Not related to the episode itself, but is anyone watching BSG on Scifi-HD? Is anyone else really disappointed with their quality? The picture seems to stutter. A LOT. It may be Comcast, I don't know. Anyone?
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The Official Battlestar Galactica Thread : SPOILERS
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So that "this has all happened before and it will all happen again" line is starting to make a lot more sense. Now I'm thinking that little movie about the Pegasus crew wasn't just a bone for the fans during the long break but a huge foreshadowing of what's to come.
The humans have obviously been to Earth before, but maybe they've been to Caprica before. Let's say they make it to Earth, the Final Cylon is discovered by Earthlings down the road, and they attempt to create a cyclon with the "new" technology. The cyclons are raised, revolt and the Earthlings flee to a planet they've only heard about in legends, Caprica. It's like Pete and Repeat sitting in a boat. Pete fell out, who is left? Repeat...
I could definetly see the ending heading toward this infinite loop *subliminal apple reference* as a way to resolve the show without spoon feeding an ending. It would also explain how there's 5 cylons unknown to the rest of the cylon world. They were created soooooo long ago.
Anyway, BSG has once again got me hooked. Anyone think Gaeida is the Final Cylon? The writer's are making too strong a case for the usual suspects so I think it will be someone out of left field.
The humans have obviously been to Earth before, but maybe they've been to Caprica before. Let's say they make it to Earth, the Final Cylon is discovered by Earthlings down the road, and they attempt to create a cyclon with the "new" technology. The cyclons are raised, revolt and the Earthlings flee to a planet they've only heard about in legends, Caprica. It's like Pete and Repeat sitting in a boat. Pete fell out, who is left? Repeat...
I could definetly see the ending heading toward this infinite loop *subliminal apple reference* as a way to resolve the show without spoon feeding an ending. It would also explain how there's 5 cylons unknown to the rest of the cylon world. They were created soooooo long ago.
Anyway, BSG has once again got me hooked. Anyone think Gaeida is the Final Cylon? The writer's are making too strong a case for the usual suspects so I think it will be someone out of left field.
I'm now leaning toward Racetrack...
I really think the final Cylon will be female. The seven have 4 males, 3 females, and the final five already have 3 males. To me it should have been reversed in the final five with 3 females and 2 males to make 6 and 6 which would seem more machine-like, creating equal numbers of each gender, but it's too late for that now...
Unless Tigh is a transexual?
I'd like to see what would happen if you asked him that to his face.
A phenomenal Busby Berkeley dance number and a rousing song?
Hadn't thought about this before... but it couldn't be Roslyn becasue she's got cancer. She's been examined by the Doc a lot and her treatment on Caprica should have clued her in that she's not normal.
Now, I'm not saying it's impossible, but at least it's highly unlikely. Unless she knows she's a cylon???
Possible... who knows how they'd work that out. Roslyn had a cancer that was cured by Cylon blood... I think that makes as much sense if she is a Cylon as if she's not. But on the day when the other four first recognized the song, if memory serves, Roslyn had a headache and was complaining of hearing things in her head too. She also fits as being this mysterious administrator that nobody knew in the Colonial government before the war, who somehow manages to walk in and capture the Presidency.
The cancer may be her instincts fighting her "programming" trying to reject her inner-Cylon. The fact that it was "cured" by by the blood of the Cylon/human hybrid may indicate that somehow it allowed her mind/body to reject the programming more easily and removed the conflict. It may be that she has more or stronger innate programming that will force out her current human persona to implement whatever plan had been put into place when she entered the 13 colonies, thus as the programming emerges she fights it more than the others who were not given specific programming but will act more like soldiers in the plan rather than the leaders.
My Racetrack switch was more in jest than anything, although I could see her becoming the commanding officer of the air-corps and having a more prominent role leading towards her bit reveal. Although I'd still put more money on Rosalyn.
A phenomenal Busby Berkeley dance number and a rousing song?
Haha, sure, we'll go with that...
I also loved this episode, but was saddened that they killed off Callie.
It seemed to me that Tori killed Callie because she wants Tyrol for herself, and took advantage of the opportunity that Callie created. In other words, she didn't kill her to preserve the identities of the cylons, but killed her out of jealousy.
