Ugh. So this episode is going to hinge on whether you liked "The Lodger" or thought it was pointless, boring filler because they couldn't get Neil Gaiman's episode up in time.
Going back to my review of "The Lodger," I find that I didn't even give it a score out of ten. Maybe that was because I didn't really think it was a Doctor Who episode so much as an episode of a suspiciously similar television show, wherein Matt Smith plays a benevolent alien bent on saving mankind, only here he has no understanding whatsoever of Earth customs.
Once again, the Doctor teams up with his comedic fat bloke friend, Craig, to save the day, and once again his social IQ gets cut in half for the sake of comedy. The Cybermats appear for the first time in the new series. (Remember those? They were the embarassing robot caterpillars from Tomb of the Cybermen that did frak-all.) The Doctor makes a fart joke and talks to babies.
The Cybermen are back, they try to take over, they're foiled. This time they're foiled because Craig loves his son so much that he resists Cyber-conversion and punches the hell out of a bunch of machines.
So basically everybody in Moffat's version of Who is superpowered. Amy can undo time-paradoxes. Rory can die a gazillion times and still keep coming back. Craig can resist Cyber-conversion just cuz.
Like "The Lodger," I'm not going to score this one. It's probably better than I'm willing to give it credit for, but I just don't like it when the show tries to be too comedic.
And then at the end of the episode, we find that River has been researching the Doctor and that the diary he'd left her has been written in. Then Eyepatch-lady shows up with the Silence and sticks River in the spacesuit so she can hide out at the bottom of Lake Silencio and kill the Doctor. There are so many things wrong with this scene that I want to spend the bulk of the review on it.
1) River has been studying the Doctor. Presumably now she knows his entire history, seeing as she's still in the future. That would mean that she knows about him defeating the Silence in 1969. That would mean that she probably saw a clip of the moon landing. That would mean that she's been brainwashed to kill the Silence on sight. But she does not.
2) The diary. I'd assumed it was brand-new when the Doctor left it on her bedside back in "Let's Kill Hitler," and that she'd been using it to chronicle his life in reverse. Now it kind of looks like he'd already written everything in it...? If not, who wrote the appointment at Lake Silencio in there?
3) Isn't River's compulsion to kill the Doctor magically gone as of "Let's Kill Hitler?" If not, why did she save his life in that episode?
4) Is older-River aware of what she'd done? She's in prison because she killed a good man, and it's strongly implied that she knows who it was. So when she shoots at the Astronaut in "The Impossible Astronaut," I would assume that she's aware that she's shooting at her younger self, and that she'll do massive epic damage to the timeline if she actually scores a hit.
All of these questions had better be answered next week.
One last thing: the nursery rhyme keeps trying to use "rock" and variations thereof to rhyme with "Doctor." The only one that's been acceptable so far is the absolutely epic double entendre "he cradled her and he rocked her."
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Who Review: "The God Complex"
It is a myth that Steven Moffat has staked his career on whether or not you like River Song. Yes, she's arguably more important than any other recurring character/not-quite-companion on the show, ever (so that category would also include, um, the Brig and... uh... Rose's mum).
It is far more accurate to say that Moffat has stakes his career on an epic deconstruction of the Doctor's god complex, hence the title of this episode. And, given the previous run of episodes, if you ever thought "The God Complex" referred to anything else, then shame on you. (On a side note, I'd be willing to bet money - not a lot, mind you - that there's an image of the Silence under Eyepatch Lady's eyepatch, so that she's always looking at them. Yeah, light doesn't work that way, but hard science has never exactly been a deal-breaker on this show.)
So there's a maze that's contained to hold a Minotaur-like thing. This thing eats people's faith. It's been thrown in a prison, presumably by other members of its own race. Regardless, the justice system that sentenced this thing decided that a) the death penalty was not an option (because the show is made in Britain but also because if they did execute it, there wouldn't be a plot), and b) a bunch of innocent passer-by could be harvested to keep this thing alive. The entire prison is designed to torment innocent people by showing them what they fear most, or something. That is how the justice system works. Now if a justice system that cruel and unusual could sentence the Minotaur... how heinous must its crimes have been?
My point is that once again the Doctor is called to sympathize with a rampaging murderer, although at least this time he puts the thing down. He does it by doing one of the most memorable things the Seventh Doctor did - he breaks his companion's faith in him. Wait. Didn't Moffat say he despised the Seventh Doctor's run? I'm so confused.
The prison is apparently near Planet France, which gets invaded more than any planet in the Universe, but it also picks up three earth-men. Um, okay. Interestingly, none of them believe in Santa. One's a Muslim, one's a conspiracy nut, and one's a gambler who believes in luck. Frankly, I'd be offended if the show equated belief in conspiracies or belief in luck with belief in my God. Not burning-cars offended, mind you, but still offended.
Okay, so why was this episode made? Because Moffat wanted to deconstruct the Doctor's God Complex, got it. But why was it set in a hotel? Because Moffat thinks that hotels are creepy. Well then you actually have to make the hotel creepy, and not just rely on the whole we're-trapped-in-here-with-a-monster premise. How about some dark corridors?
Now, what Moffat excells at is killing people I don't like (his Season 4 two-parter being the exception - except there Frakwit McRichbugger was important to the plot). So gambler-nut and conspiracy-toolbag are the first to go. And then we spend a lot of time with the chick and grooming her to be the next companion, so you know she's gonna get offed. Because apparently anyone who finds "their room" suddenly loses the will to live - as evidently happens to the Doctor by the end, if anything in "Closing Time" is anything to go by.
Which begs the question of why people go looking for their rooms in the first place.
So what did I like? Well, the monster costume was all right. I liked the Doctor finally coming to his senses and kicking Amy and Rory out before they died. I liked the cheese-eating surrender-planet. I liked the guy from the cheese-eating surrender-planet calling the Doctor out on his inability to save everyone.
It's an average episode, ultimately. It gets a plus one point because, well, because there's not a kid in it.
6 out of 10.
It is far more accurate to say that Moffat has stakes his career on an epic deconstruction of the Doctor's god complex, hence the title of this episode. And, given the previous run of episodes, if you ever thought "The God Complex" referred to anything else, then shame on you. (On a side note, I'd be willing to bet money - not a lot, mind you - that there's an image of the Silence under Eyepatch Lady's eyepatch, so that she's always looking at them. Yeah, light doesn't work that way, but hard science has never exactly been a deal-breaker on this show.)
So there's a maze that's contained to hold a Minotaur-like thing. This thing eats people's faith. It's been thrown in a prison, presumably by other members of its own race. Regardless, the justice system that sentenced this thing decided that a) the death penalty was not an option (because the show is made in Britain but also because if they did execute it, there wouldn't be a plot), and b) a bunch of innocent passer-by could be harvested to keep this thing alive. The entire prison is designed to torment innocent people by showing them what they fear most, or something. That is how the justice system works. Now if a justice system that cruel and unusual could sentence the Minotaur... how heinous must its crimes have been?
My point is that once again the Doctor is called to sympathize with a rampaging murderer, although at least this time he puts the thing down. He does it by doing one of the most memorable things the Seventh Doctor did - he breaks his companion's faith in him. Wait. Didn't Moffat say he despised the Seventh Doctor's run? I'm so confused.
The prison is apparently near Planet France, which gets invaded more than any planet in the Universe, but it also picks up three earth-men. Um, okay. Interestingly, none of them believe in Santa. One's a Muslim, one's a conspiracy nut, and one's a gambler who believes in luck. Frankly, I'd be offended if the show equated belief in conspiracies or belief in luck with belief in my God. Not burning-cars offended, mind you, but still offended.
Okay, so why was this episode made? Because Moffat wanted to deconstruct the Doctor's God Complex, got it. But why was it set in a hotel? Because Moffat thinks that hotels are creepy. Well then you actually have to make the hotel creepy, and not just rely on the whole we're-trapped-in-here-with-a-monster premise. How about some dark corridors?
Now, what Moffat excells at is killing people I don't like (his Season 4 two-parter being the exception - except there Frakwit McRichbugger was important to the plot). So gambler-nut and conspiracy-toolbag are the first to go. And then we spend a lot of time with the chick and grooming her to be the next companion, so you know she's gonna get offed. Because apparently anyone who finds "their room" suddenly loses the will to live - as evidently happens to the Doctor by the end, if anything in "Closing Time" is anything to go by.
Which begs the question of why people go looking for their rooms in the first place.
So what did I like? Well, the monster costume was all right. I liked the Doctor finally coming to his senses and kicking Amy and Rory out before they died. I liked the cheese-eating surrender-planet. I liked the guy from the cheese-eating surrender-planet calling the Doctor out on his inability to save everyone.
It's an average episode, ultimately. It gets a plus one point because, well, because there's not a kid in it.
6 out of 10.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Funny stuff my parents have said while watching "Battlestar Galactica"
I first showed my parents the Miniseries when I was only an episode or two into Season 4. Fortunately, by the time they actually got to the show proper, I had pretty much finished. So whenever they watched it and said anything that was absolutely hilarious in hindsight, I had to do my best not to completely crack up on the spot. Most of these, naturally, had to do with the identities of the Final Five.
Here are some of my favorites. Spoilers for all you very-late-to-the-party people:
Miniseries
After the explosion on Ragnar, Adama and Leoben are trapped in a corridor. Adama turns to Leoben and says "is there another way out of here?" And which point, I am not making this up, my mother says "there must be some kinda way outta here..." (surprisingly, she missed the first three quotes in "Crossroads, Part II").
