BSG Mini-series : Roslin Style!

[mooging]

The last of the lovebars are being done this week. I'm doing 25, because that's all I'll be able to cram into this week without combusting and then it's back to school and I just won't be able to do anymore. So. 10 more lovebars will be coming this way by Sunday. Don't say you weren't warned!

This post is going to be about Battlestar Galactica and the love that is Laura Roslin, so if that doesn't interest you then feel free to stop reading here or keep going for the pictures. You know you want to look at pictures! Spoilers for the mini-series of the new Battlestar Galactica ahead.

I saw the mini-series! It was brilliant, it really was. It was basically three hours of backstory for all these characters at what is basically the end of the world and it is just...brilliant. These people aren't just flawed, they can bask in their flaws and their angst is kind of an undercurrent all the way through. You can see why this appeals to me.

And then there is Laura Roslin. Ohhh, there is Laura Roslin. Yes.




So, in the first scene that we meet Laura Roslin, she is told she has cancer to the stage where the prognosis is 'doubtful'. This may turn out to be the highlight of her next few days, in retrospect. This colour suit, by the way, is one of my least favourites on her. You know you like the shallow. It's fun.



She sits with dear, sweet doomed Billy on the plane to the Galactica and stands about five seconds of whatever he's talking about before bolting for the bathroom. She kind of screws her face up and winces before she excuses herself and flees, leaving a somewhat bemused Billy behind, and something about it struck me...I don't know why.


Once safely in a bathroom and away from other people, she starts to cry (and rips open her jacket to sadly be sad about teh cancer, which some actresses would have totally killed but not Mary McDonnell) in this shaky, unsure way and you can watch her trying to pull herself back together even as she's dealing with everything. Easy way to sell a character to me? Give them well-acted angst and make them private about it. I had no chance here. *happy sigh* You may notice that the lilac suit thing has gone. This is also good.


After some time elapses, we see Laura trying to make herself look presentable again but she's still kind of crying as she does this. This got to me slightly, because it's such a realistic thing, to try to look together when you just want to curl into a ball and cry. *cuddles Roslin* I think by this time, my love was cemented.


After some stuff that seems to have a point at the time but really doesn't (ooh, decommissioning ceremony, oooh Adama speech, oooh watch Roslin meet Adama and there be tension, ooh watch Laura leave, oooh watch the cylons attack and kill pretty much everything ever) there comes a point where on the ship home, Roslin learns that the president plus most people below him are now dead. She has to submit her details...and you can see her kind of realising that she might actually be the only one left that can take charge. It's wonderful.


There...is really no point for me to include this picture apart from to say 'would you look at her legs?! Legs! Leeeeegs' and also to point out how much of her legs her skirt shows when she sits down. I don't remember the conversation she's having...it might be when she says she's 43rd in line for Presidency (being Secretary for Education - I think?)...I don't know, the legs distracted me!



And so it transpires that, yes, all the other people above Roslin are now dead so she gets to be sworn in as President. This cap might seem an odd one to choose for this, but I liked how she's almost hiding in this group of people, from responsibility or death or something and I love that she looks so scattered halfway through that. Yes.


This is the moment that one hundred percent sold me on Roslin. She's been told by Adama senior to bring the ship to meet up with the galactica but she's turned round to him and told him that no, she will be going to rescue more people and then ordered him to come and help. At this point, Adama senior gets a tad angry and calls the ship and speaks to Adama junior. Roslin comes in the room just in time to hear Adama senior tell his son something like "We're in the middle of a war and you're taking orders from a school teacher?". She goes through anger and denial and defeat and acceptance and sadness in the space of about three seconds and it was truly marvelous to watch. And then of course, when she makes herself known, Lee is all '.....how long has she been there?!' and his face and her face while they both ignore what just happened...ahh.



So, Roslin wanders about on some other ships and promises that they'll be fine and meets this sweet little girl. Anyway. She has to decide whether to stay and keep trying to save people or to jump somewhere else with only the ships that have the capability to follow them (the alternative being found by the cylons and killed). She decides, because she wants the human race to survive, to jump. She tells Billy that she has cancer; he tells her he knows. Me: 'Good God, you knew? How did you know?' His excuse of picking up on a couple of things she said - hmm. I think he has super mind-meld powers. They would come in handy. Billy then tells her that the little girl she was talking to isn't on a ship that can go with them and it's this that makes Roslin realise that she is, essentially, leaving people to die. Her face falls so gradually from this smile at Billy to this...I don't know what emotion it is. It's that complex. She's wonderful, she really is.


Then, as they prepare to leave with the people that can go, they hear all these pleas from the non-jumping ships...I'm assuming that Roslin can either hear these or feels guilty enough to imagine what is happening and hence sad, angsty sitting alone all head-in-hands-y. Two things totally out of the mood of the scene that I was thinking here are: "Legs! Thigh! Legs!!" (because really, look at that) and also "where did all the people go?" (because there were tons of people sitting in that bit of the plane and then they're just....gone. I'm fine with it if it means Laura!angst, but still. Where?).


Blah blah blah stuff, Roslin convinces Adama senior to run away from the cylons, they run, they find shiny uninhabited bit of the universe to float about in, etc. At some point Adama senior tells the surviving members of the human race that he knows where Earth is (they all live somewhere else in the universe with now quite-deaded planets) which....is a lie to cheer people up, but for some reason (because Roslin is clever and confronts him) he tells Roslin that he has no idea where Earth is but people need something to live for. She then stands up and makes the above lovely smug face while she plots....


...this, whereby she doesn't tell anyone that Earth is a sham and he lets her be President and have some power as long as she leaves the military decisions up to him. And I desperately try not to ship Roslin/Adama senior.

So that was it! Was it fun?



All screencaps by me; sorry if a few are dodgy quality - Photobucket resized everything after I'd made them pretty and any attempt to lighten them quickly in photoshop resulted in them being all pixelly. Which looked icky and bad. Anyway. Pretty Laura lights them up ;)

Comments

[moogle62.livejournal.com]

Ok, making me panic and check to see Streepness (which I don't see at all, thanks God) is nasty and cruel. I forgive you though, because you're lovely!

And glad you like fangirl passion posts, get used to seeing Laura ;)