Bear McCreary is my new hero, and pretty much the only thing keeping me from saying that he's the best composer alive is that as far as I know, the following people aren't dead: John "Star Wars" Williams, James "Star Trek II" Horner, Ennio "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" Morricone, and Hans "Pirates of the Carribean" Zimmer.
But unlike all those guys, Bear is still primarily a television composer. Which means he's not as famous. Still, over four seasons of BSG, he's given us some of the coolest musical themes and stings I've heard in a long, long time.
Honorable mention #1: the Colonial Anthem, better known as the original series theme, composed by Stu Phillips.
Honorable mention #2: the Miniseries theme, composed by Richard Gibbs. Bear McCreary is awesome and I wouldn't want to live in a world where the following tunes don't exist, but at the same time, I kind of miss the Miniseries theme and wonder what it would have been like if Richard Gibbs had stayed on to do the show.
Honorable mention #3: "All Along the Watchtower." Someone got the bright idea to do a cover of the only song in the world that has already recieved a definitive cover. I did include another Final Five track in the actual list.
10) "Black Market." Say what you will about the episode, but the title track is awesome. Shame we get to hear about three seconds of it unless we buy the soundtrack. (Um, "Black Market.")
9) "Farewell Apollo." This is the last time the Adama theme gets a big old showcase, now with military drums. With themes like these, I tend to like the later arrangements better just because they're more fully evolved. ("Six of One.")
8) "Storming New Caprica." Hell yes. This and the Adama theme are what make bagpipes bearable. ("Exodus, Part II.)
7) "Apocalypse." Downtuned guitars crunching away underneath the main title theme? If I didn't know better, I'd say Bear wrote both pieces simultaneously. (The Plan)
6) "Kat's Sacrifice." The fact that this theme only appears in one episode is downright criminal. But I guess that's what you get when you compose a theme for a character who promptly gets killed off. ("The Passage")
5) "Diaspora Oratio." What? They found Earth? But we're only halfway through Season 4! How are the next 10 episodes going to play out? This music is probably the main reason we don't ask that question. ("Revelations")
4) "An Easterly View." This was the music with which to end the show, playing over the scene that should have ended it: about two minutes before "Daybreak, Part III" actually ends, Adama sits next to Laura's grave, as the fantastic "Violence and Variations" theme plays one final time with incredible gusto.
3) "Something Dark is Coming." Move over, "Pegasus," this is the best psychedelic-tinged guitar track in the series. It plays at the beginning of "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I."
2) "Kara's Coordinates." It all comes together in "Daybreak, Part II." Starbuck's destiny, Hera's notes, the Final Five... well, kinda sorta, anyway, as far as the storytelling goes. Once again, the music sells it.
1) "Prelude to War." Perfection.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
BSG: The Passage
This is the first Battlestar Galactica episode written by Jane Espenson (primarily of Buffy fame, but at this point it'd be easier to list the sci-fi/fantasy shows that she hasn't written for in the last 15 years).
...and, frankly, I was expecting more. Now, to her credit, she does get the funniest joke of the season ("paper shortage"), but it's not quite as funny as Adama and Tigh seem to think it is.
Anyway, this episode is a pretty good case study as to why the standalone episodes of the show don't really measure up. And for the record, I'd be willing to bet that she was given most of the plot and told to work it into something useable while the regular staff focused on the developing love quadrangle.
So first of all, I'd better explain what a standalone episode is (or at least, what I consider a standalone episode to be). It's exactly that: an episode that stands alone, has a self-contained story with a beginning, middle and end. The closest we got to that in Season 1 were "Act of Contrition" and "Colonial Day." "Act of Contrition" starts with an explosion and focuses on Starbuck training new pilots, but the episode is really about her guilt over the death of Zak Adama, and that was introduced back in the Miniseries. "Colonial Day" is a bit more clear-cut of an example, because the Qurorum of Twelve, the Vice-Presidency, and Wallace Gray are all introduced in that episode. But, most of those plot threads reappear later on. Making Baltar your Vice-President doesn't come without consequences. Furthermore, "Colonial Day" is open-ended on the assassin issue, even if that never got resolved (it went to the Ship of Abandoned Plotlines, along with Boxey, Novacek, Lee's flab, Demand Peace, etc).
Then Season 2 has a massive culprit in the form of "Black Market," but as I argued when I reviewed it, I felt that "Black Market" was flawed because it was a standalone episode, since it dropped eight zillion new things in our lap with absolutely no prior notice. Lee being in a relationship with a hooker isn't so much out-of-character as it is a revelation of a dark side that has only been hinted at once before (at the end of "Resurrection Ship, Part II").
Then there was "Hero," which contorted the entire continuity of the show in order to give Adama reason to believe that he'd started the war. Said feelings of guilt had never been hinted at before - unless you count that moment in the Miniseries when Leoben tells him that he can't hide from the things he's done (but I could write an entire blog post on the discrepancies between the Miniseries and the series proper).
Now, is "The Passage" as bad as either of those two episodes? No, of course not. I vehemently disagree with the notion that "Black Market," "Hero" and "The Woman King" are the worst three episodes of the show, but that's only because for whatever reason "Epiphanies" isn't on that list. (And as an aside, I am much more forgiving of a standalone like "Black Market," whose various players are never mentioned again, than I am of "Epiphanies," which garbles its technobabble so badly that you're left wondering why Laura doesn't stick a needle in Hera once her cancer returns. "Black Market" wrecked one episode. "Epiphanies" wrecked an entire plotline.)
So there's suddenly a crisis without any warning. Last time this happened ("Water"), a Cylon was responsible. But there are no sleeper agents left in the fleet. How do I know this? Because the Cylons would never have resorted to a scheme as insane as the one in "Hero" if they had an infiltrator or a sleeper agent they could just contact. Besides, any known Cylons would have gotten off at New Caprica. (Yes, yes, I know about the Final Five, but it becomes clear later on that they have no sleeper programming, only blocked and altered memories.) But, hey, after three years in space, it's only natural that stuff might start to fail (gee, this just might become a major frakking plotline in Season 4.5... why they didn't have everything break down, instead of doing the Luddite thing, remains a mystery to me).
The food has all been contaminated, and there's a scene where the pilots have to eat crumbs. It's a nice and effective scene, provided that you like Kat.
And that's another problem with this episode. I know she's Starbuck's own personal Starbuck (and yeah, I mean that in every way possible; look at how close their faces are during their confrontations in both this and "Scar"). It's just that we know Starbuck is a hyperpowered Viper jock, because we've seen it. Kat just seems like someone who's made it their personal mission to antagonize Starbuck as much as humanly possible. Not that I disapprove of antagonizing Starbuck (anyone who calls herself a "two-timing bitch of a wife" needs a good kick in the ass from time to time - and frankly, the "make Starbuck's life hell" episodes are some of the best in the show), but that seems to be Kat's sole reason for existing. We don't really get to see her in combat all that much. We find out more about her personal life in this episode, but we also find out that she's running from her personal life.