Miniseries et seq
My mother has accused pretty much every named character in the show of being a Cylon... except Chief Tyrol. This got especially funny when he wanders around on the Algae Planet in "The Eye of Jupiter." And then survives decompression a lot better than Cally in "A Day in the Life."
"Valley of Darkness"
Col. Tigh: "Thank the gods I didn't have kids." Mom: "Uh-oh, are we gonna find out he had kids?"
"The Captain's Hand" et seq
Calling Tory Foster a Cylon pretty much every time she shows up. I'm convinced that one of the main reasons that they made her a Cylon was because she was such an obvious candidate that it would make the other three easier to sell.
"Downloaded"
After Anders blows up the cafe on Cylon-occuped Caprica, D'anna and Boomer haul him out of the rubble. Mother: "Uh-oh, they don't recognize that model." I came this close to completely losing it.
"Crossroads, Part I"
Just when I thought we had reached the end of opportunities for unintentionally hilarious statements, upon hearing the first strains of "All Along the Watchtower," Dad says: "It's Starbuck's favorite song! She's sending them a signal!" So close, and yet so far. (Yeah, none of them bought her death in "Maelstrom.")
Here are some of my favorites. Spoilers for all you very-late-to-the-party people:
Miniseries
After the explosion on Ragnar, Adama and Leoben are trapped in a corridor. Adama turns to Leoben and says "is there another way out of here?" And which point, I am not making this up, my mother says "there must be some kinda way outta here..." (surprisingly, she missed the first three quotes in "Crossroads, Part II").
Miniseries et seq
My mother has accused pretty much every named character in the show of being a Cylon... except Chief Tyrol. This got especially funny when he wanders around on the Algae Planet in "The Eye of Jupiter." And then survives decompression a lot better than Cally in "A Day in the Life."
"Valley of Darkness"
Col. Tigh: "Thank the gods I didn't have kids." Mom: "Uh-oh, are we gonna find out he had kids?"
"The Captain's Hand" et seq
Calling Tory Foster a Cylon pretty much every time she shows up. I'm convinced that one of the main reasons that they made her a Cylon was because she was such an obvious candidate that it would make the other three easier to sell.
"Downloaded"
After Anders blows up the cafe on Cylon-occuped Caprica, D'anna and Boomer haul him out of the rubble. Mother: "Uh-oh, they don't recognize that model." I came this close to completely losing it.
"Crossroads, Part I"
Just when I thought we had reached the end of opportunities for unintentionally hilarious statements, upon hearing the first strains of "All Along the Watchtower," Dad says: "It's Starbuck's favorite song! She's sending them a signal!" So close, and yet so far. (Yeah, none of them bought her death in "Maelstrom.")
Friday, September 23, 2011
Okay... What the Frak?
Ever since Doctor Who came back, I've been... well, miffed about the fact that there are only 14 episodes a season. This is the sort of crap that HBO and whatnot can pull, but only because they have to pay their actors so much to get nekkid. (At least, I assume that's the reason.)
Star Trek ran 26 episodes a season, almost every season, for pretty much all of its incarnations. Buffy? 22. Battlestar Galactica ran concurrently with the first three-ish seasons of Who and had 20 a year (sort of).
During its first six seasons, Doctor Who was churning out something like 40 half-hour episodes a year. 40. When they switched to color, that number came down to hover around 26 until the mid-1980s. (26 half-hour episodes = 13 hour-long episodes, but that only matters to DVD owners. I'm talking about the number of days we get new material, not the total number of hours. Not that I want to watch one episode in five-minute installments.)
In 1984, they pulled a stupid stunt and did a season of 13 hour-long episodes. It was such a disaster that the show was put on hiatus for 18 months... and then it came back with 14 half-hour episodes. So yeah, the new show is an improvement over that...
But...
A Christmas special, plus 13 regular episodes. And during the Tennant years, somebody screwed up his contract so badly that he didn't have to be in one of those 13?
And now there's this. Now, I'm not saying that stuff can't be worth the wait (again, BSG's last half-season certainly was). But come on. You're not doing 20, or 22, or 26 episodes. You're doing 13, plus a Christmas special. Are there really that few writers left in Britain that you have to write them all and start so late?
Now, I'd be more forgiving if Doctor Who were of the same caliber as, say, Battlestar Galactica. But this last season has been mostly disappointing, with three or four exceptions. I don't want to wait seven months for another "Night Terrors."
I'm really hesitant about saying this, because the last time an American got his mitts on Doctor Who we got the Movie... but at least we know how to get our shows out on time.
Star Trek ran 26 episodes a season, almost every season, for pretty much all of its incarnations. Buffy? 22. Battlestar Galactica ran concurrently with the first three-ish seasons of Who and had 20 a year (sort of).
During its first six seasons, Doctor Who was churning out something like 40 half-hour episodes a year. 40. When they switched to color, that number came down to hover around 26 until the mid-1980s. (26 half-hour episodes = 13 hour-long episodes, but that only matters to DVD owners. I'm talking about the number of days we get new material, not the total number of hours. Not that I want to watch one episode in five-minute installments.)
In 1984, they pulled a stupid stunt and did a season of 13 hour-long episodes. It was such a disaster that the show was put on hiatus for 18 months... and then it came back with 14 half-hour episodes. So yeah, the new show is an improvement over that...
But...
A Christmas special, plus 13 regular episodes. And during the Tennant years, somebody screwed up his contract so badly that he didn't have to be in one of those 13?
And now there's this. Now, I'm not saying that stuff can't be worth the wait (again, BSG's last half-season certainly was). But come on. You're not doing 20, or 22, or 26 episodes. You're doing 13, plus a Christmas special. Are there really that few writers left in Britain that you have to write them all and start so late?
Now, I'd be more forgiving if Doctor Who were of the same caliber as, say, Battlestar Galactica. But this last season has been mostly disappointing, with three or four exceptions. I don't want to wait seven months for another "Night Terrors."
I'm really hesitant about saying this, because the last time an American got his mitts on Doctor Who we got the Movie... but at least we know how to get our shows out on time.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
BSG: Rapture
In two of the best scenes of the season, Athena has Helo kill her (because suicide is a sin, and the only Cylon who ever kills themself but nobody else simultaneously is Cavil - twice), and then Helo bitches out Roslin about kidnapping his daughter. Since at the end of the day Roslin is a power-hungry lunatic who would just as soon send everyone who disagrees with her out the airlock, I don't really mind seeing some righteous fury on Helo's part.
And yes, I do mean that Roslin is a power-hungry lunatic. She's arguably the best representation ever of a true benevolent dictator; she really does only want more power as a means of safeguarding the fleet, but it's not clear she even ever wants an election in the first place, she tries to steal that election, she lets a former terrorist be VP because it's the easiest way to get her power back, she hedges forever on the notion of giving Baltar a trial, and once he's acquitted she mocks the notion of a trial and tries to give herself more power so she can just outright execute the next traitor who comes along.
(When all is said and done, though, she's legally the president, and if Zarek wants to complain about that, maybe he shouldn't have given up the Presidency so easily. I mean, he was willing to make a big issue out of it in Season 4; why didn't he grow a spine a season earlier?)
All right, with that political side-track over with, back to the episode. The Cylons turn five of their Raiders back, but one presses on, over the will of the group.
Watch these episodes back-to-back and wonder what precisely made Cavil change his mind. In "Jupiter," he was all "it doesn't matter how long it takes to find Earth" (which fits, given that he alone of the Seven knows what's down there). Suddenly, he says there's too much of a risk. Cavil should still be in covering-his-tracks mode, as he is at the end of the episode when he boxes D'anna. He should relish the idea that he can get Adama to nuke his last best chance to find Earth. (Maybe he's just maneuvering to try to box D'anna already. I don't know. I don't know if the writers knew at this point. I'd really like to know when the writers knew who the Final Five were, and what Cavil's role was.)
Down on the surface, Dee finds Starbuck and gets her doped up on drugs. Starbuck confesses that Lee won't cheat, but Dee's having none of that. They manage to take off, eventually, after Dee manages to slap Starbuck a good one under the guise of keeping her lucid.
Anders and Lee manage to stop the Cylon advance, except that D'anna and Baltar conveniently sneak in the back door after Chief leaves. They unplug all the bombs - and again, note that Chief can't bring himself to detonate the temple. Then it's vision time, and D'anna gets to see the faces of the Final Five, prompting an aneurysm or something. Then it's Baltar's turn. Funnily enough, he does get to see one of the Five's faces, not that he'd know it. Then he gets pistol-whipped and brought back in a body bag.
The star goes nova, and with the episode's running time almost out, everything gets nicely wrapped up by the editor.
Oh, and while that tense battle was going down on the planet, Athena managed to download to a Resurrection Ship (which Caprica-Six just happened to be on), shuttle over to the Basestar where Hera was, rescue her, and then somehow convince Caprica to come back with her. Why, I'm really not sure.
And yes, I do mean that Roslin is a power-hungry lunatic. She's arguably the best representation ever of a true benevolent dictator; she really does only want more power as a means of safeguarding the fleet, but it's not clear she even ever wants an election in the first place, she tries to steal that election, she lets a former terrorist be VP because it's the easiest way to get her power back, she hedges forever on the notion of giving Baltar a trial, and once he's acquitted she mocks the notion of a trial and tries to give herself more power so she can just outright execute the next traitor who comes along.