It seemed to me that Tori killed Callie because she wants Tyrol for herself, and took advantage of the opportunity that Callie created. In other words, she didn't kill her to preserve the identities of the cylons, but killed her out of jealousy.
Tori just has to have them all to herself...
- Let's get a tally: Anders (right before they found out they were cylons), Baltar (season4 ep.2), playing up to Chief during the last episode... I'm sure I'm forgetting some... And she's the only one who doesn't seem tormented by the knowlege that she's a cylon.So much info in the last few episodes...
BG is one of those shows where I hate having to wait a week to watch another episode. I want to keep watching after the episode ends....it leaves me craving more. I could probably sit through the whole season, in one sitting, if I had the opportunity.
But yeah, I thought this recent episode was great. ..and true to form with best episodes of the series. I really thought Callie was going to survive at the end. But man....sad to see her go. She was one of my favorite characters.
But yeah, I thought this recent episode was great. ..and true to form with best episodes of the series. I really thought Callie was going to survive at the end. But man....sad to see her go. She was one of my favorite characters.
My "left field" guess for the 5th cylon is Lee Adama. Hey, why not? That's why they call it left field.
A buddy also made a good point to me about Tigh: how can he be a cylon when he & Adm. Adama have been partnered up for so many years in the service? Through flashback scenes in earlier seasons (and Razor) we know that Adama stumbled across the human/cylon hybrid testing in its earliest stages. Then, shortly thereafter (we know b/c Adama is still a pilot and, I believe no higher rank than Captain) Adama is telling Tigh to fly as his wingman. Not only are they both young, but it seems clear that they have known each other for a bit for Adama to have that familiarity and desire to keep a fellow delinquent like Tigh close to him. Otherwise, bad career move.
The other three revealed sleepers are all young enough for it to be plausible that they are the result of successful human/cylon skinjob technology. Tigh doesn't fit the profile, though. Any thoughts?
A buddy also made a good point to me about Tigh: how can he be a cylon when he & Adm. Adama have been partnered up for so many years in the service? Through flashback scenes in earlier seasons (and Razor) we know that Adama stumbled across the human/cylon hybrid testing in its earliest stages. Then, shortly thereafter (we know b/c Adama is still a pilot and, I believe no higher rank than Captain) Adama is telling Tigh to fly as his wingman. Not only are they both young, but it seems clear that they have known each other for a bit for Adama to have that familiarity and desire to keep a fellow delinquent like Tigh close to him. Otherwise, bad career move.
The other three revealed sleepers are all young enough for it to be plausible that they are the result of successful human/cylon skinjob technology. Tigh doesn't fit the profile, though. Any thoughts?
I agree he doesn't fit the profile. Absolutely, unless... "this has all happened before and it will all happen again." I think the Cylons have been around for a long time, and that's what I was referring to in my earlier post about the infinite loop.
Tigh being a Cylon doesn't make sense now, but I hope it does by the season finale!
On that point...
^ Ron talks about the Tigh issue, saying more will be revealed.
They have thought about it, don't worry
^ Ron talks about the Tigh issue, saying more will be revealed.
They have thought about it, don't worry
On that point...
^ Ron talks about the Tigh issue, saying more will be revealed.
They have thought about it, don't worry
I had not seen that link or that interview. Many thanks!
Escape Velocity is another episode (the first of a couple this season) by my not-so-favorite Jane Espenson. The two episodes she's written before, the one about the dangerous mining ship and the episode where Kat is killed, are far from favorites and both -- it follows -- are fairly iconic of the third season of BSG. Here, perhaps with a different brief or perhaps in a flash of insight, she pulls ahead of what is now 'average' for the show, a quantity which is an unmeasurable if you consider the broad highs and the lows we have experienced since day one. She pulls ahead because this episode, like the rest of the season so far, feels like it's actually going somewhere.
The symmetries between Six and Ellen, Baltar and Tigh, were inspired, and the double-entendre dialogue we were given in the scenes that featured both of them did the idea tremendous justice. Even if it was just a thematic parallel, it was strong enough to impose order and a sense of progression on what, in other places, risked coming close to the literal, repetitive, and too-frequently tedious lulls of the last season. In particular, the "war of the religions" bores me. I would almost consider it inane if it didn't fit in with the episode's symmetries: in this case it is a lovely reflection of the cylon/human dialectic which will almost certainly end up being related to "what has happened before [will] happen again."