So I'm just going to come out and say it: until this episode, I didn't like Kat very much, and even afterwards, my feelings were somewhat mixed. But I'll get into that later.
First of all, let me talk about what I do like in this episode. Number one, the music. If you're reading this but don't have the Season 3 soundtrack, order it right now. Bear McCreary composed an awesome little theme for Kat that only ever gets heard in this episode. It's called "Kat's Sacrifice," and it could have easily been the title theme for another show.
Number two, I like the message the story tries to tell. See, as they make these dangerous trips through a radiation-filled star cluster (because the plot demands it), Kat's personal life begins to catch up to her. We learn that she was a smuggler named Sasha who stole the name of a dead girl to get through the background checks and end up as a Viper pilot. But the message of the story is that it doesn't matter who you were or what you did before; what matters is what you're doing now, and Kat's fighting the good fight. Good for her.
Number three was just something that amused me. Raptors can be flown from either the right or the left seat in the cockpit. If you watch the Raptor scenes closely enough, you'll notice that the only person driving from the left is Apollo, the only pilot played by a British actor. That just struck me as funny.
Okay, so now back to griping. Aside from the fact that this is a standalone, which means all the exposition needs to come fast and furious in order to get to the actual meat of the story, the main problem comes in the ending. Starbuck finds out about Kat's past. Kat begs Starbuck to let her, Kat, tell the Admiral herself. Starbuck, no stranger to having to confess awful secrets to Adama, agrees. Then Kat goes on a mission she knows she won't come back from because she's already recieved too much radiation poisoning. To me, that's less of a heroic sacrifice and more a glorified suicide. (But if I'm going to gripe too much about suicide, I'd be a hypocrite if I turned around and showered praise on "Sometimes a Great Notion," and since that's precisely what I'm going to do when I finally get there, I'll stop complaining.)
Anyway, "Flawed, but Watchable" (also known as "Average") is my verdict on "The Passage." I'm not going to do to Jane Espenson what I did to Robert Holmes in my Doctor Who reviews, and hold her to a higher standard than the other writers. This isn't as good as, say, Firefly's "Shindig," but it's better than any other standalone episode this season. As far as where it ranks in the season, it's competing for the #10 slot along with "The Eye of Jupiter" and "Rapture," because the first four, last four, and "Unfinished Business" have the other top nine pretty much locked up.
...and, frankly, I was expecting more. Now, to her credit, she does get the funniest joke of the season ("paper shortage"), but it's not quite as funny as Adama and Tigh seem to think it is.
Anyway, this episode is a pretty good case study as to why the standalone episodes of the show don't really measure up. And for the record, I'd be willing to bet that she was given most of the plot and told to work it into something useable while the regular staff focused on the developing love quadrangle.
So first of all, I'd better explain what a standalone episode is (or at least, what I consider a standalone episode to be). It's exactly that: an episode that stands alone, has a self-contained story with a beginning, middle and end. The closest we got to that in Season 1 were "Act of Contrition" and "Colonial Day." "Act of Contrition" starts with an explosion and focuses on Starbuck training new pilots, but the episode is really about her guilt over the death of Zak Adama, and that was introduced back in the Miniseries. "Colonial Day" is a bit more clear-cut of an example, because the Qurorum of Twelve, the Vice-Presidency, and Wallace Gray are all introduced in that episode. But, most of those plot threads reappear later on. Making Baltar your Vice-President doesn't come without consequences. Furthermore, "Colonial Day" is open-ended on the assassin issue, even if that never got resolved (it went to the Ship of Abandoned Plotlines, along with Boxey, Novacek, Lee's flab, Demand Peace, etc).
Then Season 2 has a massive culprit in the form of "Black Market," but as I argued when I reviewed it, I felt that "Black Market" was flawed because it was a standalone episode, since it dropped eight zillion new things in our lap with absolutely no prior notice. Lee being in a relationship with a hooker isn't so much out-of-character as it is a revelation of a dark side that has only been hinted at once before (at the end of "Resurrection Ship, Part II").
Then there was "Hero," which contorted the entire continuity of the show in order to give Adama reason to believe that he'd started the war. Said feelings of guilt had never been hinted at before - unless you count that moment in the Miniseries when Leoben tells him that he can't hide from the things he's done (but I could write an entire blog post on the discrepancies between the Miniseries and the series proper).
Now, is "The Passage" as bad as either of those two episodes? No, of course not. I vehemently disagree with the notion that "Black Market," "Hero" and "The Woman King" are the worst three episodes of the show, but that's only because for whatever reason "Epiphanies" isn't on that list. (And as an aside, I am much more forgiving of a standalone like "Black Market," whose various players are never mentioned again, than I am of "Epiphanies," which garbles its technobabble so badly that you're left wondering why Laura doesn't stick a needle in Hera once her cancer returns. "Black Market" wrecked one episode. "Epiphanies" wrecked an entire plotline.)
So there's suddenly a crisis without any warning. Last time this happened ("Water"), a Cylon was responsible. But there are no sleeper agents left in the fleet. How do I know this? Because the Cylons would never have resorted to a scheme as insane as the one in "Hero" if they had an infiltrator or a sleeper agent they could just contact. Besides, any known Cylons would have gotten off at New Caprica. (Yes, yes, I know about the Final Five, but it becomes clear later on that they have no sleeper programming, only blocked and altered memories.) But, hey, after three years in space, it's only natural that stuff might start to fail (gee, this just might become a major frakking plotline in Season 4.5... why they didn't have everything break down, instead of doing the Luddite thing, remains a mystery to me).
The food has all been contaminated, and there's a scene where the pilots have to eat crumbs. It's a nice and effective scene, provided that you like Kat.
And that's another problem with this episode. I know she's Starbuck's own personal Starbuck (and yeah, I mean that in every way possible; look at how close their faces are during their confrontations in both this and "Scar"). It's just that we know Starbuck is a hyperpowered Viper jock, because we've seen it. Kat just seems like someone who's made it their personal mission to antagonize Starbuck as much as humanly possible. Not that I disapprove of antagonizing Starbuck (anyone who calls herself a "two-timing bitch of a wife" needs a good kick in the ass from time to time - and frankly, the "make Starbuck's life hell" episodes are some of the best in the show), but that seems to be Kat's sole reason for existing. We don't really get to see her in combat all that much. We find out more about her personal life in this episode, but we also find out that she's running from her personal life.
So I'm just going to come out and say it: until this episode, I didn't like Kat very much, and even afterwards, my feelings were somewhat mixed. But I'll get into that later.
First of all, let me talk about what I do like in this episode. Number one, the music. If you're reading this but don't have the Season 3 soundtrack, order it right now. Bear McCreary composed an awesome little theme for Kat that only ever gets heard in this episode. It's called "Kat's Sacrifice," and it could have easily been the title theme for another show.
Number two, I like the message the story tries to tell. See, as they make these dangerous trips through a radiation-filled star cluster (because the plot demands it), Kat's personal life begins to catch up to her. We learn that she was a smuggler named Sasha who stole the name of a dead girl to get through the background checks and end up as a Viper pilot. But the message of the story is that it doesn't matter who you were or what you did before; what matters is what you're doing now, and Kat's fighting the good fight. Good for her.