(When all is said and done, though, she's legally the president, and if Zarek wants to complain about that, maybe he shouldn't have given up the Presidency so easily. I mean, he was willing to make a big issue out of it in Season 4; why didn't he grow a spine a season earlier?)
All right, with that political side-track over with, back to the episode. The Cylons turn five of their Raiders back, but one presses on, over the will of the group.
Watch these episodes back-to-back and wonder what precisely made Cavil change his mind. In "Jupiter," he was all "it doesn't matter how long it takes to find Earth" (which fits, given that he alone of the Seven knows what's down there). Suddenly, he says there's too much of a risk. Cavil should still be in covering-his-tracks mode, as he is at the end of the episode when he boxes D'anna. He should relish the idea that he can get Adama to nuke his last best chance to find Earth. (Maybe he's just maneuvering to try to box D'anna already. I don't know. I don't know if the writers knew at this point. I'd really like to know when the writers knew who the Final Five were, and what Cavil's role was.)
Down on the surface, Dee finds Starbuck and gets her doped up on drugs. Starbuck confesses that Lee won't cheat, but Dee's having none of that. They manage to take off, eventually, after Dee manages to slap Starbuck a good one under the guise of keeping her lucid.
Anders and Lee manage to stop the Cylon advance, except that D'anna and Baltar conveniently sneak in the back door after Chief leaves. They unplug all the bombs - and again, note that Chief can't bring himself to detonate the temple. Then it's vision time, and D'anna gets to see the faces of the Final Five, prompting an aneurysm or something. Then it's Baltar's turn. Funnily enough, he does get to see one of the Five's faces, not that he'd know it. Then he gets pistol-whipped and brought back in a body bag.
The star goes nova, and with the episode's running time almost out, everything gets nicely wrapped up by the editor.
Oh, and while that tense battle was going down on the planet, Athena managed to download to a Resurrection Ship (which Caprica-Six just happened to be on), shuttle over to the Basestar where Hera was, rescue her, and then somehow convince Caprica to come back with her. Why, I'm really not sure.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
...and Another Thing About Caprica
Generally speaking, the science-fiction genre has been a way to tell all sorts of fairy tales with the sort of subtext you couldn't use anywhere else. H.G. Wells did this with the Eloi and the Morlocks, using them to tell a story of a working-class rebellion. It wasn't the main point of The Time Machine, but it was in there.
This approach works because the audience is watching the adventures of people a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (or just a long time ago. Or in the future. Or whatever). They don't expect those people to be us. Captain Kirk can proselytize about a better tomorrow without getting painfully preachy.
Then came Battlestar Galactica, which turned that equation on its head. In his manifesto, Moore notes that the crew of the Galactica "are you and me." But the audience still doesn't mind because they're in spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace. You think I would watch "Dirty Hands" if it weren't an episode of a science-fiction show? And that's just the most obvious polemic in the series; you don't have to be a partisan hack to notice that they're putting all sorts of references to the War on Terror, torture, Iraq, justice, religion, and so on into the show.
Now some of this subtext is probably just a way of making the unfamiliar familiar. For example, Roslin gets sworn in aboard a futuristic jetliner, much like LBJ was sworn in on Air Force One. I don't think they intend to compare the series as an allegory to Vietnam, and I don't think anything Roslin does particularly mirrors the Great Society, but just about everyone who watched the Miniseries could pick up on the post-Dallas mood. Cally gets to play Jack Ruby in one episode, even though Boomer wasn't a sniper and her target lived. There's a reference to the "Daisy Girl" ad, and the girl isn't even playing with daisies. Hell, there's even a point where the show digs up something familiar to the audience as a way of unsettling the audience; by the time "All Along the Watchtower" makes its appearance, you've accepted the Colonial culture as a sister culture. You don't expect them to start quoting Star Wars or listening to the Beatles. They're "us" and "not-us" at the same time, which is what makes the fact that "Watchtower" exists in their universe a big slice of wham in an episode that's already nearly reached a critical mass of wham.
But in Caprica, they're already in a familiar setting. Caprica depicts a society that is maybe 10-20 years ahead of our own (ignoring the interplanetary travel). So when this society gets hit by a terrorist attack, and a barely-competent investigator starts barging in on private property just to get some good press, it hits a tad too close to home.
Suddenly, the show has abandoned one of the central tenants of political science fiction; that this all happens to people who are not us. Caprica continues the BSG theme that these people are us, but we're looking for escapism here, not a subtext so heavy that it's become plain old text.
This approach works because the audience is watching the adventures of people a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (or just a long time ago. Or in the future. Or whatever). They don't expect those people to be us. Captain Kirk can proselytize about a better tomorrow without getting painfully preachy.
Then came Battlestar Galactica, which turned that equation on its head. In his manifesto, Moore notes that the crew of the Galactica "are you and me." But the audience still doesn't mind because they're in spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace. You think I would watch "Dirty Hands" if it weren't an episode of a science-fiction show? And that's just the most obvious polemic in the series; you don't have to be a partisan hack to notice that they're putting all sorts of references to the War on Terror, torture, Iraq, justice, religion, and so on into the show.
Now some of this subtext is probably just a way of making the unfamiliar familiar. For example, Roslin gets sworn in aboard a futuristic jetliner, much like LBJ was sworn in on Air Force One. I don't think they intend to compare the series as an allegory to Vietnam, and I don't think anything Roslin does particularly mirrors the Great Society, but just about everyone who watched the Miniseries could pick up on the post-Dallas mood. Cally gets to play Jack Ruby in one episode, even though Boomer wasn't a sniper and her target lived. There's a reference to the "Daisy Girl" ad, and the girl isn't even playing with daisies. Hell, there's even a point where the show digs up something familiar to the audience as a way of unsettling the audience; by the time "All Along the Watchtower" makes its appearance, you've accepted the Colonial culture as a sister culture. You don't expect them to start quoting Star Wars or listening to the Beatles. They're "us" and "not-us" at the same time, which is what makes the fact that "Watchtower" exists in their universe a big slice of wham in an episode that's already nearly reached a critical mass of wham.
But in Caprica, they're already in a familiar setting. Caprica depicts a society that is maybe 10-20 years ahead of our own (ignoring the interplanetary travel). So when this society gets hit by a terrorist attack, and a barely-competent investigator starts barging in on private property just to get some good press, it hits a tad too close to home.
Suddenly, the show has abandoned one of the central tenants of political science fiction; that this all happens to people who are not us. Caprica continues the BSG theme that these people are us, but we're looking for escapism here, not a subtext so heavy that it's become plain old text.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Impressions of Caprica
So I'm now three episodes into Caprica, for which there may or may not be individual reviews, because even moreso than BSG this show is really adhering to the concept of being one long film.
But that's not to say that I can't make some observations about things I like (and things I don't), and some guesses about why the show ultimately failed.
#1: The Pedigree
I have some issues with the finale of Battlestar Galactica, but one thing I'm incredibly happy it did was virtually kill off any chance of a sequel. No, the reason I'm happy about this is not because I don't want to see more of the Galactica 'verse, but because a sequel simply couldn't hold up to the very impressive level of quality that BSG pulled off. It prevented subsequent geniuses from coming in and wrecking the Galactica legacy with a bunch of subpar spinoffs.
To demonstrate what I mean, just look at the Star Trek franchise. Let's ignore DS9 for a moment because I know that opinion is highly divided on that one, and just look at the other three incarnations since 1987: first you had TNG, which struggled for a little while to find its footing. Then it had a good run starting in the third or fourth season, but by the end the writers were obviously struggling to come up with good ideas. As soon as TNG got promoted from television to film, they created Voyager, which was basically as far away from DS9 as they could get; DS9 would have ongoing story and character arcs and stay in one place, while Voyager would thump the reset button every week and never stay in the same place. You can't really say that DS9 is just TNG on a space station, because there was a lot more going on there. But I think it would be accurate to say that Voyager is just TNG trying to get back to Earth (assuming you ignore the divergent qualities of each).
And after Voyager, there was Enterprise, which was basically TNG in the past. See, Deep Space Nine brought something new to the table, and it was better for it. I would argue that DS9 was better than TNG, but I also recognize that that's just personal opinon talking. However, Voyager and Enterprise showed an obvious decline in quality. So of the more recent Star Trek incarnations, we've only really had one that was even arguably better than its predecessors.
I could use other examples, but with Moore, Thompson, Weddle and Taylor all DS9 stalwarts, Star Trek seemed like the right one to go with. My point is that just like novels and films, sequels to television shows tend to suck.
#2: Prequelitis
Another problem that Caprica has is one that it shares with the Star Wars prequels. And no, I'm not talking about poorly-written characters, lousy dialogue, bad acting, or an over-reliance on CGI in place of storytelling. Caprica's not really guilty of any of that (although any show that needs to start each episode by telling you precisely what the main characters are thinking probably isn't doing everything right).
Rather, you know how it all is going to end up. The biggest twist that the Star Wars prequels could have delivered would have been to reveal that Darth Vader was actually not Anakin Skywalker (somebody on the Caprica staff knew this. Two words: Willie Adama). But that didn't happen. All we prequels really told us was that Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force. Gee, Obi-wan Kenobi used those exact words about 30 minutes into Star Wars. Likewise, all Caprica is going to tell us is that the Cylons were created by man, which is something that all but three episodes of the first three BSG seasons told us at the beginning of each episode.
