DPP: You Can't Go Home Again

[shah-of-blah.livejournal.com]

Greetings friends, Romans, and fellow shippers. For the DPP this week, we'll be doing something a bit laid-back (that's how I roll). Lately, I've been engaging in some serious nostalgia. Now that we've just finished the first official shipper rewatch on this, the shipper rewatch comm, I thought we might take the time to just reflect and appreciate some of the fine episodes in this very fine show.

We talk about fanon a lot around here (and many of us tend to live there these days) which is all well and good, but this week we're going CANON-COMPLIANT. For the most part, anyway. Slight deviations are allowed. So here's the sitrep: every day will be dedicated to a certain episode or arc. I have chosen seven (at least one from each season) that I like a lot. Hopefully, you all like them too! So each day I will post a bit about the episode--some pictures, a video, quote or two, you know--along with a fic rec and maybe even some other fun stuff if we get really crazy.

[I do have episodes planned for the rest of the week, but they're not set in stone so let me know if there's one you REALLY want to talk about.]

Today we begin with one of my all-time favorites, YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN. 

Lee: I need to know something: Why did you do this? Why did we do this? Is it for Kara? For Zak? For what?
Adama: Kara was family.  You do whatever you have to do.  Sometimes you break the rules.
Lee: And if it was me down there instead?
Adama: You don't have to ask that.
Lee: Are you sure?
Adama: If it were you, we'd never leave.

This episode has everything: action, awesome characters, dramatic conflict between said awesome characters, moral questions about the survival of the human race and what to do in certain post-apocalyptic events, and the gooey emotional stuff at the core of it too.  PLUS it is the episode that, upon rewatch, made me really appreciate Lee as a character and more than just Kara's romantic interest.  All thanks to this scene:

It also gave us pilots flying together, complete with adorable wing-waggle:

Many thanks to ddt73  and pilotography for the clips. :)

The episode also gave us the possibility of pilots engaging in BATH TIME SHENANIGANS.  (If anyone is moved to write some YCGHA comment-fic, consider this your invitation!)

Lee: My gods, you smell like a latrine.
Kara: Mmm.  You want to give me a bath?

Maybe Lee didn't give her a bath in canon (or maybe he did!), but the episode still left us the possibility for some awesome fic of the hurt/comfort variety.

My personal favorite: Bum Wheel by spoonishly.

You can also check out this episode-themed list of recs, courtesy of thrace_adama : Aoc/YCGHA.  What are your favorite fics/vids/scenes/quotes from the episode?

Comments

[embolalia.livejournal.com]

One of the things I like about YCGHA is how Kara inadvertently reunites Lee and Bill. The Adama solidarity about finding "our girl" brings them together in a way they clearly haven't been since Zak died and probably earlier. Even the fact that Lee can ask his father to confirm that he loves him is a huge step. (Though interestingly, in the podcast RDM talks about how Jamie Bamber REALLY didn't want Lee to ask the question and be so impossibly needy.)

The thing that still doesn't work for me when I see it, though, is that 48 hours are supposed to pass while Kara is on the moon. Somehow as much as they flash the big clock, it just never feels like two days are going by--no one sleeps, or noticeably changes clothes, it's never dark on the planet...I'm always surprised when I realize how long it's supposed to be.

[lizziec]

<derailing>

I'm always surprised when I realize how long it's supposed to be.

I feel this way about all of the first season, and a good chunk of the second too. One example is that the injury Kara sustains in AoC/YCGHA is supposed to be extremely serious. Cottle says in a deleted scene in YCGHA that she won't be walking, let alone flying any time soon, yet according to the timeline posted here in karathracelives (which is what has had me thinking about it for a good few days now) from the BSG wiki suggests that 10 days after that she's walking with only a stick and a mere 6 weeks or so from the injury she's on Caprica again running around with the resistance with seemingly no lasting effects.

I dunno, I just get the feeling that the writers backed themselves into a corner when writing s1 - the events within the established time line seem to be compressed into times they really shouldn't be to fit what the writers seemed to be trying to achieve.

ETA: I'm also completely open to the possibility I've missed something here.

</derailing>

[shah-of-blah.livejournal.com]

The passage of time on this show has always been wonky. I remember how surprised I was the first time I realized that the entire first season is no more than two months.

About Kara's knee though, I can see two ways around that. One, she is walking in Six Degrees of Separation and on, but her leg is still in a cast until Hand of God, I think, and she doesn't walk without a cane until Kobol's Last Gleaming. It's still not a terribly long time by most standards, but in their situation, ten days could be a very long time. Their situation was so perilous in early season 1 that people could die and everything could change in just a few days.

What I want to know is who finished training the nuggets while Kara was laid up...

[lizziec]

The passage of time on this show has always been wonky. I remember how surprised I was the first time I realized that the entire first season is no more than two months.

Yeah, I'm still feeling that really.

Their situation was so perilous in early season 1 that people could die and everything could change in just a few days.

I know, but there are still limits to how fast her body could heal. I know Kara is seriously kickass and could work through a huge amount of pain (when she gets her ass out of bed), but still. According to the wiki (which does seem to be fairly wonky/unbelievable as far as timings go) HoG is only 20 days after her injury (at which point she is doing light weight lifts with the injured leg), while KLG is about 35 days after the injury, by which point she's apparently healed enough to walk without a cane and jog and apparently run around Caprica with no ill effects. The healing timeline of around 35 days just really stretches my suspension of disbelief. Surely s1 has to take place in a longer time frame (though the writers with their Helo captions then backed themselves in to a corner there as I suspect that's where the timeline in s1 comes from).

