Felix the Gray Baddie

"I've thought about the consequences and I'm ready for them." - Felix Gaeta, A Disquiet Follows My Soul

So how do you feel about Lt. Gaeta after the simmering events of the last episode? Why is he backing yet another mutiny so soon after paying for the last one with the loss of his leg? Is Gaeta's cause just? Is Gaeta hopelessly screwed up? What's going to happen next?

As still experimental new media, webisodes are usually self contained side stories that don't dare touch the canon of their parent series. Battlestar's latest webisode series The Face of the Enemy broke free with this modest tradition. (Battlestar's previous Resistance webisodes played no small part in the legal wrangling that ultimately led to the WGA strike.)

The Face of the Enemy added a new chapter to the New Caprica story arc. It added a new dimension to the character and motivations of Felix Gaeta during season three. It solved the mystery of Baltar's whisper. In the arena of digital media, it launched a small revolution of its own.

What sets Battlestar apart from much of other television fare is its portrayal of characters in complicated humanistic progressions, serialized with way too many commercials brought to you by Sci Fi. The arc of Felix Gaeta is just such an example.

The Face of the Enemy reveals Gaeta to be another of the walking wounded in the aftermath of the New Caprica occupation. He is not alone in this however, Gaeta has plenty of dysfunctional company.

Leoben's imprisonment of Kara and his mind games, and especially Leoben's fraud involving Kasey, broke Kara's spirit where the rigors of combat could not. Discovering that she is not actually Kasey's mother obstructs Kara from "making it up to Kasey" and thus to herself. She cannot atone for her careless but unintentional neglect contributing to Kasey's serious accident with the stairs. (Assuming Leoben didn't shove Kasey. He took advantage of the incident regardless.) Atonement frustrated, Kara's recriminations turn inward to her own troubled childhood. She starts vividly remembering her mother's all too intentional mental and physical abuse and the deep scars it left in Kara the adult. Long after New Caprica and the specter of Leoben are left behind, Kara spirals downward into a personal abyss. Fueled by alcohol and self pity, she see her childhood self and mandalas of beckoning fate in every corner. With a helpful spirit guide, she realizes an epiphany, conquers her fear of death and accepts her mysterious destiny. Or just maybe Kara finally succumbed to her inner demons and committed suicide. Either way that Kara Thrace is dead. New Caprica claimed another casualty.

In a parallel story the circumstances are similar but the outcome is quite different. Tragically during the last day of occupation, Saul Tigh murders his wife Ellen for collaborating with the Cylons. Many other people died including combatants, suicide bombers and otherwise, under his direct orders but it is Ellen who proves to be his breaking point. After New Caprica Tigh spirals downward just as hard as Thrace throughout the middle of season three. But events and fate intervene to yank Tigh back from the brink. In the episode Hero, the Cylons brainwash Danny "Bulldog" Novacek and send their Manchurian candidate scampering back to the human fleet. Danny will inevitably discover the truth of Adama's actions leading to his captivity and his misguided pent up rage will inevitably find a target in Adama. How very devious of D'Anna. Ironically it is Kara who uncovers evidence of the plot. Tigh turns his back on his personal brink to save the day, Adama and save himself in the bargain. Saul Tigh moralizes to Bulldog, but Saul is mostly preaching to Saul and the advice could as easily apply to Gaeta right now:

"Tell you a dirty little secret, the toughest part of getting played is losing your dignity. Feeling like you are not worth the oxygen you are sucking down. You get used to it. You start to believe it. You start to love it. It's like a bottle that never runs dry. You can keep reaching for it over and over again." - Tigh, Hero

Tigh limps back to duty and a new life without Ellen, missing an eye but partially atoned and restored.

Kara, Saul, Bulldog and Gaeta were all badly played. In each's turn, they all quietly dealt with shame and self recrimination in isolated circumstances; Kara imprisoned by Leoben, Saul and his bottle in his bunk, Bulldog imprisoned on a baseship, Gaeta cornered with a psychopathic Eight marooned in a lost Raptor. Tragically, Gaeta perhaps has the worst lot of them all. The Face of the Enemy shows that his best intentions on New Caprica directly resulted in the executions of scores of his friends and personal acquaintances. The innocent virtuous act of Gaeta remembering their names for a liberation list is twisted into an obscenity by the Cylons into an execution list. Baltar truthfully accuses of Gaeta of being a traitor, but this is only a technicality, Gaeta is an unwitting traitor. In the aftermath of New Caprica, Gaeta can find no self absolution in acceptance, atonement or redemption like Kara, Danny and Tigh. Instead Sweet 8 devastatingly accuses Gaeta of self denial and self deception. We see this to be true, for Gaeta admits to misremembering seeing people he thought had been freed but were actually dead. Substance addiction is a frequent symptom accompanying acute cases of denial. Whether or not Gaeta's stump pains him, he is shown to be hitting the Morpha pretty hard. He even considers it briefly as an alternative painless death to asphyxiation. Gaeta also has turned from the brink, but uses fragile denial as his coping mechanism. It is a predicament that cannot last indefinitely.

"I did what I could. I don't know what else I could've done." - Gaeta, Collaborators

With the addition of The Face of the Enemy, this protestation is transformed into quite a loaded statement of self denial. Gaeta subconsciously denies himself the dignity of doing good when in his mind all of his efforts for the insurgency are overshadowed by secretive shame of the bad. Gaeta helplessly caused the deaths of dozens if not hundreds, but was instrumental in aiding many thousands to escape. Should there be any magnitude in measuring good and bad, Gaeta cannot forgive himself the lesser sin. The contradiction festers in his mind until it boils over. Baltar is the publicly accused would be executioner of New Caprica. The truth is that Gaeta secretly was. Baltar makes the near fatal mistake of taunting Gaeta with "our little secret" only to have Gaeta lunge, grab and stab Baltar in the neck with the nearest weapon, a pen. The attack is a reflexive act of passion. Gaeta goes on to commits perjury during Baltar's trial. In contrast, this is a dispassionate calculating lie. Factor in Gaeta's dissociative false memories of New Caprica from The Face of the Enemy, however, and one begins to wonder if he believes his own lies here.