But there's another problem here, one that Caprica doesn't share with Star Wars. In the prequels, we knew what Palpatine's plan was the entire time. He was going to create the Galactic Empire. We'd already seen that. So we knew there was an end goal in mind. In contrast, the Cylons never really had a "plan" beyond "nuke everything until it's dead" over in BSG (until its final season), and Sister Polygamy's plan in Caprica is a) vague as all hell, and b) not really clearly tied in to the events of 58 years later. (Palpatine manipulating things behind the scenes -> Empire. Monotheistic terrorists -> ...um, Cylons, somehow.) And then there's the stuff about Tauron languages and other stuff that never came up in Galactica. And don't tell me it's because the Colonies aren't unified yet, because there's apparently a unified court system, and even just before Galactica (per "Taking a Break from All Your Worries"), people from one colony needed a visa to work on another one.
So between these two issues, I'm a bit curious as to why this was a spinoff of Galactica and not its own stand-alone thing. And don't say it's because Galactica had brand recognition. That's a stupid argument for so many reasons.
1) In 2003, the words "Battlestar Galactica" meant "that campy Star Wars ripoff from the 70s." Five years later, it meant "the best science-fiction show ever made." Moore and Eick took the name of the show and completely re-branded it.
2) Galactica fans were turned off by the finale. Look at the viewing figures for "Daybreak" versus the figures for Caprica's pilot.
3) At times it tries too hard to be a Galactica clone (pyramid, the Colonial Anthem), while at other times it has to pointlessly distance itself from its parent show.
Okay, so that's a broad run-down of some of the problems with the show. Here are some of the things I like about it so far:
Daniel Graystone
He's not a corrupt industrialist who's only in it for the money. He seems at least somewhat distrubed by some of the ways his technology has been used, and more importantly, he's trying to chase down the virtual ghost of his daughter. Yeah, his wife's a loony who can't let go of the Idiot Ball for two damn seconds (seriously, she makes Ellen Tigh and Kara Thrace look like beacons of stability), but that's hardly his fault. Faced with some of his unintended consequences, he swore to give his holoband profits to charity. We'll see if that plays out, but it's a nice gesture anyway.
Sam Adama
Yes, the paranoid wingnut's second-favorite character is the gay gangster. (I'll probably have to say this again and again, but I don't mind political subtext so long as you neither rub my face in it nor overemphasize it at the expense of the story.) I just wish they'd stop peppering his dialogue with random Tauron words (seriously, even Worf wasn't that bad by DS9).
Zoe
Thank you, Dawson Casting. It makes me feel less guilty for saying this: Zoe is hot. It's just... what's going on with her, exactly? This geeky nerd has been making Robo-Zoe dance (and there's a scene where he does... something to the robot's crotch area). Is Robo-Zoe programmed to follow the Second Law of Robotics, or is she just willfully ignoring the creep factor in order to keep up her disguise?
But that's not to say that I can't make some observations about things I like (and things I don't), and some guesses about why the show ultimately failed.
#1: The Pedigree
I have some issues with the finale of Battlestar Galactica, but one thing I'm incredibly happy it did was virtually kill off any chance of a sequel. No, the reason I'm happy about this is not because I don't want to see more of the Galactica 'verse, but because a sequel simply couldn't hold up to the very impressive level of quality that BSG pulled off. It prevented subsequent geniuses from coming in and wrecking the Galactica legacy with a bunch of subpar spinoffs.
To demonstrate what I mean, just look at the Star Trek franchise. Let's ignore DS9 for a moment because I know that opinion is highly divided on that one, and just look at the other three incarnations since 1987: first you had TNG, which struggled for a little while to find its footing. Then it had a good run starting in the third or fourth season, but by the end the writers were obviously struggling to come up with good ideas. As soon as TNG got promoted from television to film, they created Voyager, which was basically as far away from DS9 as they could get; DS9 would have ongoing story and character arcs and stay in one place, while Voyager would thump the reset button every week and never stay in the same place. You can't really say that DS9 is just TNG on a space station, because there was a lot more going on there. But I think it would be accurate to say that Voyager is just TNG trying to get back to Earth (assuming you ignore the divergent qualities of each).
And after Voyager, there was Enterprise, which was basically TNG in the past. See, Deep Space Nine brought something new to the table, and it was better for it. I would argue that DS9 was better than TNG, but I also recognize that that's just personal opinon talking. However, Voyager and Enterprise showed an obvious decline in quality. So of the more recent Star Trek incarnations, we've only really had one that was even arguably better than its predecessors.
I could use other examples, but with Moore, Thompson, Weddle and Taylor all DS9 stalwarts, Star Trek seemed like the right one to go with. My point is that just like novels and films, sequels to television shows tend to suck.
#2: Prequelitis
Another problem that Caprica has is one that it shares with the Star Wars prequels. And no, I'm not talking about poorly-written characters, lousy dialogue, bad acting, or an over-reliance on CGI in place of storytelling. Caprica's not really guilty of any of that (although any show that needs to start each episode by telling you precisely what the main characters are thinking probably isn't doing everything right).
Rather, you know how it all is going to end up. The biggest twist that the Star Wars prequels could have delivered would have been to reveal that Darth Vader was actually not Anakin Skywalker (somebody on the Caprica staff knew this. Two words: Willie Adama). But that didn't happen. All we prequels really told us was that Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force. Gee, Obi-wan Kenobi used those exact words about 30 minutes into Star Wars. Likewise, all Caprica is going to tell us is that the Cylons were created by man, which is something that all but three episodes of the first three BSG seasons told us at the beginning of each episode.
But there's another problem here, one that Caprica doesn't share with Star Wars. In the prequels, we knew what Palpatine's plan was the entire time. He was going to create the Galactic Empire. We'd already seen that. So we knew there was an end goal in mind. In contrast, the Cylons never really had a "plan" beyond "nuke everything until it's dead" over in BSG (until its final season), and Sister Polygamy's plan in Caprica is a) vague as all hell, and b) not really clearly tied in to the events of 58 years later. (Palpatine manipulating things behind the scenes -> Empire. Monotheistic terrorists -> ...um, Cylons, somehow.) And then there's the stuff about Tauron languages and other stuff that never came up in Galactica. And don't tell me it's because the Colonies aren't unified yet, because there's apparently a unified court system, and even just before Galactica (per "Taking a Break from All Your Worries"), people from one colony needed a visa to work on another one.
So between these two issues, I'm a bit curious as to why this was a spinoff of Galactica and not its own stand-alone thing. And don't say it's because Galactica had brand recognition. That's a stupid argument for so many reasons.
1) In 2003, the words "Battlestar Galactica" meant "that campy Star Wars ripoff from the 70s." Five years later, it meant "the best science-fiction show ever made." Moore and Eick took the name of the show and completely re-branded it.
2) Galactica fans were turned off by the finale. Look at the viewing figures for "Daybreak" versus the figures for Caprica's pilot.
3) At times it tries too hard to be a Galactica clone (pyramid, the Colonial Anthem), while at other times it has to pointlessly distance itself from its parent show.
Okay, so that's a broad run-down of some of the problems with the show. Here are some of the things I like about it so far:
Daniel Graystone
He's not a corrupt industrialist who's only in it for the money. He seems at least somewhat distrubed by some of the ways his technology has been used, and more importantly, he's trying to chase down the virtual ghost of his daughter. Yeah, his wife's a loony who can't let go of the Idiot Ball for two damn seconds (seriously, she makes Ellen Tigh and Kara Thrace look like beacons of stability), but that's hardly his fault. Faced with some of his unintended consequences, he swore to give his holoband profits to charity. We'll see if that plays out, but it's a nice gesture anyway.
Sam Adama
Yes, the paranoid wingnut's second-favorite character is the gay gangster. (I'll probably have to say this again and again, but I don't mind political subtext so long as you neither rub my face in it nor overemphasize it at the expense of the story.) I just wish they'd stop peppering his dialogue with random Tauron words (seriously, even Worf wasn't that bad by DS9).
Zoe
Thank you, Dawson Casting. It makes me feel less guilty for saying this: Zoe is hot. It's just... what's going on with her, exactly? This geeky nerd has been making Robo-Zoe dance (and there's a scene where he does... something to the robot's crotch area). Is Robo-Zoe programmed to follow the Second Law of Robotics, or is she just willfully ignoring the creep factor in order to keep up her disguise?
Sunday, September 18, 2011
BSG: Maelstrom
Spoilers. Like you didn't know.
If you were a BSG fan back when this episode was initially broadcast, you probably already knew the big thing that happened in it. The production team didn't exactly try to keep Katee Sackhoff's departure a secret, other than getting her to sign a confidentiality agreement.
I didn't watch BSG on its initial run, for the relatively simple reason that a show with a title as ludicrous as Battlestar Galactica couldn't actually be any good. (Now, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that's a world-class title right there.) Anyway, I knew that this had to be coming up. I was just really surprised that this was the way that they went about doing it.
So Starbuck's been having creepy dreams about Leoben, and that mandala she painted back in her Old Caprica apartment. Now I'll be the first to point out that Starbuck's head was never screwed on all that tight, but between Leoben mind-frakking her on New Caprica (and then mind-frakking her in the other sense in her dreams) and her discovery that she painted a design that was almost identical to one painted 2,000/3,600/4,000 years ago (delete according to whichever source says what), she's pretty much gone off the deep end.