So far so good. I even thought, for the first time since the show started, that the script brought something new and useful to its representation of faith. In the past it's just been there to represent the mysterious powers of the cylons and their "plan," but Baltar's speech at the end gave a convincing reason for his followers to believe in him: the promise that someone cares for all of them, that they're all deserving of love, and that this version of "God" is different from the uncaring or somehow fickle Gods that are (importantly) "as numerous as mortal men." This promise is exactly what a decimated and hopeless population might cling to. It's so convincing that I can finally feel the importance of the "one true God" rhetoric now and relate on some emotional level with the considerable magnetism it seems to be effecting on the fleet.
In true Jane Espenson style, there was even some humor in the pot, deep down somewhere under the carrots and the peas, stewing. Roslyn's remark, "that's Lee," comes to mind. There were other brilliant moments that smell of shoe polish, such as the segue between Adama's reading of the book, ending with "and it felt good," and the bloody mask of Tigh's disfigured face begging for more pain.
Lee continues to be a pain in Roslyn's ass, but in a way that's useful to the plot and (novelly, for him) useful to his development as a character. Instead of his curious and kind of aborted stint at lawyering, this, again, feels like it's going places. And it's a two-way street because Roslyn feels like she's in motion again, too. Her speech about not repeating past mistakes with Baltar was powerful -- we can thank season three for at least that much. That it's not clear which side in many of these situations is the "proper" one is BSG back to its roots.
Perhaps the only place that this bipartisanism faltered was with the Sons of Aries raid. It gives us something easy to hate, since whether or not you like Baltar their point of view, such as it was expressed by nothing but brutality against a bunch of helpless girls, is unidentifiable. There's a place for mindless brutality, especially in a show like BSG, but I think it's best used as a consequence and not a cause. It also sets up an annoying "peaceful protest" identity in Baltar's cult that is too directly allegorical to Gandhi, MLK Jr., and so on. It's like how taking prisoners out into the wilderness on New Caprica, lining them up, and having them shot was a blunderous Nazi parallel. I don't think it does a writer any favors to ruin a villain's motive with an undefendable analog like the holocaust. It just cartoonifies them.
But The Sons of Aries are a trivial problem because they are just an inciting event in this religious conflict thread. I'm not looking forward to their inevitable return as "the embodiment of intolerance in the world," but at least I can be intrigued by Roslyn's well-motivated struggle to control the cult from inside the government. It's a necessary byproduct, I suppose. But like all sorts of waste, it leaves one with a faint sense of inefficiency.
The symmetries between Six and Ellen, Baltar and Tigh, were inspired, and the double-entendre dialogue we were given in the scenes that featured both of them did the idea tremendous justice. Even if it was just a thematic parallel, it was strong enough to impose order and a sense of progression on what, in other places, risked coming close to the literal, repetitive, and too-frequently tedious lulls of the last season. In particular, the "war of the religions" bores me. I would almost consider it inane if it didn't fit in with the episode's symmetries: in this case it is a lovely reflection of the cylon/human dialectic which will almost certainly end up being related to "what has happened before [will] happen again."
So far so good. I even thought, for the first time since the show started, that the script brought something new and useful to its representation of faith. In the past it's just been there to represent the mysterious powers of the cylons and their "plan," but Baltar's speech at the end gave a convincing reason for his followers to believe in him: the promise that someone cares for all of them, that they're all deserving of love, and that this version of "God" is different from the uncaring or somehow fickle Gods that are (importantly) "as numerous as mortal men." This promise is exactly what a decimated and hopeless population might cling to. It's so convincing that I can finally feel the importance of the "one true God" rhetoric now and relate on some emotional level with the considerable magnetism it seems to be effecting on the fleet.
In true Jane Espenson style, there was even some humor in the pot, deep down somewhere under the carrots and the peas, stewing. Roslyn's remark, "that's Lee," comes to mind. There were other brilliant moments that smell of shoe polish, such as the segue between Adama's reading of the book, ending with "and it felt good," and the bloody mask of Tigh's disfigured face begging for more pain.
