BattleStar Galatica: Razor Review
Nov. 24th, 2007 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat"Sometimes you have to be willing to do the untenable in order to survive. You have to be willing to become a RAZOR."
Just finished watching the two hour BattleStar Galatica prequel Razor - which takes place during Lee Adama's first mission commanding the BattleStar Pegasus. It also concerns two flashbacks - the more lengthy one takes place ten months prior on the Pegasus after the big Cylon Attack, with Admiral Helena Cain in charge, the shorter one concerns Bill Adama's mission during the first Cylon War. We only get a bit of the Bill Adama mission - the rest of it can be seen online at Sci-Fi.com in 2 minute websodes. The bit concerning Helena Cain is shown via the pov of one of her Lieutants, Kendra, who becomes in the present storyline Lee's X/O or second in command.
The story is not an easy one to watch subject matter wise, if you did not cringe during it - there's something wrong with you (or methinks you may be playing one too many violent video games) - but I remained riveted to the screen throughout, often rewinding bits and pieces of it. My attention like with most BSG episodes never wandered. I tried to knit during it, but gave up. That's how well done it was - BSG continues to raise the bar when it comes to television acting, production, sound, direction, and writing. Also, Michelle Forbes, Tricia Helfer, and Katee Sackoff are amazing in this episode. The guys are good too, but this one is the women's show. Another thing I adore about BSG - it allows women to be as violently brutal as men. These roles could be played by either gender with similar results. One of the few tv shows that makes that clear and pushes past traditional gender stereotypes.
BSG unlike most tv shows that deal with violence, makes it real. The consequences bruise the viewer. There's no neat wrap-up. The heroes and villians are not clearly delineated. And we often wonder who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. It is not a "feel-good" show so much as one that makes you ponder things long after the screen has gone dark.
It's hard to talk about or analyze the film without going into details which means spoilers. So...here's the prequisite spoiler cut tag -
The film starts with an image of a solider's red pocket knife - its razor sharp edge flipping against a black screen, with a female voice over, I'm assuming Kendra's, explaining what you have to become in order to survive warfare. Within those five minutes, we are told what the issue is - and it is by no means a new one. Joseph Conrad wrote about it in Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola filmed it in Apocalypse Now. If you are a Buffy fan, Joss Whedon referred to it with tongue in cheek humor.
"When looking into the abyss, be careful the abyss doesn't look back into you."
or "When fighting monsters, be careful not to become them."
[Easier said than done. If history has anything to say about it.]
Helena Cain is the rogue fighter at the center of Conrad's tale, and Coppola's. The fighter who became a monster, who stripped herself of humanity, in order to think like the enemy she perceived that she was fighting. She becomes a sword of vengeance. And in Razor we watch through Kendra's eyes the decisions, choices, and occurrences that strip that humanity away from them both.
The first is the attack on the Pegasus killing friends and forcing them to flee into jump space.
The second is the news that their homeland is devastated. Nuked. The fleet gone. No survivors.
The third is Cain's choice not to run but to fight, to become vengeance and her crews decision to back her.
At first she states this is not going to be a mad act of vengeance. But she is surrounded by people she believes she can trust. She's in a loving relationship with Gina (her network admin) and close to her x/o or second in command.
Then an opportunity presents itself to attack the Cylons. She is given the plans by Gina (portrayed by Tricia Helfner who also plays Six, and we the viewer know is a cylon). To do the attack - Kendra and Gina program the system, and Kendra provides Gina with the access codes.
Unfortunately - they fall into what appears to be a trap. The X/O suggests they flee. But Cain insists they fight even if it will cost them raiders. The X/O refuses, he can't in good conscience allow such a thing. Cain shoots him in the head for insubordination with his own gun - this is a man only a few weeks before she was joking with and had told her to get some shore leave.
They go ahead with their plan - since no one else wants to die at Cain's hands - her ploy worked. Cylons board their ship. Kendra manages to kill a few and get people to safety, seeing a fleeing Gina, she tells her to get behind her, Gina passes her, and Kendra goes around the corner - only to run into Six - Gina's look-alike. Gina, Kendra realizes at that moment, is a cylon. Which means she gave her access codes to the enemy. Kendra goes to the bridge and outs Gina, shows the security footage. Cain faced with Gina's betrayal, goes cold and shouts in repulsion, "get that that thing off my brig". Later Cain tells Kendra that the codes weren't the most important thing Kendra gave the Cylon. Trust was. We both gave it our trust. It manipulated us. She turns to her interrogator, Thorn, and tells him that if it is so good at manipulating human emotions, and mimicing them, it must have a few of its own. It must have the capacity to feel. So - please make "it" feel pain, fear, degradation, and shame. Do what you must to ensure that. Gina stares at Cain through the glass, their eyes meet. The pain is evident in both.
