Or if you like, "I, Borg, the Remake." Or if you're feeling particularly vindictive, Genesis of the Daleks II.
I'm going to mention this right off the bat: this review is unlike any other, because I'm going to spend basically all of it comparing an episode of Battlestar Galactica made in 2006 to an episode of Doctor Who made in 1975.
Obviously, the bulk of this review is going to center around the morality issue, so let's just dive right into that. It covers a lot of the same ground as Genesis of the Daleks (including the annoying, pious "if you kill him you will be just like him" argument), but it generally does it better. And no, I'm not going to bitch this episode out for being a remake of "I, Borg," because then I'd have to bitch out the entire show for being a remake of the 1978 Battlestar Galactica, and I'd have to bitch that show out for being a remake of the Book of Mormon, and we'd be here all day. So let's just put that to bed right here. Complaining about this episode and about "Hero" because they used recycled Next Generation scripts is only valid if you're going to complain about "Pegasus" as well.
Having said that, I am going to spent a ton of time comparing this to Genesis of the Daleks, both because I want to (and have them both on DVD, which is not the case with "I, Borg"), and also because it's probable that the writers didn't intend for any deliberate connection between the two.
And because I'm going to use this - a not-exactly-loved episode of Battlestar Galactica - to further attack a fan-favorite Doctor Who episode, I might as well reiterate that every single thing said on this blog is just my opinion.
Okay, here goes...
Every single episode of Battlestar Galactica has the same credit sequence, to an extent. Two shots of Caprica City. Six shielding Baltar from a nuclear shockwave. And then an entire planet under nuclear assault. Every single credit sequence reminds you exactly what the stakes are, and exactly what the Cylons are. If, as the Cylons themselves believe, your actions define who you are, then the Cylons are for the most part xenocidal monsters who need to be put down.
And please remember that, per "The Farm," Cylons have been keeping human prisoners. Caprica probably isn't the only planet (a deleted scene in The Plan would seem to confirm this) where the Cylons are doing things. What happened to these people once the Cylons decided that the occupation of the Colonies was an error? Were they allowed to go? Were they given anti-radiation medicince?
I'm not bringing up the prisoners to further my "they're monsters and thus killing them is justified" case, I'm bringing up the prisoners to point out that, if the Cylons were all wiped out by disease, our people would be better off. I want to reiterate that right here: wiping out the Cylons would be an act of xenocide, and would therefore be wrong. Is it the lesser of two evils? That's the question I'm asking here.
Furthermore, also in "The Farm," Simon the Cylon went into considerable detail about how humans die from radiation poisoning. You can bet that this has been the unpleasant fate of billions of human beings. Is it better than the disease that Apollo wants to unleash on the Cylons? Frankly, they seem about equal to me.
Finally, there is Roslin's argument. Adama says that if they commit genocide (it's actually xenocide, and I'll be refering to it as such), history will damn them. Roslin counters that at least there will be historians to damn them. That is a compelling argument.
Okay, now, let me get the most striking, important difference between this and Genesis out of the way right here and now:
The Cylons are not the Daleks.
Their warriors are cycloptic monsters who carry guns in their arms and are hard to kill. And they both killed their creator(s), who then resurrected anyway. And that is where the similarities end (Cylons never had a problem with stairs, for starters). Genesis tells us in no uncertain terms that Davros did everything he could to remove every vestige of humanity from the Daleks. In contrast, the Humanoid Cylons (who are shown again and again to be the ones in control) were designed to be as human as possible. Once the Resurrection Hub gets blown, the fundamental difference between a human and a Humanoid Cylon is that the skin-jobs can talk to their computers by sticking their hands in the sink. Furthermore, with only one exception (which I will get to later) in the entire twenty-six-year run of the classic show, the Daleks never once showed any semblance of remorse for what they did, and not one Dalek ever switched sides. In Galactica, we already have Athena, and Caprica-Six may or may not be leaning that way by this point as well. In other words, and this is crucial: "Downloaded" proved, before "A Measure of Salvation," that at least some of the Cylons were redeemable. We are now thirty-six years on from Genesis of the Daleks, and we have yet to see any indication whatsoever that the same is true of the Daleks.
(And now I need to go into a massive diversion about The Evil of the Daleks, so anyone who doesn't care can just skip ahead to the section labeled "The Cylon Virus is not a nuclear bomb.")
The Evil of the Daleks, generally considered to be the best Dalek story by any Doctor Who purist who's willing to count the stories that only exist on audio these days, concerns a group of Daleks who wish to isolate the "human factor" (love and whatnot). The Doctor does this, and amplifies it, causing a few Daleks to become good. Does this mean the Daleks are redeemable?
No.
The Daleks want to isolate the "human factor" so they can destroy it. They are not interested in love and morality. They want, dare I say it, to be mechanical. The "human factor" is phlebotinum. Made-up science to fill a specific role in a story. If a character needs phlebotinum to be good, then that character is not good. (And now I could get sidetracked on this whole thing about Angel from Buffy, but I have to stop somewhere.)
As long as there is one Dalek left in the universe (and as long as the royalties keep flowing to the Nation estate), they'll be a threat. It does not matter which Dalek it is.
The same is not true of the Cylons.
The Cylon Virus is not a nuclear bomb.
So let's pretend that the Cylons are actually human beings, just for the sake of this argument. Hell, let's pretend that they're just a different nationality, and we're at war with them. Let's say they're the Germans. To win WWII, did we need to kill every German? No. A few of their leaders killed themselves (oh, hi, Cavil), and we put several other leaders on trial. To be sure, we smashed their country so badly that we haven't heard a peep out of them since.
Ergo: to "win the war," should it be necessary to kill every Cylon? No.
Because this is the difference between the Cylons and the Daleks. The Daleks are (when Terry Nation remembers, anyway) biological organisms that act like machines. The Cylons are machines that act like humans. Outside of The Evil of the Daleks, the Daleks exhibited a singular drive to crush, kill, destroy, exterminate. The Cylons have already fallen prey to infighting; their visions clash; they are no longer all on the same page.
Let's stop pretending the Cylons are Germans. Let's pretend they're the Imperial Japanese. Cylon Farms, Nanking. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Adama fudges the issue, saying it's about the use of biological weapons. That's not what's at stake here. We didn't nuke every Japanese city at the close of WWII.
But we nuked enough of them to end the war. (No, not debating the morality of that here. As a matter of historical fact, we dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and Japan surrendered. That's the only point I wish to make, and the only reason I brought it up.)
The Cylon virus is, however, not a nuclear bomb. You can't selectively target this baseship or that baseship. You can wipe out the entire race, or you can choose not to use it at all.
The issue is not biological weapons, or weapons of mass destruction. The issue is xenocide.
Blowing the Hub
So how is this different from blowing up the Resurrection Hub? (4.9, uh... "The Hub.") Taking away Cylon resurrection means that entire race will be extinct in one generation since, and this has been established time and time again, they cannot reproduce biologically. I fail to see the fundamental difference between unleashing a monster virus on the Cylons and effectively sterilizing them, and that is where this episode falls down.
Now, argue all you want about how "The Hub" hadn't been written yet, how the Resurrection Hub hadn't even been concieved of yet, because the writers didn't know they'd need a bigger and better Death Star to go blow up, whatever. Nobody in that episode makes a peep about how this is the end of the Cylon race. The rebel Cylons themselves are all for it!
Remember: everything after 4.9 is a bunch of infighting between the humans while the Cylons scramble to try to get resurrection back. Eventually, the humans and Cylons are able to broker a truce whereby the Cylons get resurrection back if they cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die promise to leave the humans alone (and amazingly, that's not the most insane, illogical thing the humans do in the finale). Okay, so once you've unleashed the virus, there's no cure and no reason to negotiate, but even after you blow the Hub you could still negotiate.
Except: when they blew the Hub, they had no idea that the Final Five knew anything about resurrection. All they wanted from the Five was the way to Earth.
So we're back at square one. I have no idea why it's not okay to unleash a virus on the Cylons, but it's okay to sterilize them. Either way they're going to die slowly and painfully, either right now from the virus or in a few decades from old age. Either way it's the end of the race.
That is ultimately what irks me about this episode. Genesis was flawed because it pretended to take the moral high ground simply to keep the show's most popular villains alive. This episode fails because its moral is blatantly ignored later on in the show.
And Helo commits treason. There's no way around it, that's what he does. And he completely escapes punishment for it. No, wait, I'm sorry, he gets reassinged to Dogsville. I don't know what's worse; committing treason, or getting "The Woman King" foisted on the audience.
Addendum here.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Who Review: Let's Kill Hitler
Previously on Doctor Who: the most important baby girl in the universe was kidnapped and taken to a secret base via a plot involving an identical copy of her mother. In this episode, our heroes try to rescue her and, in the process, "kill" another copy of her mother. (At least River Song's blood can't frakking cure cancer.)
Okay, now that I've got the obvious Who-Galactica comparison out of the way, let's get down to business.
It's been approximately three months since last we saw our heroes (and unlike BSG's Season 2, there's no cancer, pregnancy, or election timeline to screw up during the hiatus - stop it, Jim, stop it now!)
So they meet the Doctor in a field, and he's wearing a different coat for no discernable reason other than this one is frankly cooler. His costume is now a cross between Patrick Troughton's and Tom Baker's (minus the scarf). Of course, he switches back to the old one at the end of the episode. They also meet Amy's never-before-mentioned friend, Mels, who hijacks the TARDIS at gunpoint and suggests they all go off to, well, kill Hitler.
Adolf gets about two minutes of screen time. The Doctor inadvertently foils an assassination attempt by crash-landing the TARDIS on the assassin, and then Rory shoves him in a closet. And that is it. No onscreen sermonizing from the Doctor about how killing him would screw up history, no last-ditch attempt to end his miserable existence and save millions of lives...
Ah well. Hitler manages to wound Mels before being locked in the closet, and at first I thought "well, now you've gotten rid of that nonsensical and out-of-nowhere plot device designed to get you to 1938 Berlin, now get on with Genesis of the Daleks II." And boy, was I wrong. Mels is of course short for Melody, and Mels regenerates into River. Two important firsts here: First interracial regeneration, and first time the new version is significantly older than the previous one.
River and the Doctor do their usual dance, except this time River's kind of clueless and also programmed to kill the Doctor. Madness ensues on an only slightly more sane level than that of Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death, and then River finally manages to poison him. Then she goes on a rampage around Berlin, only to decide to ultimately save the Doctor.
Oh, remember the assassination attempt I mentioned earlier? They're time-travelers from the future who crew one human-sized ship that can shapeshift and turn into, among other things, a Nazi officer and Amy Pond. Their mission is to take criminals out of time near the end of their timestreams and give them hell. Because these guys are apparently so evil and sadistic that they a) respect the timeline, and b) don't care about the millions of people that Hitler killed. That said, they seem to count the Doctor as one of the good guys, so they're naturally all too eager to give River hell for killing him. So, even though they agree with his philosophy of not interfering in the timeline, they don't care about his philosophy of routinely showering his most dangerous enemies with mercy.
Anyway, their security system consists of floating metal jellyfish who electrocute any unauthorized personnel, so Amy disables their detectors so the jellyfish think everyone's unauthorized. Then they run around like crazy because she can't think to re-enable her and Rory's detectors. Then River saves the Doctor and uses up all her regenerations to do so, because status quo is god and Moffat wrote himself into a corner regarding the way "Forest of the Dead" ended, and then they stick her in a hospital at the end of the Universe and let her find her way back to them.
