BSG

[rivkat]

Mely says it best. Despite the inadequacies of execution, I do want to say a word about what could be an interesting play on the male hero narrative. Ordinarily, in action/sf stories like this, we encounter a young man, bright and talented perhaps but also shiftless, afraid of commitment, underachieving. Then everything goes to hell and he discovers his best self, emerging at the end a man of character. It's a venerable pattern.

What could be really cool about Lee's story is that we met him just as everything went to hell; we as audience know him only in his hero-role. I like the idea that he was a lesser man before this, and we just don't know it because of our context, even as I think the execution was botched from the get-go. It would have been nice, perhaps, to meet someone from his past other than Kara and his dad -- maybe a civilian -- who has all sorts of once-accurate beliefs about him. What looks like growth when we see the whole process may look like multiple personality disorder if we meet the hero first.

Comments

[iocaste212.livejournal.com]

Hey. Dunno if you saw it but tomorrow's NYT arts section will have a big article on copyrighting the directoril aspects of a theater production. Not online yet, though.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's the story we're getting, though. (The narrative of the shiftless but talented young person who discovers unexpected strengths describes Starbuck better.) The other members of the military who did know him before have never reacted to him as if he were an underachiever or known slacker; they've reacted to him as if he's known to be a golden boy. What I see us getting is the heroic figure who continues to react heroically or idealistically in crisis, but then as the crisis goes on begins to crack -- especially in the personal areas which have always been his weakness. So his panic when finding out his girlfriend was pregnant isn't inconsistent with the Lee we've seen not know how to deal with his attraction to his best friend or his attraction to Dualla; and it's terrifying to him to find out that he's not who he's always relied on himself to be, both personally and professionally.

And I'm fine with this. As you say about a different perceived narrative, it's not the story itself I object to, it's the execution.