"I'll spare you the Ends Justify the Means speech if you spare me the We Must Do the Right Thing speech."
-Sloane
(I did a longer version of this, and then Blogger kindly lost it. Sorry.)
Section 31 is an organization that exists in Starfleet without any oversight. They recruited Bashir last year, sort of, and now they're back to actually send him on a mission. With the war apparently winding down (this is the last standalone episode before the 10-part arc that wraps up the series), Section 31 is interested in making sure that the Romulans, the only other power that will be a threat to the Federation after the war, have a Federation mole in their upper echelons. Bashir is "recruited" to help make this happen, as is Starfleet's Admiral Ross, Sisko's immediate superior and basically his stand-in for this episode, since the tirade Bashir launches against Ross could just have easily been launched against Sisko for what he did back in "In the Pale Moonlight."
Bashir is duped into thinking that Koval, the guy in charge of Romulan Intelligence, is Section 31's target. Ross gets him to think that Sloane has a Romulan accomplice, causing Bashir to get Cretak (DS9's Romulan attache) to try to steal some files from Romulan Intelligence so they can see if anyone's suspected of being a Starfleet agent. Unfortunately, she gets caught and kicked out of the Senate. Bashir realizes that Ross had a role in everything, and confronts him. Off the record, Ross admits that the plan was to discredit Cretak, who will do whatever is in Romulus's best interest, including side with the Dominion, and promote Koval, who is actually a Federation mole. Ross says that he doesn't like the deal, but he likes sending young men and women to their deaths even less. Bashir responds by saying that Ross has betrayed the very principles those men and women have died to protect - see what I mean when I say this could have been a Bashir/Sisko confrontation instead of a Bashir/Ross one? Bashir's always been the wide-eyed idealist, and Sisko's been pretty Machiavellian; they really should have gotten one good confrontation in this season, and this is the best candidate.
Sloane appears again and says that it's his job to protect idealists like Bashir from the big bad Universe that doesn't share his opinion of right and wrong. Clearly this concept - the dichotomy between the "we must do the right thing" or "we must deserve to survive" crowd and the "the ends justify the means" or "throw that thing out the airlock" crowed - fascinated the episode's author, Ronald D. Moore; after all, he later spent four years on the same subject.
Near the end of the episode, Bashir gets hauled before a trial that turns out to be for Cretak. This could - and should - have been the episode's framing device; we would learn how events got to this point along with the Romulans being duped by Koval and Sloane. Other than the fact that Sisko should have had Ross's role, this is my only real suggestion for improvement with this episode.
9 out of 10.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
BSG: Pegasus
It's been a while, and I apologize. And no, I'm obviously not doing the BSG episodes in order.
"Pegasus" was the first BSG episode to get a "mature content" warning. No way to get around it: this is the darkest episode of BSG I've seen so far. I can't really discuss the episode without discussing one particular scene, so consider yourself warned...
So way back in the 90s, Ron Moore wrote a TNG episode about a ship called the Pegasus and the insane Admiral commanding it. Just saying. (Yes, there was a Pegasus in the original BSG. I'm not ignorant of that.)
Anyway, it turns out that another ship, the eponymous Pegasus, survived the Cylon attack. Because its commander, Admiral Cain, outranks Commander Adama, she gets command of everything. Ultimately Adama realizes that she's absolutely frakkin' nuts, and goes head-to-head against her. And then the show goes on hiatus for a few months.
See, BSG knows how to make a mid-season cliffhanger. Steven Moffat should have taken note, because even in spite of the two problems I have with this episode, this is a billion times better than "A Good Man Goes to War."
So maybe I'm just a paranoid wingnut, but I can't help but notice that all the Pegasus crewmembers carry pistols with them at all times, whereas the Galactica crew does not. Okay, it's a really simple way to tell the crews apart from a distance, and I'd be willing to bet that the average viewer didn't notice it, but I can't help but think that the show is trying to send the message "guns=bad." (Then again, by this point we've already given President Airlock her nickname in "Flesh and Bone," so it's not exactly like the show has a terrible ideological bent one way or the other.)
The other problem I have with this episode from a purely artistic standpoint is the fact that after a season and a half of not-at-all traditional music, this episode gives us a psychedelic electric guitar at the beginning and some very traditional Trek-esque stuff at the end. If they'd limited it to just the Pegasus, I could see the reason for it.
Now then, on to the episode's very controversial scene. It's not just enough to have the Pegasus XO relate horror stories about the Admiral, and it's not enough to see an obviously-abused Number Six (props to the network for letting that many cuts and bruises air), we have to see a Pegasus officer sexually assault Sharon.
If you're disturbed by that scene, congratulations, you're human.
(Note, in this and future reviews I'll refer to the Number Eight copy that shot Adama as "Boomer" and the one carrying Helo's child as "Sharon.")
It's weird: Boomer getting shot in "Resistance" was simple, straightforward, and clean. More to the point, it's over very quickly; Boomer's terrible ordeal has finally come to an end, and she's probably at peace. Six's cuts and bruises are clear evidence of months of abuse (and on that note, anyone who thinks Tricia Helfer's just on the show to show some skin needs to check out her acting here, both as BSOD abuse-victim Six and as clearly-distrought hallucination-Six). And the show has alluded to sexual assault before, in both "Bastille Day" (and even more so before the scrip was re-written to let Cally bite her attacker's ear off) and "The Farm." But it was still shocking and disturbing to see it happen on-screen.
(And in the back of your head, you know that Tyrol and Helo are going to get there in time. In the Extended version, they don't.)
So the obvious question is, did we need to see this? Well, the midseason cliffhanger is the last two Human warships in the Universe turning their guns on each other, so we need a good reason to get to that point. Adama's whole perspective is that his crew is his family, so if Cain tries to have one or two of them killed, he'll absolutely turn on her. Both Tyrol and Helo have feelings for Sharon and will kill to protect her. And, having already established that the Galactica crew will treat their Cylon prisoner with some level of decency, it makes it easy to show the Pegasus crew are a bunch of sociopaths by not having them act the same way. In order to justify the last two Human military forces left anywhere going to each others' throats, we need to see one of them (obviously, the ones we haven't been following for a year and a half) do something morally despicable. And as TvTropes will tell you, rape is a special kind of evil.
So yeah, dark. Really, really dark. Also it raises the question of why Adama didn't have a guard on the cell or anything. (Oh right, because as both "Litmus" and "Resistance" have shown, Galactica's marines will obey the most powerful person in the room, regardless of outstanding orders.)
Still, the most intriguing thing about this episode is that Cain and the Pegasus crew could very well be exactly what Adama and the Galactica crew would have become if not for Roslin. Think I'm kidding? Look at Starbuck's treatment of her prisoner in "Flesh and Bone." Check out Lee's line in a deleted scene from "Resurrection Ship, Part 1" about how Galactica's crew isn't raping anyone yet. The only two people on Galactica who definitely think of Sharon as a human being with rights are Helo and Tyrol. Even more obviously, Cain's attitude towards Roslin is exactly the same as Adama's was in the miniseries. Roslin's grasp on power, as Zarek pointed out in "Bastille Day," is very tenuous, and it's only going to get even more so as her cancer gets worse. (Speaking of Zarek, in the very next episode Roslin tells Adama that Cain has to die. She seems just as much afraid of Zarek taking over as she is of Cain, but she doesn't order a hit on her political opponent...)
It's a simple fact that we'll empathize with anything that has a human face, and you can tell that the writers decided to capitalize on that with this episode. Let's not forget that the Six in the Pegasus brig killed 800 people - but even so, what happened to her is wrong, and I hope every viewer, of every political stripe, got that. What happened to Sharon, who's actually the closest thing to a Cylon who is totally on our side (that is, aware that she's a Cylon and aware of all her programming, and still on our side), is terrible.
So where does that leave us? An undeniably dark, but also undeniably very good episode.
(Much lighter sidebar: according to the commentary, Cain was originally supposed to have a rhythm stuck in her head and be constantly drumming it on tables and the like, but Michelle Forbes had no sense of rhythm, so that idea was dropped. Did RTD ever listen to that commentary track prior to 2007?)
The next review I intend to do is for DS9's "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges," but that'll have to wait until I can dig up my Season 7 box set, as I have no idea where it currently is. I also want to do "Homefront/Paradise Lost" soon (are we sensing a pattern here?) but I also don't know where my Season 4 box set is. If I don't find either of them, I'll do another BSG tomorrow.
"Pegasus" was the first BSG episode to get a "mature content" warning. No way to get around it: this is the darkest episode of BSG I've seen so far. I can't really discuss the episode without discussing one particular scene, so consider yourself warned...
So way back in the 90s, Ron Moore wrote a TNG episode about a ship called the Pegasus and the insane Admiral commanding it. Just saying. (Yes, there was a Pegasus in the original BSG. I'm not ignorant of that.)
Anyway, it turns out that another ship, the eponymous Pegasus, survived the Cylon attack. Because its commander, Admiral Cain, outranks Commander Adama, she gets command of everything. Ultimately Adama realizes that she's absolutely frakkin' nuts, and goes head-to-head against her. And then the show goes on hiatus for a few months.
See, BSG knows how to make a mid-season cliffhanger. Steven Moffat should have taken note, because even in spite of the two problems I have with this episode, this is a billion times better than "A Good Man Goes to War."
So maybe I'm just a paranoid wingnut, but I can't help but notice that all the Pegasus crewmembers carry pistols with them at all times, whereas the Galactica crew does not. Okay, it's a really simple way to tell the crews apart from a distance, and I'd be willing to bet that the average viewer didn't notice it, but I can't help but think that the show is trying to send the message "guns=bad." (Then again, by this point we've already given President Airlock her nickname in "Flesh and Bone," so it's not exactly like the show has a terrible ideological bent one way or the other.)
The other problem I have with this episode from a purely artistic standpoint is the fact that after a season and a half of not-at-all traditional music, this episode gives us a psychedelic electric guitar at the beginning and some very traditional Trek-esque stuff at the end. If they'd limited it to just the Pegasus, I could see the reason for it.
Now then, on to the episode's very controversial scene. It's not just enough to have the Pegasus XO relate horror stories about the Admiral, and it's not enough to see an obviously-abused Number Six (props to the network for letting that many cuts and bruises air), we have to see a Pegasus officer sexually assault Sharon.