Not helping matters is this invisible Heavy Raider that only she can see. (Gee, a Cylon only you are aware of? Dr. Baltar might be able to help with that, and he's not even a psychiatrist!) So after developing Starbuck's gun camera footage, everyone sees that there was no Heavy Raider. (Damn that gun camera footage, Starbuck, it's always proving you're nuts. "I saw a Heavy Raider." Yeah, right. "I found Earth." Yeah, ri... oh.)
Adama passes the buck to Apollo about whether or not to ground her, and both men will live long enough to regret Lee's decision. In this scene, Lee mentions that "In peacetime, [Cottle] would ground us all." It's an indirect nod to the fact that reinforcements simply aren't coming. You have to play the cards you're dealt. And you don't ground your top gun just because she's got a little case of PTSD. (Come to think of it, these guys are really, really bad at not grounding people. Kat was clearly dying of radiation poisoning, Starbuck is clearly going off the deep end... but then, expecting Lee Adama to ever approach the subject of Kara Thrace rationally and objectively is a bit like asking Cavil and Zarek to be best friends. It's just not going to happen.)
So Lee volunteers to be Kara's wing, and they go off on one last CAP together. She sees the Heavy Raider again and engages, chasing it right down the eye of a storm (the titular Maelstrom) until it shoots her. Maybe.
See, I'm not clear on this. The first time she ran across the Heavy Raider, it winged her, but there wasn't a scratch on her Viper afterwards. (Also, all throughout this episode, the Heavy Raider shoots the same ammunition and with the same frequency as a normal Raider; contrast this to the behavior of the HR in "Scattered.") Now it manages to shoot a hole in her canopy, causing her Viper to go into an uncontrolled tumble. Starbuck falls unconscious.
So far, so good. You could still have it either way at this point, so long as you avoid having Starbuck fully regain consciousness before the big firework. Either the Raider exists or it doesn't; either way, Starbuck thinks it does, and she's had an accident chasing it down. Either way, it's still effective as far as writing her out goes.
So then we cut to Starbuck's apartment on Caprica. Leoben turns off her alarm clock and wakes her up. They ramble on about destiny for a while before Leoben shows Starbuck her mother's death and lets her comfort her dying mother, something Starbuck never actually got to do. Having thus come to terms with death, Starbuck regains consciousness. There's a shot that heavily implies that Lee sees the Heavy Raider (thus making it real), and then Starbuck's Viper explodes. Kablooey!
...and if I hadn't left a few things out, that would have been a satisfying episode and a believable death scene.
The problem is that Head-Leoben invites Kara to "explore the space between life and death." Then, after she regains consciousness, Kara tells Lee not to worry, and that she'll see him on the other side. We see her reach for the ejection lever, and then decide against it. Yeah, it's making it clearer that she's accepting her imminent death, but the way it plays out also suggests that there's nothing other than her own crazy death wish (and the urge to explore "the space between life and death") that's keeping her from pulling out in time.
The point is, this episode planted some clear seeds, and then relied on the rumor machine (Katee left! She's expressed vocal disappointment with the show, and promises never to return!) to do its work for it. The story was originally going to be a lot simpler; Starbuck and Apollo would be stuck in a dogfight, and Starbuck would sacrifice herself so Apollo could get away. Would that have been better? Doubtful. Katee Sackhoff asked to be given another encounter with Leoben, and I certainly think that that was the right decision. You couldn't possibly kill her off, having established that she has a destiny, without her most vocal prophet/stalker telling her yup, this is where you get off. And it does redefine the relationship between them, which is important. But those final seconds just play out for too long.
And furthermore, I like the ambiguity about whether or not the Raider exists. But having a shot that implies Lee sees it, and then telling us in the commentary or interviews or whatever that he didn't is just, well, wrong. I can understand the need to put out a statement shutting down insane rumors like Daniel and Starbuck were related (seriously, where the frak did that come from?), but if your intention is that the Raider never existed, don't put a misleading visual effects shot in there.
None of this, however, is really meant to damn the episode. I know what happens later, but I'm still moved to (manly) tears watching Starbuck's final moments. So it drops a few hints for us; for Lee, and for all the other characters, she's gone forever. Her ship's in pieces.
You might say "ratings stunt," but the next episode plays her death incredibly straight. A grieving Lee Adama ends up getting sucked into Romo Lampkin's emotional manipulation, which leads to him resigning from the service and becoming the Caprican Delegate to the Quorum of Twelve, which in turn causes him to spend some time as Zarek's stooge and some time as the Acting President of the Colonies. And that's just the most obvious plot threat launched from this episode.
My main point is that by this point, they're pandering to the DVD audience rather than the initial-broadcast audience. Given all the clues in this episode, and without immediate access to press coverage of Sackhoff's departure, nobody watching this on DVD could really think she was gone for good.
If you were a BSG fan back when this episode was initially broadcast, you probably already knew the big thing that happened in it. The production team didn't exactly try to keep Katee Sackhoff's departure a secret, other than getting her to sign a confidentiality agreement.
I didn't watch BSG on its initial run, for the relatively simple reason that a show with a title as ludicrous as Battlestar Galactica couldn't actually be any good. (Now, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that's a world-class title right there.) Anyway, I knew that this had to be coming up. I was just really surprised that this was the way that they went about doing it.
So Starbuck's been having creepy dreams about Leoben, and that mandala she painted back in her Old Caprica apartment. Now I'll be the first to point out that Starbuck's head was never screwed on all that tight, but between Leoben mind-frakking her on New Caprica (and then mind-frakking her in the other sense in her dreams) and her discovery that she painted a design that was almost identical to one painted 2,000/3,600/4,000 years ago (delete according to whichever source says what), she's pretty much gone off the deep end.
Not helping matters is this invisible Heavy Raider that only she can see. (Gee, a Cylon only you are aware of? Dr. Baltar might be able to help with that, and he's not even a psychiatrist!) So after developing Starbuck's gun camera footage, everyone sees that there was no Heavy Raider. (Damn that gun camera footage, Starbuck, it's always proving you're nuts. "I saw a Heavy Raider." Yeah, right. "I found Earth." Yeah, ri... oh.)
Adama passes the buck to Apollo about whether or not to ground her, and both men will live long enough to regret Lee's decision. In this scene, Lee mentions that "In peacetime, [Cottle] would ground us all." It's an indirect nod to the fact that reinforcements simply aren't coming. You have to play the cards you're dealt. And you don't ground your top gun just because she's got a little case of PTSD. (Come to think of it, these guys are really, really bad at not grounding people. Kat was clearly dying of radiation poisoning, Starbuck is clearly going off the deep end... but then, expecting Lee Adama to ever approach the subject of Kara Thrace rationally and objectively is a bit like asking Cavil and Zarek to be best friends. It's just not going to happen.)
So Lee volunteers to be Kara's wing, and they go off on one last CAP together. She sees the Heavy Raider again and engages, chasing it right down the eye of a storm (the titular Maelstrom) until it shoots her. Maybe.
See, I'm not clear on this. The first time she ran across the Heavy Raider, it winged her, but there wasn't a scratch on her Viper afterwards. (Also, all throughout this episode, the Heavy Raider shoots the same ammunition and with the same frequency as a normal Raider; contrast this to the behavior of the HR in "Scattered.") Now it manages to shoot a hole in her canopy, causing her Viper to go into an uncontrolled tumble. Starbuck falls unconscious.
So far, so good. You could still have it either way at this point, so long as you avoid having Starbuck fully regain consciousness before the big firework. Either the Raider exists or it doesn't; either way, Starbuck thinks it does, and she's had an accident chasing it down. Either way, it's still effective as far as writing her out goes.
So then we cut to Starbuck's apartment on Caprica. Leoben turns off her alarm clock and wakes her up. They ramble on about destiny for a while before Leoben shows Starbuck her mother's death and lets her comfort her dying mother, something Starbuck never actually got to do. Having thus come to terms with death, Starbuck regains consciousness. There's a shot that heavily implies that Lee sees the Heavy Raider (thus making it real), and then Starbuck's Viper explodes. Kablooey!
...and if I hadn't left a few things out, that would have been a satisfying episode and a believable death scene.
The problem is that Head-Leoben invites Kara to "explore the space between life and death." Then, after she regains consciousness, Kara tells Lee not to worry, and that she'll see him on the other side. We see her reach for the ejection lever, and then decide against it. Yeah, it's making it clearer that she's accepting her imminent death, but the way it plays out also suggests that there's nothing other than her own crazy death wish (and the urge to explore "the space between life and death") that's keeping her from pulling out in time.
The point is, this episode planted some clear seeds, and then relied on the rumor machine (Katee left! She's expressed vocal disappointment with the show, and promises never to return!) to do its work for it. The story was originally going to be a lot simpler; Starbuck and Apollo would be stuck in a dogfight, and Starbuck would sacrifice herself so Apollo could get away. Would that have been better? Doubtful. Katee Sackhoff asked to be given another encounter with Leoben, and I certainly think that that was the right decision. You couldn't possibly kill her off, having established that she has a destiny, without her most vocal prophet/stalker telling her yup, this is where you get off. And it does redefine the relationship between them, which is important. But those final seconds just play out for too long.