Comments on the arc: It's becoming increasingly clear that the Doctor knows that he's going to die on the beach, and if the Question that preceeds the Silence is "Doctor Who?" then I'm done watching until Moffat leaves.
As with the previous two-parter, this one has a much better conclusion than a setup, even if it's all still a tad insane. Also, how did Rory and Amy get from Demon's Run to Leadworth at the beginning of the episode? Just once this season, I would like Moffat to pick up his cliffhangers exactly where he left off (unless he has a good reason for doing so, as in, he's going to have an "Unfinished Business"-style episode where he reveals everything that went on in between episodes).
No rating yet. Waiting to see how the rest of the season's arc plays out.
Okay, now that I've got the obvious Who-Galactica comparison out of the way, let's get down to business.
It's been approximately three months since last we saw our heroes (and unlike BSG's Season 2, there's no cancer, pregnancy, or election timeline to screw up during the hiatus - stop it, Jim, stop it now!)
So they meet the Doctor in a field, and he's wearing a different coat for no discernable reason other than this one is frankly cooler. His costume is now a cross between Patrick Troughton's and Tom Baker's (minus the scarf). Of course, he switches back to the old one at the end of the episode. They also meet Amy's never-before-mentioned friend, Mels, who hijacks the TARDIS at gunpoint and suggests they all go off to, well, kill Hitler.
Adolf gets about two minutes of screen time. The Doctor inadvertently foils an assassination attempt by crash-landing the TARDIS on the assassin, and then Rory shoves him in a closet. And that is it. No onscreen sermonizing from the Doctor about how killing him would screw up history, no last-ditch attempt to end his miserable existence and save millions of lives...
Ah well. Hitler manages to wound Mels before being locked in the closet, and at first I thought "well, now you've gotten rid of that nonsensical and out-of-nowhere plot device designed to get you to 1938 Berlin, now get on with Genesis of the Daleks II." And boy, was I wrong. Mels is of course short for Melody, and Mels regenerates into River. Two important firsts here: First interracial regeneration, and first time the new version is significantly older than the previous one.
River and the Doctor do their usual dance, except this time River's kind of clueless and also programmed to kill the Doctor. Madness ensues on an only slightly more sane level than that of Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death, and then River finally manages to poison him. Then she goes on a rampage around Berlin, only to decide to ultimately save the Doctor.
Oh, remember the assassination attempt I mentioned earlier? They're time-travelers from the future who crew one human-sized ship that can shapeshift and turn into, among other things, a Nazi officer and Amy Pond. Their mission is to take criminals out of time near the end of their timestreams and give them hell. Because these guys are apparently so evil and sadistic that they a) respect the timeline, and b) don't care about the millions of people that Hitler killed. That said, they seem to count the Doctor as one of the good guys, so they're naturally all too eager to give River hell for killing him. So, even though they agree with his philosophy of not interfering in the timeline, they don't care about his philosophy of routinely showering his most dangerous enemies with mercy.
Anyway, their security system consists of floating metal jellyfish who electrocute any unauthorized personnel, so Amy disables their detectors so the jellyfish think everyone's unauthorized. Then they run around like crazy because she can't think to re-enable her and Rory's detectors. Then River saves the Doctor and uses up all her regenerations to do so, because status quo is god and Moffat wrote himself into a corner regarding the way "Forest of the Dead" ended, and then they stick her in a hospital at the end of the Universe and let her find her way back to them.
Comments on the arc: It's becoming increasingly clear that the Doctor knows that he's going to die on the beach, and if the Question that preceeds the Silence is "Doctor Who?" then I'm done watching until Moffat leaves.
As with the previous two-parter, this one has a much better conclusion than a setup, even if it's all still a tad insane. Also, how did Rory and Amy get from Demon's Run to Leadworth at the beginning of the episode? Just once this season, I would like Moffat to pick up his cliffhangers exactly where he left off (unless he has a good reason for doing so, as in, he's going to have an "Unfinished Business"-style episode where he reveals everything that went on in between episodes).
No rating yet. Waiting to see how the rest of the season's arc plays out.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Things I Wish the BSG Writers Had Handled Better
1) figured out who the Cylons were at the very beginning, and planted subtle clues all along the way. There's still no need to introduce the concept of the Final Five until Season 3, but the way they did it leaves several loose ends that needed to be tied up (or ignored: Baltar tests one of the Final Five at one point, but later appears not to know who any of them are). That said, by the end of Season Two, we'd established a clever mis-lead, in that each of the Significant Seven had been revealed as a Cylon in either the first (Two, Three, Four, Six) or second (One, Five, Eight) episodes they appeared in, whereas each of the Final Five had been around for years. It was a nice mis-lead, and it made the reveal of the Final Five a massive surprise. It just would have been better if a) they didn't have to tie up so many loose ends, like suddenly making Hot Dog a father, and b) they didn't have to invent two never-before-seen Cylon infiltrators in The Plan to make Boomer's "there are eight [Cylons in the fleet]" statement work. (Although, admittedly, if Boomer had told the truth and said that there were only six, the Caprica Resistance would contain the obvious suspects, and if Boomer had said that there were only two - the Three and the One had to have been the only ones her sleeper persona knew about - then people would have been confused about the Final Five a full year too early.)
2) done a better job with "Epiphanies." From the on-screen dialogue in that episode, there's no reason to assume that when Roslin's cancer returned in Season 4, they couldn't have just harvested Hera's blood again. Hell, that would have made for an interesting story idea, probably the biggest missed opportunity in the entire show: can you justify harvesting a baby's blood every time someone gets the flu? Instead, in contradiction to what's on the screen, we accept Ron Moore's podcast comment about it actually being stem cells that cured Roslin's cancer as the accepted canon. Which leads me directly to:
3) not rely too heavily on people watching the commentaries. Some viewers (such as my parents) are still convinced that nobody was aboard the Olympic Carrier when Lee shot it down, despite the fact that several characters have said it was occupied, and Ron Moore has said so as well in the commentary. I could go a bit further here, and say "not editing the re-caps to include things that weren't actually in previous episodes," but I understand the need to do this. Battlestar was a character-driven show. A lot of time had to be spent on the characters, sometimes at the expense of minor plot points that could be easily slipped into a recap. It's annoying, but understandable.
4) the Luddite thing in the finale. See, at the end of "Resurrection Ship, Part 2," Gina escaped from Pegasus and was living comfortably aboard Cloud Nine by the next episode. We didn't need to know the details. Likewise, they didn't need everyone to go all Luddite on us for the sake of wrapping up loose ends. If they felt like promoting a Luddite agenda, then the final montage of robots gets that particular message across just fine. All they really needed to do was drop some random dialogue either from our heroes, about how all their equipment will decay and become unuseable in time, or from Head-Six and Head-Baltar about how the Ice Age nearly wiped them all out.
I get that one of Lee's character flaws is that he's so desperate to do the right thing that he doesn't always think things through (and I like that flaw; it's one of the things that makes him so interesting as a character, and makes his courtroom scene with Roslin in "Crossroads, Part 1" one of my favorite scenes in the show), but the rest of the fleet can't possibly be that naive as well. Stone-age level technology means every single Colonial is probably going to die of disease within about ten years. The all-important Hera will be lucky to see 20.
At some point in Season 4, the refinery ship should have been destroyed, further limiting the fleet's options; "we now have 17 more jumps to find a safe planet before we run out of fuel." Make it obvious that their current technology will not last much longer, and that they have no way of replacing it. The series started off with Adama accepting the inevitable: he couldn't stay and fight the Cylons, he had to run. It should have ended in a similar fashion. If not, then Galactica's condition should have been a signal that they needed to find and colonize a planet ASAP, not strip the ship for parts and try to continue on without any real protection except from the rebel Baseship.
5) keep a better track of logistics. While I appreciated the survivor count at the beginning of each episode, which at least told me that the writers were taking things more seriously than the production team of Star Trek: Voyager, there's no way that Galactica could have fired off as much ammunition and lost as many Vipers as they did. I appreciate that they played it semi-realistically ("Flight of the Phoenix," mention of a Viper production facility on the Pegasus in "Scar," and one fuel crisis in each of the first three seasons - although the third was due to a strike, rather than a shortage), but food and water are each addressed only once, and Galactica's still can't possibly account for Saul Tigh's booze intake. As Zarek said in "Colonial Day," there is no production. As my mother asked during "Black Market," who's producing all the medicine?
6) the Opera House vision. So this vision has Athena and Roslin herd Hera towards Baltar and Six, who take her away. In reality, Athena and Roslin herd Hera towards Baltar and Six, who take her away. So far, so good. But they take her to CIC, where she's immediately used as a hostage by Cavil as the writers tease us one more time with a "negotiation" resolution. If these visions are messages from God telling them to keep Hera safe, isn't arranging for her to be Cavil's hostage pretty much the last thing you want to have happen? And what the hell was Tigh doing up on that balcony? He's never been up there during combat before. The only reason he went up there was so that every bit of the vision could fall neatly into place.
And now, here is a brief list of things that don't annoy me nearly as much as they annoy the average fan:
Lee and Dee. There were hints of that going all the way back to 2.4, "Resistance," and that was well before they started shacking up (2.17, "The Captain's Hand"). It's true that Dee occasionally comes off as passive or weak ("Sacrifice," "Rapture"), but her motivations - to get what happiness she can today because she might be dead tomorrow - resonate clearly in this post-apocalyptic setting.
"God did it." When Head-Six starts claiming to be an angel of God, and then once Head-Baltar shows up and no other explanation suffices, and then when a major character returns from the dead, it becomes absolutely undeniable that there's a greater force at work here.
"Black Market," "Hero," and "The Woman King." See their respective reviews as they come up. Fans tend to hate these episodes because people act out of character, or something contradicts established continuity. And while it's hard to defend "Hero" from that latter charge, these episodes take our characters and show that they are three-dimensional, and that they're not always heroes.
2) done a better job with "Epiphanies." From the on-screen dialogue in that episode, there's no reason to assume that when Roslin's cancer returned in Season 4, they couldn't have just harvested Hera's blood again. Hell, that would have made for an interesting story idea, probably the biggest missed opportunity in the entire show: can you justify harvesting a baby's blood every time someone gets the flu? Instead, in contradiction to what's on the screen, we accept Ron Moore's podcast comment about it actually being stem cells that cured Roslin's cancer as the accepted canon. Which leads me directly to:
3) not rely too heavily on people watching the commentaries. Some viewers (such as my parents) are still convinced that nobody was aboard the Olympic Carrier when Lee shot it down, despite the fact that several characters have said it was occupied, and Ron Moore has said so as well in the commentary. I could go a bit further here, and say "not editing the re-caps to include things that weren't actually in previous episodes," but I understand the need to do this. Battlestar was a character-driven show. A lot of time had to be spent on the characters, sometimes at the expense of minor plot points that could be easily slipped into a recap. It's annoying, but understandable.
4) the Luddite thing in the finale. See, at the end of "Resurrection Ship, Part 2," Gina escaped from Pegasus and was living comfortably aboard Cloud Nine by the next episode. We didn't need to know the details. Likewise, they didn't need everyone to go all Luddite on us for the sake of wrapping up loose ends. If they felt like promoting a Luddite agenda, then the final montage of robots gets that particular message across just fine. All they really needed to do was drop some random dialogue either from our heroes, about how all their equipment will decay and become unuseable in time, or from Head-Six and Head-Baltar about how the Ice Age nearly wiped them all out.