If you're disturbed by that scene, congratulations, you're human.
(Note, in this and future reviews I'll refer to the Number Eight copy that shot Adama as "Boomer" and the one carrying Helo's child as "Sharon.")
It's weird: Boomer getting shot in "Resistance" was simple, straightforward, and clean. More to the point, it's over very quickly; Boomer's terrible ordeal has finally come to an end, and she's probably at peace. Six's cuts and bruises are clear evidence of months of abuse (and on that note, anyone who thinks Tricia Helfer's just on the show to show some skin needs to check out her acting here, both as BSOD abuse-victim Six and as clearly-distrought hallucination-Six). And the show has alluded to sexual assault before, in both "Bastille Day" (and even more so before the scrip was re-written to let Cally bite her attacker's ear off) and "The Farm." But it was still shocking and disturbing to see it happen on-screen.
(And in the back of your head, you know that Tyrol and Helo are going to get there in time. In the Extended version, they don't.)
So the obvious question is, did we need to see this? Well, the midseason cliffhanger is the last two Human warships in the Universe turning their guns on each other, so we need a good reason to get to that point. Adama's whole perspective is that his crew is his family, so if Cain tries to have one or two of them killed, he'll absolutely turn on her. Both Tyrol and Helo have feelings for Sharon and will kill to protect her. And, having already established that the Galactica crew will treat their Cylon prisoner with some level of decency, it makes it easy to show the Pegasus crew are a bunch of sociopaths by not having them act the same way. In order to justify the last two Human military forces left anywhere going to each others' throats, we need to see one of them (obviously, the ones we haven't been following for a year and a half) do something morally despicable. And as TvTropes will tell you, rape is a special kind of evil.
So yeah, dark. Really, really dark. Also it raises the question of why Adama didn't have a guard on the cell or anything. (Oh right, because as both "Litmus" and "Resistance" have shown, Galactica's marines will obey the most powerful person in the room, regardless of outstanding orders.)
Still, the most intriguing thing about this episode is that Cain and the Pegasus crew could very well be exactly what Adama and the Galactica crew would have become if not for Roslin. Think I'm kidding? Look at Starbuck's treatment of her prisoner in "Flesh and Bone." Check out Lee's line in a deleted scene from "Resurrection Ship, Part 1" about how Galactica's crew isn't raping anyone yet. The only two people on Galactica who definitely think of Sharon as a human being with rights are Helo and Tyrol. Even more obviously, Cain's attitude towards Roslin is exactly the same as Adama's was in the miniseries. Roslin's grasp on power, as Zarek pointed out in "Bastille Day," is very tenuous, and it's only going to get even more so as her cancer gets worse. (Speaking of Zarek, in the very next episode Roslin tells Adama that Cain has to die. She seems just as much afraid of Zarek taking over as she is of Cain, but she doesn't order a hit on her political opponent...)
It's a simple fact that we'll empathize with anything that has a human face, and you can tell that the writers decided to capitalize on that with this episode. Let's not forget that the Six in the Pegasus brig killed 800 people - but even so, what happened to her is wrong, and I hope every viewer, of every political stripe, got that. What happened to Sharon, who's actually the closest thing to a Cylon who is totally on our side (that is, aware that she's a Cylon and aware of all her programming, and still on our side), is terrible.
So where does that leave us? An undeniably dark, but also undeniably very good episode.
(Much lighter sidebar: according to the commentary, Cain was originally supposed to have a rhythm stuck in her head and be constantly drumming it on tables and the like, but Michelle Forbes had no sense of rhythm, so that idea was dropped. Did RTD ever listen to that commentary track prior to 2007?)
The next review I intend to do is for DS9's "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges," but that'll have to wait until I can dig up my Season 7 box set, as I have no idea where it currently is. I also want to do "Homefront/Paradise Lost" soon (are we sensing a pattern here?) but I also don't know where my Season 4 box set is. If I don't find either of them, I'll do another BSG tomorrow.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Who Review: "A Good Man Goes to War"
Anyone who hasn't seen the episode and doesn't somehow already know River Song's identity and doesn't want that spoiled, go away now.
Right then, if Steven Moffat ever gets access to a real TARDIS, I have a few suggestions for him. If, for example, he's ever going to build an entire episode around one massive revelation, Empire Strikes Back-style, he shouldn't blatantly give it away in all the promotional materials.
At a bare minimum, what you know going into this episode is that a) Amy's giving birth, and b) we'll find out who River is. It doesn't take any fantastic leap of the imagination to put two and two together. And any pretense of uncertainty gets thrown out the window a minute in when we learn that Amy's daughter's name is Melody Pond, thus spoiling the ending for anyone with either a thesaurus or a working knowledge of the English language.
What I'm saying is that the so-called "revelation" at the end of the episode is nothing of the sort, but rather the confirmation of the suspicions of every Who fan with a brain.
We've had this problem before. Back in "Time of Angels," the Doctor was remarkably thick about the fact that the Aplans had two heads but the statues had one. It's never a good thing when the viewers get ahead of the Doctor, and for us to get that far ahead of the companions suggests that they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
(Side note: if Rory technically didn't exist during the events of "The Pandorica Opens," how did his daughter?)
(Other side note: so Melody's all special because she was concieved inside the TARDIS. Wait, is Moffat honestly saying that, for example, Ian and Barbara, whose relationship is practically canon, never got it on? Or is he saying that Rory and Amy are just really, really bad at practicing contraception? Remember, Rory's fantasy in "Amy's Choice" was her getting pregnant, at home, five years after they left the Doctor. Look, this isn't the sort of show where details would be all that appropriate, but... seriously?)
(Other other side note: where the hell were the Cybermen?)
You'll notice I haven't said that much about the plot. That's because it's a bit insane. The Doctor gathers a bunch of allies we've never seen before (or more accurately, he gathers an army of Silurians, led by someone we've never seen before, a Sontaran we've never seen before, and a fat blue guy we have seen before, but never with the Doctor) and goes on the warpath, bloodlessly winning a victory only to find out that he's been fooled twice by the same trick, which is the only real plot twist in the episode.
A friend of mine recently described Harry Potter 7A as a massive tease, and I can't help but feel that that's exactly what this episode was. The problem was we all knew the truth from very early on, and the "proper revelation" of it was something of a letdown. It'd be like dropping a massive, obvious hint at the start of The Empire Strikes Back as to Darth Vader's real identity, except worse, because Empire still has other plot twists (the midget is Yoda, Lando is a traitor) and watchable moments ("I know"). It is not one massive enticement to watch Return of the Jedi.
Now is it fair to compare this episode, which is the first of a two-parter, to a film? No, but this is the mid-season break. Even Star Trek Voyager never went as low as to make a season finale that basically did nothing more than say "hey, come back next fall."
There is, simply put, no meat in this episode.
Right then, if Steven Moffat ever gets access to a real TARDIS, I have a few suggestions for him. If, for example, he's ever going to build an entire episode around one massive revelation, Empire Strikes Back-style, he shouldn't blatantly give it away in all the promotional materials.
At a bare minimum, what you know going into this episode is that a) Amy's giving birth, and b) we'll find out who River is. It doesn't take any fantastic leap of the imagination to put two and two together. And any pretense of uncertainty gets thrown out the window a minute in when we learn that Amy's daughter's name is Melody Pond, thus spoiling the ending for anyone with either a thesaurus or a working knowledge of the English language.
What I'm saying is that the so-called "revelation" at the end of the episode is nothing of the sort, but rather the confirmation of the suspicions of every Who fan with a brain.
We've had this problem before. Back in "Time of Angels," the Doctor was remarkably thick about the fact that the Aplans had two heads but the statues had one. It's never a good thing when the viewers get ahead of the Doctor, and for us to get that far ahead of the companions suggests that they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
(Side note: if Rory technically didn't exist during the events of "The Pandorica Opens," how did his daughter?)
(Other side note: so Melody's all special because she was concieved inside the TARDIS. Wait, is Moffat honestly saying that, for example, Ian and Barbara, whose relationship is practically canon, never got it on? Or is he saying that Rory and Amy are just really, really bad at practicing contraception? Remember, Rory's fantasy in "Amy's Choice" was her getting pregnant, at home, five years after they left the Doctor. Look, this isn't the sort of show where details would be all that appropriate, but... seriously?)
(Other other side note: where the hell were the Cybermen?)
You'll notice I haven't said that much about the plot. That's because it's a bit insane. The Doctor gathers a bunch of allies we've never seen before (or more accurately, he gathers an army of Silurians, led by someone we've never seen before, a Sontaran we've never seen before, and a fat blue guy we have seen before, but never with the Doctor) and goes on the warpath, bloodlessly winning a victory only to find out that he's been fooled twice by the same trick, which is the only real plot twist in the episode.
A friend of mine recently described Harry Potter 7A as a massive tease, and I can't help but feel that that's exactly what this episode was. The problem was we all knew the truth from very early on, and the "proper revelation" of it was something of a letdown. It'd be like dropping a massive, obvious hint at the start of The Empire Strikes Back as to Darth Vader's real identity, except worse, because Empire still has other plot twists (the midget is Yoda, Lando is a traitor) and watchable moments ("I know"). It is not one massive enticement to watch Return of the Jedi.
Now is it fair to compare this episode, which is the first of a two-parter, to a film? No, but this is the mid-season break. Even Star Trek Voyager never went as low as to make a season finale that basically did nothing more than say "hey, come back next fall."
There is, simply put, no meat in this episode.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
BSG: "Bastille Day"
Going out of order here just because I'm not nearly as crazy about "Water" as I am about "Bastille Day," and I have to make headway somewhere.
Okay, relevant stuff from "Water" that needs to be mentioned: Adama put on a big formal greeting for Roslin, thinking she'd like it. She hated it, dreading the notion of having to do this sort of thing all the time. Lee told her it was a peace offering from Adama, so she made him (Lee) her military advisor.
In this episode, we find out that Adama doesn't like that, and says Lee has to choose a side.
So, in this episode, the following things happen:
Lee chooses a side.
Lee becomes my favorite character.
Jamie Bamber's accent slips for one word (no, you find it).
