Late to the party but I managed to rewatch the mini last night - I didn't remember that it was three hours long and was up later than I intended...but never even contemplated turning it off once I started. :)
It was the first time that I saw the mini since my first watching, and I was blown away by things I had forgotten. Many of them have already been discussed, like criminally BAD HAIR (oh Lords of Kobol, Kara's hair was as bad in the mini as Lee's was in UB and that's saying something). Also Lee's pissyness...I'm a total Lee!girl and it shocked me to remember what a snippy jerk he was in the beginning. My fond memories of Lee apparently started kicking in during 33 (can't wait to watch that next), when I fell in love with his character head over heels. But the "Lady's in charge" line of the mini was my moment of Zen with him from the beginning.
Not shipper-related, I had also forgotten how violent the hand-to-hand combat scene was between Papadama and Leoben on Ragnar. And I still don't quite know exactly what Leoben was doing there in the first place. Was he there as part of some Cylon master plan to foil the Colonials getting ammunition? If so, what could one Cylon do - why not send in a whole team of them? Or was he there by happenstance and got trapped by the storm? Maybe I'm just dense but it still seems awkward to me and not explained very well.
As far as how the series shaped my view of the pilots goes, I can NOT, not not believe that the brig scene is in any way a continuation of "they never got off the table" retcon of the finale. I rewound it and watched it again to see if it was at all plausible, and the answer is simply no. There's too much love tied up in the twisted baggage for it to have been a simple almost-frak on the table. I'm terrible at meta so I can't wax eloquent about it but dammit, no.
Especially when we see the scene of Kara praying over the picture of her, Zak and Lee. That was a pivotal emotional moment for me in shipping pilots. Kara was so clearly broken up about his "death" - and this is after losing her entire squadron, Helo, and 12 billion other people on the colonies - yet she is thinking of only one man. Her Lee. So clearly there is much, much more behind pilot!love than a stupid table.
I really just loved the mini for setting up our pilots as gender-stereotype-breaking anti heros. We all know what those roles are, Kara as the brash hot shot loud mouthed top pilot and Lee as the emo do-gooder over-thinker committed to his duty. But the mini went out of its way to show us that these aren't caricatures. The photo scene with Kara shows us her vulnerable side, and Lee is the only one in the military to back Roslin and make the tough decision to leave the non-FTL ships behind. Sometimes we get so caught up in the main characteristics of each of our favored pilots we tend to forget that they are more well-rounded than we think. But they are two halves of the same whole, destined to complete the other...it's clear from the beginning. (Although Kara rescuing Lee, the damsel in distress, in her Viper is just so classic role reversal I love it to pieces).
Anyway, it was a great walk down memory lane and it made my heart hurt to see some of the characters we loved so much in the beginning get such a shaft later on. Chief, oh Chief. And is it me or is everyone pronouncing Gaeta different in the mini than later on? I can also hear a bit of Jamie's British accent peeking through that disappears in subsequent episodes. OK, now I'm just rambling but it sure beats working, which is what I should be doing right now. Sigh. Baaaaaby pilots. How I miss you.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-07-06 09:38 pm (UTC)It was the first time that I saw the mini since my first watching, and I was blown away by things I had forgotten. Many of them have already been discussed, like criminally BAD HAIR (oh Lords of Kobol, Kara's hair was as bad in the mini as Lee's was in UB and that's saying something). Also Lee's pissyness...I'm a total Lee!girl and it shocked me to remember what a snippy jerk he was in the beginning. My fond memories of Lee apparently started kicking in during 33 (can't wait to watch that next), when I fell in love with his character head over heels. But the "Lady's in charge" line of the mini was my moment of Zen with him from the beginning.
Not shipper-related, I had also forgotten how violent the hand-to-hand combat scene was between Papadama and Leoben on Ragnar. And I still don't quite know exactly what Leoben was doing there in the first place. Was he there as part of some Cylon master plan to foil the Colonials getting ammunition? If so, what could one Cylon do - why not send in a whole team of them? Or was he there by happenstance and got trapped by the storm? Maybe I'm just dense but it still seems awkward to me and not explained very well.
As far as how the series shaped my view of the pilots goes, I can NOT, not not believe that the brig scene is in any way a continuation of "they never got off the table" retcon of the finale. I rewound it and watched it again to see if it was at all plausible, and the answer is simply no. There's too much love tied up in the twisted baggage for it to have been a simple almost-frak on the table. I'm terrible at meta so I can't wax eloquent about it but dammit, no.
Especially when we see the scene of Kara praying over the picture of her, Zak and Lee. That was a pivotal emotional moment for me in shipping pilots. Kara was so clearly broken up about his "death" - and this is after losing her entire squadron, Helo, and 12 billion other people on the colonies - yet she is thinking of only one man. Her Lee. So clearly there is much, much more behind pilot!love than a stupid table.
I really just loved the mini for setting up our pilots as gender-stereotype-breaking anti heros. We all know what those roles are, Kara as the brash hot shot loud mouthed top pilot and Lee as the emo do-gooder over-thinker committed to his duty. But the mini went out of its way to show us that these aren't caricatures. The photo scene with Kara shows us her vulnerable side, and Lee is the only one in the military to back Roslin and make the tough decision to leave the non-FTL ships behind. Sometimes we get so caught up in the main characteristics of each of our favored pilots we tend to forget that they are more well-rounded than we think. But they are two halves of the same whole, destined to complete the other...it's clear from the beginning. (Although Kara rescuing Lee, the damsel in distress, in her Viper is just so classic role reversal I love it to pieces).
Anyway, it was a great walk down memory lane and it made my heart hurt to see some of the characters we loved so much in the beginning get such a shaft later on. Chief, oh Chief. And is it me or is everyone pronouncing Gaeta different in the mini than later on? I can also hear a bit of Jamie's British accent peeking through that disappears in subsequent episodes. OK, now I'm just rambling but it sure beats working, which is what I should be doing right now. Sigh. Baaaaaby pilots. How I miss you.