It is tempting to think that it is this moment that Cain slides towards the very darkness that she condemns, starts to become the razor. But I think that moment started earlier - when she shot her X/O, making it clear to everyone on board that her word was law and she'd kill anyone who protested. Which of course makes it impossible for anyone to tell her at any point that she is wrong without taking their own lives into their hands. A Choice that Admiral Adama never makes. But as Adama tells his son, he is surrounded by people that Cain was not. His son. Saul. The President. People he can't easily kill, with the exception of possibly Saul. When you have a child, he tells his son, you have to face looking at yourself reflected in that child's eyes. You fear what that reflection will tell you. Cain did not have that. Perhaps Gina may have been for a bit that conscience - as she is for Baltar, but in Baltar's situation - Six gives her life to save Baltar, while Gina betrays Cain and eventually kills her in retribution for the torture Cain subjects her to as a result of the original betrayal.
(For anyone who has watched S2 and S3 of the series - we know that Adama often goes against the views of The President, Saul, and his son - and came very close a couple of times to killing all three. We also know that at the end of S3, he and Lee were not seeing eye-to-eye on anything. Yet, Adama still rejects the path Cain ultimately took. Also it's interesting that the writers went against the gender stereotype here - instead of the woman being the one who chooses not to become the razor, it is the man. Most tv shows, books, and movies would have done the opposite, heck Doctor Who certainly does - this in a nutshell is why BSG is so groundbreaking.)
What haunts me most though is the refrain at the end..."what has happened before, will happen again, and again, and again, again..." The vicious circle. Betrayal-Retribution-Retribution-Death-Rebirth-Betrayal-Retribution-Retribution...
One wonders what would have happened to Cain if she had made different choices? If Kendra had?
Kendra enters the cylon ship, finds a hybrid cylon at its center - the product of the cylons experiments with humans, and it asks her in a creepy god-like whisper, do you seek to be forgiven for past transgressions? She does. She led the assault on the civilian ship - as ordered by Cain. When the civilians they found resisted Cain's order to allow the Pegasus to take able-bodied crew, supplies, and equipement, leaving the remaining women, children, and infirm helpless - Kendra shot the man's wife in the head and the men next to her followed suit.
Their faces haunt her. She attempts to escape with shots of heroine or some sort of drug to take the edge off. It is the reason she stays behind and manually arms the nuke to blow up the cylon hybrid ship that is still conducting experiments.
The experiments are a reminder that the cylons are no better in this conflict. It is also a homage to one of the more bleak episodes of the original version of BattleStar Galatica. Including the use of the old wobbly tin cylons from the series with the red light darting back and forth - flying the ships, as opposed to the nifty newer models accompanying the human cylons. In the original version - humans were taken to be food for an alien species in cohoots with the cylons - strapped in. Drugged. This version is in some ways more frightening than that one. We don't see everything - just the briefest suggestion - an arm cut off, a brain in a jar, people with wires inserted in their skin. It's more gruesome than Doctor Who's cybermen, because we see so little of it.
Did Cain and Kendra have a choice? Could they have chosen a different path? What would have happened if Kendra had merely shot Gina? OR Cain had just had her executed? Or what if they chose to do to Gina what Adama chose regarding Sharon? Would that have broken the cycle? Would it have mattered? Gina - we know - not only goes on to kill Cain, but also sets off a nuclear device which alerts the cylons to the humans whereabouts at the end of Season 2, causing them to be held captive on New Caprica. IS Cain partly responsible for that?
And to what degree do Cain and Kendra's choices define them? Cain tells Kendra not to look back. You can't. The choices you make, you make because you have to. We have no other alternative. Is she right?
Lee Adama wonders this. He wonders if he was correct to make a choice that would have killed everyone aboard the hybrid ship. A choice his father stopped him from making. Adama states that we can't know what choice is the right one. We make the ones we have to make. And it is not up to us to judge those others made in circumstances we weren't privy to or in at the time. We can't know what we would have done in their place. That, he states, is up to a higher power, assuming of course there is one - he doesn't believe there is.