Richard Hatch (the original Apollo from the 1978 series) shows up.
Yeah, it's an Apollo-centric episode.
Other stuff from "Water" that was important: someone (Sharon the Cylon) blew up the water tank on the Galactica, forcing everyone to go look for water. Eventually, they found a planet with a bunch of ice on it, which is close enough. Unfortunately, the ice needs to be broken up into chunks, which is going to be hard labor. Fortunately, we've got a ship full of prisoners! Unfortunately, our bleeding-heart Education-Secretary-turned-President isn't big on slave labor. Or to put it another way, our practically-retired, shortsighted Commander thinks slave labor is a-ok.
(Unfortunately, a lot of the Adama-Roslin tension kind of vanishes after this episode, or at least takes a massive backseat to the other plots, and for it to come crashing back at the end of the season is kind of jarring.)
Lee gets sent over to round up some volunteers, having proposed a system whereby prisoners could earn points towards gaining their freedom. Roslin's aide, Billy, goes with, and Billy picks Dualla to represent the Galactica staff. To round out the team, they send over Cally, a cute technician.
Turns out one of the prisoners is Tom Zarek (Richard Hatch's character), a terrorist from Dualla's home planet. Billy and Lee respect him; Dualla does not. Cally's only there to be threatened by inmates, so she's not afforded an opinion. (Okay, that was a joke, but seriously, Cally has a very similar quality to Willow in early Buffy seasons, in that you just know the monsters are going to go for her.)
In the middle of a philosophical discussion between Lee and Zarek, the prisoners break out and take over the ship. Zarek demands Roslin's resignation, as she was never duly elected. In America, at least in theory, the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed. This doesn't explain the Presidencies of people who lose the popular vote, and it certainly doesn't explain President Ford.
So, while it pains me to say it, and while I certainly have issues with some of his views in "Colonial Day," the terrorist has a point. Nobody elected Laura Roslin. She did a fantastic job rallying the fleet together, but she did so on, let's face it, some very tenuous authority. (Pop quiz: who's America's Secretary of Education right now? No, you can't Google it.)
Well it turns out that Zarek is planning on martyrdom; he knows Roslin and Adama won't negotiate with him and will instead send in the troops, and he wants his glorious last stand. One of his fellow former inmates just wants... well, it's never outright stated, but it's strongly implied that he has fairly ungentlemanly intentions towards Cally. Cally freakin' bites his ear off and gets a bullet in the gut for it. (People getting shot in the gut will be a recurring theme on this show.)
A standoff ensues; Lee gets someone's gun and shoots the would-be rapist (thus establishing another recurring theme), and then delivers an ultimatum to Zarek at gunpoint: his men are going to mine the ice for them, and then they'll have their elections. Nobody else has to die, but if Lee reneges on the deal, Zarek can still have his last stand.
Roslin and Adama chew Lee out for negotiating without authorization, but Lee points out that Roslin is just serving out the remainder of the previous President's term, and that term is up in 7 months. According to the law, there's an election then. Lee's picked his side; rather than be loyal specifically to one person, he's going to be loyal to whatever the Colonies have in lieu of a Constitution.
Which, on the one hand, feels like a cop-out ending, if only because we had no idea prior to this episode that the President's term was almost up. On the other hand, compared to the way "Act of Contrition/You Can't Go Home Again" wraps up (that is to say, entirely predictably), this is nice. Lee figured out which side he's on, and if you throw out all the rules, he just won't play.
Despite the "oh, by the way, your term's almost up" ending, this is probably my favorite single episode of the season. The line has been drawn; even though there are less than 50,000 people left, the law will still be obeyed (at least until Lee himself says otherwise at the end of Season 3). Other episodes may draw on more personal conflicts ("Act of Contrition"), have more humor ("Tigh Me Up, Tight Me Down"), feature more action ("Hand of God"), or touch on other political subjects that, with the benefit of hindsight, seem strangely lacking in other space operas ("Colonial Day"). But this is a nice, tense little number that shows Lee thinking on his feet and finding his own moral footing. Can you blame me for suddenly liking the character so much?
Okay, relevant stuff from "Water" that needs to be mentioned: Adama put on a big formal greeting for Roslin, thinking she'd like it. She hated it, dreading the notion of having to do this sort of thing all the time. Lee told her it was a peace offering from Adama, so she made him (Lee) her military advisor.
In this episode, we find out that Adama doesn't like that, and says Lee has to choose a side.
So, in this episode, the following things happen:
Lee chooses a side.
Lee becomes my favorite character.
Jamie Bamber's accent slips for one word (no, you find it).
Richard Hatch (the original Apollo from the 1978 series) shows up.
Yeah, it's an Apollo-centric episode.
Other stuff from "Water" that was important: someone (Sharon the Cylon) blew up the water tank on the Galactica, forcing everyone to go look for water. Eventually, they found a planet with a bunch of ice on it, which is close enough. Unfortunately, the ice needs to be broken up into chunks, which is going to be hard labor. Fortunately, we've got a ship full of prisoners! Unfortunately, our bleeding-heart Education-Secretary-turned-President isn't big on slave labor. Or to put it another way, our practically-retired, shortsighted Commander thinks slave labor is a-ok.
(Unfortunately, a lot of the Adama-Roslin tension kind of vanishes after this episode, or at least takes a massive backseat to the other plots, and for it to come crashing back at the end of the season is kind of jarring.)
Lee gets sent over to round up some volunteers, having proposed a system whereby prisoners could earn points towards gaining their freedom. Roslin's aide, Billy, goes with, and Billy picks Dualla to represent the Galactica staff. To round out the team, they send over Cally, a cute technician.
Turns out one of the prisoners is Tom Zarek (Richard Hatch's character), a terrorist from Dualla's home planet. Billy and Lee respect him; Dualla does not. Cally's only there to be threatened by inmates, so she's not afforded an opinion. (Okay, that was a joke, but seriously, Cally has a very similar quality to Willow in early Buffy seasons, in that you just know the monsters are going to go for her.)
In the middle of a philosophical discussion between Lee and Zarek, the prisoners break out and take over the ship. Zarek demands Roslin's resignation, as she was never duly elected. In America, at least in theory, the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed. This doesn't explain the Presidencies of people who lose the popular vote, and it certainly doesn't explain President Ford.
So, while it pains me to say it, and while I certainly have issues with some of his views in "Colonial Day," the terrorist has a point. Nobody elected Laura Roslin. She did a fantastic job rallying the fleet together, but she did so on, let's face it, some very tenuous authority. (Pop quiz: who's America's Secretary of Education right now? No, you can't Google it.)
Well it turns out that Zarek is planning on martyrdom; he knows Roslin and Adama won't negotiate with him and will instead send in the troops, and he wants his glorious last stand. One of his fellow former inmates just wants... well, it's never outright stated, but it's strongly implied that he has fairly ungentlemanly intentions towards Cally. Cally freakin' bites his ear off and gets a bullet in the gut for it. (People getting shot in the gut will be a recurring theme on this show.)
A standoff ensues; Lee gets someone's gun and shoots the would-be rapist (thus establishing another recurring theme), and then delivers an ultimatum to Zarek at gunpoint: his men are going to mine the ice for them, and then they'll have their elections. Nobody else has to die, but if Lee reneges on the deal, Zarek can still have his last stand.
Roslin and Adama chew Lee out for negotiating without authorization, but Lee points out that Roslin is just serving out the remainder of the previous President's term, and that term is up in 7 months. According to the law, there's an election then. Lee's picked his side; rather than be loyal specifically to one person, he's going to be loyal to whatever the Colonies have in lieu of a Constitution.
Which, on the one hand, feels like a cop-out ending, if only because we had no idea prior to this episode that the President's term was almost up. On the other hand, compared to the way "Act of Contrition/You Can't Go Home Again" wraps up (that is to say, entirely predictably), this is nice. Lee figured out which side he's on, and if you throw out all the rules, he just won't play.
Despite the "oh, by the way, your term's almost up" ending, this is probably my favorite single episode of the season. The line has been drawn; even though there are less than 50,000 people left, the law will still be obeyed (at least until Lee himself says otherwise at the end of Season 3). Other episodes may draw on more personal conflicts ("Act of Contrition"), have more humor ("Tigh Me Up, Tight Me Down"), feature more action ("Hand of God"), or touch on other political subjects that, with the benefit of hindsight, seem strangely lacking in other space operas ("Colonial Day"). But this is a nice, tense little number that shows Lee thinking on his feet and finding his own moral footing. Can you blame me for suddenly liking the character so much?
Falling Behind, promises to catch up
but first:
This would seem to indicate that Steven Moffat had that one idea about the Doctor's name (no, not his real one, we still don't know that one) stuck in his head for 16 years!
This would seem to indicate that Steven Moffat had that one idea about the Doctor's name (no, not his real one, we still don't know that one) stuck in his head for 16 years!
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
BtVS: "Fool for Love"
It sounds sacreligious, but once upon a time I actually did compare Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Star Trek Voyager.
Once you've winched your jaw back up / launched your missiles at me / excommunicated me, let me explain. See, in Voyager's fourth season, a member of the stock villan race (in this case, the Borg) unwillingly joined the good guys. Seven of Nine immediately got the closest equivalent to character exploration Voyager ever accomplished; her backstory was fleshed out, and blah blah blah. All this happened about half a season in, blah blah.
In Buffy the Vampire Slayer's fourth season, a member of the stock villain race (in this case, vampires) unwillingly joined the good guys. Spike had to wait an entire season before we got his backstory. The delay is intriguing, but understandable; the way Buffy treats Spike is considerably different from the way Janeway treats Seven (outside of fanfiction). For the entirety of Season 4, she didn't trust him, didn't like him, had no reason to want to hear his backstory. And so we had to wait.
There are two other things I should mention about this episode before I actually dive into it. First, as most people know, it's the first part of an unofficial two-parter with Angel's "Darla," which aired immediately afterward. In both episodes, we see flashbacks to London, 1880 and China, 1900, but from Spike's perspective in the first episode and Darla's in the second.
Second, this was the first Buffy episode I saw, the first Whedon episode I saw, the only Whedon episode I actually saw on television (as opposed to DVD) until Dollhouse, and one of only three Whedon episodes (the other two being Angel's "In the Dark" and Firefly's "Our Mrs. Reynolds") that I saw out of chronological order. So it's a fairly important episode to me.