I get that one of Lee's character flaws is that he's so desperate to do the right thing that he doesn't always think things through (and I like that flaw; it's one of the things that makes him so interesting as a character, and makes his courtroom scene with Roslin in "Crossroads, Part 1" one of my favorite scenes in the show), but the rest of the fleet can't possibly be that naive as well. Stone-age level technology means every single Colonial is probably going to die of disease within about ten years. The all-important Hera will be lucky to see 20.
At some point in Season 4, the refinery ship should have been destroyed, further limiting the fleet's options; "we now have 17 more jumps to find a safe planet before we run out of fuel." Make it obvious that their current technology will not last much longer, and that they have no way of replacing it. The series started off with Adama accepting the inevitable: he couldn't stay and fight the Cylons, he had to run. It should have ended in a similar fashion. If not, then Galactica's condition should have been a signal that they needed to find and colonize a planet ASAP, not strip the ship for parts and try to continue on without any real protection except from the rebel Baseship.
5) keep a better track of logistics. While I appreciated the survivor count at the beginning of each episode, which at least told me that the writers were taking things more seriously than the production team of Star Trek: Voyager, there's no way that Galactica could have fired off as much ammunition and lost as many Vipers as they did. I appreciate that they played it semi-realistically ("Flight of the Phoenix," mention of a Viper production facility on the Pegasus in "Scar," and one fuel crisis in each of the first three seasons - although the third was due to a strike, rather than a shortage), but food and water are each addressed only once, and Galactica's still can't possibly account for Saul Tigh's booze intake. As Zarek said in "Colonial Day," there is no production. As my mother asked during "Black Market," who's producing all the medicine?
6) the Opera House vision. So this vision has Athena and Roslin herd Hera towards Baltar and Six, who take her away. In reality, Athena and Roslin herd Hera towards Baltar and Six, who take her away. So far, so good. But they take her to CIC, where she's immediately used as a hostage by Cavil as the writers tease us one more time with a "negotiation" resolution. If these visions are messages from God telling them to keep Hera safe, isn't arranging for her to be Cavil's hostage pretty much the last thing you want to have happen? And what the hell was Tigh doing up on that balcony? He's never been up there during combat before. The only reason he went up there was so that every bit of the vision could fall neatly into place.
And now, here is a brief list of things that don't annoy me nearly as much as they annoy the average fan:
Lee and Dee. There were hints of that going all the way back to 2.4, "Resistance," and that was well before they started shacking up (2.17, "The Captain's Hand"). It's true that Dee occasionally comes off as passive or weak ("Sacrifice," "Rapture"), but her motivations - to get what happiness she can today because she might be dead tomorrow - resonate clearly in this post-apocalyptic setting.
"God did it." When Head-Six starts claiming to be an angel of God, and then once Head-Baltar shows up and no other explanation suffices, and then when a major character returns from the dead, it becomes absolutely undeniable that there's a greater force at work here.
"Black Market," "Hero," and "The Woman King." See their respective reviews as they come up. Fans tend to hate these episodes because people act out of character, or something contradicts established continuity. And while it's hard to defend "Hero" from that latter charge, these episodes take our characters and show that they are three-dimensional, and that they're not always heroes.
Is BSG Really a Liberal Show? Miniseries-S1
I've decided to split this essay up into four parts, and examine the evidence piecemeal across all the seasons. This first part will focus largely on the Cylons as villains and what they represent, and on the issues presented in the episodes "Litmus," "Flesh and Bone" and "Colonial Day."
That the Fall of the Twelve Colonies greatly resembles the 9/11 terror attacks is undeniable. Six (both in physical and mental form) goes on about God. Cylons infiltrate a society that is very similar to ours. So to a large extent, it's hard not to see the Cylons as very obvious stand-ins for modern terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda. I don't really buy the "Cylons-are-the-Religious-Right" argument, primarily because of Laura Roslin. But more on her later.
So Cylons are analogous to terrorists. Then you have an episode where Roslin and Adama agree to have Starbuck interrogate a Cylon prisoner, and not just any Cylon prisoner, but a Leoben, probably the most fanatical model of them all. After Starbuck does more than the Guantanamo Bay interrogators are allowed to do, she goes on to point out that because Leoben is a machine, there's no limit to the techniques she can use. Yet Leoben is played by a human being, and for all intents and purposes is physically identical to one. He sweats and bleeds, eats and prays. Moreover, he doesn't even seem to harbor any particular ill-will towards Starbuck or the Colonials. He mocks her belief, but only as he explains or defends his own. He hasn't actually planted a nuclear bomb, and he's just been stalling for time, trying to keep himself alive.
And yet Roslin, supposedly one of the more liberal characters on the show (I distinctly remember an early commentary where Moore and Eick pointed out that Adama and Starbuck were meant to be Republicans and Roslin and Lee Democrats), has him tortured and then thrown out the airlock once she deems him too dangerous to leave alive.
Not a very liberal position. But then, Roslin's been having visions, and by the end of the season, she fervently believes that the religious texts are true. So, tortures and summarily executes prisoners, believes in a higher power, bans abortion in Season 2... look me in the eye and tell me Roslin's actually a liberal.
Let's take a look at Lee. In "Bastile Day," he successfully talks his way out of a hostage situation and only kills someone when a fellow soldier's life is in danger. He and his father negotiate with terrorists and hostage-takers (Adama's doing it to stall for time). He even promises them what they want: an election. But all Lee is doing is following the rule of law. The law says there's an election coming up, so there's an election coming up. Just because it's the end of the world doesn't mean we get to throw out all the rules. But that's not to say that Roslin couldn't pass a new law or change the Articles of Colonization. As his actions during the Pegasus arc in Season 2 demonstrate, Lee holds more to the letter of the law than to the spirit (more on that in part 2).
In "Colonial Day," he strong-arms a suspect and antagonizes a civilian from Saggitaron, just because he doesn't like the fact that the civilian supports Tom Zarek. In that episode, Zarek makes a few remarks about how there is no economy in place, so they have to go back to a collectivist system. This is the former terrorist espousing economic liberalism (or possibly just making a jab at Star Trek, I'm not entirely sure which). And as is usual for him, Zarek has 90% of a point; there is no economy, but that's no excuse to impose socialism.
And anyway, Roslin, our protagonist, defeats him.
In "Litmus," we have an overzealous prosecutor engage in a witch-hunt to find Cylon spies and saboteurs. Partly due to the fact that Tyrol and Boomer had engaged in an illegal tryst, the prosecutor came this close to getting her hands on a Cylon agent, before she lost perspective and tried to go after Adama for his lax security measures. Rather than first convict a Cylon, and then press Adama for better security measures, she abused the special powers she'd been granted.
Okay, I'll give you that one.
There's no denying that the show does have a political subtext. But at least in Season One, that subtext doesn't really lean in one direction or the other. Battlestar Galactica is not Star Trek, and it never sermonizes at the audience.
I did leave one very important point out here, and that's the culpability of Gaius Baltar. I'll cover all that when I get to his trial in Season 3.
That the Fall of the Twelve Colonies greatly resembles the 9/11 terror attacks is undeniable. Six (both in physical and mental form) goes on about God. Cylons infiltrate a society that is very similar to ours. So to a large extent, it's hard not to see the Cylons as very obvious stand-ins for modern terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda. I don't really buy the "Cylons-are-the-Religious-Right" argument, primarily because of Laura Roslin. But more on her later.
So Cylons are analogous to terrorists. Then you have an episode where Roslin and Adama agree to have Starbuck interrogate a Cylon prisoner, and not just any Cylon prisoner, but a Leoben, probably the most fanatical model of them all. After Starbuck does more than the Guantanamo Bay interrogators are allowed to do, she goes on to point out that because Leoben is a machine, there's no limit to the techniques she can use. Yet Leoben is played by a human being, and for all intents and purposes is physically identical to one. He sweats and bleeds, eats and prays. Moreover, he doesn't even seem to harbor any particular ill-will towards Starbuck or the Colonials. He mocks her belief, but only as he explains or defends his own. He hasn't actually planted a nuclear bomb, and he's just been stalling for time, trying to keep himself alive.
And yet Roslin, supposedly one of the more liberal characters on the show (I distinctly remember an early commentary where Moore and Eick pointed out that Adama and Starbuck were meant to be Republicans and Roslin and Lee Democrats), has him tortured and then thrown out the airlock once she deems him too dangerous to leave alive.
Not a very liberal position. But then, Roslin's been having visions, and by the end of the season, she fervently believes that the religious texts are true. So, tortures and summarily executes prisoners, believes in a higher power, bans abortion in Season 2... look me in the eye and tell me Roslin's actually a liberal.
Let's take a look at Lee. In "Bastile Day," he successfully talks his way out of a hostage situation and only kills someone when a fellow soldier's life is in danger. He and his father negotiate with terrorists and hostage-takers (Adama's doing it to stall for time). He even promises them what they want: an election. But all Lee is doing is following the rule of law. The law says there's an election coming up, so there's an election coming up. Just because it's the end of the world doesn't mean we get to throw out all the rules. But that's not to say that Roslin couldn't pass a new law or change the Articles of Colonization. As his actions during the Pegasus arc in Season 2 demonstrate, Lee holds more to the letter of the law than to the spirit (more on that in part 2).
In "Colonial Day," he strong-arms a suspect and antagonizes a civilian from Saggitaron, just because he doesn't like the fact that the civilian supports Tom Zarek. In that episode, Zarek makes a few remarks about how there is no economy in place, so they have to go back to a collectivist system. This is the former terrorist espousing economic liberalism (or possibly just making a jab at Star Trek, I'm not entirely sure which). And as is usual for him, Zarek has 90% of a point; there is no economy, but that's no excuse to impose socialism.
And anyway, Roslin, our protagonist, defeats him.
In "Litmus," we have an overzealous prosecutor engage in a witch-hunt to find Cylon spies and saboteurs. Partly due to the fact that Tyrol and Boomer had engaged in an illegal tryst, the prosecutor came this close to getting her hands on a Cylon agent, before she lost perspective and tried to go after Adama for his lax security measures. Rather than first convict a Cylon, and then press Adama for better security measures, she abused the special powers she'd been granted.
Okay, I'll give you that one.
There's no denying that the show does have a political subtext. But at least in Season One, that subtext doesn't really lean in one direction or the other. Battlestar Galactica is not Star Trek, and it never sermonizes at the audience.
I did leave one very important point out here, and that's the culpability of Gaius Baltar. I'll cover all that when I get to his trial in Season 3.
BSG: Resurrection Ship
"We're all friendlies. So let's just... be friendly."
-Starbuck, channeling Buffy
There's something about cliffhangers. Most of the times, the ones that seem really good have horrible resolutions (3.2 and 3.3, "Precipice" and "Exodus, Part 1"). Ones that don't seem particularly engaging can lead to truly awesome things. This one falls somewhere in the middle. The Colonials are all busy flying circles around each other, afraid of firing first (and you really don't know who you want to punch more: smug, superior Narcho, or "request weapons free" ad nauseam Kat). Then Starbuck shows up and gets mistaken for a Cylon again, and because she's got pictures of the Resurrection Ship, everyone calls off everything and goes to calm down aboard Colonial One, where the President tries to placate everyone and then once Cain is gone, tells Adama that she (Cain) has to die.
We discover that Pegasus had a civilian fleet at one point, but Cain stripped the ships for parts and left most of the passengers to die. She took the useful ones with her, killing the families of those who refused to come. Upon hearing this, Adama decided that Cain is too dangerous to live, so he tasks Starbuck with killing her after the mission to destroy the Resurrection Ship.