Lee continues to be a pain in Roslyn's ass, but in a way that's useful to the plot and (novelly, for him) useful to his development as a character. Instead of his curious and kind of aborted stint at lawyering, this, again, feels like it's going places. And it's a two-way street because Roslyn feels like she's in motion again, too. Her speech about not repeating past mistakes with Baltar was powerful -- we can thank season three for at least that much. That it's not clear which side in many of these situations is the "proper" one is BSG back to its roots.
Perhaps the only place that this bipartisanism faltered was with the Sons of Aries raid. It gives us something easy to hate, since whether or not you like Baltar their point of view, such as it was expressed by nothing but brutality against a bunch of helpless girls, is unidentifiable. There's a place for mindless brutality, especially in a show like BSG, but I think it's best used as a consequence and not a cause. It also sets up an annoying "peaceful protest" identity in Baltar's cult that is too directly allegorical to Gandhi, MLK Jr., and so on. It's like how taking prisoners out into the wilderness on New Caprica, lining them up, and having them shot was a blunderous Nazi parallel. I don't think it does a writer any favors to ruin a villain's motive with an undefendable analog like the holocaust. It just cartoonifies them.
But The Sons of Aries are a trivial problem because they are just an inciting event in this religious conflict thread. I'm not looking forward to their inevitable return as "the embodiment of intolerance in the world," but at least I can be intrigued by Roslyn's well-motivated struggle to control the cult from inside the government. It's a necessary byproduct, I suppose. But like all sorts of waste, it leaves one with a faint sense of inefficiency.
Ehh. I'm disappointed that tonight's cliffhanger didn't end any stronger or more "hanging," even, than most of the standalone episodes we've had so far this season. The developing mutiny on the Demetrius wasn't new material for us, so that much of the first act, before Leoben was discovered, were reminder scenes. We could have skipped to just before the discovery of the heavy raider and only lost redundant scenes and the establishment of Helo, not Anders as the spokesman character for the rest of the fleet aboard the ship (which was a curious choice. I suppose it had to be him for him to make the call to start the mutiny at the end).
Finding Leoben was interesting enough, but it almost watches more as a blackboard diagram in the BSG writers' room, with all the character names bundled next to their plot arcs, trying to figure out how to bundle Leoben into one of them. So many important characters stacked up in one place, practically one room, feels pretty theatrical.
Speaking of important characters, Athena has really dissolved into the Galactica crew now, hasn't she? Nothing in this ep. distinguishes her from any of the other grunts, so all the agonizing plot development we got for her (and Boomer) earlier in the show seems forgotten. I hope that every one of these people on Starbuck's mission end up having something important to justify their presence. Otherwise it'll feel like piggybacking, which is only slightly lesser to completely dropping ongoing characters because they don't fit with whatever new scheme the prods have worked up for the finale.
I don't rate the episode poorly, mainly because it's riding on the strong momentum of the last one. Still, Tyrol joining up with Baltar felt like a delayed reaction (and it upsets the nice symmetry of the Final Three on Galactica -- Tigh in denial, Tyrol ambivalent, and Tory self-indulgent). TTT.
Baltar's offering his hand and saying "it's what Cally would have wanted" reeked of post-hoc character development and was a disappointing cliche, just to have that scene later on where he apologizes to Tyrol for being so unimaginative. Indeed! Terry Rossio says that one of the things that most irritates him in screenplays are moments where the characters acknowledge the stupidity of their own situations. Well, this might walk the line between believable Baltar bumbling and the writer's own clumsiness.
Anyway, a bridge episode plotwise and kind of a nonevent for the characters. That Starbuck is a "new person" has already been shown well enough, I thought.
So... so-so.
Finding Leoben was interesting enough, but it almost watches more as a blackboard diagram in the BSG writers' room, with all the character names bundled next to their plot arcs, trying to figure out how to bundle Leoben into one of them. So many important characters stacked up in one place, practically one room, feels pretty theatrical.