Then of course there's the bit about Kara Thrace. Who, the hybrid cylon warns Kendra, is the herald of death, the harbringer of the apocalypse. The human race must not follow Kara Thrace, if they do, she will lead them to their end. Do we trust the cylon? Destiny we are told at the end is not always what it seems.
Cain tells Kendra that they must become razors to survive, to stay razors, until they have the luxury to become human again. To live human lives again. But I wonder if it is possible to go backwards? The cylons takes human prisoners, create hybrids from them - half human/half machine - cutting away the human flesh literally while Cain does it metaphorically. One can't help but wonder who is the most successful - Cain or the Cylons? Cain who systematically turns her crew and herself into a weapon, a war machine. Or the cylons with their gross experiments. Is Cain any better than the cylons Adama and Lee are fighting in past and present?
I can't help but think Cain's mistake was that she fought for the wrong reasons. Not to save her race. But to enact vengeance on its behalf. Vengeance never works. All it does is eat away at you, until you become little more than a machine to do its bidding.
A razor.
The episode was in my opinion amongst the best the series has had to offer. Driving home some of it's themes regarding the effects of warfare and violence on the human soul for good or ill. Like all BSG episodes it does not provide easy answers, just worrying questions - leaving it up to the viewer to come up with his or her own conclusions.
Just finished watching the two hour BattleStar Galatica prequel Razor - which takes place during Lee Adama's first mission commanding the BattleStar Pegasus. It also concerns two flashbacks - the more lengthy one takes place ten months prior on the Pegasus after the big Cylon Attack, with Admiral Helena Cain in charge, the shorter one concerns Bill Adama's mission during the first Cylon War. We only get a bit of the Bill Adama mission - the rest of it can be seen online at Sci-Fi.com in 2 minute websodes. The bit concerning Helena Cain is shown via the pov of one of her Lieutants, Kendra, who becomes in the present storyline Lee's X/O or second in command.
The story is not an easy one to watch subject matter wise, if you did not cringe during it - there's something wrong with you (or methinks you may be playing one too many violent video games) - but I remained riveted to the screen throughout, often rewinding bits and pieces of it. My attention like with most BSG episodes never wandered. I tried to knit during it, but gave up. That's how well done it was - BSG continues to raise the bar when it comes to television acting, production, sound, direction, and writing. Also, Michelle Forbes, Tricia Helfer, and Katee Sackoff are amazing in this episode. The guys are good too, but this one is the women's show. Another thing I adore about BSG - it allows women to be as violently brutal as men. These roles could be played by either gender with similar results. One of the few tv shows that makes that clear and pushes past traditional gender stereotypes.
BSG unlike most tv shows that deal with violence, makes it real. The consequences bruise the viewer. There's no neat wrap-up. The heroes and villians are not clearly delineated. And we often wonder who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. It is not a "feel-good" show so much as one that makes you ponder things long after the screen has gone dark.
It's hard to talk about or analyze the film without going into details which means spoilers. So...here's the prequisite spoiler cut tag -
The film starts with an image of a solider's red pocket knife - its razor sharp edge flipping against a black screen, with a female voice over, I'm assuming Kendra's, explaining what you have to become in order to survive warfare. Within those five minutes, we are told what the issue is - and it is by no means a new one. Joseph Conrad wrote about it in Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola filmed it in Apocalypse Now. If you are a Buffy fan, Joss Whedon referred to it with tongue in cheek humor.
"When looking into the abyss, be careful the abyss doesn't look back into you."
or "When fighting monsters, be careful not to become them."
[Easier said than done. If history has anything to say about it.]
Helena Cain is the rogue fighter at the center of Conrad's tale, and Coppola's. The fighter who became a monster, who stripped herself of humanity, in order to think like the enemy she perceived that she was fighting. She becomes a sword of vengeance. And in Razor we watch through Kendra's eyes the decisions, choices, and occurrences that strip that humanity away from them both.
The first is the attack on the Pegasus killing friends and forcing them to flee into jump space.
The second is the news that their homeland is devastated. Nuked. The fleet gone. No survivors.
The third is Cain's choice not to run but to fight, to become vengeance and her crews decision to back her.
At first she states this is not going to be a mad act of vengeance. But she is surrounded by people she believes she can trust. She's in a loving relationship with Gina (her network admin) and close to her x/o or second in command.
Then an opportunity presents itself to attack the Cylons. She is given the plans by Gina (portrayed by Tricia Helfner who also plays Six, and we the viewer know is a cylon). To do the attack - Kendra and Gina program the system, and Kendra provides Gina with the access codes.