Because the writers haven't come up with Death Star II, I mean the Resurrection Hub, here Gina-Six tells them that the Resurrection Ship contains everything needed for Cylons to resurrect themselves, and that if they destroy that ship, then Gina can truly die.
Now as best as I can tell, the Resurrection Hub is kind of like the server for the Resurrection Ships, and if it goes down then none of the ships will work, in much the same way that my internet doesn't work on days when the Comcast people get lonely enough to want phone calls from angry customers. But as I said, the writers haven't made that up yet.
So anyway, they decide to blow up the Resurrection Ship, because that will buy them a reprive while the Cylons take their time getting another Ship out there. Which kind of begs the following questions:
1) what else are the Cylons doing that would require them not to send every Basestar and Resurrection Ship they have after the last two Battlestars in the Galaxy?
Answer: per Season Three, they are looking for Earth. Why are they looking for Earth if Earth contains answers that Number One doesn't want them to find? Who knows. Another possible answer, both supported and refuted by evidence presented in "Pegasus," is that other ships in the Cylon fleet have quarantined planets with natural resources so the Colonials can't use them. But Cain specifically said that there were only two Basestars in the fleet. At least in "Exodus," the division of the Cylon fleet (they go from something like a dozen Basestars in "LDYB II" to four in "Exodus") makes sense, because the others are out searching for Galactica and/or Earth.
2) How many Resurrection Ships are there, and why don't the Cylons have another one hanging around for backup? On that note, how many Basestars are there? Again, The Plan seems to indicate that there are hundreds of them (we see at least twenty attack Caprica alone).
Anyway, as the operation is planned, both Adama and Cain make plans to execute each other after the battle. Adama clearly learns from the Boomer incident, and tells Starbuck to shoot Cain in the head. Adama's code is "Downfall," a reference to a film about Hitler's final days, while Cain's is "Case Orange," which is both a reference to World War 2 and to the contingency plan in the Miniseries.
Part 2: Apollo confronts Adama about the plan to bump off his superior officer, and falters in disbelief when he's told that it was the President's idea. Poor guy lost his job as CAG, got demoted to Lieutenant, and suffered a massive blow to his idealism. No wonder he tries to passively commit suicide in this episode, and starts visiting a prostitute by the time "Black Market" rolls around.
Adama asks Sharon why the Cylons hate humanity so much. She replies that they don't; they just don't think humans are worthy of survival. Adama takes her words to heart, and ultimately quotes them at Tigh and Starbuck when he calls off the mission to assassinate Cain.
Other than Lee doing his spacewalk, the mission goes off without a hitch. There's a tremendous amount of irony as Cain tells Starbuck not to flinch, and Starbuck and Fisk wish each other good hunting. But when the moment comes, both Adama and Cain back down, Adama because of his conversation with Sharon, and Cain because... well, who knows. (Would Fisk have done it? He's scared to death of Cain, for sure, but he doesn't exactly like her, either.)
Meanwhile, Baltar gets Gina-Six to open up to him (no, not like that) by telling her a story that Head-Six told him. Which is all well and good, except that now Head-Six is insisting that she's an angel of God, so either she's lying about that (which she's not), or she told him that story because on some level she actually does want Baltar to form a relationship with Gina (which she seems jealous about). Anyway, Baltar gives her a gun and she goes off and shoots Cain, thus saving our heroes the trouble of doing it.
And thus ends the two-parter. Starbuck speaks at Cain's funeral, noting that she respects Cain's refusal to flinch, to second-guess herself. (And yet Starbuck wants to frak Lee, who second-guesses himself all the time?)
Overall reflections on the Pegasus arc: a very well-crafted story. The last episode is absolutely rife with irony; Cain telling Starbuck not to flinch from what she has to do, Fisk and Starbuck wishing each other good hunting, one Cylon talking Adama down from shooting Cain while another Cylon does precisely that.
-Starbuck, channeling Buffy
There's something about cliffhangers. Most of the times, the ones that seem really good have horrible resolutions (3.2 and 3.3, "Precipice" and "Exodus, Part 1"). Ones that don't seem particularly engaging can lead to truly awesome things. This one falls somewhere in the middle. The Colonials are all busy flying circles around each other, afraid of firing first (and you really don't know who you want to punch more: smug, superior Narcho, or "request weapons free" ad nauseam Kat). Then Starbuck shows up and gets mistaken for a Cylon again, and because she's got pictures of the Resurrection Ship, everyone calls off everything and goes to calm down aboard Colonial One, where the President tries to placate everyone and then once Cain is gone, tells Adama that she (Cain) has to die.
We discover that Pegasus had a civilian fleet at one point, but Cain stripped the ships for parts and left most of the passengers to die. She took the useful ones with her, killing the families of those who refused to come. Upon hearing this, Adama decided that Cain is too dangerous to live, so he tasks Starbuck with killing her after the mission to destroy the Resurrection Ship.
Because the writers haven't come up with Death Star II, I mean the Resurrection Hub, here Gina-Six tells them that the Resurrection Ship contains everything needed for Cylons to resurrect themselves, and that if they destroy that ship, then Gina can truly die.
Now as best as I can tell, the Resurrection Hub is kind of like the server for the Resurrection Ships, and if it goes down then none of the ships will work, in much the same way that my internet doesn't work on days when the Comcast people get lonely enough to want phone calls from angry customers. But as I said, the writers haven't made that up yet.
So anyway, they decide to blow up the Resurrection Ship, because that will buy them a reprive while the Cylons take their time getting another Ship out there. Which kind of begs the following questions:
1) what else are the Cylons doing that would require them not to send every Basestar and Resurrection Ship they have after the last two Battlestars in the Galaxy?
Answer: per Season Three, they are looking for Earth. Why are they looking for Earth if Earth contains answers that Number One doesn't want them to find? Who knows. Another possible answer, both supported and refuted by evidence presented in "Pegasus," is that other ships in the Cylon fleet have quarantined planets with natural resources so the Colonials can't use them. But Cain specifically said that there were only two Basestars in the fleet. At least in "Exodus," the division of the Cylon fleet (they go from something like a dozen Basestars in "LDYB II" to four in "Exodus") makes sense, because the others are out searching for Galactica and/or Earth.
2) How many Resurrection Ships are there, and why don't the Cylons have another one hanging around for backup? On that note, how many Basestars are there? Again, The Plan seems to indicate that there are hundreds of them (we see at least twenty attack Caprica alone).
Anyway, as the operation is planned, both Adama and Cain make plans to execute each other after the battle. Adama clearly learns from the Boomer incident, and tells Starbuck to shoot Cain in the head. Adama's code is "Downfall," a reference to a film about Hitler's final days, while Cain's is "Case Orange," which is both a reference to World War 2 and to the contingency plan in the Miniseries.
Part 2: Apollo confronts Adama about the plan to bump off his superior officer, and falters in disbelief when he's told that it was the President's idea. Poor guy lost his job as CAG, got demoted to Lieutenant, and suffered a massive blow to his idealism. No wonder he tries to passively commit suicide in this episode, and starts visiting a prostitute by the time "Black Market" rolls around.
Adama asks Sharon why the Cylons hate humanity so much. She replies that they don't; they just don't think humans are worthy of survival. Adama takes her words to heart, and ultimately quotes them at Tigh and Starbuck when he calls off the mission to assassinate Cain.
Other than Lee doing his spacewalk, the mission goes off without a hitch. There's a tremendous amount of irony as Cain tells Starbuck not to flinch, and Starbuck and Fisk wish each other good hunting. But when the moment comes, both Adama and Cain back down, Adama because of his conversation with Sharon, and Cain because... well, who knows. (Would Fisk have done it? He's scared to death of Cain, for sure, but he doesn't exactly like her, either.)
Meanwhile, Baltar gets Gina-Six to open up to him (no, not like that) by telling her a story that Head-Six told him. Which is all well and good, except that now Head-Six is insisting that she's an angel of God, so either she's lying about that (which she's not), or she told him that story because on some level she actually does want Baltar to form a relationship with Gina (which she seems jealous about). Anyway, Baltar gives her a gun and she goes off and shoots Cain, thus saving our heroes the trouble of doing it.
And thus ends the two-parter. Starbuck speaks at Cain's funeral, noting that she respects Cain's refusal to flinch, to second-guess herself. (And yet Starbuck wants to frak Lee, who second-guesses himself all the time?)
Overall reflections on the Pegasus arc: a very well-crafted story. The last episode is absolutely rife with irony; Cain telling Starbuck not to flinch from what she has to do, Fisk and Starbuck wishing each other good hunting, one Cylon talking Adama down from shooting Cain while another Cylon does precisely that.
Monday, August 22, 2011
BSG: Final Cut
"Would you get out of my face?"
-Tigh
Hey, remember that time the alcoholic second-in-command declared martial law and got four people killed? So do the producers, so now that the rest of the Kobol arc is done, it's time to address that.
D'Anna Biers, professional smear journalist, is invited aboard Galactica in order to clear the air between the military and the civilians. It's a clever move on Roslin's part, because finding the sleaziest reporter out there and getting her to paint the crew in a positive light would be a massive propaganda coup.
My entire opinion of D'Anna was tainted from her very first scene, when she talks about editing "stock footage of rampaging marines" into the tape of marines shooting civilians aboard the Gideon. Having never seen Xena, my reaction was less "hey kids, it's Lucy Lawless!" and more "wow, I've known this character for three seconds and I already hope she turns out to be a Cylon."
What follows are a number of increasingly implausible scenes as D'Anna and her cameraman get shots of literally anything and everything that could possibly go wrong during a routine day aboard Galactica, capped off by the cheapest dogfight scene ever in the (modern) show's history. And this is where it kind of falls down.
Too many things are going on: Tigh is getting death threats because of his role in the Gideon massacre, Kat is turning into a stim-junkie, and Sharon nearly has a miscarriage. Biers and her camera witness each of them in turn, because somebody thought it would be great to give her unlimited access to the crew. There really doesn't seem to be an A-story, and it's all undermined by the fact that nobody bothers to try to have private conversations away from D'Anna's camera. Starbuck and Apollo talk about Kat going nuts, fully aware that D'Anna is taping every word. Adama and Tigh don't bother discussing the fallout from the Gideon incident in his quarters, they do it in CIC, where D'Anna can stand right there and tape everything.
The focal point of the story, according to the summary on the DVD casing, is D'Anna's discovery that there's a pregnant copy of Sharon aboard Galactica. And that would make for a compelling story, because preggers-Sharon is a big secret and a security threat. But would it really, as D'Anna says, blow everything wide open and turn the civilians against the Galactica crew? Bear in mind that there are no other friendly warships left in the Universe.* It's not exactly like the civvies can take care of themselves if the Cylons come calling.
*Nobody knows about the Pegasus yet, and given what happened to its civilian fleet, it doesn't qualify as a "friendly" ship.
This feels like one of the "new five" of Season 2. That's the first time I've used this term, so here it is in a nutshell: as far as I know, the writers assumed Season 2 would be 13 episodes long, and broke the season accordingly. When the order got bumped from 13 to 20, they got a three-month hiatus between episodes 10 and 11 in order to come up with more story ideas as part of the deal. So that's seven new episodes to make, but then "Scattered" became "Scattered" and "Valley of Darkness," and "Home" became "Home, Part 1" and "Home, Part 2." So then there were only five new episodes to do. And if I had to guess, those five are "Final Cut," "Flight of the Phoenix," "Black Market," "Sacrifice," and "Downloaded." I make those guesses not because of the relative quality of those episodes ("Downloaded" was nominated for a Hugo, for crying out loud), but because they generally have far less to do with the season's arc than the other 15 episodes, which either deal with Kobol, the Pegasus, Roslin's cancer, or Starbuck's quest to save Anders and the other Caprica resistance fighters.