Number three was just something that amused me. Raptors can be flown from either the right or the left seat in the cockpit. If you watch the Raptor scenes closely enough, you'll notice that the only person driving from the left is Apollo, the only pilot played by a British actor. That just struck me as funny.
Okay, so now back to griping. Aside from the fact that this is a standalone, which means all the exposition needs to come fast and furious in order to get to the actual meat of the story, the main problem comes in the ending. Starbuck finds out about Kat's past. Kat begs Starbuck to let her, Kat, tell the Admiral herself. Starbuck, no stranger to having to confess awful secrets to Adama, agrees. Then Kat goes on a mission she knows she won't come back from because she's already recieved too much radiation poisoning. To me, that's less of a heroic sacrifice and more a glorified suicide. (But if I'm going to gripe too much about suicide, I'd be a hypocrite if I turned around and showered praise on "Sometimes a Great Notion," and since that's precisely what I'm going to do when I finally get there, I'll stop complaining.)
Anyway, "Flawed, but Watchable" (also known as "Average") is my verdict on "The Passage." I'm not going to do to Jane Espenson what I did to Robert Holmes in my Doctor Who reviews, and hold her to a higher standard than the other writers. This isn't as good as, say, Firefly's "Shindig," but it's better than any other standalone episode this season. As far as where it ranks in the season, it's competing for the #10 slot along with "The Eye of Jupiter" and "Rapture," because the first four, last four, and "Unfinished Business" have the other top nine pretty much locked up.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Caprica: Pilot
Our story opens in the V-club, which you can tell is a place up to no good because it's full of teenagers having sex, fighting each other, killing each other, engaging in human sacrifice, and listening to techno music. Zoe Graystone talks to two of her friends as they watch her virtual copy. The copy is, sadly, more believable than her friend Ben, who frankly sounds like he just read his lines for the first time that morning.
Anyway, the copy of Zoe de-rezzes (see, Battlestar took its slang from Blade Runner, so Caprica's going to have to steal its slang from some other 80s thing: Tron). Real-Zoe gets in trouble, but promises to perform "tweakage" on the virtual copy. Did the writers get all their knowledge of kids from Buffy and their technology ideas from cult 80s films?
So we meet her parents - Daddy's a major player in this show. Daniel Graystone is played by Eric Stoltz, which makes me wish I'd seen him in more stuff than just Pulp Fiction.
Zoe and her avatar talk - the avatar is pretty much exactly like her only a tad more judgemental. (Here's the first thing that makes no frakking sense to me: the avatar supposedly is Zoe, but Zoe knows why Zoe-A is so important, and Zoe-A apparently doesn't.)
So the kids run away, but then Ben blows himself up rather than admit he only read the first page of the script. Unfortunately, he kills Zoe, as well as Tamara Adams and her mother. Tamara's daddy is Civil Liberties Lawyer... I mean, defense attorney for the mob Joseph Adama, idol and enemy of Romo Lampkin, father of Bill, and owner of one very special lighter.
So in this scene there's some stuff that doesn't make sense to me. Zoe uses a piece of magic paper to send a message to her mother, and it says "message sent." By "message sent," I assume they meant the message was sent, but later we find out it didn't get there, somehow. Why is she using a piece of magic paper? Is magic paper really going to replace the iPhone and not the other way around? Check out how long it takes her to type the first four words of her message; we've got faster stuff today.
Then there's Ben, who's willing to up and murder his best friend. Why? Was she mocking his acting ability? It doesn't make any sense, and by the time the pilot movie ends we still only have the vague idea that Polly Walker might be behind it in some way.
Now contrast this with the way Battlestar Galactica opened. We know about the Cylon War, about the 40-year silence. Six walks in, kisses the guy, nukes the station. War is on. Six is in the market, killing the baby, a model with no acting experience doing a better job than Ben Stark (yeah, I'm picking on him because he's flat and his character makes no sense). Six has sex with Baltar, tells him she used him to get into the defense mainframe. We know what's going on here.
There's an obvious 9/11 subtext. "As of this moment, we are at war." People grieve, but they get ready for what looks like it's just going to be a black-and-white struggle (which the show then gleefully subverts every chance it gets). Roslin pulls an LBJ and gets sworn in on a passenger jet. The miniseries uses historical references to put us in a familiar world.
Nothing of the sort is really attempted in Caprica. Yeah, there's a terrorist attack, but what's the point? Who are the Soldiers of the One? "As you know," they worship the one true God, but what do they really want? What could cause Ben Stark to murder his girlfriend and a bunch of other civilians? The Cylons want to nuke the Colonies until all the humans are dead; later on, we learn that Cavil wants to prove to five specific people that mankind isn't worth saving, but we don't even need to know anything about that plotline to get the BSG miniseries. Meanwhile, a terrorist blows up a train, and the only noticeable change is that now an anti-terrorism officer is harassing a grieving mother.
Adama and Graystone sit in a coffee shop and smoke for a couple of hours. Look at us! Smoking! Yeah, we're subversive, aren't we? It's not like Mad Men does this day in and day out.
So after that, Graystone invites Adama to a C-Bucs game. And he gives this guy he just met his private number. This is before he knows that he can exploit Adama's grief to his advantage, using Adama's mob connections to steal the MCP (Master Control Program? STOP USING TERMS FROM TRON!!!!)
Next, Lacy goes to see Zoe-A in what's totally not the Matrix, honest, and when she finds Zoe-A covered in blood, she screams. Now, later we'll see that both Lacy and Adama unconsciously say what they say in V-world out in the real world too, so why doesn't that scream alert the Graystone household that something's wrong? Why does Lacy have to be in the Graystone household to find Zoe-A's magic room? They weren't at the beginning.
So they do the "you're just a thing" thing, and we talk about how Zoe-A has memories even though she's been compiled from data about Zoe's birth control perscriptions (and about eighty gazillion other sources).
Fortunately, as happens whenever I start griping about things not following their own frakking rules, a character I like shows up. Graystone shows up, but Lacy runs away.
Now, Adama's a lawyer, so I guess we have to show him in a court of law. Turns out Adama and his underworld buddies have bribed the judge (so... in the entire BSG/Caprica verse, the fairest trial we've ever seen is... Gaeta nearly being executed by the Circle).
Graystone has his own problems; he's about to lose his contract to build robots for the military because his robot can't shoot a mobile bowling pin with a painball gun. How hard can it be? The computer can always manage to shoot me whenever I play Half-Life 2, and Gordon Freeman can't move half as fast as the bowling pin. Per "Rebirth," it's because the robot isn't intuitive or some such, but 1) how smart is Serge, the Graystones' robot butler, and 2) how "intuitive" are the NPCs in any modern video game?
Then we have the scene where the kid asks the uncomfortable questions about death, but this scene is quickly interrupted because Daniel Graystone is too busy making important discoveries. Now as much as I'll complain about Season 3 of BSG chasing its own tail for the sake of character pieces, this show has pretty much the opposite problem. I want to see Adama realize that his wife and daughter were on that train. I want to see Adama talk to his son about it.