Unfortunately - they fall into what appears to be a trap. The X/O suggests they flee. But Cain insists they fight even if it will cost them raiders. The X/O refuses, he can't in good conscience allow such a thing. Cain shoots him in the head for insubordination with his own gun - this is a man only a few weeks before she was joking with and had told her to get some shore leave.
They go ahead with their plan - since no one else wants to die at Cain's hands - her ploy worked. Cylons board their ship. Kendra manages to kill a few and get people to safety, seeing a fleeing Gina, she tells her to get behind her, Gina passes her, and Kendra goes around the corner - only to run into Six - Gina's look-alike. Gina, Kendra realizes at that moment, is a cylon. Which means she gave her access codes to the enemy. Kendra goes to the bridge and outs Gina, shows the security footage. Cain faced with Gina's betrayal, goes cold and shouts in repulsion, "get that that thing off my brig". Later Cain tells Kendra that the codes weren't the most important thing Kendra gave the Cylon. Trust was. We both gave it our trust. It manipulated us. She turns to her interrogator, Thorn, and tells him that if it is so good at manipulating human emotions, and mimicing them, it must have a few of its own. It must have the capacity to feel. So - please make "it" feel pain, fear, degradation, and shame. Do what you must to ensure that. Gina stares at Cain through the glass, their eyes meet. The pain is evident in both.
It is tempting to think that it is this moment that Cain slides towards the very darkness that she condemns, starts to become the razor. But I think that moment started earlier - when she shot her X/O, making it clear to everyone on board that her word was law and she'd kill anyone who protested. Which of course makes it impossible for anyone to tell her at any point that she is wrong without taking their own lives into their hands. A Choice that Admiral Adama never makes. But as Adama tells his son, he is surrounded by people that Cain was not. His son. Saul. The President. People he can't easily kill, with the exception of possibly Saul. When you have a child, he tells his son, you have to face looking at yourself reflected in that child's eyes. You fear what that reflection will tell you. Cain did not have that. Perhaps Gina may have been for a bit that conscience - as she is for Baltar, but in Baltar's situation - Six gives her life to save Baltar, while Gina betrays Cain and eventually kills her in retribution for the torture Cain subjects her to as a result of the original betrayal.
(For anyone who has watched S2 and S3 of the series - we know that Adama often goes against the views of The President, Saul, and his son - and came very close a couple of times to killing all three. We also know that at the end of S3, he and Lee were not seeing eye-to-eye on anything. Yet, Adama still rejects the path Cain ultimately took. Also it's interesting that the writers went against the gender stereotype here - instead of the woman being the one who chooses not to become the razor, it is the man. Most tv shows, books, and movies would have done the opposite, heck Doctor Who certainly does - this in a nutshell is why BSG is so groundbreaking.)
What haunts me most though is the refrain at the end..."what has happened before, will happen again, and again, and again, again..." The vicious circle. Betrayal-Retribution-Retribution-Death-Rebirth-Betrayal-Retribution-Retribution...
One wonders what would have happened to Cain if she had made different choices? If Kendra had?
Kendra enters the cylon ship, finds a hybrid cylon at its center - the product of the cylons experiments with humans, and it asks her in a creepy god-like whisper, do you seek to be forgiven for past transgressions? She does. She led the assault on the civilian ship - as ordered by Cain. When the civilians they found resisted Cain's order to allow the Pegasus to take able-bodied crew, supplies, and equipement, leaving the remaining women, children, and infirm helpless - Kendra shot the man's wife in the head and the men next to her followed suit.
Their faces haunt her. She attempts to escape with shots of heroine or some sort of drug to take the edge off. It is the reason she stays behind and manually arms the nuke to blow up the cylon hybrid ship that is still conducting experiments.
The experiments are a reminder that the cylons are no better in this conflict. It is also a homage to one of the more bleak episodes of the original version of BattleStar Galatica. Including the use of the old wobbly tin cylons from the series with the red light darting back and forth - flying the ships, as opposed to the nifty newer models accompanying the human cylons. In the original version - humans were taken to be food for an alien species in cohoots with the cylons - strapped in. Drugged. This version is in some ways more frightening than that one. We don't see everything - just the briefest suggestion - an arm cut off, a brain in a jar, people with wires inserted in their skin. It's more gruesome than Doctor Who's cybermen, because we see so little of it.