And ultimately I'm not sure what the point of this episode was. It could have been a confrontation between D'Anna and Adama over freedom of the press. It could have been about Tigh dealing with his responsibility for the Gideon incident. It could have been about Kat and her stims, or it could have been about Dee's backstory. But when they tried to jam all those ideas into one episode, it comes off as a bit of a mess.
That said, the episode is a tour de force for the editor. Intercutting Kat's interview with her botched landing was a masterstroke, as was intercuttng Dee's interview with her panicked looks during the battle. But the best part comes near the end, as they're all watching the completed documentary and the theme from the original series plays in all its glory as we learn that not one Galactica crewmember has asked to resign (cf. 4.1 "He That Believeth in Me").
-Tigh
Hey, remember that time the alcoholic second-in-command declared martial law and got four people killed? So do the producers, so now that the rest of the Kobol arc is done, it's time to address that.
D'Anna Biers, professional smear journalist, is invited aboard Galactica in order to clear the air between the military and the civilians. It's a clever move on Roslin's part, because finding the sleaziest reporter out there and getting her to paint the crew in a positive light would be a massive propaganda coup.
My entire opinion of D'Anna was tainted from her very first scene, when she talks about editing "stock footage of rampaging marines" into the tape of marines shooting civilians aboard the Gideon. Having never seen Xena, my reaction was less "hey kids, it's Lucy Lawless!" and more "wow, I've known this character for three seconds and I already hope she turns out to be a Cylon."
What follows are a number of increasingly implausible scenes as D'Anna and her cameraman get shots of literally anything and everything that could possibly go wrong during a routine day aboard Galactica, capped off by the cheapest dogfight scene ever in the (modern) show's history. And this is where it kind of falls down.
Too many things are going on: Tigh is getting death threats because of his role in the Gideon massacre, Kat is turning into a stim-junkie, and Sharon nearly has a miscarriage. Biers and her camera witness each of them in turn, because somebody thought it would be great to give her unlimited access to the crew. There really doesn't seem to be an A-story, and it's all undermined by the fact that nobody bothers to try to have private conversations away from D'Anna's camera. Starbuck and Apollo talk about Kat going nuts, fully aware that D'Anna is taping every word. Adama and Tigh don't bother discussing the fallout from the Gideon incident in his quarters, they do it in CIC, where D'Anna can stand right there and tape everything.
The focal point of the story, according to the summary on the DVD casing, is D'Anna's discovery that there's a pregnant copy of Sharon aboard Galactica. And that would make for a compelling story, because preggers-Sharon is a big secret and a security threat. But would it really, as D'Anna says, blow everything wide open and turn the civilians against the Galactica crew? Bear in mind that there are no other friendly warships left in the Universe.* It's not exactly like the civvies can take care of themselves if the Cylons come calling.
*Nobody knows about the Pegasus yet, and given what happened to its civilian fleet, it doesn't qualify as a "friendly" ship.
This feels like one of the "new five" of Season 2. That's the first time I've used this term, so here it is in a nutshell: as far as I know, the writers assumed Season 2 would be 13 episodes long, and broke the season accordingly. When the order got bumped from 13 to 20, they got a three-month hiatus between episodes 10 and 11 in order to come up with more story ideas as part of the deal. So that's seven new episodes to make, but then "Scattered" became "Scattered" and "Valley of Darkness," and "Home" became "Home, Part 1" and "Home, Part 2." So then there were only five new episodes to do. And if I had to guess, those five are "Final Cut," "Flight of the Phoenix," "Black Market," "Sacrifice," and "Downloaded." I make those guesses not because of the relative quality of those episodes ("Downloaded" was nominated for a Hugo, for crying out loud), but because they generally have far less to do with the season's arc than the other 15 episodes, which either deal with Kobol, the Pegasus, Roslin's cancer, or Starbuck's quest to save Anders and the other Caprica resistance fighters.
And ultimately I'm not sure what the point of this episode was. It could have been a confrontation between D'Anna and Adama over freedom of the press. It could have been about Tigh dealing with his responsibility for the Gideon incident. It could have been about Kat and her stims, or it could have been about Dee's backstory. But when they tried to jam all those ideas into one episode, it comes off as a bit of a mess.
That said, the episode is a tour de force for the editor. Intercutting Kat's interview with her botched landing was a masterstroke, as was intercuttng Dee's interview with her panicked looks during the battle. But the best part comes near the end, as they're all watching the completed documentary and the theme from the original series plays in all its glory as we learn that not one Galactica crewmember has asked to resign (cf. 4.1 "He That Believeth in Me").
Saturday, August 20, 2011
New Who in one week! ...yay?
As the sole person out there following this sorry excuse for a blog might have noticed, I filled out my "Doctor Who goes on hiatus" time by watching every single frakking episode of Battlestar Galactica, and, as I hinted at here, I do feel that Galactica is the better show (for one thing, even the "bad" Galactica episodes like "Black Market" and "The Woman King" didn't even approach the special level of awful dreck that was "The Rebel Flesh" or "Fear Her," and though "Daybreak, Part 1" was a fairly massive tease, at least it was more engaging than "A Good Man Goes to War").
So, having spent the last several weeks exposing myself to a miniseries, seventy-three episodes and two films of general awesomeness, am I really looking forward to the return of Doctor Who?
Well, yes. Despite the fact that as far as I can tell, our first episode back, the preposterously-titled "Let's Kill Hitler," is probably going to be Moffat carrying out some sort of revenge fantasy, I still want to know what the hell was really going on with that astronaut on the beach at the beginning of the season. (And on the subject of comparing BSG to Who, someone please tell me that the Moff has a Plan, because he can't exactly drop that event the same way Apollo suddenly dropped all that weight in Season 3.)
See, Joss Whedon (and to a lesser extent, Russell T Davies) wrote backwards; they figured out where they wanted to be at the end of the season and then worked out how to get there. (I can say this with some certainty because I believe Joss when he says that plans to kill of certain characters had been in the works for years, although I also suspect certain revelations near the end of "Dollhouse" might have been the complete opposite of planned out in advance.) Ron Moore and company famously/notoriously (delete according to preference) wrote forward, giving themselves plenty of plot elements to use in the future, but also plenty of rope to hang themselves with. I'm not entirely sure where Moffat falls on that spectrum, but I hope it's towards the Whedon/Davies end. When Moore came up with the Final Five, and their identities, he had to scramble like a madman to tie up loose ends (Number Seven, the fact that Cylons age, "Hot Dog is the father," etc). Now it worked, so I'll give him credit for that, but even so, the Hot Dog thing was way out of left field. But that's nothing compared to straight-up murdering your protagonist at the beginning of the season like Moffat did. And before you make the obvious comparison to a certain BSG event in Season 3, Doctor Who is pretty athiestic, so it's not like the Doctor's going to waltz back in with a brand-new TARDIS that can magically point the way to Earth, and "God did it" won't be an acceptable answer... Besides, with the timey-wimey ball in effect, you can't even take Matt Smith's name out of the credits for a few episodes to fool people into thinking he's dead for good.
...so they're going to kill Hitler, wich is going to cause a massive dent in history, causing robot jellyfish to attack them because robot jellyfish make more sense than killer time dragons, but whatever. Hey, maybe in all the mayhem, you could go untangle some other stuff in your history, like, I don't know, the Valeyard? No, I'm just kidding, go back to that beach and save yourself from dying. Do it. Do it now.
Also: according to your own Fourth incarnation, Doctor, you don't have "the right" to wipe out the Daleks. Ah, but Hitler's a different story. Why? Because Tarantino did it first.
So, having spent the last several weeks exposing myself to a miniseries, seventy-three episodes and two films of general awesomeness, am I really looking forward to the return of Doctor Who?
Well, yes. Despite the fact that as far as I can tell, our first episode back, the preposterously-titled "Let's Kill Hitler," is probably going to be Moffat carrying out some sort of revenge fantasy, I still want to know what the hell was really going on with that astronaut on the beach at the beginning of the season. (And on the subject of comparing BSG to Who, someone please tell me that the Moff has a Plan, because he can't exactly drop that event the same way Apollo suddenly dropped all that weight in Season 3.)
See, Joss Whedon (and to a lesser extent, Russell T Davies) wrote backwards; they figured out where they wanted to be at the end of the season and then worked out how to get there. (I can say this with some certainty because I believe Joss when he says that plans to kill of certain characters had been in the works for years, although I also suspect certain revelations near the end of "Dollhouse" might have been the complete opposite of planned out in advance.) Ron Moore and company famously/notoriously (delete according to preference) wrote forward, giving themselves plenty of plot elements to use in the future, but also plenty of rope to hang themselves with. I'm not entirely sure where Moffat falls on that spectrum, but I hope it's towards the Whedon/Davies end. When Moore came up with the Final Five, and their identities, he had to scramble like a madman to tie up loose ends (Number Seven, the fact that Cylons age, "Hot Dog is the father," etc). Now it worked, so I'll give him credit for that, but even so, the Hot Dog thing was way out of left field. But that's nothing compared to straight-up murdering your protagonist at the beginning of the season like Moffat did. And before you make the obvious comparison to a certain BSG event in Season 3, Doctor Who is pretty athiestic, so it's not like the Doctor's going to waltz back in with a brand-new TARDIS that can magically point the way to Earth, and "God did it" won't be an acceptable answer... Besides, with the timey-wimey ball in effect, you can't even take Matt Smith's name out of the credits for a few episodes to fool people into thinking he's dead for good.
...so they're going to kill Hitler, wich is going to cause a massive dent in history, causing robot jellyfish to attack them because robot jellyfish make more sense than killer time dragons, but whatever. Hey, maybe in all the mayhem, you could go untangle some other stuff in your history, like, I don't know, the Valeyard? No, I'm just kidding, go back to that beach and save yourself from dying. Do it. Do it now.
Also: according to your own Fourth incarnation, Doctor, you don't have "the right" to wipe out the Daleks. Ah, but Hitler's a different story. Why? Because Tarantino did it first.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
BSG: Valley of Darkness
In the aftermath of a Cylon attack, now there are Centurions aboard the ship. Colonel Tigh very nearly gets blown out the airlock (and not for the last time either, cf. 4.10, "Revelations").
The Cylon plan: split up into two groups. Send one group to Secondary Damage Control, which can apparently open up the entire ship into space and kill all the humans aboard. Send the other group of Auxiliary Fire Control, which has nothing to do with dealing with parts of the ship that are burning, but rather with controlling the ship's guns. Tigh, apparently has seen this before (actually, a deleted scene reveals that Adama has seen this before, and had the foresight to tell Tigh about it back when they were both space-bums), and is able to stop the group going to Auxiliary Fire Control. But it's up to Apollo to stop the others, which he does with the "help" of Jammer, that random, cowardly (eventually traitorous) deckhand I don't particularly like. They need explosive rounds to deal with these Centurious, even though the gang on Kobol didn't in the previous episode. Whatever. The Second Rule of Firefights is: "The good guy's weapons shall always work, unless the plot demands otherwise." (The First Rule is: "the bad guys will always miss, unless the plot demands otherwise.")
