BSG: Dirty Hands

Season 3, Episode 16

So apparently somebody from the production office time-traveled from 2006 to 2011, read my blog, realized that I was threatening to write an essay entitled "Is Battlestar Galactica Really a Liberal Show?" and decided to create some evidence for the defense.

Now, we had a bit of that earlier in Season 3, what with the suicide bombings done by our heroes, but then episode five went out of its way to show us that Tigh et al had gone a bit bonkers as far as extreme measures go (though that episode did also kill off my least favorite character, so at least there was that). So the jury's still out on that part. Then, much later in the season, along comes this episode.

Now I should point out right off the bat that I don't hate this episode. I have yet to see a BSG episode I actually hate. I didn't like the ending of "Epiphanies," and while I had my problems with "Black Market," I didn't think it was the awful schlock the fandom seems to think it is. Same with "The Woman King," but that's another story for a different day. The point is, this episode was enjoyable, and, like the Doctor Who serials written by Malcolm Hulke, didn't offend my political sensibilities to the point where I couldn't enjoy it. That said, I am going to pick it apart, just because I can and because there's some stuff in it that deserves to be picked apart.

It's a story where the working class is exploited by the elite. You know, the fighter pilots who put their lives on the line every day (or at least every week if the FX budget is up to it) to keep the Cylons from destroying or enslaving the last remnants of humanity. These tired men and women, some of whom didn't even get to muster out during the New Caprica year, have finally had enough...

Oh, wait. It's not the pilots. It's a bunch of guys we've never seen before, slaving away to create fuel for the aforementioned pilots. Because, you know, even after we have ships capable of making FTL jumps, we'll still use manual labor.

(Now, somebody's going to jump on me for the "manual labor" comment, and say something like "well, you know what happened when they got machines to do their jobs for them? The Cylons happened. That didn't end too well." To which I say we've got machines on assembly lines in the country's remaining production plants, and they aren't about to nuke us all. There's a huge difference between "build me a machine that can process fuel for me" and "build me an A.I. that can beat me at chess, lie about the functional capacity of my ship, read my lips, and remote-pilot a pod so it crashes into me." In the miniseries, Roslin was talking about putting a computerized network on Galactica, so it's not like everyone's a Luddite like Adama.)

(Or you might complain about machines putting people out of work, which is fair enough if you're willing to ignore what Zarek said back in 1.11, "Colonial Day," about how people are still doing their jobs even if money doesn't mean anything anymore. Suddenly we're back on the subject of compensation, and yeah, a lot has happened since then, but you'd think if there was a genuine economy all of a sudden, it would have been brought up before now.)

So anyway, the refinery ship starts sabotaging its own output because they want better working conditions and so on. Which, let's face it, is a kind of stupid game to play when you're facing off against the only thing standing between you and the Cylons (or dehydration; see 1.2, "Water"). And it gets the captain arrested for his trouble, but more because he started quoting Baltar's book at Roslin, which was another stupid thing to do.

Oh, Baltar. He's stuck in prison because he collaborated with the Cylons, and he's either writing Mein Kampf or The Communist Manifesto. His lawyer is helpfully smuggling it out for him, because "stumps don't have freedom of expression" (1.3, "Bastille Day," so apparently someone who watched Season 1 did a small amount of editing on this episode).

But before I rag on the workers of the fleet too much, I'll pause and aim some venom in the other direction. There's a subplot in this episode about a background mechanic named Ceelix, who applied to be a pilot. Now, nobody in the fleet ever read Atlas Shrugged, so Adama doesn't know what a bad idea it is to chain somebody to their desk. So Ceelix is told her current job is too important for her to leave. I'm no expert on politics, but I'd think that if you're suddenly down to 41,400 people, you draft every man, woman and child capable of using a tool and find something for them to work on, and award promotions or transfers based on merit. (Now you might be thinking that's what Cain did, but not really. She just took the best and brightest, and left everyone else to rot.) So if Ceelix has what it takes to be a pilot, you find somebody else to take over her mechanic job. Like Farmboy.

Back to the main plot. Cheif Tyrol is told to get the refinery ship back in line, but the workers demand to be put on a rotation cycle. So Tyrol drafts every civilian with farming experience (because farming=working with machines), including Farmboy. Farmboy is a kid who spent a few months on a farm in order to pay for college, and he's none too happy about getting shut up in the refinery ship. This is what I like to call "denial." See, even though the Cylons nuked his home planet and that college he wanted to go to, he somehow thinks that his getting assigned to actual work is a "mistake."

Sure enough, something goes wrong on the refinery ship and Farmboy gets hurt for it. What exactly goes wrong and how badly Farmboy gets hurt is something you'll have to watch the episode to figure out, but it looks to me like somebody decided it'd be a fun idea if they couldn't just turn off the conveyor belt without first having to push the "stab my arm" button. (And this is right after Tyrol and Cally almost died because they couldn't override an airlock in the previous episode. Honestly, how has the fleet lasted this long?)

Anyway, this is the last straw for Tyrol, and he goes on strike. Then Adama threatens to shoot Cally, and he goes off strike. Then he gets to talk to Roslin, and turns the Colonial One passengers into janitors and laundry-folders. This is the part of the episode I really like; see, part of the reason Tyrol goes on strike is because he's afraid what happened to Farmboy could one day happen to his son, and he doesn't want that. But he also doesn't want his kid to grow up without a mother, so when Adama threatens to shoot Cally, he's put in a really uncomfortable position. This is what good drama is about: you put your character in a position where, no matter what choice they make, they lose something (see also "Exodus, Part II" and "Crossroads, Part I" for other fantastic examples this season, invovling Tigh and and Lee, respectively). Unfortunately, in this case it's undermined because once Tyrol caves, he gets to negotiate with Roslin anyway and basically gets what he wants.

As for Adama's actions, on paper I don't for one moment suspect that he's actually going to shoot Cally. Objectively, it's totally against the most basic component of his character, that he's a father to his men. In the episode itself, Edward James Olmos sells it, because he's really good at his job. But what Adama's trying to do there is to get Tyrol to stand down; he knows Roslin will negotiate with Galactica's chief mechanic, but not with anyone who has any sort of power over her (see the very next episode to hear Roslin flat-out say she won't negotiate with terrorists).

So that's "Dirty Hands." Nice try, I loved the "I'm gonna have them shoot Cally" scene between Tyrol and Adama, and I like the resolution, that yes, everyone has to pitch in. Too bad the refinery ship looks more like a Gilded Age factory than a space-age fuel processor.

As a side note, as a Firefly fan, I approve of the music. (This season gives us Jane Espenson and Mark Sheppard as well! It's like somebody finally noticed the similar visual styles and decided to just run with it; Firefly even gets a mention in RDM's podcast for "The Son Also Rises.")

All right, I'm going to be back on schedule through at least Saturday; I don't know if I'll have a reliable internet connection after that. So here are the BSG episodes I'm going to try to get through by then: "Water," "You Can't Go Home Again," "Tigh Me Up Tigh Me Down," "Colonial Day," and "Kobol's Last Gleaming." Because I just covered BSG's strike episode, I'd also like to work in DS9's "Bar Association," but I make no promises. I'll also put together a BSG page, listing all my reviews so far, like I have for Doctor Who. And speaking of Doctor Who, I'm going to get the extant Season 12 serials ("Robot" and "The Sontaran Experiment") covered before the end of August, as well as "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" and "The Caves of Androzani."