What I want to know is who finished training the nuggets while Kara was laid up...

I don't know, but given the "interesting" nature of the timeline it must have been one hell of a training programme because they were apparently trained enough to take part in the major battle in Hand of God just 20 or so days later (if we take the bsg wiki to be correct, which is one hell of a supposition here). I know that they were pretty short handed but would they really have risked the Vipers and lives of some kids who not long before had been struggling to land?

[shah-of-blah.livejournal.com]

The healing timeline of around 35 days just really stretches my suspension of disbelief.
Very true. But I feel compelled to play the devil's (or rather writer's) advocate and try to find some way around this inconsistency. One aspect is that 35 days seems far too short given our medicine, but we don't really know what technology they might have for healing bones. Obviously this isn't Harry Potter and they can't fix you up immediately, but for all we know they could heal something like Kara's knee injury in a matter of weeks. Also, we're talking about a deleted scene (when Cottle says it'll be a long time) which is questionably canon. /writer's advocate

I know that they were pretty short handed but would they really have risked the Vipers and lives of some kids who not long before had been struggling to land?
Actually, I think the answer to this is a resounding "Yes." They couldn't maintain a CAP without those nuggets--no way could they pull off the tylium mission and they were all going to die without that tylium. So yes, if they were willing to give a nugget (Hot Dog) his wings after just two training flights, then I think it's safe to say they would put those nuggets in the air after three weeks of training.

[lizziec]

I know you're just trying to be a writers advocate, but I always felt it was fairly clearly established that Colonial medicine in the series is at about the same level as medicine in the here and now. I'm more of the opinion that the timeline here is wonky than that the colonials had some amazing knee healing medicine ;)

Having read your comments about the nuggets/asteroid thing though I'm with you on that now. It was clearly an all hands on deck situation to enable them to survive, so it's not beyond the realms of possibility that all possible pilots would be pressed in to service.

[anamarya.livejournal.com]

i'm with you on most of the things that you said here but this they were willing to give a nugget (Hot Dog) his wings after just two training flights i sort of doubt. we should remember that HotDog was a Fight School wash-out so he was the one with some experience not only in flying but flying Vipers (at least on simulators and stuff).

[embolalia.livejournal.com]

And don't forget, she also recovered from a bullet wound in about 3 days--in time to go camping on Kobol with no ill effects!

[lizziec]

Hm. Apparently Kara is way more badass than I had ever assumed... :)

[shah-of-blah.livejournal.com]

Only possible conclusion: Kara is Superman. Or the Slayer.

[lizziec]

I'm starting to think that it's the only possible conclusion we can draw :)

[anamarya.livejournal.com]

What I want to know is who finished training the nuggets while Kara was laid up...

this is a good question. maybe she kept giving the theory classes and somebody else (idk who) took them out.

[embolalia.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of completely addicted to using the BSG wiki to find time between episodes for fic to fill in! Seasons 1 though Home are really crazy compressed--it works out that something like 8 or 9 days have passed since the attacks during 33 by AoC, so you'd imagine more sleep deprivation would hit them pretty hard, too. Seasons 3 and 4, though, skip months between episodes. It's never even particularly clear why.

[lizziec]

it works out that something like 8 or 9 days have passed since the attacks during 33 by AoC, so you'd imagine more sleep deprivation would hit them pretty hard, too.

This. It's not long since the events of "33" so they must still be tired (being short handed must have meant they took longer to get the rest they needed after the events of "33"), and then they run for another 48ish hours without sleep. Given they do sleep deprivation so well in "33" I was kind of disappointed they never explored it again (even with just a throwaway comment) in YCGHA.

It's never even particularly clear why.

No. I suspect it's because the writers themselves really don't know.

[ddt73.livejournal.com]

I'd like to know how they came up with 10 days passing.

It's not entirely clear how much time passed from the end of YCGHA and Litmus. For that matter it's not clear how much time passed from episode to episode. I think they have season one far too compressed. I know it's from Battlestar-wiki but I think they are wrong.

[lizziec]

I've been assuming that in the first season they come up with time guesstimates based on the little caption whenever they catch up with Helo on Caprica (the ones that say "Lt Karl Agathon, XXth day on Caprica" - or whatever it actually is).

I'm completely in agreement though, because no matter whether it's the writers dropping the ball or the battlestar wiki dropping it the timelines just don't make much sense, for all sorts of reasons.

[embolalia.livejournal.com]

I think that in addition to the Caprica timeline, they trapped themselves later when they have episodes where characters say things like "it's been x months since the attacks" and then when they finally got around to notating it on a calendar, they had to have skipped a bunch of time somewhere. The whole timeline for Razor fails at this.

[shah-of-blah.livejournal.com]

I completely agree about the 48 hours thing--if I could change one thing about this episode, I would want to really feel how tired they all must have been. Lee, Adama, Tyrol--they probably haven't slept. Kara hasn't had anything to eat or drink in all that time too. It's like we can feel all the desperation, but the exhaustion is glossed over.

[embolalia.livejournal.com]

I would want to really feel how tired they all must have been.

Exactly. I just wanted one shot of Lee in his Viper, falling asleep and jerking awake. Or even just some mention of the fact that *his* contrition has been expressed through flying around for two days straight, thinking about her, searching for her.

[lizziec]

That would have been awesome. Some acknowledgement (however small) of the mental and physical toll that the search for Kara would have placed on people already exhausted.

[anamarya.livejournal.com]

I'm jumping to conclusions here but i feel that maybe they believed that in this moment another episode that involved a lot of people being very-tired would have been an overkill. i mean, they are like 2-3 episodes in between 33 and AoC/YCGHA.