Meanwhile, Billy and Dee nearly suffer a fatal blow to their relationship (being on opposite sides of a military coup can do that), but then get back together (nearly being shot by toasters can do that). And Roslin gets a Pulp Fiction moment when the Cylons shoot through her jacket, but don't hit her. (God did it! The entire show goes out of its way to have our big skeptic, Baltar, say in the very first episode that there are random, serendipitous occurences, rather than acts of God, and even he is a believer soon enough. This is another example of what we call foreshadowing, and is therefore a reason why I don't have too many problems with the finale...)
On Kobol, Tyrol gets the spare medpack back for Socinus, but it's too late, and all they can do is euthanize him. Tarn, who died in the previous episode, was a redshirt, but Socinus was a character from all the way back in the Miniseries (even if he did only have one line there). Now the show is serious about killing off minor characters. There are more to come...
Meanwhile on Caprica, Starbuck berates Helo for falling in love with a machine (yeah, because you don't frak everything you fancy, do you, Kara?) They go to Starbuck's old apartment, where she plays a tape of piano music her father recorded. Shame it's not "All Along the Watchtower," but at least there's a curious design on the wall behind her for the writers to exploit later...
And on the subject of vaguely spoilery stuff, Tigh's last line is hilarious.
The Cylon plan: split up into two groups. Send one group to Secondary Damage Control, which can apparently open up the entire ship into space and kill all the humans aboard. Send the other group of Auxiliary Fire Control, which has nothing to do with dealing with parts of the ship that are burning, but rather with controlling the ship's guns. Tigh, apparently has seen this before (actually, a deleted scene reveals that Adama has seen this before, and had the foresight to tell Tigh about it back when they were both space-bums), and is able to stop the group going to Auxiliary Fire Control. But it's up to Apollo to stop the others, which he does with the "help" of Jammer, that random, cowardly (eventually traitorous) deckhand I don't particularly like. They need explosive rounds to deal with these Centurious, even though the gang on Kobol didn't in the previous episode. Whatever. The Second Rule of Firefights is: "The good guy's weapons shall always work, unless the plot demands otherwise." (The First Rule is: "the bad guys will always miss, unless the plot demands otherwise.")
Meanwhile, Billy and Dee nearly suffer a fatal blow to their relationship (being on opposite sides of a military coup can do that), but then get back together (nearly being shot by toasters can do that). And Roslin gets a Pulp Fiction moment when the Cylons shoot through her jacket, but don't hit her. (God did it! The entire show goes out of its way to have our big skeptic, Baltar, say in the very first episode that there are random, serendipitous occurences, rather than acts of God, and even he is a believer soon enough. This is another example of what we call foreshadowing, and is therefore a reason why I don't have too many problems with the finale...)
On Kobol, Tyrol gets the spare medpack back for Socinus, but it's too late, and all they can do is euthanize him. Tarn, who died in the previous episode, was a redshirt, but Socinus was a character from all the way back in the Miniseries (even if he did only have one line there). Now the show is serious about killing off minor characters. There are more to come...
Meanwhile on Caprica, Starbuck berates Helo for falling in love with a machine (yeah, because you don't frak everything you fancy, do you, Kara?) They go to Starbuck's old apartment, where she plays a tape of piano music her father recorded. Shame it's not "All Along the Watchtower," but at least there's a curious design on the wall behind her for the writers to exploit later...
And on the subject of vaguely spoilery stuff, Tigh's last line is hilarious.
BSG: The Farm
This was the darkest episode of the show for all of five episodes, and then "Pegasus" came along. (And then "Pegasus" was knocked off that perch by its own extended version.)
For the first and only time in the show, the A-storyline takes place on Cylon-occupied Caprica. Starbuck has met the resistance movement, led by former Pyramid star (and onetime musician, cf. 4.11, "Sometimes a Great Notion") Samuel T. Anders, whom she promptly starts fawning over, and then frakking.
Then they go on a scouting mission and she gets shot and wakes up in a hospital with a doctor played by Rick Worthy. I mention him specifically because shortly after I saw "Pegasus," I went back to Voyager and watched the two-parter "Equinox" for fun and recognized him. I believe that makes him the second of five Star Trek actors to turn up on this show (Kate Vernon, Michelle Forbes, Dean Stockwell and Nana Visitor being the others, but I'm probably missing a few other people anyway). Anyway, his character's name is Simon, and he's a doctor. (I'm tempted to say it's a Firefly reference.) Simon completely fails to put Starbuck at ease. (Moore says in the podcast that the viewers are smart, that we don't really need to suffer these "gotcha" moments, that we can figure things out along with Starbuck. I wish he'd kept that mindset when he was writing the denoument to "Daybreak," but that's another story for a different day.)
Anyway, it turns out that he is a Cylon, and it's strongly implied that he harvested one of Starbuck's ovaries (but the writers of this and 3.2, "Precipice," aren't exactly clear on the difference between ovaries and eggs, so who knows exactly what he took). Starbuck escapes by stabbing Simon in the throat and clocking a Six with a fire extinguisher. She finds a room where a bunch of women are wired up to machines, and mercy-kills them all. Then she runs into another Simon copy, but he's gunned down by the resistance, who have come to rescue her. Amid all this, Sharon has stolen a heavy raider, and uses it to take Starbuck and Helo back to the fleet, while Anders remains behind to keep fighting. He does seem to suggest that he'll leave if Starbuck can get all the resistance fighters off with him, which they can't do in one tiny Raider... which begs the question of why they don't just steal more Raiders then and there? (Because Starbuck is the only human who can fly Raiders? Sure, if you pretend 3.8, "Hero" doesn't exist. On the other hand, at least Novacek's a pilot, whose Raider was probably modified, etc, etc. Also, Novacek's first name is "Daniel," but sadly that doesn't go anywhere... cf. 4.15, "No Exit.")
Sharon points out that they would have set Starbuck up with a Cylon she'd like if she agreed to take part voluntarily in the breeding program. I don't mean to spoil anything, but this scene is hilarious in light of later revelations (3.17, "Maelstrom," 3.20, "Crossroads, Part 2"). Hell, it's pretty funny as it is, since you can't quite see Starbuck falling for any of the male members of the Significant Seven.
But in between that and Anders's morning-after pillow-talk at the beginning of the episode, this one is pretty dark. Not content to nuke us into oblivion, the Cylons are now down with raping human women in order to propogate their race. Thank goodness there are some levels we won't stoop to... oh. Right. "Pegasus."
For the first and only time in the show, the A-storyline takes place on Cylon-occupied Caprica. Starbuck has met the resistance movement, led by former Pyramid star (and onetime musician, cf. 4.11, "Sometimes a Great Notion") Samuel T. Anders, whom she promptly starts fawning over, and then frakking.
Then they go on a scouting mission and she gets shot and wakes up in a hospital with a doctor played by Rick Worthy. I mention him specifically because shortly after I saw "Pegasus," I went back to Voyager and watched the two-parter "Equinox" for fun and recognized him. I believe that makes him the second of five Star Trek actors to turn up on this show (Kate Vernon, Michelle Forbes, Dean Stockwell and Nana Visitor being the others, but I'm probably missing a few other people anyway). Anyway, his character's name is Simon, and he's a doctor. (I'm tempted to say it's a Firefly reference.) Simon completely fails to put Starbuck at ease. (Moore says in the podcast that the viewers are smart, that we don't really need to suffer these "gotcha" moments, that we can figure things out along with Starbuck. I wish he'd kept that mindset when he was writing the denoument to "Daybreak," but that's another story for a different day.)
Anyway, it turns out that he is a Cylon, and it's strongly implied that he harvested one of Starbuck's ovaries (but the writers of this and 3.2, "Precipice," aren't exactly clear on the difference between ovaries and eggs, so who knows exactly what he took). Starbuck escapes by stabbing Simon in the throat and clocking a Six with a fire extinguisher. She finds a room where a bunch of women are wired up to machines, and mercy-kills them all. Then she runs into another Simon copy, but he's gunned down by the resistance, who have come to rescue her. Amid all this, Sharon has stolen a heavy raider, and uses it to take Starbuck and Helo back to the fleet, while Anders remains behind to keep fighting. He does seem to suggest that he'll leave if Starbuck can get all the resistance fighters off with him, which they can't do in one tiny Raider... which begs the question of why they don't just steal more Raiders then and there? (Because Starbuck is the only human who can fly Raiders? Sure, if you pretend 3.8, "Hero" doesn't exist. On the other hand, at least Novacek's a pilot, whose Raider was probably modified, etc, etc. Also, Novacek's first name is "Daniel," but sadly that doesn't go anywhere... cf. 4.15, "No Exit.")
Sharon points out that they would have set Starbuck up with a Cylon she'd like if she agreed to take part voluntarily in the breeding program. I don't mean to spoil anything, but this scene is hilarious in light of later revelations (3.17, "Maelstrom," 3.20, "Crossroads, Part 2"). Hell, it's pretty funny as it is, since you can't quite see Starbuck falling for any of the male members of the Significant Seven.
But in between that and Anders's morning-after pillow-talk at the beginning of the episode, this one is pretty dark. Not content to nuke us into oblivion, the Cylons are now down with raping human women in order to propogate their race. Thank goodness there are some levels we won't stoop to... oh. Right. "Pegasus."
Monday, August 15, 2011
Who Review: The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords
"Utopia" ended on a cliffhanger, with the Doctor, Martha and Jack trapped at the End of the Universe (sadly there was no restaurant in sight) and about to be devoured by Mad Max zombie things. Said Mad Max Zombie Things (MMZTs) have no real purpose except to railroad our heroes into Professor Yana's clutches, Yana turns out to be the Master, Martha does a stupid and unlocks his dormant personality, and he goes absolutely ape and turns into that guy from Life On Mars. He steals the TARDIS and leaves our heroes trapped and apparently at the mercy of the MMZTs.
But no need to worry about them, because Captain Jack has a fancy-pants wristband that lets him go anywhere, except when the plot demands that he can't, which is always, so it's actually disabled unless the Doctor needs a superpowered sidekick. Like now. So they pop back to present day London, and it turns out that the Master has been living under the alias Harold Saxon for the past 18 months, and is now the Prime Minister.
Harold Saxon has no history to speak of. His political career is less than two years long. His college records are sealed. Nobody can find his birth certificate. Only one member of the press seems at all interested in actually exploring his past (and she gets killed for her trouble). When the Doctor asks Martha what his platform was, she can't give a coherent answer. And they made him the Prime Minister anyway. (This was made in 2007, otherwise I'd be concerned that the BBC was actually allowing a conservative slant into its programming.)
All joking aside, the Master proceeds to murder his cabinet with a smile, a gasmask, and a ton of gas. There's a death panel for ya. Then for kicks and giggles, he murders the American President-elect (?) and takes over the planet with the help of six billion murderous bowling balls. Meanwhile, the Doctor accomplishes nothing. At his disposal, he has Captain Jack, an immortal sex god with a teleporter for a wristwatch, and Martha Jones, who has the distinct advantage of not being Rose Tyler. He also has TARDIS keys that he somehow rigs to make them all but unnoticed by almost everyone else.
And he accomplishes nothing. The entire first episode is devoted to making John Simm look awesome and feeding the Doctor/Master slashfic writers ("I love it when you use my name").
The next episode opens. It is one year later. Baltar's presidency is a terrible mess. Starbuck is suddenly on speaking terms with Tigh, and Apollo is fat. Wait, wrong show again. (And in fairness, Rusty did point out in the commentary that Battlestar did it first.)