See, among the many, many other things Buffy the Vampire Slayer did to make it one of the greatest television shows ever, it always stuck with the characters in the middle of really awkward, uncomfortable, emotional scenes. There was no relief for the audience (say, by cutting to a different scene) because there was no relief for the characters. Nobody ever talked through their problems off-screen. There's a scene in "Innocence" where, just to prove to the audience how Angel is truly gone, Angelus spends a good three minutes completely shattering Buffy's heart.
At least Daniel Graystone's story is interesting enough to make up for the character bits I miss from Adama's story. Graystone gets Zoe's friend, Lacy, to show him Zoe-A. Then Graystone steals Zoe-A and puts it in a Cylon body. (Hey, this guy's supposed to be some sort of genius, right? If there's a risk of something going wrong, how about you copy Zoe-A's program? You yourself aren't really sure whether she's your daughter or just a tool to help keep your contract from being stolen by a competitor.)
(Further note to self: be sure to mock Baltar's supposed genius credentials on the next BSG review, too.)
Graystone shows Adama a copy of his daughter, Tamara, but Adama's not quite as quick a convert to the Church of the Robot Soul (established 1982). Still, he's perfectly willing to help Graystone steal the MCP from his competitor.
So Adama agrees to give the defense minister a message in exchange for his mob buddies getting the MCP. The defense minister has Tyrell's glasses from Blade Runner, because hey, why not? Either you get the reference, or you don't, and if you don't, why are you watching this? Then Graystone has sex with his wife while Adama's brother kills the minister.
So basically Graystone is this amoral businessman who's willing to steal from his competitor and corrupt his daughter's work in order to keep his contract... except then he was sad he couldn't suceed in putting his daughter in the robot. This makes him a complex, nuanced character. But because they kept cutting away from the Adama storyline, and because they left a bunch of material invovling Mrs. Graystone and Sister Clarence Willow on the cutting room floor, I don't really have that much of a feel for their characters yet.
See, in the Battlestar Galactica pilot/miniseries, you got to know all these characters. Adama was this crusty old guy who had the respect of his underlings, Tigh was a functional drunk with an estranged wife, Starbuck was an ace pilot but also a world-class screwup partly because of the guilt she felt in getting her boyfriend killed, Apollo wasn't a chip off the old block at all, Roslin was either an obstructivist schoolteacher or a cancer-stricken heroine who rallied a civilian fleet, or both, and Baltar was a sleazebag with an imaginary girlfriend. Basically what I know about Joseph Adama at this point is that he's a defense attorney for the mob, and he doesn't know how to raise his son.
Epilogue: The Perils of Prequels
We're in a similar trap here to the one that the Star Wars prequels fell into. Now, that's not entirely fair, because Caprica doesn't have a cartoon rabbit, an awful love story, and an over-reliance on CGI instead of characters (although I'm not sure I like how much attention the Cylon prototype is getting, and I applaud the decision to have Zoe stand in for the robot a lot once we get to the series proper). We have much better characters, (let's face it, saturday morning cartoons have better characters than the Star Wars prequels) but the story's in a similar dilemma because we all know where it ends up. The very first thing on the screen is a title card that says "Caprica: 58 years before the Fall." We go into this thinking that we know how it's all going to end.
All we knew about the way Battlestar Galactica was going to end was that they were probably going to find Earth (they did), and that they were probably going to discover 12 Cylon models along the way (they did). We didn't know who those Cylons were, who would die along the way, what state we'd find Earth in, how well the Roslin-Adama alliance would last, whether Starbuck and Apollo would ever frak, whether Starbuck would ever confess to Adama about the real circumstances of Zak's death, or even when the entire show takes place.
Not nearly as many plotlines are set up here. We have the Soldiers of the One and whatever Polly Walker's up to, but it's harder to care because we all know they'll be dead in 58 years. Here we know that the Cylons will become self-aware, that Joseph Adama will live long enough to know his grandson Lee, that Zoe-A is somehow going to have to magically vanish, they're going to lose that magic paper technology and the holobands, and that it's all going to end in a nuclear holocaust. We think we know little Willie Adama's going to make it, but that's subverted far too late.
So, and especially given the way "Daybreak" divided the Galactica fanbase, I really think Caprica should have been an independent show instead of a prequel.
Anyway, the copy of Zoe de-rezzes (see, Battlestar took its slang from Blade Runner, so Caprica's going to have to steal its slang from some other 80s thing: Tron). Real-Zoe gets in trouble, but promises to perform "tweakage" on the virtual copy. Did the writers get all their knowledge of kids from Buffy and their technology ideas from cult 80s films?
So we meet her parents - Daddy's a major player in this show. Daniel Graystone is played by Eric Stoltz, which makes me wish I'd seen him in more stuff than just Pulp Fiction.
Zoe and her avatar talk - the avatar is pretty much exactly like her only a tad more judgemental. (Here's the first thing that makes no frakking sense to me: the avatar supposedly is Zoe, but Zoe knows why Zoe-A is so important, and Zoe-A apparently doesn't.)
So the kids run away, but then Ben blows himself up rather than admit he only read the first page of the script. Unfortunately, he kills Zoe, as well as Tamara Adams and her mother. Tamara's daddy is Civil Liberties Lawyer... I mean, defense attorney for the mob Joseph Adama, idol and enemy of Romo Lampkin, father of Bill, and owner of one very special lighter.
So in this scene there's some stuff that doesn't make sense to me. Zoe uses a piece of magic paper to send a message to her mother, and it says "message sent." By "message sent," I assume they meant the message was sent, but later we find out it didn't get there, somehow. Why is she using a piece of magic paper? Is magic paper really going to replace the iPhone and not the other way around? Check out how long it takes her to type the first four words of her message; we've got faster stuff today.
Then there's Ben, who's willing to up and murder his best friend. Why? Was she mocking his acting ability? It doesn't make any sense, and by the time the pilot movie ends we still only have the vague idea that Polly Walker might be behind it in some way.
Now contrast this with the way Battlestar Galactica opened. We know about the Cylon War, about the 40-year silence. Six walks in, kisses the guy, nukes the station. War is on. Six is in the market, killing the baby, a model with no acting experience doing a better job than Ben Stark (yeah, I'm picking on him because he's flat and his character makes no sense). Six has sex with Baltar, tells him she used him to get into the defense mainframe. We know what's going on here.
There's an obvious 9/11 subtext. "As of this moment, we are at war." People grieve, but they get ready for what looks like it's just going to be a black-and-white struggle (which the show then gleefully subverts every chance it gets). Roslin pulls an LBJ and gets sworn in on a passenger jet. The miniseries uses historical references to put us in a familiar world.
