mmu1 said:
This is the guy who volunteered to stay behind on Caprica to make room for someone he felt the fleet would need more, and unlike most of the main characters, has yet to lie, cheat, cover up, betray, scheme... He might be naive, or blinded by love or hormones, but he's got integrity.)
We, as omniscient viewers, know that. How does the president? How does Kara, for that matter? Has anyone proven he's not a cylon plant? To play devil's advocate: three times now, we've seen very convienent rescues on Caprica; Roslin knows she can't trust Boomer; she doesn't know Helo (and didn't Apollo and Starbuck both know her before they knew her to be a cylon...yes, they did, so there's no reason Helo couldn't be a cylon in that regard) and the only person she knows and potentially trusts, Kara, admits to having been held in cylon medical facility where she knows they operated on her and drugged her repeatedly. Luckily, when she returns with a pet cylon in tow, she also brings Helo, a man who draws a gun on Apollo, the straightest arrow she knows, and the most trustworthy man in the fleet (in whose hands she has placed her life several times, now). Yeah, Helo's got an iron-clad reputation, all right.
The point is, he's chosen love over duty. He is no longer trustworthy in the eyes of President and likely the fleet. He has been compromised and is damaged goods. That doesn't mean he lacks integrity or is a bad person...but he's also clearly divided; and one day the fleet may suffer for that division. What will Helo do if he thinks Boomer is going to be killed?
mmu1 said:
On one hand, she'll to go to great lengths to preserve useless institutions like the Quorum of Twelve, or indulge in insanity like elections in the middle of a fight for survival, on the other, whenever she feels like it (or whenever voices in her head tell her to) she'll throw someone out into space, encourage soldiers to mutiny, split the fleet and take a large chunk of it - completely defenseless - to chase a rainbow without considering whether she's playing into the Cylons' hands in some way, or whether her drug addiction is affecting her judgement...
I'm going to be really angry if the writers end up validating her insanity by making her the prophesied savior of mankind.
Well, I don't think the writers will EVER state that. I think they'll keep it quite ambigious. Was it an act of god that saved Gaius' butt back in the first season? Depends on your perspective, I suppose. That's as close, I think, as you'll get to the prophecy being proven true or false.
As for the Quorom being useless, clearly neither she nor the Adamas accept that answer. Senior may hate politics, but he recognizes their value. And it's clear that Adama detests the idea of a military state as much or MORE than the president does. As for mutiny...well, we had that argument a while ago, but if RDM is to be believed (and I think he ought to) then technically, the president was in the right and Adama violated the law (as the Colonial system is based on the US system, with the president being the commander in chief). Is it an extremely bad idea of the president to do what she did? I think so...but it wasn't illegal, and certainly not mutiny.
As for taking the fleet: we first have to assume that religion is invalid...something the characters aren't likely to do. Even relatively unreligious characters like Apollo are clearly defensive when Boomer-C talks smack about it. Was it a smart thing to do? Not by a long shot. However, in the long run, what exactly was mankind bound to do? Live as gypsies for ever, until they run out of supplies? Roslin KNEW that they had nowhere to go, and that Adama had told the Big Lie to keep the fleet moving and motivated. She wanted to make the Big Lie into the Big Goal, instead.
That mankind has completely misunderstood and potentially vastly underestimated the cylons motivations and intelligence is another problem entirely.