Did Cain and Kendra have a choice? Could they have chosen a different path? What would have happened if Kendra had merely shot Gina? OR Cain had just had her executed? Or what if they chose to do to Gina what Adama chose regarding Sharon? Would that have broken the cycle? Would it have mattered? Gina - we know - not only goes on to kill Cain, but also sets off a nuclear device which alerts the cylons to the humans whereabouts at the end of Season 2, causing them to be held captive on New Caprica. IS Cain partly responsible for that?
And to what degree do Cain and Kendra's choices define them? Cain tells Kendra not to look back. You can't. The choices you make, you make because you have to. We have no other alternative. Is she right?
Lee Adama wonders this. He wonders if he was correct to make a choice that would have killed everyone aboard the hybrid ship. A choice his father stopped him from making. Adama states that we can't know what choice is the right one. We make the ones we have to make. And it is not up to us to judge those others made in circumstances we weren't privy to or in at the time. We can't know what we would have done in their place. That, he states, is up to a higher power, assuming of course there is one - he doesn't believe there is.
Then of course there's the bit about Kara Thrace. Who, the hybrid cylon warns Kendra, is the herald of death, the harbringer of the apocalypse. The human race must not follow Kara Thrace, if they do, she will lead them to their end. Do we trust the cylon? Destiny we are told at the end is not always what it seems.
Cain tells Kendra that they must become razors to survive, to stay razors, until they have the luxury to become human again. To live human lives again. But I wonder if it is possible to go backwards? The cylons takes human prisoners, create hybrids from them - half human/half machine - cutting away the human flesh literally while Cain does it metaphorically. One can't help but wonder who is the most successful - Cain or the Cylons? Cain who systematically turns her crew and herself into a weapon, a war machine. Or the cylons with their gross experiments. Is Cain any better than the cylons Adama and Lee are fighting in past and present?
I can't help but think Cain's mistake was that she fought for the wrong reasons. Not to save her race. But to enact vengeance on its behalf. Vengeance never works. All it does is eat away at you, until you become little more than a machine to do its bidding.
A razor.
The episode was in my opinion amongst the best the series has had to offer. Driving home some of it's themes regarding the effects of warfare and violence on the human soul for good or ill. Like all BSG episodes it does not provide easy answers, just worrying questions - leaving it up to the viewer to come up with his or her own conclusions.
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-25 06:42 am (UTC)But as Adama tells his son, he is surrounded by people that Cain was not.
Since she shot her XO, which is what Adama leaves out. Which makes it Cain's fault and Cain's choice that she wasn't.
Moreover, regarding the Gina matter, I found it telling that when Gina has the gun directly after Kendra outs her, she hesitates for that fatal moment, can't bring herself to shoot Cain immediately. Which ties with the show's presentation of the Cylons as more human than humans on occasion. The next time Gina has a gun, she won't hesitate anymore. And of course viewers of the second season know the full extent of the "pain and degradation" Cain inflicts on Gina. Months of torture and gang rape is something that Adama and Lee do not mention in their conversation because I don't think the viewers would have swallowed that this, too, was something Adama might have done/ordered if without Lee, Tigh and Roslin.
(The torture, maybe, since there are precedents - Leoben in s1 and Baltar's interrogation in s3 - but not for such an extended period. Definitely not the rapes.)
One last irony, though, regarding Adama and Cain: in the end, Cain did take back her order to assassinate Adama (and he his to assassinate her), without either of them knowin. Kara in her eulogy praised Cain for "not blinking", as does Kendra when talking to Lee in "Razor", but the most human thing Cain did, which showed she did remain human till the end, was blinking, hesitating, and for once NOT doing the ruthless thing.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-25 11:22 pm (UTC)...Since she shot her XO, which is what Adama leaves out. Which makes it Cain's fault and Cain's choice that she wasn't.
True. But then Cain did not have the same relationship Adama did with his XO. As Adama states to Lee towards the beginning - an XO has got to be your right arm. You have to trust them. It's an ironic statement, considering what we now know about Saul. But it is the difference between the two. Cain is shown early on not really respecting her XO. She's on the tread-mill alone, in the room alone. She isolates herself. He's invited her to leave for drinks, she turns him down. Adama does the opposite with Saul - it's clear they are friends, devoted to each other. Family.
Also,the fact that she does shoot her XO makes it impossible for her to get close to the next one. Fisk is cleary too afraid of her to ever challenge her decisions. It is what isolates her. The choice to rule her men with fear as opposed to gaining their trust.
Moreover, regarding the Gina matter, I found it telling that when Gina has the gun directly after Kendra outs her, she hesitates for that fatal moment, can't bring herself to shoot Cain immediately. Which ties with the show's presentation of the Cylons as more human than humans on occasion.