The episode opens with Buffy on routine patrol, doing what she always does, fighting a vampire and making quips, but this time it goes wrong and she gets stabbed. The vampire gets away. I like that it was just a normal vampire (in the sense that the vamp is a one-shot who dies later in the episode) rather than a recurring villain. They're making a point; by Season Five, vampires had become the equivalent of the Stormtroopers in Star Wars; the only way they were ever going to win a fight was through sheer numbers. And yet Buffy slips up in a one-on-one fight and barely escapes with her life. There was nothing special about this particular vampire (except that he was a Heavy Metal fan - more on that in just a moment); Buffy just slipped up and got a chilling reminder of her own mortality.
I think that's what the writers were going for, and the commentary seems to back it up. But they undercut it just a little bit by making the vampire a metalhead. There's a Season Three Angel episode where a pop band gets infected by a demon virus and goes all metal, so it's not just a one-time occurence; someone on the Mutant Enemy staff just went ahead and automatically equated metal with evil. That kind of annoys me, but I digress. They convey "metalhead" by giving the vamp a leather jacket and long hair. Both of these also say "badass," which does kind of undercut the notion that this was just an ordinary vamp that nearly killed Buffy.
Anyway, she decides she wants to know how some of her predecessors died, so she won't make the same mistakes she did. Unfortunately, Giles doesn't have that much for her, so she goes to the only person she knows who has actually killed a Slayer. Exactly one season ago, Spike was captured by Buffy's equivalent of Torchwood and implanted with a microchip that prevents him from harming humans (how exactly that chip works is a bit of a mystery, as at one point he uses it to test whether another character actually is human. Man, if only they had that sort of thing on BSG...) Still able to fight demons, he began a reluctant transition to Buffy's side, and I do mean that it more ways than one. This episode comes near the beginning of the "Spike loves Buffy" arc, which may have been created to help explain why he's actually willing to fight on the side of good by the end of the season.
Anyways, back in his bad old days, Spike killed not one but two Slayers; one during the Boxer rebellion and one in New York in the 70s. Buffy asks him to recount these fights and see if she can glean any information from his story.
But Spike's not content to just do two scenes; instead, he starts his story on the evening of his transformation from bloody awful poet to badass creature of the night. Once upon a time, (specifically in 1880) he was a poet named William who inexplicably thought he could come up with a rhyme for "effulgent." (Watch the episode to find out what he went with.) Mercilessly mocked by some people, he storms out into the night, bumps into someone (who we find out in "Darla" was, um, Darla), and then encounters Dru, who turns him.
As a new vampire, Spike doesn't quite understand the whole "stealth" thing. He goes on a rampage that very nearly gets the entire Fang Gang (Angelus, Darla, Dru, and him) killed. Angelus warns him that he'll attract the attention of a Slayer, but this only piques his interest.
Fast forward to 1900. It's the Boxer Rebellion. Spike is losing a fight against the Chinese Slayer until an explosion knocks her off-balance. Spike capitalizes on the situation and kills her. Then it turns out that Slayer blood is an aphrodisiac to vampires (as if That One Scene at the end of Season Three wasn't suggestive enough), so Spike and Dru start to get it on. They then re-unite with Angel and Darla, who both look uncomfortable for reasons that "Darla" will reveal, but the astute Buffy fan will have already figured out (hint: 1900 is after 1898). Spike boasts about killing a Slayer.
Buffy interrupts, understandably not really wanting to hear about Spike getting his jollies. (Give it a year, Summers...) Spike correctly deduces that Buffy's interested in his story because she got hurt, and thinks he can give her some sort of insight. They go outside and, with the aid of a pool cue, re-enact the second fight.
It takes place on a subway carriage, and once again, Spike is losing until the lights go out, at which point he promptly gains the upper hand. He reveals every Slayer has a death wish, and that all it takes is luck, or as he puts it, "one good day." Buffy didn't lose that fight because the metalhead vamp was faster or stronger; she lost it because she slipped up. Her friends help tie her to this world, but there's part of her that just doesn't want to play the game anymore.
Of course, that's not all Spike says. "I'll slip in. Have myself a real good day." Doesn't take a genius to figure out what he's talking about. Buffy storms away, affronted.
Privately, Spike remembers what happened in South America in after the events of "Belonging." Dru leaves him for a Chaos demon, insisting that he stinks of the Slayer.
The titular fool for love is Spike. He loved Dru, but she left him. Now he has feelings for Buffy, but she treats him like dirt. He loads up a shotgun, intending to kill her, but he finds her sitting on her back porch, upset about something, and his resolve shatters. Buffy just found out that her mother might have brain cancer. Spike sits on the porch with Buffy. Roll credits.
This is really the first time that Buffy lets Spike in. Okay, that sounded wrong. This is the first time she opens up... no, that's not any better. That doesn't happen until Season Six. But it's worth pointing out that, just as Spike will be the first one in Season Six to learn that Buffy was in Heaven, here Spike is the first one to find out that something is very, very wrong in Buffy's personal life. The balance of power is just beginning to shift.
The notion that any old vampire could have offed Buffy was an interesting one. Of course, it wasn't actually going to happen, and when Buffy does die at the end of the season, it's during the season finale and the entire Universe is at stake. The "death wish" concept is introduced here to help set that up. But clearly the notion of "just a normal, pointless death" stuck with the writing team...
9 out of 10.
(Yes, I slipped up in my schedule. "Darla" will still be up this evening.)
Thursday: BSG: "Water"
Friday: BSG: "Bastille Day"
Saturday: DS9: "In Purgatory's Shadow/By Inferno's Light"
Sunday: Doctor Who: "A Good Man Goes to War" and a River Song retrospective
Once you've winched your jaw back up / launched your missiles at me / excommunicated me, let me explain. See, in Voyager's fourth season, a member of the stock villan race (in this case, the Borg) unwillingly joined the good guys. Seven of Nine immediately got the closest equivalent to character exploration Voyager ever accomplished; her backstory was fleshed out, and blah blah blah. All this happened about half a season in, blah blah.
In Buffy the Vampire Slayer's fourth season, a member of the stock villain race (in this case, vampires) unwillingly joined the good guys. Spike had to wait an entire season before we got his backstory. The delay is intriguing, but understandable; the way Buffy treats Spike is considerably different from the way Janeway treats Seven (outside of fanfiction). For the entirety of Season 4, she didn't trust him, didn't like him, had no reason to want to hear his backstory. And so we had to wait.
There are two other things I should mention about this episode before I actually dive into it. First, as most people know, it's the first part of an unofficial two-parter with Angel's "Darla," which aired immediately afterward. In both episodes, we see flashbacks to London, 1880 and China, 1900, but from Spike's perspective in the first episode and Darla's in the second.
Second, this was the first Buffy episode I saw, the first Whedon episode I saw, the only Whedon episode I actually saw on television (as opposed to DVD) until Dollhouse, and one of only three Whedon episodes (the other two being Angel's "In the Dark" and Firefly's "Our Mrs. Reynolds") that I saw out of chronological order. So it's a fairly important episode to me.
The episode opens with Buffy on routine patrol, doing what she always does, fighting a vampire and making quips, but this time it goes wrong and she gets stabbed. The vampire gets away. I like that it was just a normal vampire (in the sense that the vamp is a one-shot who dies later in the episode) rather than a recurring villain. They're making a point; by Season Five, vampires had become the equivalent of the Stormtroopers in Star Wars; the only way they were ever going to win a fight was through sheer numbers. And yet Buffy slips up in a one-on-one fight and barely escapes with her life. There was nothing special about this particular vampire (except that he was a Heavy Metal fan - more on that in just a moment); Buffy just slipped up and got a chilling reminder of her own mortality.
I think that's what the writers were going for, and the commentary seems to back it up. But they undercut it just a little bit by making the vampire a metalhead. There's a Season Three Angel episode where a pop band gets infected by a demon virus and goes all metal, so it's not just a one-time occurence; someone on the Mutant Enemy staff just went ahead and automatically equated metal with evil. That kind of annoys me, but I digress. They convey "metalhead" by giving the vamp a leather jacket and long hair. Both of these also say "badass," which does kind of undercut the notion that this was just an ordinary vamp that nearly killed Buffy.
Anyway, she decides she wants to know how some of her predecessors died, so she won't make the same mistakes she did. Unfortunately, Giles doesn't have that much for her, so she goes to the only person she knows who has actually killed a Slayer. Exactly one season ago, Spike was captured by Buffy's equivalent of Torchwood and implanted with a microchip that prevents him from harming humans (how exactly that chip works is a bit of a mystery, as at one point he uses it to test whether another character actually is human. Man, if only they had that sort of thing on BSG...) Still able to fight demons, he began a reluctant transition to Buffy's side, and I do mean that it more ways than one. This episode comes near the beginning of the "Spike loves Buffy" arc, which may have been created to help explain why he's actually willing to fight on the side of good by the end of the season.
Anyways, back in his bad old days, Spike killed not one but two Slayers; one during the Boxer rebellion and one in New York in the 70s. Buffy asks him to recount these fights and see if she can glean any information from his story.
But Spike's not content to just do two scenes; instead, he starts his story on the evening of his transformation from bloody awful poet to badass creature of the night. Once upon a time, (specifically in 1880) he was a poet named William who inexplicably thought he could come up with a rhyme for "effulgent." (Watch the episode to find out what he went with.) Mercilessly mocked by some people, he storms out into the night, bumps into someone (who we find out in "Darla" was, um, Darla), and then encounters Dru, who turns him.
As a new vampire, Spike doesn't quite understand the whole "stealth" thing. He goes on a rampage that very nearly gets the entire Fang Gang (Angelus, Darla, Dru, and him) killed. Angelus warns him that he'll attract the attention of a Slayer, but this only piques his interest.
Fast forward to 1900. It's the Boxer Rebellion. Spike is losing a fight against the Chinese Slayer until an explosion knocks her off-balance. Spike capitalizes on the situation and kills her. Then it turns out that Slayer blood is an aphrodisiac to vampires (as if That One Scene at the end of Season Three wasn't suggestive enough), so Spike and Dru start to get it on. They then re-unite with Angel and Darla, who both look uncomfortable for reasons that "Darla" will reveal, but the astute Buffy fan will have already figured out (hint: 1900 is after 1898). Spike boasts about killing a Slayer.