Speaking of important characters, Athena has really dissolved into the Galactica crew now, hasn't she? Nothing in this ep. distinguishes her from any of the other grunts, so all the agonizing plot development we got for her (and Boomer) earlier in the show seems forgotten. I hope that every one of these people on Starbuck's mission end up having something important to justify their presence. Otherwise it'll feel like piggybacking, which is only slightly lesser to completely dropping ongoing characters because they don't fit with whatever new scheme the prods have worked up for the finale.
I don't rate the episode poorly, mainly because it's riding on the strong momentum of the last one. Still, Tyrol joining up with Baltar felt like a delayed reaction (and it upsets the nice symmetry of the Final Three on Galactica -- Tigh in denial, Tyrol ambivalent, and Tory self-indulgent). TTT.
Baltar's offering his hand and saying "it's what Cally would have wanted" reeked of post-hoc character development and was a disappointing cliche, just to have that scene later on where he apologizes to Tyrol for being so unimaginative. Indeed! Terry Rossio says that one of the things that most irritates him in screenplays are moments where the characters acknowledge the stupidity of their own situations. Well, this might walk the line between believable Baltar bumbling and the writer's own clumsiness.
Anyway, a bridge episode plotwise and kind of a nonevent for the characters. That Starbuck is a "new person" has already been shown well enough, I thought.
So... so-so.
Just my two cents... this show is getting worse by the episode. I read the interview with Executive Producer Ron Moore that was linked above after last week's episode and it just made things so much more clear to me. Way too many "I think"s and "I don't know"s for a show with so many story lines to be brought together. No wonder I'm not even enjoying the last few episodes.
So our latest episode we have lots more of the groupies fawning over Baltar and more half-assed, vapid preaching. That whole story-line seems so pointless; I'd yawn if it wasn't so painful to watch every instance of it. It seems most likely to me that the producers spent time in bars and clubs most of the off-season, told way too many women they could get them a part on a TV show, and just had to work them all in somehow.
And of course we need to get a fight going between Anders and Leoben. He finds Helo (XO) and Gaida (third in command) who have been kept out of Kara's room by her orders to the marines guarding the door. "She didn't want to be disturbed." Oh, but Ensign Anders... "here, let me get that door for you..."
But the kicker for me was Helo leading a mutiny because Kara had the audacity to trust a cylon.
Let me say that again: Helo led a mutiny because Kara had the audacity to trust a cylon.
Helo. The one married to a cylon. The one who spent over two seasons loving on, trusting, fathering a child with, and breaking every rule he could think of to protect a cylon. And since then doing her bidding against his orders all while finding that she is, so far as he knows, indeed trustworthy.
The above post is correct:
She is a cylon. She knows from her own experience that cylons can choose to help humans. She also knows from her own experience that models other than hers can. It didn't take her long to trust Six on the base ship, did it?
One of my biggest pet peeves are story lines that rely on suspended logic, drastic and immediate changes contrary to historically defined characters, and phenomenally stupid decisions made over and over. Season 1 of BSG was full of this but it was still an exciting story. Seasons 2 and 3 were better, at the very least with respect to my pet peeve. Season 4 is, as I said above, getting worse by the episode.
I think a lot of that has to do with poor planning of the overall story, requiring so much backtracking and so much of my peeve to make the story come together. For comparison (and this is just my opinion), the reason Lost got so bad in seasons 2 and 3 was because producers/writers had a great story that they envisioned taking place over 2 or 3 seasons. They pitched it... "Sure, let's do a season and see what happens." Then, during the first season, it's a huge hit. So now they have a story written for 2-3 seasons but they can milk 6 or more out of it. More money, more episodes... okay! Problem is the story needs to be stretched... so you have a ton of ridiculously bad episodes because they've got to add fodder to make it longer.
BSG is seeming more and more like the opposite. They've got a story without an ending and now they've got a limited number of episodes to end it, so "hey, how should we finish this thing? I know, let's make a few of the crew cylons!" etc.
Much Ado, after sharing the link, wrote:
So our latest episode we have lots more of the groupies fawning over Baltar and more half-assed, vapid preaching. That whole story-line seems so pointless; I'd yawn if it wasn't so painful to watch every instance of it. It seems most likely to me that the producers spent time in bars and clubs most of the off-season, told way too many women they could get them a part on a TV show, and just had to work them all in somehow.