By the beginning of season four, Gaeta has become something of a classic Freudian basket case. Sometimes suppressed guilt and shame are just that, things corrosive to the psyche. Repression is the lid sealing the pressure cooker. Left unchecked it can be an explosive combination.

"The truth is, no good ever comes of concealing it. If you don't believe me, go check out Mr. Gaeta." - Baltar to Tory, deleted scene from The Road Less Traveled

In Gaeta's very first non-Sulu, non-Dradis scene of season four he is shown to already have a problem getting out his "sirs." He is openly insubordinate with Captain Kara Thrace.

"What about this one?
It's a proto-planetary system.
So?
Nothing but rocks. No ringed gas giants like you... claimed you saw.
I did see it, Lieutenant.
If you say so, sir.
And what are you saying, Mr. Gaeta?
I'm not saying anything, sir. I'm just following orders.
Well, I'm ordering you to help me.
(scoffs) You're ordering me... ?!?
Mr. Gaeta, take a break. - Helo
With pleasure, sir." - Kara, Gaeta, He That Believeth in Me

The proto-planetary yellow star system with nothing but rocks may yet return in future episodes. If so, this is a highly ironic scene and Gaeta is an obstacle to progress in finding Earth.

Kara is newly back from dead. Everyone is highly suspicious of her, so Gaeta is not sticking his neck out by jumping on the bandwagon of distrust. Yet, this is the beginning of a steady progression of Gaeta second guessing authority figures. What begins as open sarcasm degrades into open contempt. By the time of the paranoid mass hysteria aboard the Demetrius, Gaeta calmly disobeys a direct order from Kara. Only this time she is the ship's captain. Is it simply a matter of his "moral compass" recognizing the legitimate authority of XO Helo relieving Kara by the regulations? Again, Gaeta is not sticking his neck out so very far and the majority of the audience is on his side. In terms of story structure, Gaeta is an obstacle to progress here. The "correct" course is to play out Kara's dubiously wild hunch, realize Leoben is not playing a Cylon trick, fulfill part of Kara's vision and meet up with the rebel Cylons.

By the time of the most recent episode, A Disquiet Follows My Soul, Gaeta's progression has him openly fomenting insurrection. He uses a straw man argument accusing Anders of the nuking humans while at the same saving humans as the leader of the human resistance. By sticking this unlikely argument in Gaeta's mouth, the writers deliberately make the character unsympathetic. This time much less of the audience remains on Gaeta's side.

Being a lowly Lieutenant, the most junior of officers, only aggravates Gaeta's position. He is just enough removed from authority to affect change. But Gaeta's rank places him in an ideal position to observe the mistakes first hand of those who are in authority. So Gaeta backs one dark horse after another; President Baltar, Demetrius XO Helo and now Vice President Zarek. Ironically all are in "legitimate" authority but in attempting to correct the perceived mistakes of those they replace, they themselves commit even greater mistakes.

Gaeta's unlearning reasoning is that if only this person took charge, things would be ever so much better. Again and again, this second guessing heralds disaster: the occupation of New Caprica, the pointless loss of Gaeta's own leg, the imminent attempted takeover by Zarek that you already know will fail. At episode's end, Gaeta's near refusal to call Admiral Adama sir shows hostile contempt and by now, hardly any of the audience remains on Gaeta's side.

So what is Gaeta's character flaw? He can't acknowledge that everyone is human and everyone makes mistakes. Those who predominantly do good are not exempt from error. Given time and opportunity, most people recover and learn from their mistakes. The scales of right and wrong eventually balance. Most who consistently do good, can and do stumble but get back up and continue to good afterward. By denying himself acceptance of his own guilt in disastrously aiding the enemy encountered in Sweet 8, Gaeta has lost sight of this redemptive quality in himself. More importantly, he cannot see this ability in others. Roslin and Adama have made serious mistakes, but Gaeta believes in a distorted reality where they can do nothing right in the future. In this reality, their past successes count for nothing. In short, Gaeta has "sees something shiny" issues like the flawed Cylon model Eights. It is normal to have crises in confidence. To constantly shift allegiances always in favor of the latest greatest would be leader usually leads to failure because it never builds trust. Looking at Gaeta's history shows that he's been repeatedly betrayed by quickly extending trust in a new direction at the expense of withdrawing it from others. If this were any other show, Gaeta is well past the point of being marked for regular cast member death. But by virtue of everyone being flawed, everyone gets second chances on Battlestar. Only Gaeta can give himself this reality check.

Just as Tigh's advice to Bulldog could be helpful to Gaeta, Athena's advice to her mutinous waffling Cylon sisters is also relevant. When in dire jeopardy, faith matters as much as trust.

"We wanted the same thing, but it turned out to be a disaster. The Sixes have made one mistake after another. They have to be stopped before they get the rest of us killed.
Ask.
You could help us.
You want me to lead a mutiny against the Sixes.
It's the only way.
You guys make me sick.
Why?
Because you pick your side and you stick! You don't cut and run when things get ugly. Otherwise you'll never have anything. No love, no family. No life to call your own. Now you guys can either help me or get the hell out of my way." - Athena, Eights, Faith

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