Buffy interrupts, understandably not really wanting to hear about Spike getting his jollies. (Give it a year, Summers...) Spike correctly deduces that Buffy's interested in his story because she got hurt, and thinks he can give her some sort of insight. They go outside and, with the aid of a pool cue, re-enact the second fight.
It takes place on a subway carriage, and once again, Spike is losing until the lights go out, at which point he promptly gains the upper hand. He reveals every Slayer has a death wish, and that all it takes is luck, or as he puts it, "one good day." Buffy didn't lose that fight because the metalhead vamp was faster or stronger; she lost it because she slipped up. Her friends help tie her to this world, but there's part of her that just doesn't want to play the game anymore.
Of course, that's not all Spike says. "I'll slip in. Have myself a real good day." Doesn't take a genius to figure out what he's talking about. Buffy storms away, affronted.
Privately, Spike remembers what happened in South America in after the events of "Belonging." Dru leaves him for a Chaos demon, insisting that he stinks of the Slayer.
The titular fool for love is Spike. He loved Dru, but she left him. Now he has feelings for Buffy, but she treats him like dirt. He loads up a shotgun, intending to kill her, but he finds her sitting on her back porch, upset about something, and his resolve shatters. Buffy just found out that her mother might have brain cancer. Spike sits on the porch with Buffy. Roll credits.
This is really the first time that Buffy lets Spike in. Okay, that sounded wrong. This is the first time she opens up... no, that's not any better. That doesn't happen until Season Six. But it's worth pointing out that, just as Spike will be the first one in Season Six to learn that Buffy was in Heaven, here Spike is the first one to find out that something is very, very wrong in Buffy's personal life. The balance of power is just beginning to shift.
The notion that any old vampire could have offed Buffy was an interesting one. Of course, it wasn't actually going to happen, and when Buffy does die at the end of the season, it's during the season finale and the entire Universe is at stake. The "death wish" concept is introduced here to help set that up. But clearly the notion of "just a normal, pointless death" stuck with the writing team...
9 out of 10.
(Yes, I slipped up in my schedule. "Darla" will still be up this evening.)
Thursday: BSG: "Water"
Friday: BSG: "Bastille Day"
Saturday: DS9: "In Purgatory's Shadow/By Inferno's Light"
Sunday: Doctor Who: "A Good Man Goes to War" and a River Song retrospective
Monday, June 6, 2011
BSG: 33
Yes, we're tired. Yes, there is no relief. Yes, the Cylons keep coming after us time after time after time. And yes, we are still expected to do our jobs!
-Colonel Tigh
The first episode of BSG proper is a dark tour-de-force, aptly demonstrating exactly where the show is going to go, and how the show is going to work for at least the first season.
For all intents and purposes, there are three major stories unfolding: Helo and a Boomer clone on Caprica (which I'll ignore for now and instead cover all in one go once the story comes to some sort of conclusion). Baltar continues to have conversations with Six, which chronicle his slow conversion into either an instrument of God's will, a helpless pawn in Six's game, or some sort of self-actualization. And of course, Galactica must deal with Cylon threats pretty much every week.
This time, the threat comes every 33 minutes, hence the title of the episode. The crew is worn out after five days of constant attacks. The Cylons show up, the fleet jumps, 33 minutes pass, repeat. Until one time it doesn't. They left behind one ship, the Olympic Carrier, by accident. This time, 33 minutes come and go and nothing happens. Then the Carrier shows up, 33 minutes pass incredibly quickly, and the Cylons show up. Just to drive the point home, it's suddenly revealed that there are nukes on the Carrier, and so Starbuck and Apollo, jacked up on stimulants, are ordered to destroy it, despite the fact that there are almost certainly civilians aboard.
Let me just get the two minor quibbles I have with this episode out of the way first. One, as I already mentioned, the 33 minutes between the Carrier's reappearance and the Cylons' arrival seem to elapse much too quickly. Two, very little is made of the fact that the pilots are, as Starbuck says, "on drugs." Given the confrontation between Lee and Kara, you'd kind of think that that was going somewhere.
Now let me move on to the things I like. One, the confrontation between Lee and Kara. Of all the things in this episode, that scene is probably my favorite. She doesn't want to take the stimulants because they'll mess her up. Lee's a by-the-book officer who knows better than to disobey an order, and his orders are to get Kara to take her drugs. (It kind of comes back later, in that Kara pauses significantly before firing on the Carrier. Lee's no happier about that order, but he does as he's told with less hesitation.)
Oh, second, the destruction of the Carrier. There are less than 50,000 Humans left in the Universe. Every single remaining life is extra-precious. But Roslin and Adama know that they can't risk the entire fleet for the sake of the 1,300 on the Carrier. They don't know for certain, but the evidence strongly suggests that the Cylons are tracking that ship, or someone on it. And then suddenly it's got nukes. So that ship has to be destroyed, along with everyone aboard. The stakes are simply too high to do otherwise. But it's not sugarcoated; both Apollo and Adama argue that the burden of responsibility is on them, and the Carrier's destruction gets mentioned again in the following episode.
Third, sometimes the Baltar/Six stuff doesn't seem to tie in quite so nicely to the main plot, but it works really well here. Someone aboard the Carrier seems to have knowledge that could expose Baltar's (accidental) role in the destruction of Caprica; when the Carrier goes missing, Six claims that Baltar has been saved by God. Baltar doesn't believe her; the Carrier reappears. Baltar repents; Roslin gives the order to destroy the Carrier.
There are a lot of wonderful little character touches as well, like Tigh giving up his ten minutes of rest because Adama's too tired to remember whose turn it is. Or Chief Tyrol, who's given so little to work with, but does a fantastic job showing just how tired and frustrated he is. Or Dualla, trying to track down any surviving members of her family. The extended cast size is just about manageable, so these tiny little scenes help the audience remember who these people are and help flesh out their characters.
Frankly, if you count "33" as the proper start to Season 1, then it's the strongest single-episode introduction to a television show I've ever seen. If you don't, then it's still the strongest "episode right after the season opener" I've ever seen. Can't say much more than that.
-Colonel Tigh
The first episode of BSG proper is a dark tour-de-force, aptly demonstrating exactly where the show is going to go, and how the show is going to work for at least the first season.
For all intents and purposes, there are three major stories unfolding: Helo and a Boomer clone on Caprica (which I'll ignore for now and instead cover all in one go once the story comes to some sort of conclusion). Baltar continues to have conversations with Six, which chronicle his slow conversion into either an instrument of God's will, a helpless pawn in Six's game, or some sort of self-actualization. And of course, Galactica must deal with Cylon threats pretty much every week.
This time, the threat comes every 33 minutes, hence the title of the episode. The crew is worn out after five days of constant attacks. The Cylons show up, the fleet jumps, 33 minutes pass, repeat. Until one time it doesn't. They left behind one ship, the Olympic Carrier, by accident. This time, 33 minutes come and go and nothing happens. Then the Carrier shows up, 33 minutes pass incredibly quickly, and the Cylons show up. Just to drive the point home, it's suddenly revealed that there are nukes on the Carrier, and so Starbuck and Apollo, jacked up on stimulants, are ordered to destroy it, despite the fact that there are almost certainly civilians aboard.
Let me just get the two minor quibbles I have with this episode out of the way first. One, as I already mentioned, the 33 minutes between the Carrier's reappearance and the Cylons' arrival seem to elapse much too quickly. Two, very little is made of the fact that the pilots are, as Starbuck says, "on drugs." Given the confrontation between Lee and Kara, you'd kind of think that that was going somewhere.
Now let me move on to the things I like. One, the confrontation between Lee and Kara. Of all the things in this episode, that scene is probably my favorite. She doesn't want to take the stimulants because they'll mess her up. Lee's a by-the-book officer who knows better than to disobey an order, and his orders are to get Kara to take her drugs. (It kind of comes back later, in that Kara pauses significantly before firing on the Carrier. Lee's no happier about that order, but he does as he's told with less hesitation.)
Oh, second, the destruction of the Carrier. There are less than 50,000 Humans left in the Universe. Every single remaining life is extra-precious. But Roslin and Adama know that they can't risk the entire fleet for the sake of the 1,300 on the Carrier. They don't know for certain, but the evidence strongly suggests that the Cylons are tracking that ship, or someone on it. And then suddenly it's got nukes. So that ship has to be destroyed, along with everyone aboard. The stakes are simply too high to do otherwise. But it's not sugarcoated; both Apollo and Adama argue that the burden of responsibility is on them, and the Carrier's destruction gets mentioned again in the following episode.
Third, sometimes the Baltar/Six stuff doesn't seem to tie in quite so nicely to the main plot, but it works really well here. Someone aboard the Carrier seems to have knowledge that could expose Baltar's (accidental) role in the destruction of Caprica; when the Carrier goes missing, Six claims that Baltar has been saved by God. Baltar doesn't believe her; the Carrier reappears. Baltar repents; Roslin gives the order to destroy the Carrier.
There are a lot of wonderful little character touches as well, like Tigh giving up his ten minutes of rest because Adama's too tired to remember whose turn it is. Or Chief Tyrol, who's given so little to work with, but does a fantastic job showing just how tired and frustrated he is. Or Dualla, trying to track down any surviving members of her family. The extended cast size is just about manageable, so these tiny little scenes help the audience remember who these people are and help flesh out their characters.
Frankly, if you count "33" as the proper start to Season 1, then it's the strongest single-episode introduction to a television show I've ever seen. If you don't, then it's still the strongest "episode right after the season opener" I've ever seen. Can't say much more than that.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Who Review: "The Rebel Flesh"/"The Almost People"
...alias the knockoff of Avatar, Blade Runner, and every other duplicate/AI plotline out there.
"The Rebel Flesh" is pretty terrible for all the reasons I detailed here and have no wish to repeat.
"The Almost People" is actually really cool, from the moment Matt Smith starts imitating his predecessors to the utter wham of an ending.