Nothing of the sort is really attempted in Caprica. Yeah, there's a terrorist attack, but what's the point? Who are the Soldiers of the One? "As you know," they worship the one true God, but what do they really want? What could cause Ben Stark to murder his girlfriend and a bunch of other civilians? The Cylons want to nuke the Colonies until all the humans are dead; later on, we learn that Cavil wants to prove to five specific people that mankind isn't worth saving, but we don't even need to know anything about that plotline to get the BSG miniseries. Meanwhile, a terrorist blows up a train, and the only noticeable change is that now an anti-terrorism officer is harassing a grieving mother.
Adama and Graystone sit in a coffee shop and smoke for a couple of hours. Look at us! Smoking! Yeah, we're subversive, aren't we? It's not like Mad Men does this day in and day out.
So after that, Graystone invites Adama to a C-Bucs game. And he gives this guy he just met his private number. This is before he knows that he can exploit Adama's grief to his advantage, using Adama's mob connections to steal the MCP (Master Control Program? STOP USING TERMS FROM TRON!!!!)
Next, Lacy goes to see Zoe-A in what's totally not the Matrix, honest, and when she finds Zoe-A covered in blood, she screams. Now, later we'll see that both Lacy and Adama unconsciously say what they say in V-world out in the real world too, so why doesn't that scream alert the Graystone household that something's wrong? Why does Lacy have to be in the Graystone household to find Zoe-A's magic room? They weren't at the beginning.
So they do the "you're just a thing" thing, and we talk about how Zoe-A has memories even though she's been compiled from data about Zoe's birth control perscriptions (and about eighty gazillion other sources).
Fortunately, as happens whenever I start griping about things not following their own frakking rules, a character I like shows up. Graystone shows up, but Lacy runs away.
Now, Adama's a lawyer, so I guess we have to show him in a court of law. Turns out Adama and his underworld buddies have bribed the judge (so... in the entire BSG/Caprica verse, the fairest trial we've ever seen is... Gaeta nearly being executed by the Circle).
Graystone has his own problems; he's about to lose his contract to build robots for the military because his robot can't shoot a mobile bowling pin with a painball gun. How hard can it be? The computer can always manage to shoot me whenever I play Half-Life 2, and Gordon Freeman can't move half as fast as the bowling pin. Per "Rebirth," it's because the robot isn't intuitive or some such, but 1) how smart is Serge, the Graystones' robot butler, and 2) how "intuitive" are the NPCs in any modern video game?
Then we have the scene where the kid asks the uncomfortable questions about death, but this scene is quickly interrupted because Daniel Graystone is too busy making important discoveries. Now as much as I'll complain about Season 3 of BSG chasing its own tail for the sake of character pieces, this show has pretty much the opposite problem. I want to see Adama realize that his wife and daughter were on that train. I want to see Adama talk to his son about it.
See, among the many, many other things Buffy the Vampire Slayer did to make it one of the greatest television shows ever, it always stuck with the characters in the middle of really awkward, uncomfortable, emotional scenes. There was no relief for the audience (say, by cutting to a different scene) because there was no relief for the characters. Nobody ever talked through their problems off-screen. There's a scene in "Innocence" where, just to prove to the audience how Angel is truly gone, Angelus spends a good three minutes completely shattering Buffy's heart.
At least Daniel Graystone's story is interesting enough to make up for the character bits I miss from Adama's story. Graystone gets Zoe's friend, Lacy, to show him Zoe-A. Then Graystone steals Zoe-A and puts it in a Cylon body. (Hey, this guy's supposed to be some sort of genius, right? If there's a risk of something going wrong, how about you copy Zoe-A's program? You yourself aren't really sure whether she's your daughter or just a tool to help keep your contract from being stolen by a competitor.)
(Further note to self: be sure to mock Baltar's supposed genius credentials on the next BSG review, too.)
Graystone shows Adama a copy of his daughter, Tamara, but Adama's not quite as quick a convert to the Church of the Robot Soul (established 1982). Still, he's perfectly willing to help Graystone steal the MCP from his competitor.
So Adama agrees to give the defense minister a message in exchange for his mob buddies getting the MCP. The defense minister has Tyrell's glasses from Blade Runner, because hey, why not? Either you get the reference, or you don't, and if you don't, why are you watching this? Then Graystone has sex with his wife while Adama's brother kills the minister.
So basically Graystone is this amoral businessman who's willing to steal from his competitor and corrupt his daughter's work in order to keep his contract... except then he was sad he couldn't suceed in putting his daughter in the robot. This makes him a complex, nuanced character. But because they kept cutting away from the Adama storyline, and because they left a bunch of material invovling Mrs. Graystone and Sister Clarence Willow on the cutting room floor, I don't really have that much of a feel for their characters yet.
See, in the Battlestar Galactica pilot/miniseries, you got to know all these characters. Adama was this crusty old guy who had the respect of his underlings, Tigh was a functional drunk with an estranged wife, Starbuck was an ace pilot but also a world-class screwup partly because of the guilt she felt in getting her boyfriend killed, Apollo wasn't a chip off the old block at all, Roslin was either an obstructivist schoolteacher or a cancer-stricken heroine who rallied a civilian fleet, or both, and Baltar was a sleazebag with an imaginary girlfriend. Basically what I know about Joseph Adama at this point is that he's a defense attorney for the mob, and he doesn't know how to raise his son.
Epilogue: The Perils of Prequels
We're in a similar trap here to the one that the Star Wars prequels fell into. Now, that's not entirely fair, because Caprica doesn't have a cartoon rabbit, an awful love story, and an over-reliance on CGI instead of characters (although I'm not sure I like how much attention the Cylon prototype is getting, and I applaud the decision to have Zoe stand in for the robot a lot once we get to the series proper). We have much better characters, (let's face it, saturday morning cartoons have better characters than the Star Wars prequels) but the story's in a similar dilemma because we all know where it ends up. The very first thing on the screen is a title card that says "Caprica: 58 years before the Fall." We go into this thinking that we know how it's all going to end.
All we knew about the way Battlestar Galactica was going to end was that they were probably going to find Earth (they did), and that they were probably going to discover 12 Cylon models along the way (they did). We didn't know who those Cylons were, who would die along the way, what state we'd find Earth in, how well the Roslin-Adama alliance would last, whether Starbuck and Apollo would ever frak, whether Starbuck would ever confess to Adama about the real circumstances of Zak's death, or even when the entire show takes place.
Not nearly as many plotlines are set up here. We have the Soldiers of the One and whatever Polly Walker's up to, but it's harder to care because we all know they'll be dead in 58 years. Here we know that the Cylons will become self-aware, that Joseph Adama will live long enough to know his grandson Lee, that Zoe-A is somehow going to have to magically vanish, they're going to lose that magic paper technology and the holobands, and that it's all going to end in a nuclear holocaust. We think we know little Willie Adama's going to make it, but that's subverted far too late.
So, and especially given the way "Daybreak" divided the Galactica fanbase, I really think Caprica should have been an independent show instead of a prequel.
Friday, September 9, 2011
BSG: Colonial Day
In which we look at the political side of life on the run, meet Roslin's economic advisor (who has apparently been there from the start), say good-bye to Roslin's economic advisor, make some jabs at Star Trek, and elect a Vice-President. Also, Zarek brokers for power and may or may not have sent an assassin to do... something.