And of course we need to get a fight going between Anders and Leoben. He finds Helo (XO) and Gaida (third in command) who have been kept out of Kara's room by her orders to the marines guarding the door. "She didn't want to be disturbed." Oh, but Ensign Anders... "here, let me get that door for you..."
But the kicker for me was Helo leading a mutiny because Kara had the audacity to trust a cylon.
Let me say that again: Helo led a mutiny because Kara had the audacity to trust a cylon.
Helo. The one married to a cylon. The one who spent over two seasons loving on, trusting, fathering a child with, and breaking every rule he could think of to protect a cylon. And since then doing her bidding against his orders all while finding that she is, so far as he knows, indeed trustworthy.
The above post is correct:
That seems less like a story line to me and more like a lapse in memory, either by the writers or an attempt to create one for the audience, at least long enough to have her be on the mutiny's side for this episode.
She is a cylon. She knows from her own experience that cylons can choose to help humans. She also knows from her own experience that models other than hers can. It didn't take her long to trust Six on the base ship, did it?
One of my biggest pet peeves are story lines that rely on suspended logic, drastic and immediate changes contrary to historically defined characters, and phenomenally stupid decisions made over and over. Season 1 of BSG was full of this but it was still an exciting story. Seasons 2 and 3 were better, at the very least with respect to my pet peeve. Season 4 is, as I said above, getting worse by the episode.
I think a lot of that has to do with poor planning of the overall story, requiring so much backtracking and so much of my peeve to make the story come together. For comparison (and this is just my opinion), the reason Lost got so bad in seasons 2 and 3 was because producers/writers had a great story that they envisioned taking place over 2 or 3 seasons. They pitched it... "Sure, let's do a season and see what happens." Then, during the first season, it's a huge hit. So now they have a story written for 2-3 seasons but they can milk 6 or more out of it. More money, more episodes... okay! Problem is the story needs to be stretched... so you have a ton of ridiculously bad episodes because they've got to add fodder to make it longer.
BSG is seeming more and more like the opposite. They've got a story without an ending and now they've got a limited number of episodes to end it, so "hey, how should we finish this thing? I know, let's make a few of the crew cylons!" etc.
Much Ado, after sharing the link, wrote:
Reading that article and watching the first five episodes of this final season speak the opposite to me... they haven't thought about it, at least not near enough. And I am worried.
Sigh. River metaphors and Galactica just never get along.
A lot of people I've talked to about BSG have been getting weary of it lately. "Bored" is a common adjective of theirs, and lately my father complained that there wasn't enough "plot." Of course, there's lots of plot, but what he meant was that there isn't any satisfying thematic development, unlike the character and plot arcs that are ongoing. At its best, this show addresses the hypothetical scenario of near apocalypse and its possible social and physical consequences. But this is not BSG at its best. We haven't had BSG at its best for a long time, not since the very end of Season 2, or the occasional "Collaborators."
It didn't help that this episode was only bone and gristle. Point by point plot development, chained together in the most tedious way possible by expository dialogue and false conflicts. Wrapping up rogue Six, Gaeta getting shot, figuring out how to link the ships' FTL drives... these are all frustrating obstacles for anyone looking for theme in this episode. It plays like a shopping list delivered from on-high, the spectral groceries of Ronald D. Moore.
The theme is apparently something like "we can be redeemed." While somewhat unifying of a concept, the various takes on it in E06 are abortive and beg the audience to "believe." This is a step beyond having Baltar discover faith or Roslin wrestle with nihilism. It's too valent, and it's a tough pill for me to swallow, coming from BSG especially. Doubly, the redemptive scenes are frustratingly sentimental, which steals hugely from their potential power. For example, the President's not one to be "won over" unless it's on her own terms, so it bothers me that she seems to have abandoned her 'metaphor' interpretation of faith just because of a Major Kira cameo. Perhaps it shouldn't shock me so much because it wasn't long ago that she was a self-described pythia guiding the fleet to salvation.
A similar contradiction nests in Athena, who is being characterized as "the unredeemed" for abandoning her people and refusing compassion. But then she spouts gibberish about "choosing sides" and other hypocritical nonsense that just tells us that the writer thinks her point of view is clearly The Wrong One. That Athena's nihilism puts her parallel to Roslin, then splits them apart when Roslin makes The Enlightened Choice only emphasizes that.