It is one year later. The Master owns Earth. The Doctor, Jack, and all of Martha's family are his prisoners. Martha has spent the year roaming the earth, but we don't have to wait seven episodes before a boxing match frames a bunch of flashbacks to figure out what she's been up to. Also, the Doctor is suddenly an old man, because the Master has been torturing him with his Laser Screwdriver (which is bigger and thicker than the Sonic).
Martha pretends that she's been assembling a gun that's been hidden all over the world, and because this is so very close to being the usual RTD end-of-season deus ex machina, we don't really question it. It turns out that she's just been telling the Doctor's story to everyone, and now on the eve of the Master's war against the Universe, they all think his name at once (or rather, they think "Doctor"), and he magically gets better, becomes Space Jesus, and forgives the Master, who promptly gets shot by his wife and, rather than regenerate, dies out of pure spite.
It's a great showcase for John Simm as the Master. David Tennant gets to expand his acting repertoire and the fact that he has to spend an entire episode as either an old man or a CGI goblin at least prevents him from beeing annoyingly cheerful or even-more-annoyingly angsty. But that's really all it has going for it.
6 out of 10 for both parts.
But no need to worry about them, because Captain Jack has a fancy-pants wristband that lets him go anywhere, except when the plot demands that he can't, which is always, so it's actually disabled unless the Doctor needs a superpowered sidekick. Like now. So they pop back to present day London, and it turns out that the Master has been living under the alias Harold Saxon for the past 18 months, and is now the Prime Minister.
Harold Saxon has no history to speak of. His political career is less than two years long. His college records are sealed. Nobody can find his birth certificate. Only one member of the press seems at all interested in actually exploring his past (and she gets killed for her trouble). When the Doctor asks Martha what his platform was, she can't give a coherent answer. And they made him the Prime Minister anyway. (This was made in 2007, otherwise I'd be concerned that the BBC was actually allowing a conservative slant into its programming.)
All joking aside, the Master proceeds to murder his cabinet with a smile, a gasmask, and a ton of gas. There's a death panel for ya. Then for kicks and giggles, he murders the American President-elect (?) and takes over the planet with the help of six billion murderous bowling balls. Meanwhile, the Doctor accomplishes nothing. At his disposal, he has Captain Jack, an immortal sex god with a teleporter for a wristwatch, and Martha Jones, who has the distinct advantage of not being Rose Tyler. He also has TARDIS keys that he somehow rigs to make them all but unnoticed by almost everyone else.
And he accomplishes nothing. The entire first episode is devoted to making John Simm look awesome and feeding the Doctor/Master slashfic writers ("I love it when you use my name").
The next episode opens. It is one year later. Baltar's presidency is a terrible mess. Starbuck is suddenly on speaking terms with Tigh, and Apollo is fat. Wait, wrong show again. (And in fairness, Rusty did point out in the commentary that Battlestar did it first.)
It is one year later. The Master owns Earth. The Doctor, Jack, and all of Martha's family are his prisoners. Martha has spent the year roaming the earth, but we don't have to wait seven episodes before a boxing match frames a bunch of flashbacks to figure out what she's been up to. Also, the Doctor is suddenly an old man, because the Master has been torturing him with his Laser Screwdriver (which is bigger and thicker than the Sonic).
Martha pretends that she's been assembling a gun that's been hidden all over the world, and because this is so very close to being the usual RTD end-of-season deus ex machina, we don't really question it. It turns out that she's just been telling the Doctor's story to everyone, and now on the eve of the Master's war against the Universe, they all think his name at once (or rather, they think "Doctor"), and he magically gets better, becomes Space Jesus, and forgives the Master, who promptly gets shot by his wife and, rather than regenerate, dies out of pure spite.
It's a great showcase for John Simm as the Master. David Tennant gets to expand his acting repertoire and the fact that he has to spend an entire episode as either an old man or a CGI goblin at least prevents him from beeing annoyingly cheerful or even-more-annoyingly angsty. But that's really all it has going for it.
6 out of 10 for both parts.
Friday, August 12, 2011
BSG: Hand of God
A dying leader will lead them to the promised land, but will die before ever setting foot there.
So basically, from this point on, Laura Roslin is Space Moses (except that in 4.10, "Revelations," she does in fact set foot on Earth. Go figure).
Roslin gives a speech about the fact that they've almost run out of fuel and don't really have a plan (at least when the humans don't have a Plan, they can go ahead and admit it). She's interrupted by a hallucination of a dozen snakes on her podium. Wise priest Elosha thinks Roslin's having her on, but it turns out that, yup, Roslin is the dying leader that a prophet named Pythia wrote about a gazillion years ago.
On the subject of Pythia, at the end of this episode, we learn that the phrase "all of this has happened before, and all of this has happened again" was written by her (and not, say, the writers of Disney's Peter Pan).* We've heard that phrase before, spoken by Leoben in "Flesh and Bone," but there, Starbuck's response was "Don't quote Scripture." Um, so then Pythia wasn't Nostradamus, but rather John, author of the Book of Revelations. (Or she's Agnes Nutter, Witch.) Point is, she's a dead woman who knows a lot about what's about to happen, but apparently Laura Roslin never got around to even hearing about her. Baltar read Pythia in the sixth grade, but Roslin, a schoolteacher, didn't. Okay, then.
*Alternatively, they both could have written it, a la Sam Anders, Dreilide T[spoiler], and Bob Dylan. And if by some delightful coincidence you have no idea what I'm referring to, then stop and revel in the fact that you have somehow managed to avoid knowledge of what is probably the show's most well-known plot twist. I envy you.
So they're out of fuel, and Roslin has no plan for getting more. Good thing Adama does. There's a ton of fuel nearby, the only problem is that the Cylons are sitting on it. Well, the solution is obvious: take it from the Cylons.
Which is precisely what they do. Starbuck's still out of commission, but she plans the attack. Baltar randomly guesses where the thermal exhaust port is, and Lee maneuvers straight down the trench, and now the way I'm describing it, it sounds more like porn than a Star Wars knockoff.
Yeah, this is one of the more superficial episodes of the show. But given that it still has a ton of Team Dad moments for Adama (visiting Starbuck in the gym and explaining why she's not going on the mission, giving Apollo his lawyer father's lighter, etc), "superficial" is an incredibly relative term.
And it's this episode where both Baltar and Roslin begin to accept their roles as instruments of God. We the audience think Baltar's still off in loony-land, but that's mainly because 2.7, "Home, Part 2" hasn't happened yet and the show's religious subtext hasn't yet become text. As I said at the beginning, Roslin basically becomes Space Moses at this point, and she'll waffle back and forth between that role and becoming more of a (benevolent) dictator until the middle of Season 4, when she settles for Dying Cancer Patient. Baltar's eventually going to become Space John the Baptist (after first trying on a dozen other ill-fitting mantles), though the actor's initials might have you guessing at a different role...
So basically, from this point on, Laura Roslin is Space Moses (except that in 4.10, "Revelations," she does in fact set foot on Earth. Go figure).
Roslin gives a speech about the fact that they've almost run out of fuel and don't really have a plan (at least when the humans don't have a Plan, they can go ahead and admit it). She's interrupted by a hallucination of a dozen snakes on her podium. Wise priest Elosha thinks Roslin's having her on, but it turns out that, yup, Roslin is the dying leader that a prophet named Pythia wrote about a gazillion years ago.
On the subject of Pythia, at the end of this episode, we learn that the phrase "all of this has happened before, and all of this has happened again" was written by her (and not, say, the writers of Disney's Peter Pan).* We've heard that phrase before, spoken by Leoben in "Flesh and Bone," but there, Starbuck's response was "Don't quote Scripture." Um, so then Pythia wasn't Nostradamus, but rather John, author of the Book of Revelations. (Or she's Agnes Nutter, Witch.) Point is, she's a dead woman who knows a lot about what's about to happen, but apparently Laura Roslin never got around to even hearing about her. Baltar read Pythia in the sixth grade, but Roslin, a schoolteacher, didn't. Okay, then.
*Alternatively, they both could have written it, a la Sam Anders, Dreilide T[spoiler], and Bob Dylan. And if by some delightful coincidence you have no idea what I'm referring to, then stop and revel in the fact that you have somehow managed to avoid knowledge of what is probably the show's most well-known plot twist. I envy you.
So they're out of fuel, and Roslin has no plan for getting more. Good thing Adama does. There's a ton of fuel nearby, the only problem is that the Cylons are sitting on it. Well, the solution is obvious: take it from the Cylons.
Which is precisely what they do. Starbuck's still out of commission, but she plans the attack. Baltar randomly guesses where the thermal exhaust port is, and Lee maneuvers straight down the trench, and now the way I'm describing it, it sounds more like porn than a Star Wars knockoff.
Yeah, this is one of the more superficial episodes of the show. But given that it still has a ton of Team Dad moments for Adama (visiting Starbuck in the gym and explaining why she's not going on the mission, giving Apollo his lawyer father's lighter, etc), "superficial" is an incredibly relative term.
And it's this episode where both Baltar and Roslin begin to accept their roles as instruments of God. We the audience think Baltar's still off in loony-land, but that's mainly because 2.7, "Home, Part 2" hasn't happened yet and the show's religious subtext hasn't yet become text. As I said at the beginning, Roslin basically becomes Space Moses at this point, and she'll waffle back and forth between that role and becoming more of a (benevolent) dictator until the middle of Season 4, when she settles for Dying Cancer Patient. Baltar's eventually going to become Space John the Baptist (after first trying on a dozen other ill-fitting mantles), though the actor's initials might have you guessing at a different role...
BSG: Flesh and Bone
The President's been having wacky dreams, while a former flight-instructor with a bad leg and a serious attitude problem gets to torture a man who keeps spouting off religious babble.
...Man, this is a million miles away from the original series, isn't it?
There's not a lot to summarize here. They find another copy of Leoben and send Starbuck to interrogate him for some reason. He messes with her head for a while in between several near-drowning experiences, all the while claiming that he's hidden a nuke somewhere in the fleet. Then Roslin shows up and offers him a pardon, at which point he says that there is no nuke and that Adama is a Cylon. The President then kindly shows the tortured toaster to the airlock. Starbuck, visibly shaken, prays for his soul.
So anyway, the first time you see this episode, it comes off as some sort of statement on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of torture. Depending on how much attention you pay to Leoben's ramblings, you may or may not (but my money's on not) grasp the real importance of this episode: this is the first encounter between Starbuck and Leoben. Also, the first mention of Starbuck's abusive mother, which comes from Leoben, who should really have no way of knowing this. (But, as we'll later discover, Leoben is all sorts of special.)
But maybe not, because we know that a) the writers were making things up as they went along, and b) Katee Sackhoff specifically requested that 3.17, "Maelstrom," be re-written to give her another enounter with Leoben. It's possible that the entire Starbuck-Leoben thing was thought up on the fly later on.
The significant things we get from this episode: Starbuck is going to find Kobol, Kobol will lead them to Earth. Fair enough, it's probable that they'd worked out the plot all the way to 2.7, "Home, Part 2" by this point. Also, Roslin's having visions which will tie directly into "The Hand of God," "Kobol's Last Gleaming," et seq.
Meanwhile, on Caprica, C-Boomer, having slept with Helo, now goes rogue and de-rails whatever last vestiges of the Cylon "plan" there were. And on Galactica, Baltar finds out that G-Boomer is a Cylon, but decides not to tell anyone, thus directly setting up the end of "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down," when he refuses to divulge whether or not Ellen's a Cylon and let the fandom stew over that question for the next two years (cf. 3.4, "Exodus, Part 2").