But don't expect the assassin to come up again. It's not like this show's at its best when it threads long-running plot elements together in a brilliant tapestry...
So, having broken the bank on "Bastille Day," our writers decide that they can now represent other ships in the fleet with... college campuses. Brillaint. Just put a couple lines of dialogue in about how it's a cruise ship and two visual effects shots showing the artificial horizon, and boom! Sold!
The Quorum of Twelve is meeting here, and Sagittaron has elected Tom Zarek, former terrorist, to that august body. Roslin is pissed, but decides to let him attend over Adama's objections. Now as a side note, the only crime Zarek is ever accused of is blowing up a government building (and, y'know, that whole hostage situation on the Astral Queen). By the time Zarek finally gets around to launching his mutiny, Roslin has...
-summarily executed at least three prisoners without a trial.
-deliberately withheld knowledge of her debilitating illness from the public.
-subverted the boundary between military and civilian government.
-ordered the assassination of the fleet's senior military officer.
-unilaterally curtailed at least one liberty via executive fiat.
-attempted to steal an election.
-consistently ignored the will of the people in pursuing an alliance with the Rebel Cylon faction.
And meanwhile Colonel Tigh has used suicide bombers to blow up Cylon facilities, and every single time anyone other than Roslin mentions President Adar, it's usually in negative terms. Adama says he was a moron, and Roslin herself confesses that he killed 13 civilians when he sent the marines into Aerilon City, and that he was willing to get into a shooting war with a teacher's union. Even in light of recent events in Wisconsin, that doesn't exactly put Adar in any sort of positive light. What I'm saying is that Zarek may have had some legitimate grievance. (Which is not to say that he had the right to blow up a building, or even that Adar was president when Zarek was imprisoned 20 years ago. But that's one of the things that's so great about the show; the many shades of gray.)
So Zarek gets on the Quroum, and at the meeting he mentions that Roslin has (almost certainly deliberately, judging by her conversation with Grey and Billy afterwards) neglected to include the election of a Vice-President in the agenda. Wow, Madame Airlock manipulating something for political reasons? Get out. And then everyone starts panicking that Zarek will have Roslin killed the moment he becomes Vice-President. As we see at virtually all of his appearances after this, but most notably when he gives Laura back the Presidency in 3.5, "Collaborators," Zarek is a realist. He knows how governments work, and what they need to make them work. (Hell, he even launches his mutiny from a fairly legitimate grievance that "the Roslin/Adama administration" is blatantly ignoring the will of the people.)
So Zarek says that money doesn't have any real meaning. Man, that sounds familiar. (I'd always interpreted this scene as a not-at-all subtle jab at the socialist/collectivist economics of Star Trek.) He also says that they should become a collective because there isn't any business. Uh, Tom, who made your suit if there isn't any production whatsoever? Did you have it with you on the Astral Queen? (Come to think of it, where did Apollo's blue and dress uniforms come from? I don't think there was any cargo space in the Viper, and I don't think he wore one of them under his flight suit...) Maybe he's just saying this to appeal to the mob, because Zarek is fantastic at manipulating mobs... and Lee Adama.
Except, for whatever reason, in this episode Lee isn't Lee Adama, college rebel who reads banned books. He's a jack-booted thug who roughs up a man for defending Zarek, has the barman turn off a wireless broadcast of Zarek's interview even though other people want to hear him and he has a right to be heard, more-or-less starts a barfight over said wireless broadcast, plays the "bad cop" in a "good-cop bad-cop" routine with Starbuck, and bullies Zarek in the middle of a frakking Quorum meeting. I hereby submit Lee's behavior in this episode for official consideration in The Case For Another Pilot.
Roslin realizes that Grey can't win the election for VP, so she throws him under a bus and gets Gaius Baltar to run instead. That's clearly going to end well. Gaius gets elected, Lee and Kara dance together, and everyone's on speaking terms. No, things aren't going to go to hell next week, why do you ask?
Meanwhile, on Cylon-occupied Caprica, Helo finally sees another Eight running around, and the game is over.
The problem with this episode is that, unlike "Water," which was ill-concieved from the start and only got worse because Grace Park had to learn how to play a sleeper agent on the spot, or "Six Degrees of Separation," which will live or die based on your opinion of the character Gaius Baltar and the writer Michael Angeli, "Colonial Day" is an episode that could have been great. Roslin throws a trusted and valuable adviser under a bus in order to survive a political crisis and an assassin's bullet, and she has to replace him with Gaius Baltar of all people. That's a great story!
...the problem is the execution. Grey should have been seen before this (and sadly, this won't be the last time the writers drop an important new character on us for one episode only, after which point said character is never seen or mentioned again). His loss should have been felt by the Roslin Administration. He could have wound up in the anti-Roslin faction, which would have made him a very awkward ally of Baltar and Zarek during the election.
Zarek is back, and it's sadly the last time he'll be a two-dimensional character for at least a year. Richard Hatch plays him as a congenial politician, which is exactly what the charater needs to be, but he completely lacks the menacing undertones that the plot requires. This is not a fault in Hatch's performance; the fault lies in the fact that the story demands two completely different things from the character of Tom Zarek in this episode in order to make both the fact that he's suddenly a politician and the danger that Vice-President Zarek implies credible.
My favorite scene, which I didn't get to talk about because it was part of another subplot that went nowhere, was the one between Ellen Tigh and Tom Zarek at the bar. I'm paraphrasing a bit because I don't have it in front of me, but the conversation starts something like this:
Tom: Can I get you a drink?
Ellen: Are you the bartender now?
Tom: No. But why should he tend bar? What's in it for him?
Ellen: A big tip.
Tom: But what would he spend it on?
These are two people who both very much look out for number one, but Ellen is just so much more open about that fact. Tom's much more interested in currying favor and racking up an impressive amount of good will and favors to call in later. There are three things I wish they'd done with the character of Tom Zarek: give him another scene with Ellen, put him in the New Caprican resistance (because having to actually work alongside a bona-fide former terrorist would have given Tigh conniptions), and give him a final interview (the last is actually Richard Hatch's idea, and it's great).
But don't expect the assassin to come up again. It's not like this show's at its best when it threads long-running plot elements together in a brilliant tapestry...
So, having broken the bank on "Bastille Day," our writers decide that they can now represent other ships in the fleet with... college campuses. Brillaint. Just put a couple lines of dialogue in about how it's a cruise ship and two visual effects shots showing the artificial horizon, and boom! Sold!
The Quorum of Twelve is meeting here, and Sagittaron has elected Tom Zarek, former terrorist, to that august body. Roslin is pissed, but decides to let him attend over Adama's objections. Now as a side note, the only crime Zarek is ever accused of is blowing up a government building (and, y'know, that whole hostage situation on the Astral Queen). By the time Zarek finally gets around to launching his mutiny, Roslin has...
-summarily executed at least three prisoners without a trial.
-deliberately withheld knowledge of her debilitating illness from the public.
-subverted the boundary between military and civilian government.
-ordered the assassination of the fleet's senior military officer.