And furthermore, I like the ambiguity about whether or not the Raider exists. But having a shot that implies Lee sees it, and then telling us in the commentary or interviews or whatever that he didn't is just, well, wrong. I can understand the need to put out a statement shutting down insane rumors like Daniel and Starbuck were related (seriously, where the frak did that come from?), but if your intention is that the Raider never existed, don't put a misleading visual effects shot in there.
None of this, however, is really meant to damn the episode. I know what happens later, but I'm still moved to (manly) tears watching Starbuck's final moments. So it drops a few hints for us; for Lee, and for all the other characters, she's gone forever. Her ship's in pieces.
You might say "ratings stunt," but the next episode plays her death incredibly straight. A grieving Lee Adama ends up getting sucked into Romo Lampkin's emotional manipulation, which leads to him resigning from the service and becoming the Caprican Delegate to the Quorum of Twelve, which in turn causes him to spend some time as Zarek's stooge and some time as the Acting President of the Colonies. And that's just the most obvious plot threat launched from this episode.
My main point is that by this point, they're pandering to the DVD audience rather than the initial-broadcast audience. Given all the clues in this episode, and without immediate access to press coverage of Sackhoff's departure, nobody watching this on DVD could really think she was gone for good.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Who Review: The Girl Who Waited
Tom McRae hasn't, to the best of my knowledge, worked on the show since Season 2. And since Season 2 was the bad season, I was a little bit skeptical...
Silly me.
Okay, so they go to a planet, and once again the Doctor doesn't bother to check the news or anything because they land in the middle of a plague. A quarantine facility shifts time in order to save people. The Doctor and Rory get stuck in one time-stream, while Amy gets stuck in another.
There are two fantastic concepts here. First, the whole idea of splitting time-streams so that some people move faster than others is utterly brilliant, and I hope the idea is revisited. Then there's the notion that the plague could kill the Doctor (but not Rory or Amy, who are immune), so he has to stay in the TARDIS and be Mission Control for the entire episode. I would not mind seeing more episodes like this. Not because Matt Smith is annoying; far from it, but it was nice to actually go all the way with what's been a common theme since 2005 and actually force the Doctor to act entirely through other people.
Amy gets chased around not-Aperture-Science-honest by faceless medic-droids that want to give her medicine that will kill her (Moffat Cliche Number 3: Literal-Minded Medical Robots Gone Amok). Way back in "Gridlock," when those two clowns drugged Martha, I first wondered about the way future medicine would affect our heroes, and it's nice to see that someone is finally taking this issue seriously. Which is another great plus in this episode's favor.
Rory gets equipped with a pair of glasses that let him hear the Doctor, while the Doctor can see whatever the glasses see. Then he goes in search of wifey. Small problem: it's been 36 years for Amy, and those 36 years have not been kind to Amy, Amy's psyche, and the makeup and wardrobe departments.
Which brings us to utterly stupid thing number one: Old-Amy's costume looks like the sort of thing I could bash together without any budget whatsoever. Maybe that's the point, but I can't help but think of Old-Amy as a sort of Joan of Arc with Nerf armor. So for the rest of this review, I'm going to call her Joan of Nerf.
Anyway, Joan of Nerf isn't big on the whole "rescue Amy before she becomes me" thing, since she is Amy (since she has all her memories) and she doesn't want to die. But other-Amy is still out there, somehow, and they eventually strike a bargain to rescue both versions after loads and loads of heartstring-tugging.
But then the Doctor reneges on the deal and only saves the younger, hotter, less angsty version, justifying himself because "I said I'd save her, and I did." Except Joan of Nerf has all of Amy's memories, and per YOUR VERY ARGUMENT in "The Almost People," that makes her just as much a person as Amy.
That's less a Stupid Thing than it is a Continuity Problem, but Moffat can duck around that by claiming that Big Bang 2 yargle arb fargle.
Stupid Thing Number Two is the fight scene at the end, which demonstrates the clear advantage of having a trained ballerina in your cast. What, did you think a stunt double wouldn't work? Joan of Nerf is already wearing (awful) make-up.
And now I have to do the thing I hate doing, which is critique acting. I'm not an actor, I don't know subpar acting when I see it, so I really only ever do this when there's a noticeable problem, and there is one here. See, Joan of Nerf is supposed to hate the Doctor. She's been spending the last 36 years doing two things; hiding from medic-droids that will kill her, and nursing a festering hatred of the Doctor. But Joan of Nerf also still loves Rory, and because of that, and the fact that she's Amy, who is apparently Time Santa as far as sorting out paradoxes goes, so she's got to end up being a hero. While there's no doubt that Karen Gillan can act off of herself, she doesn't really pull off the emotional weight that Joan of Nerf is supposed to be carrying. Again, that's less a Stupid Thing and more an inconvenience. She's delivered really great performances on other occasions (two words: "save him" in "Amy's Choice"), but it just felt a tad flat here.
I guess I have to mention how, just as in "The Almost People," we knew the extra person wasn't going to come back, but it was nice to see everyone acknowledge that. I would have liked a little bit more from the Doctor about how necessary it is to leave her behind - and frankly, I'm surprised Joan of Nerf got totally offed, unlike Jenny in "The Doctor's Daughter" or even River in "Forest of the Dead." (Moffat is going out of his way to tie up loose ends. I don't know whether that's a good thing or not.) I'm also surprised she didn't go down fighting, but, as you'll see when I get around to reviewing BSG's "Maelstrom," I tend to misjudge how characters are going to die. (Agh! I came this close to finishing a Who Review without mentioning Galactica.)
So now all we have to do is age the Doctor, and clone Rory, and we'll have gone full circle on everything.
7 out of 10. A number of great ideas. Better follow-through would have been nice.
Silly me.
Okay, so they go to a planet, and once again the Doctor doesn't bother to check the news or anything because they land in the middle of a plague. A quarantine facility shifts time in order to save people. The Doctor and Rory get stuck in one time-stream, while Amy gets stuck in another.
There are two fantastic concepts here. First, the whole idea of splitting time-streams so that some people move faster than others is utterly brilliant, and I hope the idea is revisited. Then there's the notion that the plague could kill the Doctor (but not Rory or Amy, who are immune), so he has to stay in the TARDIS and be Mission Control for the entire episode. I would not mind seeing more episodes like this. Not because Matt Smith is annoying; far from it, but it was nice to actually go all the way with what's been a common theme since 2005 and actually force the Doctor to act entirely through other people.
Amy gets chased around not-Aperture-Science-honest by faceless medic-droids that want to give her medicine that will kill her (Moffat Cliche Number 3: Literal-Minded Medical Robots Gone Amok). Way back in "Gridlock," when those two clowns drugged Martha, I first wondered about the way future medicine would affect our heroes, and it's nice to see that someone is finally taking this issue seriously. Which is another great plus in this episode's favor.
Rory gets equipped with a pair of glasses that let him hear the Doctor, while the Doctor can see whatever the glasses see. Then he goes in search of wifey. Small problem: it's been 36 years for Amy, and those 36 years have not been kind to Amy, Amy's psyche, and the makeup and wardrobe departments.
Which brings us to utterly stupid thing number one: Old-Amy's costume looks like the sort of thing I could bash together without any budget whatsoever. Maybe that's the point, but I can't help but think of Old-Amy as a sort of Joan of Arc with Nerf armor. So for the rest of this review, I'm going to call her Joan of Nerf.
Anyway, Joan of Nerf isn't big on the whole "rescue Amy before she becomes me" thing, since she is Amy (since she has all her memories) and she doesn't want to die. But other-Amy is still out there, somehow, and they eventually strike a bargain to rescue both versions after loads and loads of heartstring-tugging.
But then the Doctor reneges on the deal and only saves the younger, hotter, less angsty version, justifying himself because "I said I'd save her, and I did." Except Joan of Nerf has all of Amy's memories, and per YOUR VERY ARGUMENT in "The Almost People," that makes her just as much a person as Amy.
That's less a Stupid Thing than it is a Continuity Problem, but Moffat can duck around that by claiming that Big Bang 2 yargle arb fargle.
Stupid Thing Number Two is the fight scene at the end, which demonstrates the clear advantage of having a trained ballerina in your cast. What, did you think a stunt double wouldn't work? Joan of Nerf is already wearing (awful) make-up.
And now I have to do the thing I hate doing, which is critique acting. I'm not an actor, I don't know subpar acting when I see it, so I really only ever do this when there's a noticeable problem, and there is one here. See, Joan of Nerf is supposed to hate the Doctor. She's been spending the last 36 years doing two things; hiding from medic-droids that will kill her, and nursing a festering hatred of the Doctor. But Joan of Nerf also still loves Rory, and because of that, and the fact that she's Amy, who is apparently Time Santa as far as sorting out paradoxes goes, so she's got to end up being a hero. While there's no doubt that Karen Gillan can act off of herself, she doesn't really pull off the emotional weight that Joan of Nerf is supposed to be carrying. Again, that's less a Stupid Thing and more an inconvenience. She's delivered really great performances on other occasions (two words: "save him" in "Amy's Choice"), but it just felt a tad flat here.
I guess I have to mention how, just as in "The Almost People," we knew the extra person wasn't going to come back, but it was nice to see everyone acknowledge that. I would have liked a little bit more from the Doctor about how necessary it is to leave her behind - and frankly, I'm surprised Joan of Nerf got totally offed, unlike Jenny in "The Doctor's Daughter" or even River in "Forest of the Dead." (Moffat is going out of his way to tie up loose ends. I don't know whether that's a good thing or not.) I'm also surprised she didn't go down fighting, but, as you'll see when I get around to reviewing BSG's "Maelstrom," I tend to misjudge how characters are going to die. (Agh! I came this close to finishing a Who Review without mentioning Galactica.)