For a start, all the gangers except three spend the entire episode in acid suits, so it's really easy to tell them apart. As for the other three, one is the Doctor, one stays wearing what her human double is wearing in order to confuse Rory (and us), and the other... well, I'll get to that. The point is, we're either supposed to be confused, or not aware that we're looking at a ganger. That is to say the confusion is intentional here whereas it was just annoying in the first part.
Rory is still off with Jessica, while the others bundle together. The Doctor quickly acclimatizes to his ganger and the two of them go into a fantastic double-act. They can only be told apart by their shoes. Sabotage ensues and the Doctors try to keep everyone safe, but they're not particularly good at it because people still die.
What I like most about the Doctor's attitude towards the Doctorganger is that it's really a continuation of the line Peter Davison once uttered in The Five Doctors: "A man is the sum of his memory." Because the Doctorganger has all the Doctor's memories, he is the Doctor.
Amy confronts the "fake" Doctor and mentions his upcoming death. He flips out - understandably. (It turns out later that they switched places, so that's the original she's just told... oops.)
Eventually the "real" Doctor sends the "fake" Doctor off to save Rory. He gives him his sonic screwdriver. The "fake" Doctor gets knocked out and appears to join the Gangers, who lock all the "real" people in a room with an acid pump. Here, the "real" Doctor tries to escape by using the sonic screwdriver. ...what? At the end, the "fake" Doctor, having revealed himself to be the original Doctor all along, gives the Doctorganger back his screwdriver, which the Doctorganger uses to kill himself, another Ganger, and Jessica, who is now patently evil. Then the original Doctor pulls out another screwdriver, points it at Amy, and...
Amy's body disintegrates, and her consciousness is instantly transferred somewhere else. She's a Cylon! Wait, wrong show. Again.
Okay, so the screwdriver evidently got cloned, but if you watched carefully, it looks like there were somehow three of them floating around instead of two.
As a side note, how does the Doctor know it's been nine months for Amy?
As another side note, when will the show stop hiring bad child actors?
The twist ending was legitimately awesome. Everything Matt Smith did in this episode, from imitating his predecessors to talking to himself to saying "call me Smith" (ho ho ho) was excellent.
"Rebel Flesh" gets 2 out of 10. You had to have seen that coming. "Almost People" gets a 7, saved primarily because of Smith's performance and the ending. (I have never split the ratings on a two-parter by that much, which should really tell you how little I think of the setup, but how awesome Smith's performance is.)
"The Rebel Flesh" is pretty terrible for all the reasons I detailed here and have no wish to repeat.
"The Almost People" is actually really cool, from the moment Matt Smith starts imitating his predecessors to the utter wham of an ending.
For a start, all the gangers except three spend the entire episode in acid suits, so it's really easy to tell them apart. As for the other three, one is the Doctor, one stays wearing what her human double is wearing in order to confuse Rory (and us), and the other... well, I'll get to that. The point is, we're either supposed to be confused, or not aware that we're looking at a ganger. That is to say the confusion is intentional here whereas it was just annoying in the first part.
Rory is still off with Jessica, while the others bundle together. The Doctor quickly acclimatizes to his ganger and the two of them go into a fantastic double-act. They can only be told apart by their shoes. Sabotage ensues and the Doctors try to keep everyone safe, but they're not particularly good at it because people still die.
What I like most about the Doctor's attitude towards the Doctorganger is that it's really a continuation of the line Peter Davison once uttered in The Five Doctors: "A man is the sum of his memory." Because the Doctorganger has all the Doctor's memories, he is the Doctor.
Amy confronts the "fake" Doctor and mentions his upcoming death. He flips out - understandably. (It turns out later that they switched places, so that's the original she's just told... oops.)
Eventually the "real" Doctor sends the "fake" Doctor off to save Rory. He gives him his sonic screwdriver. The "fake" Doctor gets knocked out and appears to join the Gangers, who lock all the "real" people in a room with an acid pump. Here, the "real" Doctor tries to escape by using the sonic screwdriver. ...what? At the end, the "fake" Doctor, having revealed himself to be the original Doctor all along, gives the Doctorganger back his screwdriver, which the Doctorganger uses to kill himself, another Ganger, and Jessica, who is now patently evil. Then the original Doctor pulls out another screwdriver, points it at Amy, and...
Amy's body disintegrates, and her consciousness is instantly transferred somewhere else. She's a Cylon! Wait, wrong show. Again.
Okay, so the screwdriver evidently got cloned, but if you watched carefully, it looks like there were somehow three of them floating around instead of two.
As a side note, how does the Doctor know it's been nine months for Amy?
As another side note, when will the show stop hiring bad child actors?
The twist ending was legitimately awesome. Everything Matt Smith did in this episode, from imitating his predecessors to talking to himself to saying "call me Smith" (ho ho ho) was excellent.
"Rebel Flesh" gets 2 out of 10. You had to have seen that coming. "Almost People" gets a 7, saved primarily because of Smith's performance and the ending. (I have never split the ratings on a two-parter by that much, which should really tell you how little I think of the setup, but how awesome Smith's performance is.)
Saturday, June 4, 2011
BtVS: "Becoming" (parts 1 and 2)
"Becoming" is the two-part finale to Buffy's second season, bringing the Angelus arc to a close and demonstrating better than any episode other than "The Gift" just how much Buffy is willing to sacrifice in order to save the world.
Loads and loads of background information is necessary, so I'll get it out of the way quickly; in Season 1, Buffy, the Slayer, fell in love with Angel, the only good vampire in the universe (because he was the only one who had a soul). In the middle of Season 2, they had sex, causing Angel to experience a moment of perfect happiness and lose his soul. He became evil once again, harassing Buffy's friends for the remainder of the season and murdering one of her teachers.
Also earlier in Season 2, Buffy met Kendra, the other Slayer. See, Buffy "died" at the end of Season 1, and whenever one Slayer dies the next is "called" (gets their powers). Buffy's subsequent resuscitation didn't cancel Kendra's activation, and so for a brief time there were two Slayers, who for the most part stayed out of each other's way.
Also earlier in Season 2, the aforementioned teacher Angelus killed researched a way to restore his soul, and saved that information to a floppy disk that just happened to go AWOL after her death.
Also earlier in Season 2, we met a pair of vampires named Spike and Drusilla, who used to pal around with Angelus in the bad old days. Dru was injured before the season began, but she was restored by a ritual arranged by Spike. During that same ritual, Spike got tossed into a pipe organ and got stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of the season (they were actually planning to kill him at that point, as he'd served his purpose as one of the season's fake Big Bads, but fan reaction was positive enough to convice the writers to keep him around). When Angel turned evil, he started flirting with Dru and mocking Spike's injury, making Spike incredibly jealous.
...okay, I think that's everything (this is what I get for reviewing an arc-driven show in non-chronological order). Let's dive into the episodes.
Part 1 starts with even more background information. It shows the moment Angelus was sired by Darla in 1753 (which contradicts information we're given in "Halloween," but that's another story), as well as his persecution of Drusilla in 1860, his re-ensoulment in 1898, his rescue from rock-bottom in 1996 and his decision to help Buffy that same year.
The plot revolves around a demon named Acathla, who is currently stuck in stone form. (Quick! Everyone stare at it and don't blin... sorry, wrong series.) Only one who is worthy can remove the sword from Acathla, which will re-awaken it, and then Acathla will consume the world. Angelus thinks this is an awesome idea, and sets about trying to make himself worthy. To that end, he has his minions kidnap resident demonologist Giles in a raid that also puts Buffy's friend Willow in the hospital and kills Kendra. Buffy finds Kendra's body and is nearly arrested for murder. She escapes, but gets expelled from school.
Then she runs into Spike, who it turns out has been faking the extent of his injuries for the last few episodes. He can walk again, and he's not that big on the whole world-ending thing, so he agrees to help Buffy save Giles from a torture-happy ("they didn't even have chainsaws in my day") Angelus. In the process of all this, Buffy's mother finds out that she's the Slayer. Joyce is, understandably, less than thrilled.
Meanwhile, Willow has found the information she needs to restore Angel's soul, and never mind that she spent the first half of the second episode unconscious in a hospital, she's going to do it. (Whedon runs into this same suspension-of-disbelief problem again next year when he puts Buffy in the hospital right before her showdown with the Mayor.)
Angelus figures out how to do the ritual, and promptly does it. Buffy shows up and Spike does his part, but then he knocks out Dru and runs away with her, because she's all he really wanted. Buffy and Angelus have a sword fight while Acathla slowly wakes up. Buffy wins, because this is her show, but right before she can skewer Angelus (whose blood is needed in order to reverse the ritual), Willow restores his soul. Of course, Buffy's still got to kill him, because if she doesn't Acathla will swallow the world. So she does. Angel disappears into hell for one hundred years, or one summer, depending on your perspective.
Her personal life now in utter ruins - she's expelled from school and wanted for murder, she had to kill her boyfriend as soon as he got his soul back, and she's not on speaking terms with her mother - Buffy skips town. Roll credits.
By this point, Whedon knew he was bringing Angel back to spin him off into his own show. The return itself still basically amounts to "a wizard did it," but that doesn't really cheapen the emotional impact of this episode. Once Angel does return, his relationship with Buffy is forever altered and ultimately doomed.
This is one of the great season finales of the show (the other being "The Gift," if you had to ask). Note that it's not enough to just have Buffy kill the demon that's been walking around in her boyfriend's body for the last few months; he had to get his soul restored so she'd have to kill Angel, not Angelus. Yes, it seems strange that Willow can suddenly do high-level magic after getting knocked on the head, yes, the murder charges will be randomly dropped between seasons, and yes, absolutely no effort is made to mask the stunt doubles' faces during the sword-fight. But really, these are quibbles. Seeing Dru kill Kendra is a nice touch; throughout the entire season we've been hearing people say just how dangerous she is, and it's only here at the end where she shows us just what she can do. And Buffy has to let her go as part of her bargain with Spike. It's a shame it would take two and a half years for them to meet again, and even then it was only really as part of the Buffy/Spike story. But the main story, the conclusion of the Angelus arc and the final confrontation between him and Buffy, delivers on all levels.
10 out of 10.