-unilaterally curtailed at least one liberty via executive fiat.
-attempted to steal an election.
-consistently ignored the will of the people in pursuing an alliance with the Rebel Cylon faction.
And meanwhile Colonel Tigh has used suicide bombers to blow up Cylon facilities, and every single time anyone other than Roslin mentions President Adar, it's usually in negative terms. Adama says he was a moron, and Roslin herself confesses that he killed 13 civilians when he sent the marines into Aerilon City, and that he was willing to get into a shooting war with a teacher's union. Even in light of recent events in Wisconsin, that doesn't exactly put Adar in any sort of positive light. What I'm saying is that Zarek may have had some legitimate grievance. (Which is not to say that he had the right to blow up a building, or even that Adar was president when Zarek was imprisoned 20 years ago. But that's one of the things that's so great about the show; the many shades of gray.)
So Zarek gets on the Quroum, and at the meeting he mentions that Roslin has (almost certainly deliberately, judging by her conversation with Grey and Billy afterwards) neglected to include the election of a Vice-President in the agenda. Wow, Madame Airlock manipulating something for political reasons? Get out. And then everyone starts panicking that Zarek will have Roslin killed the moment he becomes Vice-President. As we see at virtually all of his appearances after this, but most notably when he gives Laura back the Presidency in 3.5, "Collaborators," Zarek is a realist. He knows how governments work, and what they need to make them work. (Hell, he even launches his mutiny from a fairly legitimate grievance that "the Roslin/Adama administration" is blatantly ignoring the will of the people.)
So Zarek says that money doesn't have any real meaning. Man, that sounds familiar. (I'd always interpreted this scene as a not-at-all subtle jab at the socialist/collectivist economics of Star Trek.) He also says that they should become a collective because there isn't any business. Uh, Tom, who made your suit if there isn't any production whatsoever? Did you have it with you on the Astral Queen? (Come to think of it, where did Apollo's blue and dress uniforms come from? I don't think there was any cargo space in the Viper, and I don't think he wore one of them under his flight suit...) Maybe he's just saying this to appeal to the mob, because Zarek is fantastic at manipulating mobs... and Lee Adama.
Except, for whatever reason, in this episode Lee isn't Lee Adama, college rebel who reads banned books. He's a jack-booted thug who roughs up a man for defending Zarek, has the barman turn off a wireless broadcast of Zarek's interview even though other people want to hear him and he has a right to be heard, more-or-less starts a barfight over said wireless broadcast, plays the "bad cop" in a "good-cop bad-cop" routine with Starbuck, and bullies Zarek in the middle of a frakking Quorum meeting. I hereby submit Lee's behavior in this episode for official consideration in The Case For Another Pilot.
Roslin realizes that Grey can't win the election for VP, so she throws him under a bus and gets Gaius Baltar to run instead. That's clearly going to end well. Gaius gets elected, Lee and Kara dance together, and everyone's on speaking terms. No, things aren't going to go to hell next week, why do you ask?
Meanwhile, on Cylon-occupied Caprica, Helo finally sees another Eight running around, and the game is over.
The problem with this episode is that, unlike "Water," which was ill-concieved from the start and only got worse because Grace Park had to learn how to play a sleeper agent on the spot, or "Six Degrees of Separation," which will live or die based on your opinion of the character Gaius Baltar and the writer Michael Angeli, "Colonial Day" is an episode that could have been great. Roslin throws a trusted and valuable adviser under a bus in order to survive a political crisis and an assassin's bullet, and she has to replace him with Gaius Baltar of all people. That's a great story!
...the problem is the execution. Grey should have been seen before this (and sadly, this won't be the last time the writers drop an important new character on us for one episode only, after which point said character is never seen or mentioned again). His loss should have been felt by the Roslin Administration. He could have wound up in the anti-Roslin faction, which would have made him a very awkward ally of Baltar and Zarek during the election.
Zarek is back, and it's sadly the last time he'll be a two-dimensional character for at least a year. Richard Hatch plays him as a congenial politician, which is exactly what the charater needs to be, but he completely lacks the menacing undertones that the plot requires. This is not a fault in Hatch's performance; the fault lies in the fact that the story demands two completely different things from the character of Tom Zarek in this episode in order to make both the fact that he's suddenly a politician and the danger that Vice-President Zarek implies credible.
My favorite scene, which I didn't get to talk about because it was part of another subplot that went nowhere, was the one between Ellen Tigh and Tom Zarek at the bar. I'm paraphrasing a bit because I don't have it in front of me, but the conversation starts something like this:
Tom: Can I get you a drink?
Ellen: Are you the bartender now?
Tom: No. But why should he tend bar? What's in it for him?
Ellen: A big tip.
Tom: But what would he spend it on?
These are two people who both very much look out for number one, but Ellen is just so much more open about that fact. Tom's much more interested in currying favor and racking up an impressive amount of good will and favors to call in later. There are three things I wish they'd done with the character of Tom Zarek: give him another scene with Ellen, put him in the New Caprican resistance (because having to actually work alongside a bona-fide former terrorist would have given Tigh conniptions), and give him a final interview (the last is actually Richard Hatch's idea, and it's great).
Thursday, September 8, 2011
BSG: The Captain's Hand
In which the writers, in an attempt to avoid a contemporary euphamism for "abortion," put a massive lie in Roslin's mouth.
"I have fought for a woman's right to control her body my entire life."
Yeah, except for that one time you were all set to murder Sharon's baby against her will.
I'll try not to thump my Bible too much in this review, mostly because the writers did their best to edge around the subject matter with similar tact.
The B-plot of this episode...
Okay, that's not correct. This episode doesn't really have an A- and B-plot, it just has one plot that gets less screen time than the other. This episode sets out to do two things that need to be done before the end of the season:
1) prove that there are no competent officers left in the Pegasus chain of command, thus justifying Adama's decision to put his son in command, and
2) give Baltar a platform from which to launch his Presidential campaign.
And it does both of those reasonably well.
Way back in "The Farm" we got these really creepy overtones from Simon the Cylon about what life after the apocalypse would mean as far as reproductive rights goes. Honestly, if re-building your society is your first priority, and if the statement that finally convinces the Commander to give up the fight and run away is "we need to start making babies," then, well, you need to start making babies.
In the series bible, there was this idea about how in Season 1, Roslin was going to ban contraceptives for everyone except female Galactica crew, and I for one would like to have seen that plotline make it onto the screen. (Incidentally, in this version, said decision irks civil-liberties-minded (!) Adama, who declares martial law because of that, not because Roslin got Starbuck to commandeer the Raider.)
Hell, in the aftermath of a real disaster that takes your population down to 50,298 (which, I hasten to add, is smaller than that of my suburb), I'd imagine that two laws would very quickly be passed. 1) every single male between 20 and 40 would be immediately conscripted ("Dirty Hands" skirts this issue, but only in an oblique way). 2) every single female between 20 and 40 would be required to marry and begin having children. Basically, you'd have to divide your population up between soldiers and baby-makers (old folks would have to raise the kids, I guess). Then Baltar's rant at the end of the episode about curtailing freedoms and making us more like the Cylons would ring true.