BSG has been consistent in that regard. Demonstrating that neither the humans nor the cylons are the bad guys. Both are capable of horrible and wonderful things. Both are human. Gina/Six is a perfect example. She is shown doing horrid things - yet at the same time, capable of love and compassion. She clearly cared for Cain, a great deal. Her hesitation demonstrates that as does her expression when she sees Cain ordering the torture and prior, when she sees Cain's reaction to the video clip of Six.
And of course viewers of the second season know the full extent of the "pain and degradation" Cain inflicts on Gina.
I think in a way that made the prior relationship between Cain/Gina all the more powerful. It's almost as if Cain felt that the more she tortured, degraded, shamed Gina, the harder she, Cain, would become. Gina represented to Cain - her weakness, her vulnerabilty, as well as being a symbol of the cylons who disrupted her life and killed her family. I wonder if Cain would have gone so far if Gina had merely been a foot solider much like Leoben on Galatica? And I wonder how Adama would react if he discovered someone similarily close to him was a cylon?
Someone like Saul? Or Starbuck? Or Rosyln? (Sharon was one thing, but Saul?)
Rape...is often, at least in films, books, and tv shows - a violent act that is perpetuated against someone who the perpetuator at some point cared deeply for. I've always fond that bit odd. Yet, when I think about it, it makes sense. Of all the acts of violence - rape contains the highest level of degradation, betrayal and shame. It is a violation. Turning what should be an act of love into an act of violence and hate. The fact that Helena Cain has a man rape her female lover - is interesting in that context. Cain feels violated by the revelation that her *lover* is a cylon, so Gina must be violated as well, but not directly by Cain so much as by Cain's foot-solider or proxy. I wonder, if it were possible, if Helena would have tried to do the rape herself? The rape like all the other things she does to Gina - feels like an act of extended rage. The Wrath of Cain...she's so filled with rage at this point that whomever cuts across it becomes it's target.
And she tells her crew, specifically Kendra, to hold on to their rage. At first just to get through. Once Gina is revealed as a cylon traitor, Cain allows the rage to consume her, until, there is little left.
One last irony, though, regarding Adama and Cain: in the end, Cain did take back her order to assassinate Adama (and he his to assassinate her), without either of them knowin.
Great point! I'd forgotten that bit. Yes, Cain blinks and eventually changes her mind - she does not go through with her plan to kill Adama. I'm not sure if it is because the mission is successful or if Cain, like Adama, realized it was wrong...and in that moment regained her humanity.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-25 05:21 pm (UTC)I never liked the Admiral Cain storyline, but accepted that her character had to be built that way since it was based on the old show. This did nothing to illuminate for me the bad command choices she made. I found her transformation from the first few scenes we see her in to the point where she shoots her XO in the head - the same XO she had been recently joking with and who invited her to join them on vacation- unconvincing. It made no sense to me. Yet there must have been a reason why this woman was an Admiral in the first place, some personal bravery she had exhibited or some brilliant tactical successes. Unless she had just served her time and it was bureaucracy. But that is hard to believe with her offensive, difficult personality. She would have made too many enemies in the course of her career.
And, moreover, the XO was correct. All of the command decision she made from that point out were foolish. Knowing it is a trap and fighting anyway - and then losing half your fighting capacity? And then making more and more desperate choices based on the hole in the fighting force that that left, with no one in your force able to address you with anything like honesty. For what point? If she had a deathwish, we should have been shown it.
So I don't accept the premise that this is the effect of war on human beings. I think that is a ridiculous, overly broad, stereotypical, anti-war POV. I do accept that this is the effect of war on an already twisted personality, who is a committed to a course of making bad command decisions and is thus falling into a darker and darker hole because of it. For contrast, the effect of war on both Tigh and Admiral Adama has been entirely different. Far more clarifying. (That's Tigh before we find out that he is a cylon - who knows what will happen to him now.) And that's been true of Roslin as well. All of them have grown positively over the course of the war. Lee, well, that's been a more mixed bag. He doesn't have his father's stones, and most of the time, his father's correct instincts, and I think that has been haunting him all his life.
Moreover, I found the fact that he was twice willing in about 5 minutes to sacrifice Kara - Kara of all people, given her importance to him personally and to the fighting force where she was so invaluable - to be odd, callow, somewhat stupid and also unbelievable, given his character. And it kind of justified that remark about having been tossed the keys to an expensive new car by his father.