Thoughts on BSG 3x05: Collaborators
Nov. 2nd, 2006 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
askmehowSo I rewatched Collaborators, and here's my thought of the day: Saul Tigh as epic hero. No, wait! Before you start laughing, hear me out.
Epic heroes (in particular Achilles and Odysseus) are prized by the society that created them because they protect the community. They are trained -- and expected -- to be ruthless in the pursuit of this goal, and are often very effective killing machines: Achilles, for example, is deemed god-like because he can (and does) inflict death upon hundreds. This makes them both prized by and alien from the culture that they protect: they are simultaneously exalted and outcasts.
Now Saul, Saul typifies this. On Galactica, he's the bumbling, grumbling drunkard of an XO who can be sniggered at behind his back, but when the chips are down -- when you're on the surface of a benighted planet with no hope of help and nothing but tent canvas between you and the enemy -- he's the first person you look to to get you out of this mess.
The problem, of course, is re-integration. Epic heroes aren't expected to survive their wars -- they serve their purpose, die honourably and get an elaborate funeral: witness Patroclus, and indeed Achilles. Odysseus has to wander several lands for several years in order to complete his psychological re-integration into domestic, agricultural life from the horrors of war. Saul Tigh, on the other hand, has just landed back on Galactica, no preparation and no Penelope to ease him back into the civilised society (or its equivalent in this universe: the rigidly coded, hierarchical world of Galactica). The scene in CIC, with Saul yelling at Gaeta, and calling Helo a "toaster-lover" is telling, because the Occupation was real to him in ways that it could never be for Helo or Adama. He, more than anyone else, lost a lot (his eye, Ellen), and he fights the war every day. He can't bring himself to recognise the new order of things (such as refusing to recognise Helo's position as the XO, at least for now), can't recognise that things must change for humanity to do more than merely survive, because survival is all he knows.
Anarchy is Saul's metier (as it was for Achilles before him), but unlike Achilles he doesn't die in his moment of crowning glory: the rescue of the settlers. He will live out his days and see his legacy tarnished merely because the qualities that lead to a civilisation's survival in the face of a crisis (Saul's determination and ruthlessness) have no place in during times of rebuilding or renaissance (Roslin's general pardon).
Epic heroes (in particular Achilles and Odysseus) are prized by the society that created them because they protect the community. They are trained -- and expected -- to be ruthless in the pursuit of this goal, and are often very effective killing machines: Achilles, for example, is deemed god-like because he can (and does) inflict death upon hundreds. This makes them both prized by and alien from the culture that they protect: they are simultaneously exalted and outcasts.
Now Saul, Saul typifies this. On Galactica, he's the bumbling, grumbling drunkard of an XO who can be sniggered at behind his back, but when the chips are down -- when you're on the surface of a benighted planet with no hope of help and nothing but tent canvas between you and the enemy -- he's the first person you look to to get you out of this mess.
The problem, of course, is re-integration. Epic heroes aren't expected to survive their wars -- they serve their purpose, die honourably and get an elaborate funeral: witness Patroclus, and indeed Achilles. Odysseus has to wander several lands for several years in order to complete his psychological re-integration into domestic, agricultural life from the horrors of war. Saul Tigh, on the other hand, has just landed back on Galactica, no preparation and no Penelope to ease him back into the civilised society (or its equivalent in this universe: the rigidly coded, hierarchical world of Galactica). The scene in CIC, with Saul yelling at Gaeta, and calling Helo a "toaster-lover" is telling, because the Occupation was real to him in ways that it could never be for Helo or Adama. He, more than anyone else, lost a lot (his eye, Ellen), and he fights the war every day. He can't bring himself to recognise the new order of things (such as refusing to recognise Helo's position as the XO, at least for now), can't recognise that things must change for humanity to do more than merely survive, because survival is all he knows.
Anarchy is Saul's metier (as it was for Achilles before him), but unlike Achilles he doesn't die in his moment of crowning glory: the rescue of the settlers. He will live out his days and see his legacy tarnished merely because the qualities that lead to a civilisation's survival in the face of a crisis (Saul's determination and ruthlessness) have no place in during times of rebuilding or renaissance (Roslin's general pardon).