Loads and loads of background information is necessary, so I'll get it out of the way quickly; in Season 1, Buffy, the Slayer, fell in love with Angel, the only good vampire in the universe (because he was the only one who had a soul). In the middle of Season 2, they had sex, causing Angel to experience a moment of perfect happiness and lose his soul. He became evil once again, harassing Buffy's friends for the remainder of the season and murdering one of her teachers.
Also earlier in Season 2, Buffy met Kendra, the other Slayer. See, Buffy "died" at the end of Season 1, and whenever one Slayer dies the next is "called" (gets their powers). Buffy's subsequent resuscitation didn't cancel Kendra's activation, and so for a brief time there were two Slayers, who for the most part stayed out of each other's way.
Also earlier in Season 2, the aforementioned teacher Angelus killed researched a way to restore his soul, and saved that information to a floppy disk that just happened to go AWOL after her death.
Also earlier in Season 2, we met a pair of vampires named Spike and Drusilla, who used to pal around with Angelus in the bad old days. Dru was injured before the season began, but she was restored by a ritual arranged by Spike. During that same ritual, Spike got tossed into a pipe organ and got stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of the season (they were actually planning to kill him at that point, as he'd served his purpose as one of the season's fake Big Bads, but fan reaction was positive enough to convice the writers to keep him around). When Angel turned evil, he started flirting with Dru and mocking Spike's injury, making Spike incredibly jealous.
...okay, I think that's everything (this is what I get for reviewing an arc-driven show in non-chronological order). Let's dive into the episodes.
Part 1 starts with even more background information. It shows the moment Angelus was sired by Darla in 1753 (which contradicts information we're given in "Halloween," but that's another story), as well as his persecution of Drusilla in 1860, his re-ensoulment in 1898, his rescue from rock-bottom in 1996 and his decision to help Buffy that same year.
The plot revolves around a demon named Acathla, who is currently stuck in stone form. (Quick! Everyone stare at it and don't blin... sorry, wrong series.) Only one who is worthy can remove the sword from Acathla, which will re-awaken it, and then Acathla will consume the world. Angelus thinks this is an awesome idea, and sets about trying to make himself worthy. To that end, he has his minions kidnap resident demonologist Giles in a raid that also puts Buffy's friend Willow in the hospital and kills Kendra. Buffy finds Kendra's body and is nearly arrested for murder. She escapes, but gets expelled from school.
Then she runs into Spike, who it turns out has been faking the extent of his injuries for the last few episodes. He can walk again, and he's not that big on the whole world-ending thing, so he agrees to help Buffy save Giles from a torture-happy ("they didn't even have chainsaws in my day") Angelus. In the process of all this, Buffy's mother finds out that she's the Slayer. Joyce is, understandably, less than thrilled.
Meanwhile, Willow has found the information she needs to restore Angel's soul, and never mind that she spent the first half of the second episode unconscious in a hospital, she's going to do it. (Whedon runs into this same suspension-of-disbelief problem again next year when he puts Buffy in the hospital right before her showdown with the Mayor.)
Angelus figures out how to do the ritual, and promptly does it. Buffy shows up and Spike does his part, but then he knocks out Dru and runs away with her, because she's all he really wanted. Buffy and Angelus have a sword fight while Acathla slowly wakes up. Buffy wins, because this is her show, but right before she can skewer Angelus (whose blood is needed in order to reverse the ritual), Willow restores his soul. Of course, Buffy's still got to kill him, because if she doesn't Acathla will swallow the world. So she does. Angel disappears into hell for one hundred years, or one summer, depending on your perspective.
Her personal life now in utter ruins - she's expelled from school and wanted for murder, she had to kill her boyfriend as soon as he got his soul back, and she's not on speaking terms with her mother - Buffy skips town. Roll credits.
By this point, Whedon knew he was bringing Angel back to spin him off into his own show. The return itself still basically amounts to "a wizard did it," but that doesn't really cheapen the emotional impact of this episode. Once Angel does return, his relationship with Buffy is forever altered and ultimately doomed.
This is one of the great season finales of the show (the other being "The Gift," if you had to ask). Note that it's not enough to just have Buffy kill the demon that's been walking around in her boyfriend's body for the last few months; he had to get his soul restored so she'd have to kill Angel, not Angelus. Yes, it seems strange that Willow can suddenly do high-level magic after getting knocked on the head, yes, the murder charges will be randomly dropped between seasons, and yes, absolutely no effort is made to mask the stunt doubles' faces during the sword-fight. But really, these are quibbles. Seeing Dru kill Kendra is a nice touch; throughout the entire season we've been hearing people say just how dangerous she is, and it's only here at the end where she shows us just what she can do. And Buffy has to let her go as part of her bargain with Spike. It's a shame it would take two and a half years for them to meet again, and even then it was only really as part of the Buffy/Spike story. But the main story, the conclusion of the Angelus arc and the final confrontation between him and Buffy, delivers on all levels.
10 out of 10.
Friday, June 3, 2011
DS9: In the Pale Moonlight
"Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?"
-the Joker, Batman
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few... or the one."
-Spock, Star Trek II
So Deep Space Nine is probably the most controversial Star Trek show, at least among Trekkies, and "In the Pale Moonlight" is probably the most controversial Trek episode ever. Which is understandable, because it is so far away from Gene Rodenberry's utopian vision that it might as well have been an episode in a different show. To most people - we'll call them the traditional Trekkies - Star Trek is about idealism and principles. Deep Space Nine, on the other hand, shows the Federation on a war footing and tests many of those principles to the breaking point. "In the Pale Moonlight" is just the greatest example.
Setting: the Dominion War. The Dominion and the Cardassians are pouding the Klingons and the Federation, while the Romulans are sitting on the sidelines. Long story short, Sisko (DS9's commander and apparently the only guy involved in the war efforts who has brains, competence and initiative) decides that the only way they're going to win the war is by recruiting the Romulans. It doesn't take him long to realize that the Romulans won't commit to an alliance without definitive proof that the Dominion is plotting against them. So he asks the station's resident spy and magnificent bastard, Garak, to procure said proof. Garak eventually decides that such proof doesn't actually exist, but he's not the sort of person to let that stop him. This is the same guy who tortured Odo that one time, continued sputtering lies about his past even when the truth could have saved him considerable pain, and, if the spin-off book penned by his actor is to be believed, killed Gul Dukat's father. In other words, he's exactly the sort of person you should never in a million years let convince you to let him forge some evidence. Not because he won't be able to, you understand, but rather because he'll do it so creepily effectively.
And yet that's exactly what Sisko does, because the stakes are so damn high. In order to get the right type of recording unit, Sisko has to give an unknown contact enough magic goo ("biomemetic gel") to make a biological weapon. To get the right forger for the job, he first has to get said forger a pardon (as the forger is rotting in a Klingon prison, about to be executed), and later has to bribe Quark not to press charges after the forger attacks him. Quark is the station's resident capitalist pig, a greedy SOB who's only ever in it for himself, or so he'd like you to think. When Quark tells you that he's just proven that yes, you do have a price, you need to take a step back and re-examine what you're doing. But Sisko can't. Because the stakes are too high. If he can't bring the Romulans into the war, the Federation will be wiped out.
Eventually the recording is completed, and a Romulan senator arrives to review it. Unfortunately, he finds out that IT'S A FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE! However, it turns out that this was Garak's plan all along; Garak has planted a bomb in the senator's ship. The senator dies, but the recording is found in the wreckage. Garak assures Sisko that any signs of forgery will now appear to be imperfections caused by the explosion. "And with a dead senator in one hand and a seemingly genuine [recording] in the other, what conclusion would you draw?" The Romulans are drawn into the war, and all it costs is the life of a senator, the life of a forger (Sisko mentions his death, which presumably happened offscreen and was cut from the finished episode), and Sisko's principles.
It's easy to understand why some people don't like this episode, and indeed DS9 as a whole. A Starfleet officer abandoning his principles to drag other people into a war for the Federation's benefit is about as far away from peacefully seeking out new life and new civilizations as you can get. I think the following season's "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" (In Time of War, the Law Falls Silent) was written to address fan concerns; here, someone else goes no further, really, than Sisko went, but in that episode, all of our heroes are appalled. (The main protagonist of that episode is Dr. Bashir, who is the closest DS9 has to a bleeding-heart liberal. In contrast, Sisko has already shown that he easily loses his cool, and has on one notorious occasion basically gassed a planet to capture a criminal.)
Bear in mind that this episode aired in 1998. Then, nobody had ever heard of Guantanamo Bay. We weren't at war. There was no reason to think, so the traditional Trekkies claimed, that we'd have to resort to underhanded methods to win a war.
Well, that was then. In 1998, the concept of a full-scale war like that was an interesting thought experiment, to see if Roddenberry's utopian ideals could withstand such an extreme threat. The traditional Trekkies don't like the answer.
The episode is framed by Sisko narrating his personal log and trying to come to terms with what he's done. Perhaps the most damning thing is the fact that the episode ends with the realization that, even though with the benefit of hindsight, it's obvious even to him that he was treading down the road to hell, he can live with what he's done. He sacrificed his principles to save as many lives as he could. (Of course, he could have sacrificed even more principles and saved even more lives by arguing for a surrender, but nobody on either side of the debate seems to be too keen to point that out...)
It doesn't treat its subject matter lightly, and Avery Brooks' serious performance here helps tremendously. I'll call him out for overacting in various other reviews, but here I think he hits every note perfectly. The writing is perfect too. This episode forced Trekkies to confront serious wartime issues in a way that clearly made many of them uncomfortable.
At the beginning of the review I quoted two things that were not this episode. The first, from Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film, is the line that named this episode. Dancing with the devil is precisely what Sisko does here. The second, the famous line that foreshadows and explains Spock's self-sacrifice in Star Trek II, is really only a minor variation on the old Communist line: "From each according to ability, to each according to need." There's no denying that this is perfectly in line with Star Trek's generally leftist ideology. And yet, really, that is no different than what Sisko does here. The need is too great not to sacrifice his principles.
Frankly, until I saw Battlestar Galactica's "33," I thought this was the best dramatic plotline American science-fiction television had ever produced, and for exactly the same reason I love "33" so much. It doesn't shy away from the fact that in dire emergency, principles are the first thing to go. There is no such thing as a perfect solution. Star Trek generally likes to pretend that we're all going to be perfect in the future. The Deep Space Nine writers knew better, and they proved it here.