So now all we have to do is age the Doctor, and clone Rory, and we'll have gone full circle on everything.
7 out of 10. A number of great ideas. Better follow-through would have been nice.
Friday, September 16, 2011
BSG: The Eye of Jupiter
Between the occupation of New Caprica and Baltar's subsequent Basestar vacation, the writers needed to come up with a frakking good idea why the audience wouldn't get to see all 12 Cylon models running around.
And the idea the writers came up with was good enough to breathe another season and a half of life into a show that was beginning to lose its traction. (Is that really a fair assessment? Try to picture the way the bulk of Season 4 would have gone if the Final Five were just models 7 and 9-12, as opposed to being fundamentally different from the others.) Enter the Final Five, the five not-yet-revealed Cylon models who aren't in contact with the other seven.
Baltar mentioned them first in "Torn," and then everyone started using the term, presumably because they were programmed not to think about the Final Five, and that extended to calling the Final Five the Final Five.
Then in "Hero," the Cylons engaged in an absolutely insane plot to get a former prisoner to kill Adama, which told me all I needed to know about the Final Five; namely, that the other seven weren't in contact with the Five, and that the likelihood of any of the Five having sleeper programming was practically nil.
So now we come to the Algae Planet, or as I like to call it, Overexposed Planet Number Four. Caprica was overexposed with a gold filter, Kobol was overexposed with a green filter, New Caprica was overexposed with a blue filter and tons of fog (except in "Unfinished Business" for some reason), the Algae planet was overexposed with a blue filter, and Earth will just be plain overexposed.
Anyway, on this planet is the Temple of Five, which was built by the Thirteenth Tribe but apparently contains some sort of clue about not only the location of Earth, but also the identities of the Final Five. Talk about convenient.
Actually, no, please do not talk about convenient. There are two different conversations in this episode where characters go out of their way to say how totally random it is that both the Colonial and Cylon fleets converged on this planet at once, and that it must be the will of God, the gods, or Ronald D. Moore. This is what we call "lampshade hanging," and we don't need none of that!
Baltar, because he actually is a genius, managed to decipher a riddle spoken by the Basestar's hybrid, and that led them to the Algae planet. Meanwhile, the humans only found the planet because they were looking for food to eat. Which group is supposed to be the ones interpreting religious scrolls looking for Earth again? Anyway, Roslin gets right down to business interpreting religious scrolls as soon as Tyrol reports back that he's found a temple that looks surprisingly like the main part of Ragnar Anchorage... I mean, a temple that was built by the Thirteenth Tribe.
(Now, with the benefit of hindsight, you might be tempted to think that there's something significant to the fact that Tyrol found the temple. I submit as counter-evidence the fact that Anders didn't.)
Anyway, once another 20 episodes elapse and we get around to "Sometimes a Great Notion," the gaps start to get filled in as to how this can be both a Thirteenth Tribe temple and a Final Five identifier. But for the time being, we're all "huh," and "what?"
Anyway, the temple supposedly contains the Eye of Jupiter, which points the way to Earth. The Eye of Jupiter is denoted as this red, yellow and blue mandala thingy. Tyrol is tasked with finding the Eye while Apollo and Anders try to hold off a Cylon ground force. Anders is well aware that his "two-timing bitch of a wife" (her words) is cheating on him with Apollo. Naturally, there's an incredible amount of tension... and also ridiculously oiled biceps. (There's a similar scene between Starbuck and Dee in the next episode, but with out the subtext. That's probably because we just had "The Passage," where Starbuck and Kat got so close that every male audience member was yelling "Kiss her!")
Starbuck won't divorce Anders, and Lee makes up his mind not to cheat on Dee, which puts them both pretty much in hell for the next couple of episodes. But not to worry, becuase Starbuck gets shot down, Anders flips and tries to go rescue her, but Lee won't let him because he's too important. Apparently nobody else is capable of leading a bunch of civilians.
Incidentally, this is a repeated problem in the show: the plot contrives to send a character somewhere or keep a character somewhere because that character is too important. Starbuck is the best sniper, even though she's a pilot (and a card shark, tactical genius, Pyramid pro, painter, pianist, and clairvoyant). Boomer is the best Raptor wrangler, even though Racetrack steps in as soon as she's out of the picture. Anders is the only capable resistance leader. Apollo is the only person qualified to be Acting President.
Meanwhile, the Cylons show up. Lucy Lawless is still tricking you into thinking she's the show's Big Bad, but it's starting to become clear that she's on a mission of her own and the others are about to rebel. Just to hammer that point home, Dean Stockwell shows up for the first time since New Caprica to hurl massive amounts of snark at pretty much everyone (it's what he does, and he's so good at it that they went and made an entire movie of him doing almost nothing but). In this instance, he offers the Colonials Baltar in exchange for the Eye of Jupiter. Naturally, they don't take the offer. Baltar and D'anna jump in a Heavy Raider and head towards the planet, but Adama threatens to nuke the temple (and the surrounding area, including Apollo and Starbuck) so the Cylons can't find the Eye.
And, oh yeah, the sun's about to go supernova.
This was sort-of, kind-of the Season 3 midseason finale, because they went on a quick break afterwards. No, it's not as good as the Season 2 equivalent. That's because this episode has to service so much more than just its own cliffhanger. Since the Final Five are so much more important to the overall mythology of the series than the Pegasus ever was, we have to focus on that aspect of the story a lot. But since there's a rather simple explanation for the Temple of Five being both of the things that it is, and since that explanation gives the entire game away, a massive sleight-of-hand which basically amounts to "don't think about it too hard" is employed.
So what did I like about this episode? Ironically, the same thing I didn't like that much about "Water." Grace Park is better here than she was there. Her characters are more interesting. The scene between Boomer and Athena is great, and the scene where Athena finds out her daughter is still alive is even better.
The scene where Roslin confesses that she kidnapped Hera is great. I normally wish they would go back and stick the deleted scenes back into the episodes more often (as in "Pegasus" and "Unfinished Business"), but I'm glad they didn't in this case, because the snippet of that scene that made it into the episode is so much better than the full-length version that can be found elsewhere on the DVD. (Roslin second-guessing herself and asking Adama what she should do? We don't need to see that. I like Roslin the most when she's absolutely sure that the choice she made was the lesser of two evils.)
I guess I liked the scene between Anders and Lee, even though I thought the plot was trying a bit too hard to force these two to cooperate, when really Anders could just have gone off and rescued Starbuck. (Lee's a character I get about 99% of the time, so whenever he does something that doesn't make any sense to me, it tends to throw me. Anders isn't that important; he just told all the civilians to make bombs and whatnot.)
And Dean Stockwell makes a welcome reappearance. But still, when you compare this to "Pegasus" and especially "Revelations," the other two midseason cliffhangers, this one comes up so short. (Obligatory swipe at Doctor Who: yes, it's better than "A Good Man Goes to War." That goes without saying.)
And the idea the writers came up with was good enough to breathe another season and a half of life into a show that was beginning to lose its traction. (Is that really a fair assessment? Try to picture the way the bulk of Season 4 would have gone if the Final Five were just models 7 and 9-12, as opposed to being fundamentally different from the others.) Enter the Final Five, the five not-yet-revealed Cylon models who aren't in contact with the other seven.
Baltar mentioned them first in "Torn," and then everyone started using the term, presumably because they were programmed not to think about the Final Five, and that extended to calling the Final Five the Final Five.
Then in "Hero," the Cylons engaged in an absolutely insane plot to get a former prisoner to kill Adama, which told me all I needed to know about the Final Five; namely, that the other seven weren't in contact with the Five, and that the likelihood of any of the Five having sleeper programming was practically nil.
So now we come to the Algae Planet, or as I like to call it, Overexposed Planet Number Four. Caprica was overexposed with a gold filter, Kobol was overexposed with a green filter, New Caprica was overexposed with a blue filter and tons of fog (except in "Unfinished Business" for some reason), the Algae planet was overexposed with a blue filter, and Earth will just be plain overexposed.
Anyway, on this planet is the Temple of Five, which was built by the Thirteenth Tribe but apparently contains some sort of clue about not only the location of Earth, but also the identities of the Final Five. Talk about convenient.
Actually, no, please do not talk about convenient. There are two different conversations in this episode where characters go out of their way to say how totally random it is that both the Colonial and Cylon fleets converged on this planet at once, and that it must be the will of God, the gods, or Ronald D. Moore. This is what we call "lampshade hanging," and we don't need none of that!
Baltar, because he actually is a genius, managed to decipher a riddle spoken by the Basestar's hybrid, and that led them to the Algae planet. Meanwhile, the humans only found the planet because they were looking for food to eat. Which group is supposed to be the ones interpreting religious scrolls looking for Earth again? Anyway, Roslin gets right down to business interpreting religious scrolls as soon as Tyrol reports back that he's found a temple that looks surprisingly like the main part of Ragnar Anchorage... I mean, a temple that was built by the Thirteenth Tribe.
(Now, with the benefit of hindsight, you might be tempted to think that there's something significant to the fact that Tyrol found the temple. I submit as counter-evidence the fact that Anders didn't.)