Insight from The Plan: Leoben intercepted Starbuck's wireless transmissions from "Act of Contrition" at the very latest (both because we see him listening to those transmissions and because she was out of action after that point). He also raved to Number One about how she was able to fly a Raider in "You Can't Go Home Again." (So, wait, does this mean Novacek is special too? cf. 3.08, "Hero.") Even without The Plan, it's clear that his obsession with Starbuck began before the events of this episode; The Plan just makes it more clear.
So it's a character piece with a political edge, which is a fairly accurate description of Battlestar Galactica as a whole. It appears on first blush to be a fairly standalone piece with the description I used at the top, but either this was never the plan or the writers liked the ideas in this episode enough to build on them further.
I will just say that I still hadn't really warmed to Leoben as a character the first time I saw this. Until Number Four showed up, Leoben had the role of the "creepy Cylon straight out of Blade Runner." (It's worth pointing out that Leoben's creepyness stems from his religious philosophy and his obsession with Starbuck, whereas Four's creepyness comes from the character's reliance on fact over faith and the character's clinical detatchment from everything. Except in The Plan.)
Side note, regarding these reviews: from now on, I'm going to do my best to leave vague hints but not actually spoil anything that happens in episodes after the one I'm reviewing (for example, leaving Number Four's identity and gender unmentioned in the paragraph above, and the vague hints about "Maelstrom" and "Exodus"). I'll try not to contradict any revelation in Season 4, but for the sake of the story I may occasionally say something slightly misleading in my analyses. Also, regarding the films: Razor is absolutely canonical. The Plan is a nice effort to tie up loose ends, but it smacks of retcon (because it, um, is), so I'll draw on it where it's convenient and ignore it everywhere else.
...Man, this is a million miles away from the original series, isn't it?
There's not a lot to summarize here. They find another copy of Leoben and send Starbuck to interrogate him for some reason. He messes with her head for a while in between several near-drowning experiences, all the while claiming that he's hidden a nuke somewhere in the fleet. Then Roslin shows up and offers him a pardon, at which point he says that there is no nuke and that Adama is a Cylon. The President then kindly shows the tortured toaster to the airlock. Starbuck, visibly shaken, prays for his soul.
So anyway, the first time you see this episode, it comes off as some sort of statement on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of torture. Depending on how much attention you pay to Leoben's ramblings, you may or may not (but my money's on not) grasp the real importance of this episode: this is the first encounter between Starbuck and Leoben. Also, the first mention of Starbuck's abusive mother, which comes from Leoben, who should really have no way of knowing this. (But, as we'll later discover, Leoben is all sorts of special.)
But maybe not, because we know that a) the writers were making things up as they went along, and b) Katee Sackhoff specifically requested that 3.17, "Maelstrom," be re-written to give her another enounter with Leoben. It's possible that the entire Starbuck-Leoben thing was thought up on the fly later on.
The significant things we get from this episode: Starbuck is going to find Kobol, Kobol will lead them to Earth. Fair enough, it's probable that they'd worked out the plot all the way to 2.7, "Home, Part 2" by this point. Also, Roslin's having visions which will tie directly into "The Hand of God," "Kobol's Last Gleaming," et seq.
Meanwhile, on Caprica, C-Boomer, having slept with Helo, now goes rogue and de-rails whatever last vestiges of the Cylon "plan" there were. And on Galactica, Baltar finds out that G-Boomer is a Cylon, but decides not to tell anyone, thus directly setting up the end of "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down," when he refuses to divulge whether or not Ellen's a Cylon and let the fandom stew over that question for the next two years (cf. 3.4, "Exodus, Part 2").
Insight from The Plan: Leoben intercepted Starbuck's wireless transmissions from "Act of Contrition" at the very latest (both because we see him listening to those transmissions and because she was out of action after that point). He also raved to Number One about how she was able to fly a Raider in "You Can't Go Home Again." (So, wait, does this mean Novacek is special too? cf. 3.08, "Hero.") Even without The Plan, it's clear that his obsession with Starbuck began before the events of this episode; The Plan just makes it more clear.
So it's a character piece with a political edge, which is a fairly accurate description of Battlestar Galactica as a whole. It appears on first blush to be a fairly standalone piece with the description I used at the top, but either this was never the plan or the writers liked the ideas in this episode enough to build on them further.
I will just say that I still hadn't really warmed to Leoben as a character the first time I saw this. Until Number Four showed up, Leoben had the role of the "creepy Cylon straight out of Blade Runner." (It's worth pointing out that Leoben's creepyness stems from his religious philosophy and his obsession with Starbuck, whereas Four's creepyness comes from the character's reliance on fact over faith and the character's clinical detatchment from everything. Except in The Plan.)
Side note, regarding these reviews: from now on, I'm going to do my best to leave vague hints but not actually spoil anything that happens in episodes after the one I'm reviewing (for example, leaving Number Four's identity and gender unmentioned in the paragraph above, and the vague hints about "Maelstrom" and "Exodus"). I'll try not to contradict any revelation in Season 4, but for the sake of the story I may occasionally say something slightly misleading in my analyses. Also, regarding the films: Razor is absolutely canonical. The Plan is a nice effort to tie up loose ends, but it smacks of retcon (because it, um, is), so I'll draw on it where it's convenient and ignore it everywhere else.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Admin: Battlestar Galactica Reviews
Some of these were written during my 2021-22 rewatch; others were written during or shortly after my 2011 initial watch. For Season 1, the only new reviews are 1.9 and 1.12-13. For Season 2, new reviews are marked with a *. For Season 3, the old reviews are 3.7, 3.10-12, and 3.16-17. For Season 4, the only old review is 4.12.
Season 1
1.1: 33
1.3: Bastille Day
1.4: Act of Contrition
1.6: Litmus
1.8: Flesh and Bone
1.9: Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down
1.10: The Hand of God
1.11: Colonial Day
1.12: Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part 1 (you can find a mini-review of both parts under "essays")
1.13: Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part 2
Season 2
2.1: Scattered*
2.2: Valley of Darkness
2.3: Fragged*
2.4: Resistance*
2.5: The Farm
2.6: Home, Part 1*
2.7: Home, Part 2*
2.8: Final Cut
2.9: Flight of the Phoneix*
2.10: Pegasus
2.11: Resurrection Ship, Part 1* (an old review, of sorts, can be found under "essays")
2.12: Resurrection Ship, Part 2* (ditto)
2.13: Epiphanies
2.14: Black Market
2.15: Scar
2.16: Sacrifice
2.17: The Captain's Hand
2.18: Downloaded*
2.19: Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 1*
2.20: Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2*
Season 3
3.1: Occupation
3.2: Precipice
3.3: Exodus, Part 1
3.4: Exodus, Part 2
3.5: Collaborators
3.6: Torn
3.7: A Measure of Salvation (and addendum)
3.8: Hero (TNG 3.10: "The Defector")
3.9: Unfinished Business
3.10: The Passage
3.11: The Eye of Jupiter
3.12: Rapture
3.13: Taking a Break from All Your Worries
3.14: The Woman King
3.15: A Day in the Life
3.16: Dirty Hands
3.17: Maelstrom
3.18: The Son Also Rises
3.19: Crossroads, Part 1
3.20: Crossroads, Part 2
Season 4
Essays and mini-arc reviews:
The Quest for Caprica ("Kobol's Last Gleaming" mini-review and Helo's subplot through "The Farm")
A 2011 review of Resurrection Ship, Parts 1 and 2 that spends more time poking holes in the myth arc than reviewing the episode.
BSG: Litmus
The moral of the story, kids, is if your boss is too blinded by love to notice his robot girlfriend's glowing spine, don't lie under oath for him. It's not worth it.
The other moral of the story is that if your name is William Adama, you don't have to worry about the authority of independent tribunals. You can just call them witch hunts and then get your goons to arrest the chief investigator. Yay!
So basically this episode establishes the fact that marines will always, always obey the orders of the highest-ranking figure in their immediate vicinity, regardless of standing orders to the contrary (see also "Resistance" and "The Captain's Hand").
The story in a nutshell: there's another Number Five in the fleet that's been laying low all this time, only to surface and blow himself up now in a completely noncritical area. (If The Plan is to be believed, this particular Five is a blithering idiot, but he did suceed in kicking off a witch hunt, which is more than, oh, the other Two, the One, the Six, or even the Three managed to accomplish.) Hell, certain members of the Final Five have inadvertantly done more damage to the crew's morale than any self-aware Cylon infiltrator...
The blame seems to center on Chief Tyrol, whom Sgt. Hadrian suspects of being a Cylon agent. (So... it's safe to say that Hadrian was one of the mutineers, then.) The crew is lying for the chief, because he still hasn't stopped frakking his robot (and more importantly, officer) girlfriend. However, nobody bothered to check their stories beforehand, so everything quickly goes to hell. (Moral number three: always coordinate your lies! No wonder the Cylon models all only use one name each, except for Six. "I'm not Natalie, you idiot, I'm Caprica, whoops now everyone's looking at us funny," etc.)
So one guy, Socinus, takes the fall, and the Chief has to go out there on that deck, knowing that one of his men is in the brig because he couldn't keep his fly zipped, and the Chief breaks things off with Boomer because apparently he can keep his fly zipped. We just had Adama blow his lid in the previous episode when told to call off the SAR for Starbuck, and now he gives the Chief a masterful dressing-down; much more of this, Bill, and you could lose your father-figure status and have a mutiny on your hands...
But that's not until much, much later. Anyway, this is a lot better-paced than "Water" was, and there's no need to internalize the struggle here. So even though "Litmus" is probably my second-least-favorite episode of Season One, it's still pretty frakking good.
The other moral of the story is that if your name is William Adama, you don't have to worry about the authority of independent tribunals. You can just call them witch hunts and then get your goons to arrest the chief investigator. Yay!
So basically this episode establishes the fact that marines will always, always obey the orders of the highest-ranking figure in their immediate vicinity, regardless of standing orders to the contrary (see also "Resistance" and "The Captain's Hand").
The story in a nutshell: there's another Number Five in the fleet that's been laying low all this time, only to surface and blow himself up now in a completely noncritical area. (If The Plan is to be believed, this particular Five is a blithering idiot, but he did suceed in kicking off a witch hunt, which is more than, oh, the other Two, the One, the Six, or even the Three managed to accomplish.) Hell, certain members of the Final Five have inadvertantly done more damage to the crew's morale than any self-aware Cylon infiltrator...
The blame seems to center on Chief Tyrol, whom Sgt. Hadrian suspects of being a Cylon agent. (So... it's safe to say that Hadrian was one of the mutineers, then.) The crew is lying for the chief, because he still hasn't stopped frakking his robot (and more importantly, officer) girlfriend. However, nobody bothered to check their stories beforehand, so everything quickly goes to hell. (Moral number three: always coordinate your lies! No wonder the Cylon models all only use one name each, except for Six. "I'm not Natalie, you idiot, I'm Caprica, whoops now everyone's looking at us funny," etc.)
So one guy, Socinus, takes the fall, and the Chief has to go out there on that deck, knowing that one of his men is in the brig because he couldn't keep his fly zipped, and the Chief breaks things off with Boomer because apparently he can keep his fly zipped. We just had Adama blow his lid in the previous episode when told to call off the SAR for Starbuck, and now he gives the Chief a masterful dressing-down; much more of this, Bill, and you could lose your father-figure status and have a mutiny on your hands...
But that's not until much, much later. Anyway, this is a lot better-paced than "Water" was, and there's no need to internalize the struggle here. So even though "Litmus" is probably my second-least-favorite episode of Season One, it's still pretty frakking good.
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