10 out of 10.
Saturday: Buffy: "Becoming"
Sunday: Doctor Who: "The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People"
Monday: BSG: "33"
Tuesday: Buffy: "Fool for Love"
Wednesday: Angel: "Darla"
Thursday: BSG: "Water"
-the Joker, Batman
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few... or the one."
-Spock, Star Trek II
So Deep Space Nine is probably the most controversial Star Trek show, at least among Trekkies, and "In the Pale Moonlight" is probably the most controversial Trek episode ever. Which is understandable, because it is so far away from Gene Rodenberry's utopian vision that it might as well have been an episode in a different show. To most people - we'll call them the traditional Trekkies - Star Trek is about idealism and principles. Deep Space Nine, on the other hand, shows the Federation on a war footing and tests many of those principles to the breaking point. "In the Pale Moonlight" is just the greatest example.
Setting: the Dominion War. The Dominion and the Cardassians are pouding the Klingons and the Federation, while the Romulans are sitting on the sidelines. Long story short, Sisko (DS9's commander and apparently the only guy involved in the war efforts who has brains, competence and initiative) decides that the only way they're going to win the war is by recruiting the Romulans. It doesn't take him long to realize that the Romulans won't commit to an alliance without definitive proof that the Dominion is plotting against them. So he asks the station's resident spy and magnificent bastard, Garak, to procure said proof. Garak eventually decides that such proof doesn't actually exist, but he's not the sort of person to let that stop him. This is the same guy who tortured Odo that one time, continued sputtering lies about his past even when the truth could have saved him considerable pain, and, if the spin-off book penned by his actor is to be believed, killed Gul Dukat's father. In other words, he's exactly the sort of person you should never in a million years let convince you to let him forge some evidence. Not because he won't be able to, you understand, but rather because he'll do it so creepily effectively.
And yet that's exactly what Sisko does, because the stakes are so damn high. In order to get the right type of recording unit, Sisko has to give an unknown contact enough magic goo ("biomemetic gel") to make a biological weapon. To get the right forger for the job, he first has to get said forger a pardon (as the forger is rotting in a Klingon prison, about to be executed), and later has to bribe Quark not to press charges after the forger attacks him. Quark is the station's resident capitalist pig, a greedy SOB who's only ever in it for himself, or so he'd like you to think. When Quark tells you that he's just proven that yes, you do have a price, you need to take a step back and re-examine what you're doing. But Sisko can't. Because the stakes are too high. If he can't bring the Romulans into the war, the Federation will be wiped out.
Eventually the recording is completed, and a Romulan senator arrives to review it. Unfortunately, he finds out that IT'S A FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE! However, it turns out that this was Garak's plan all along; Garak has planted a bomb in the senator's ship. The senator dies, but the recording is found in the wreckage. Garak assures Sisko that any signs of forgery will now appear to be imperfections caused by the explosion. "And with a dead senator in one hand and a seemingly genuine [recording] in the other, what conclusion would you draw?" The Romulans are drawn into the war, and all it costs is the life of a senator, the life of a forger (Sisko mentions his death, which presumably happened offscreen and was cut from the finished episode), and Sisko's principles.
It's easy to understand why some people don't like this episode, and indeed DS9 as a whole. A Starfleet officer abandoning his principles to drag other people into a war for the Federation's benefit is about as far away from peacefully seeking out new life and new civilizations as you can get. I think the following season's "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" (In Time of War, the Law Falls Silent) was written to address fan concerns; here, someone else goes no further, really, than Sisko went, but in that episode, all of our heroes are appalled. (The main protagonist of that episode is Dr. Bashir, who is the closest DS9 has to a bleeding-heart liberal. In contrast, Sisko has already shown that he easily loses his cool, and has on one notorious occasion basically gassed a planet to capture a criminal.)
Bear in mind that this episode aired in 1998. Then, nobody had ever heard of Guantanamo Bay. We weren't at war. There was no reason to think, so the traditional Trekkies claimed, that we'd have to resort to underhanded methods to win a war.
Well, that was then. In 1998, the concept of a full-scale war like that was an interesting thought experiment, to see if Roddenberry's utopian ideals could withstand such an extreme threat. The traditional Trekkies don't like the answer.
The episode is framed by Sisko narrating his personal log and trying to come to terms with what he's done. Perhaps the most damning thing is the fact that the episode ends with the realization that, even though with the benefit of hindsight, it's obvious even to him that he was treading down the road to hell, he can live with what he's done. He sacrificed his principles to save as many lives as he could. (Of course, he could have sacrificed even more principles and saved even more lives by arguing for a surrender, but nobody on either side of the debate seems to be too keen to point that out...)
It doesn't treat its subject matter lightly, and Avery Brooks' serious performance here helps tremendously. I'll call him out for overacting in various other reviews, but here I think he hits every note perfectly. The writing is perfect too. This episode forced Trekkies to confront serious wartime issues in a way that clearly made many of them uncomfortable.
At the beginning of the review I quoted two things that were not this episode. The first, from Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film, is the line that named this episode. Dancing with the devil is precisely what Sisko does here. The second, the famous line that foreshadows and explains Spock's self-sacrifice in Star Trek II, is really only a minor variation on the old Communist line: "From each according to ability, to each according to need." There's no denying that this is perfectly in line with Star Trek's generally leftist ideology. And yet, really, that is no different than what Sisko does here. The need is too great not to sacrifice his principles.
Frankly, until I saw Battlestar Galactica's "33," I thought this was the best dramatic plotline American science-fiction television had ever produced, and for exactly the same reason I love "33" so much. It doesn't shy away from the fact that in dire emergency, principles are the first thing to go. There is no such thing as a perfect solution. Star Trek generally likes to pretend that we're all going to be perfect in the future. The Deep Space Nine writers knew better, and they proved it here.
10 out of 10.
Saturday: Buffy: "Becoming"
Sunday: Doctor Who: "The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People"
Monday: BSG: "33"
Tuesday: Buffy: "Fool for Love"
Wednesday: Angel: "Darla"
Thursday: BSG: "Water"
Thursday, June 2, 2011
BSG: Miniseries part 2
Lee saves himself, the President, and the civilian fleet by doing some technobabble. According to the commentary, this is a sly wink at the Star Trek thing of doing technobabble week in and week out to get out of every single stinking bind.
Roslin continues to gather civilian ships. She goes aboard one and meets a little girl who, well, hasn't quite grasped the fact that her parents are dead yet. That in itself is a pretty heartbreaking scene, but what's to come is even better/worse...
A Cylon scout finds the civilian fleet, and they decide they have to jump immediately. The ships that aren't FTL-capable will simply have to be left behind, and that includes the one the little girl is on. The sequence that follows is the sequence that told me I'd absolutely love this show. The slowest countdown ever commences, and the camera keeps cutting back to Roslin or the little girl, as if telling us "okay, any second now, she's going to change her mind and put the other ships at risk to save the girl." Nope! (Also: Barry Goldwater will kill us all.) The fleet jumps, and Cylons appear and blow the remaining ships to itty bitty bits. This is a series that clearly won't shy away from showing us the consequences of hard decisions, and I love it for that.
(Sidebar: Genesis of the Daleks would be 100% better if, instead of the Doctor spouting off some nonsense about the Daleks ultimately doing some good, it ended with a flash-forward into the future and showed us every single extermination thus far in the show; deaths that are now, in a very real sense, on the Doctor's hands.)
Galactica jumps to Ragnar Station, which is hidden inside a nebula of some sort, which does a good job of playing hell with sensors and communication. There's an incredibly lengthy sequence that follows, wherein they meet a guy who's been hiding there. He's acting an awful lot like he's seen Blade Runner, because he acts a lot like the replicants in that film. Unfortunately for him, Adama's played by a guy who was in that film, so Adama cottons on and bashes his head in with a flashlight. While Adama's still separated from the rest of the crew (and seriously, this sequence lasts forever), the civilian fleet arrives. Adama gets back, and he and Lee have a... restrained reunion. Adama, Tigh and Baltar discuss what it means that the Cylons look like us now. Baltar's tasked with coming up with a way to identify the Cylons, because apparently the Voight-Kampff test doesn't exist in this universe (seriously, though, Six is clearly sociopathic at the very least. She'd register as a replicant).
Starbuck is tasked with scouting outside the nebula to see what the Cylon position is. Before she leaves, she confesses to Lee that Zak (remember him? He's Lee's dead brother and the whole reason there's a wedge between Lee and Adama - apparently, although the final episode suggests that their estrangement goes back even further than that) actually flunked Basic Flight, and was only in that Viper he died in because Starbuck fudged his grades. Whoops. You'll have to wait for episode 4 of the series proper for that issue to actually be tackled, though.
Starbuck finds a Cylon force. Adama and Roslin argue about whether or not they can actually fight, and Adama eventually agrees to just run. Before they do so, Baltar frames a man as a Cylon agent (pretty much because Six told him to), and that man gets left behind on Ragnar. Not to worry, though, because he actually is a Cylon. (Because if he wasn't, Baltar would be utterly reprehensible, I guess.)
There's a fairly epic battle while Galactica screens the civilian fleet from a Cylon attack, Starbuck saves Apollo's life, and then there's the denoument. Adama claims that they're going to set course for Earth, but Roslin privately calls him on it. Now she holds all the cards; it's not enough that Adama's already said he has no intention of staging a military coup, now Roslin can just hold the "you lied about knowing where Earth is" thing over his head. At the very end, the Cylons arrive on Ragnar and spout some cryptic gibberish. One of them is identical to Boomer, meaning, dun dun dunnnnnnn, Boomer's a Cylon.
As you can tell, there's not nearly as much stuff going on in Part 2. The Ragnar Station stuff drags on for longer than is really healthy (and with the benefit of hindsight, the "mechanic drops an explosive thingy and causes a nasty accident" event is going to get recycled in the series proper). It's nice to see Baltar start worming his way into Adama's confidence once the latter gets back, and it's good to see the various "I thought you were dead" reactions Lee gets when he comes back. There's a nice battle at the end, but really, having introduced everything in Part 1, all Part 2 really seems to do is get all the chips in place for the actual show.
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Post-Craig review: Goldfinger
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