While we're on the subject, what's this business with the Eights asking Athena to lead them against the Sixes? It makes them seem like the lobotomized zombies BSG has been trying to convince us that they aren't for how long now? (Not that they ever did a very good job of making the cylons seem competent.) It didn't help that this set piece was brushed aside as breezily as the rest of the plot.
I thought this episode was pretty bad. It could only be redeemed if the next episode's theme is "there is no redemption," and this whole act was simply to get our hopes up. That would be writerly misdirection. This was, I hate to say it, boring.
A lot of people I've talked to about BSG have been getting weary of it lately. "Bored" is a common adjective of theirs, and lately my father complained that there wasn't enough "plot." Of course, there's lots of plot, but what he meant was that there isn't any satisfying thematic development, unlike the character and plot arcs that are ongoing. At its best, this show addresses the hypothetical scenario of near apocalypse and its possible social and physical consequences. But this is not BSG at its best. We haven't had BSG at its best for a long time, not since the very end of Season 2, or the occasional "Collaborators."
It didn't help that this episode was only bone and gristle. Point by point plot development, chained together in the most tedious way possible by expository dialogue and false conflicts. Wrapping up rogue Six, Gaeta getting shot, figuring out how to link the ships' FTL drives... these are all frustrating obstacles for anyone looking for theme in this episode. It plays like a shopping list delivered from on-high, the spectral groceries of Ronald D. Moore.
The theme is apparently something like "we can be redeemed." While somewhat unifying of a concept, the various takes on it in E06 are abortive and beg the audience to "believe." This is a step beyond having Baltar discover faith or Roslin wrestle with nihilism. It's too valent, and it's a tough pill for me to swallow, coming from BSG especially. Doubly, the redemptive scenes are frustratingly sentimental, which steals hugely from their potential power. For example, the President's not one to be "won over" unless it's on her own terms, so it bothers me that she seems to have abandoned her 'metaphor' interpretation of faith just because of a Major Kira cameo. Perhaps it shouldn't shock me so much because it wasn't long ago that she was a self-described pythia guiding the fleet to salvation.
A similar contradiction nests in Athena, who is being characterized as "the unredeemed" for abandoning her people and refusing compassion. But then she spouts gibberish about "choosing sides" and other hypocritical nonsense that just tells us that the writer thinks her point of view is clearly The Wrong One. That Athena's nihilism puts her parallel to Roslin, then splits them apart when Roslin makes The Enlightened Choice only emphasizes that.
While we're on the subject, what's this business with the Eights asking Athena to lead them against the Sixes? It makes them seem like the lobotomized zombies BSG has been trying to convince us that they aren't for how long now? (Not that they ever did a very good job of making the cylons seem competent.) It didn't help that this set piece was brushed aside as breezily as the rest of the plot.
I thought this episode was pretty bad. It could only be redeemed if the next episode's theme is "there is no redemption," and this whole act was simply to get our hopes up. That would be writerly misdirection. This was, I hate to say it, boring.
Oh, give it up!
I'm still going for Roslyn.
Maybe they get to Earth, and Laura dies on schedule, but there's a Resurrection Ship there, and she comes back cancer-free.
BORING?? Wow, seriously. What do you do in your downtime of not watching or critiquing BSG? I'm sure it must involve private yachts, exotic sports cars, beautiful women, skydiving, and hanging out with James Bond. I thought this weeks episode rocked. Some top notch acting: blood for blood thing, the reveal of the hybrid (oracle), the starbuck vision come to fruition... the criss crossing 8/Athena "picking sides and sticking," thing (completely intentional), Gata's leg, the tension of the FTL countdown and the commandeering of the base ship, major character development from the President and fine acting to boot.. it goes on. Boring? Pft. Maybe check out some other show then. I get irritated when fans become so entitled they dis on the show creators when things don't meet their personal vision. Do [you bored/disappointed people] sit around with note cards with all the characters names on them and scheme up potential story arcs all week or what? I'm a fanboi, sue me, but I'm enjoying this final season.
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