Oh, I realize that a lot of people have leapt to that conclusion based on the deliberately challenging words that the writers have tossed in.

The fall of the Colonies evoked 9/11. Cally shooting Sharon evokes Oswald. Swearing in Laura Roslin evoked Lyndon B. Johnson.

Don’t forget that the humans were torturing teh Cylons last season. The Humans=Iraqi terrorists parallel is there, but I don’t think it’s a sign of bias.

nerdlet Says:

All of that makes it seem more like an oversight than anything. And especially in Starbuck’s case, where they CLOSE the season on a shot of her saying “fight ‘em until they can’t,” implying that yes, she will be one of the leaders of the rebellion… oh, no, she’s just been sitting in one room for the past four months, neither making babies nor fighting Cylons.

Umm, she’s been fighting the Cylons, she killed that stalker Cylon five times already. Shortly after being invaded, it looks like she got picked up and was locked into that apartment for brainwashing. You’ll notice too that Lebon is far to busy with his plaything to attend the Cylon meetings in Colonial One.

nerdlet Says:

I did like that there wasn’t actually an abortion debate or anything, though – here’s the people who are for it, here’s the people who are against it, and we already know all the arguments. Whew.

Oh come on now! I’m strongly pro-choice and I could clearly see how every single pro-choice bogey man was trotted out without balance. She was afraid of her parents, she asked for asylum, that religious woman claimed she was her parents property, smuggled across between ships, etc. That episode was about the most bias one so far.

zuzu Says:

Jesus. I actually agree with Darleen. To an extent.
I don’t think the show has come off as entirely gender-neutral. Surely, the military is structured so (though I don’t really understand why they use “sir” for gender-neutrality, since it has the effect of making the male gender the standard),

What would you use instead of sir for gender-neutral?

…except possibly for the Marines, who look to be nearly all-male. And the one command-level officer we saw who was female was sadistic and “well-connected,” implying that she was promoted over more deserving men.

Huh? Are we talking about Cain or Master-at-arms Sergeant Hadrian?
en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Hadrian

Raincitygirl Says:

One mistake they made in the premiere was calling Cally “Cally Tyrol.” I’m pretty sure Cally is her last name, not her first. I think her first name is Jane or Jenny or something. Everybody has always referred to her as Specialist Cally, and nobody else gets called by their rank and then just their first name.

Cally Henderson, now Cally Tyrol.

And, of course, the Cylons now believe that love is the key to successfully making babies.

Also, this could be seen as another cylon experiment, a reverse of Season 1 with Helo. They’ve found that they can get a female cylon to get a human male to fall in love with her, now they could be trying the reverse. Sure, he’s using her because she’s a woman and has ovaries, but wasn’t Helo used the same way because he was a man and had a penis? And while they’ve had female cylon models fall in love, they haven’t had any male cylons yet, and maybe they’re trying that out to see how that works. The cylons don’t understand love or emotion, but desperately want to.

Anyway, I don’t think Starbuck’s capture is the writers being gender-biased so much as they’re evening out what they did in Season 1.

As for the gender equity, or lack there of, of New Caprica, I think it has something to do with the facts on the ground rather than any overarching sexism:
1) Roslin’s best skill at this moment is as a teacher/ voice of reason (which is what she’s doing)
2) Cally is basically providing food for the kid that the chief couldn’t provide (I honestly doubt that baby formula is a well stocked commodity)
3) As has been previously mentioned Starbuck is doing the best see can (Along with Zarek she’s the most logical person to keep imprisoned, well besides Anders)

My biggest problem with Tigh’s tactics is that they’re fucking retarded (at least in terms of accomplishing anything other than killing/terrorizing collaborators) on what level does matching your single most vulnerable asset (humanity’s population) against your enemies strongest asset (Cylon immortality) make sense?

My 3rd point raises my other objection: If the Cylon’s know enough about the events on Caprica to keep Starbuck imprisoned (though obviously beeding plays into this) why isn’t Anders locked up (Hell, he’s a far more accomplished terrorist than Zarek, at least in terms of Cylons)?

Well, it’s rather hard to do either when one has been in prison for the last four months. And when you get right down to it, it shouldn’t be all that big a surprise that Starbuck would be one of the first people that the Cylons would take into captivity, nor should it be all that shocking that she would be one of the ones they would keep there.

I’m not complaining that Starbuck was taken captive in the universe itself. I’m complaining that she was taken captive in the meta-universe, when it was meta-implied that she would be one of the leaders of the resistance – blaming the writers, not the characters, I guess.

It’s plausible that Roslin might wish to retreat from the resistance, certainly, but it’s made clear that she *is* working with them in some capacity, but her scenes are still mostly just teaching children and getting captured. Again, mostly meta – though I really can’t imagine her sitting back and not trying to wrestle control of the resistance from crazy-eye-Tigh. She may no longer have official authority but neither does he (iirc), and he’s the one whose awesome plan is to slowly kill off humanity.

And Darleen, what zuzu said.

Raincitygirl, Cally’s last name was Henderson.