Anyway, once another 20 episodes elapse and we get around to "Sometimes a Great Notion," the gaps start to get filled in as to how this can be both a Thirteenth Tribe temple and a Final Five identifier. But for the time being, we're all "huh," and "what?"
Anyway, the temple supposedly contains the Eye of Jupiter, which points the way to Earth. The Eye of Jupiter is denoted as this red, yellow and blue mandala thingy. Tyrol is tasked with finding the Eye while Apollo and Anders try to hold off a Cylon ground force. Anders is well aware that his "two-timing bitch of a wife" (her words) is cheating on him with Apollo. Naturally, there's an incredible amount of tension... and also ridiculously oiled biceps. (There's a similar scene between Starbuck and Dee in the next episode, but with out the subtext. That's probably because we just had "The Passage," where Starbuck and Kat got so close that every male audience member was yelling "Kiss her!")
Starbuck won't divorce Anders, and Lee makes up his mind not to cheat on Dee, which puts them both pretty much in hell for the next couple of episodes. But not to worry, becuase Starbuck gets shot down, Anders flips and tries to go rescue her, but Lee won't let him because he's too important. Apparently nobody else is capable of leading a bunch of civilians.
Incidentally, this is a repeated problem in the show: the plot contrives to send a character somewhere or keep a character somewhere because that character is too important. Starbuck is the best sniper, even though she's a pilot (and a card shark, tactical genius, Pyramid pro, painter, pianist, and clairvoyant). Boomer is the best Raptor wrangler, even though Racetrack steps in as soon as she's out of the picture. Anders is the only capable resistance leader. Apollo is the only person qualified to be Acting President.
Meanwhile, the Cylons show up. Lucy Lawless is still tricking you into thinking she's the show's Big Bad, but it's starting to become clear that she's on a mission of her own and the others are about to rebel. Just to hammer that point home, Dean Stockwell shows up for the first time since New Caprica to hurl massive amounts of snark at pretty much everyone (it's what he does, and he's so good at it that they went and made an entire movie of him doing almost nothing but). In this instance, he offers the Colonials Baltar in exchange for the Eye of Jupiter. Naturally, they don't take the offer. Baltar and D'anna jump in a Heavy Raider and head towards the planet, but Adama threatens to nuke the temple (and the surrounding area, including Apollo and Starbuck) so the Cylons can't find the Eye.
And, oh yeah, the sun's about to go supernova.
This was sort-of, kind-of the Season 3 midseason finale, because they went on a quick break afterwards. No, it's not as good as the Season 2 equivalent. That's because this episode has to service so much more than just its own cliffhanger. Since the Final Five are so much more important to the overall mythology of the series than the Pegasus ever was, we have to focus on that aspect of the story a lot. But since there's a rather simple explanation for the Temple of Five being both of the things that it is, and since that explanation gives the entire game away, a massive sleight-of-hand which basically amounts to "don't think about it too hard" is employed.
So what did I like about this episode? Ironically, the same thing I didn't like that much about "Water." Grace Park is better here than she was there. Her characters are more interesting. The scene between Boomer and Athena is great, and the scene where Athena finds out her daughter is still alive is even better.
The scene where Roslin confesses that she kidnapped Hera is great. I normally wish they would go back and stick the deleted scenes back into the episodes more often (as in "Pegasus" and "Unfinished Business"), but I'm glad they didn't in this case, because the snippet of that scene that made it into the episode is so much better than the full-length version that can be found elsewhere on the DVD. (Roslin second-guessing herself and asking Adama what she should do? We don't need to see that. I like Roslin the most when she's absolutely sure that the choice she made was the lesser of two evils.)
I guess I liked the scene between Anders and Lee, even though I thought the plot was trying a bit too hard to force these two to cooperate, when really Anders could just have gone off and rescued Starbuck. (Lee's a character I get about 99% of the time, so whenever he does something that doesn't make any sense to me, it tends to throw me. Anders isn't that important; he just told all the civilians to make bombs and whatnot.)
And Dean Stockwell makes a welcome reappearance. But still, when you compare this to "Pegasus" and especially "Revelations," the other two midseason cliffhangers, this one comes up so short. (Obligatory swipe at Doctor Who: yes, it's better than "A Good Man Goes to War." That goes without saying.)
Thursday, September 15, 2011
My 10 favorite pieces of BSG soundtrack music
Bear McCreary is my new hero, and pretty much the only thing keeping me from saying that he's the best composer alive is that as far as I know, the following people aren't dead: John "Star Wars" Williams, James "Star Trek II" Horner, Ennio "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" Morricone, and Hans "Pirates of the Carribean" Zimmer.
But unlike all those guys, Bear is still primarily a television composer. Which means he's not as famous. Still, over four seasons of BSG, he's given us some of the coolest musical themes and stings I've heard in a long, long time.
Honorable mention #1: the Colonial Anthem, better known as the original series theme, composed by Stu Phillips.
Honorable mention #2: the Miniseries theme, composed by Richard Gibbs. Bear McCreary is awesome and I wouldn't want to live in a world where the following tunes don't exist, but at the same time, I kind of miss the Miniseries theme and wonder what it would have been like if Richard Gibbs had stayed on to do the show.
Honorable mention #3: "All Along the Watchtower." Someone got the bright idea to do a cover of the only song in the world that has already recieved a definitive cover. I did include another Final Five track in the actual list.
10) "Black Market." Say what you will about the episode, but the title track is awesome. Shame we get to hear about three seconds of it unless we buy the soundtrack. (Um, "Black Market.")
9) "Farewell Apollo." This is the last time the Adama theme gets a big old showcase, now with military drums. With themes like these, I tend to like the later arrangements better just because they're more fully evolved. ("Six of One.")
8) "Storming New Caprica." Hell yes. This and the Adama theme are what make bagpipes bearable. ("Exodus, Part II.)
7) "Apocalypse." Downtuned guitars crunching away underneath the main title theme? If I didn't know better, I'd say Bear wrote both pieces simultaneously. (The Plan)
6) "Kat's Sacrifice." The fact that this theme only appears in one episode is downright criminal. But I guess that's what you get when you compose a theme for a character who promptly gets killed off. ("The Passage")
5) "Diaspora Oratio." What? They found Earth? But we're only halfway through Season 4! How are the next 10 episodes going to play out? This music is probably the main reason we don't ask that question. ("Revelations")
4) "An Easterly View." This was the music with which to end the show, playing over the scene that should have ended it: about two minutes before "Daybreak, Part III" actually ends, Adama sits next to Laura's grave, as the fantastic "Violence and Variations" theme plays one final time with incredible gusto.
3) "Something Dark is Coming." Move over, "Pegasus," this is the best psychedelic-tinged guitar track in the series. It plays at the beginning of "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I."
2) "Kara's Coordinates." It all comes together in "Daybreak, Part II." Starbuck's destiny, Hera's notes, the Final Five... well, kinda sorta, anyway, as far as the storytelling goes. Once again, the music sells it.
1) "Prelude to War." Perfection.
But unlike all those guys, Bear is still primarily a television composer. Which means he's not as famous. Still, over four seasons of BSG, he's given us some of the coolest musical themes and stings I've heard in a long, long time.
Honorable mention #1: the Colonial Anthem, better known as the original series theme, composed by Stu Phillips.
Honorable mention #2: the Miniseries theme, composed by Richard Gibbs. Bear McCreary is awesome and I wouldn't want to live in a world where the following tunes don't exist, but at the same time, I kind of miss the Miniseries theme and wonder what it would have been like if Richard Gibbs had stayed on to do the show.
Honorable mention #3: "All Along the Watchtower." Someone got the bright idea to do a cover of the only song in the world that has already recieved a definitive cover. I did include another Final Five track in the actual list.
10) "Black Market." Say what you will about the episode, but the title track is awesome. Shame we get to hear about three seconds of it unless we buy the soundtrack. (Um, "Black Market.")
9) "Farewell Apollo." This is the last time the Adama theme gets a big old showcase, now with military drums. With themes like these, I tend to like the later arrangements better just because they're more fully evolved. ("Six of One.")
8) "Storming New Caprica." Hell yes. This and the Adama theme are what make bagpipes bearable. ("Exodus, Part II.)
7) "Apocalypse." Downtuned guitars crunching away underneath the main title theme? If I didn't know better, I'd say Bear wrote both pieces simultaneously. (The Plan)
6) "Kat's Sacrifice." The fact that this theme only appears in one episode is downright criminal. But I guess that's what you get when you compose a theme for a character who promptly gets killed off. ("The Passage")
5) "Diaspora Oratio." What? They found Earth? But we're only halfway through Season 4! How are the next 10 episodes going to play out? This music is probably the main reason we don't ask that question. ("Revelations")
4) "An Easterly View." This was the music with which to end the show, playing over the scene that should have ended it: about two minutes before "Daybreak, Part III" actually ends, Adama sits next to Laura's grave, as the fantastic "Violence and Variations" theme plays one final time with incredible gusto.
3) "Something Dark is Coming." Move over, "Pegasus," this is the best psychedelic-tinged guitar track in the series. It plays at the beginning of "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I."
2) "Kara's Coordinates." It all comes together in "Daybreak, Part II." Starbuck's destiny, Hera's notes, the Final Five... well, kinda sorta, anyway, as far as the storytelling goes. Once again, the music sells it.
1) "Prelude to War." Perfection.
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