And even though that didn't happen, I'm still quite happy with the episode we got (besides, what I'm proposing would probably be too dark even for that show). Adama discovers that Dr. Cottle has been providing abortions on his ship for 5/8 months (delete whichever is appropriate; I'm not really going to discuss the Season Two Timeline Discontinuity here. Follow that link to an article written by people with even more time on their hands). Now, per the series bible and an early Season 1 commentary, Adama is supposed to be the main "Republican" on the show. (For what it's worth, I think this is the last time he's to the right of Roslin on an issue; they've certainly traded places by "A Measure of Salvation.") I think he'd be royally pissed that Cottle's been doing this sort of thing, but they have a brief glaring contest and then appear to get over it.
Roslin doesn't really have that option. The latest girl is from Gemenon, the planet of the devout wingnuts who believe that children (or at least female children) are the property of their parents until they turn 18. The Gemenese representative, basically a stand-in for Elosha (who died earlier in the season), pressures Roslin to force the girl to return to her parents.
(The writers mention, back in the commentary for "Home, Part 1," that they were deciding whether to kill Billy or Elosha in that episode, and that killing Elosha meant that they were sacrificing a plotline later on in the season where the priests would lean on Roslin for some sort of action. I would be willing to bet that they simply revived that plotline after Paul Campbell left, with the Gemenese rep standing in for Elosha.)
Roslin points out that abortion was legal in the 12 colonies and so it is still legal today. (Ah, but unless the Colonies had their own equivalent of Roe v. Wade, I kind of doubt that abortion was legal on Gemenon. Oh well.) So the Gemenese delegate storms away in a huff, and if she hadn't appeared earlier in the show, I would have assumed she'd been cast simply on her ability to do that, because she has to do it twice in this episode and then we never see her again (maybe she got nuked on Cloud Nine along with Lee's hooker-girlfriend).
Adama and Roslin have a chat where she lies in the manner discussed at the top of the page, and Adama points out that Roslin's first commandment was "make babies." She consults with Baltar, who by this point is already planning to "betray Roslin and run for President" (as Gina-Six conveniently tells us in the re-cap of the far superior versions of "Epiphanies" and "Black Market" that somehow never made it to air). Baltar tells her that the human race will be extinct in less than 20 years.
So Roslin gives a speech. Now, Roslin isn't my favorite character on the show; throughout the Miniseries and Seasons 1 and 2.0, she spends a lot of time being obstructive, liberal, holier-than-thou, and dying. (This in contrast to Baltar, who spends most of his time being deceptive, crazy, holier-than-thou, and living.) But credit where credit's due; the character is very well-written and almost flawlessly acted, and for my money this is one of Mary McDonnell's best scenes in the show (others including her confession scene in "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2," her absolutely heartbreaking "Captain Apollo" moment in "Crossroads, Part 1," and her "every bomb, every bullet" oath against Zarek and the subsequent "he is alive" appeal to the Cylons in "Blood on the Scales"). You can tell this is one of those hard decisions that she's going to regret, like the destruction of the Olympic Carrier.
In a way, this is the closest the show ever comes to "In the Pale Moonlight," that (in)famous Deep Space Nine episode where a Starfleet officer sells out his principles to keep the Federation alive. You get the sense that something similar is going on here... but you wonder if, in Roslin's personal log, she would have admitted that she'd do it all over again.
Baltar takes this opportunity to stab her in the back, the slimeball, and announce his candidacy for President. He's already been told to run by Zarek and, in the aforementioned flashback-to-something-that-never-actually-happened, Six. Head-Six shows up and applauds his decision, agreeing with her physical counterpart and continuing to blur the distinction between them even though by this point, especially with the introduction of Head-Baltar just around the corner, the writers have to know what she really is. I'm not complaining, but it's not like they're doing the slower members of the audience any favors (three of the four people I've watched "Downloaded" with were utterly confused by Head-Baltar).
Here's the thing about the abortion issue: nobody brings up the rights of the unborn or the right to privacy or anything like that (nor do they shy away from using the a-word). This is about Roslin being forced to make a hard decision that goes against her own political stance for the good of humanity. Which is probably the only way they could do this sort of an episode without completely showing their political colors and alienating part of their (decreasing) audience, but is still, all things considered, probably the best way for a drama like this to do it.
The other plot, the one that a lot of people mistake for the A-plot, is a lot more straightforward. Lee gets sent over to Pegasus to be the de facto XO to Barry Garner (John Heard, clearly having a ball and making this one-shot character more interesting than Fisk ever was), who disobeys orders, falls into a trap, and has to re-enact Star Trek II without any of the literary references or age-induced gravitas that made that film the masterpiece it is. Lee and Kara also argue, due in no small part to the fact that she frakking shot him in the previous episode, but it turns out that his real beef with her is that she can always get away with everything while he can't. (Was he already writing his "Crossroads, Part 2" speech in his head?)
Anyway, Garner pulls a Spock and Pegasus is able to jump away. Lee gives Garner a glowing report, even though the whole fiasco was Garner's fault in the first place, and then Adama puts Lee in command of Pegasus. Lee tells Dee he's leaving Galactica, not her, but that scene gets left on the cutting room floor and then put into the re-cap of several subsequent episodes. (I adore the full version of that scene, where Dee comes in on Lee and Kara embracing and doesn't get jealous, and then Kara tells Lee she'll leave the boots outside so he and Dee can get some privacy, and then Lee tells Dee Kara never jokes about that sort of thing. Maybe the reason I don't mind the Lee/Dee scenes being gutted is the fact that they're still in the deleted scenes on the DVD.)
From here through "Exodus, Part 2," it's full speed ahead, all guns blazing, with very little to complain about. Arguably the start of the longest run of great episodes the show had.
"I have fought for a woman's right to control her body my entire life."
Yeah, except for that one time you were all set to murder Sharon's baby against her will.
I'll try not to thump my Bible too much in this review, mostly because the writers did their best to edge around the subject matter with similar tact.
The B-plot of this episode...
Okay, that's not correct. This episode doesn't really have an A- and B-plot, it just has one plot that gets less screen time than the other. This episode sets out to do two things that need to be done before the end of the season:
1) prove that there are no competent officers left in the Pegasus chain of command, thus justifying Adama's decision to put his son in command, and
2) give Baltar a platform from which to launch his Presidential campaign.
And it does both of those reasonably well.
Way back in "The Farm" we got these really creepy overtones from Simon the Cylon about what life after the apocalypse would mean as far as reproductive rights goes. Honestly, if re-building your society is your first priority, and if the statement that finally convinces the Commander to give up the fight and run away is "we need to start making babies," then, well, you need to start making babies.
In the series bible, there was this idea about how in Season 1, Roslin was going to ban contraceptives for everyone except female Galactica crew, and I for one would like to have seen that plotline make it onto the screen. (Incidentally, in this version, said decision irks civil-liberties-minded (!) Adama, who declares martial law because of that, not because Roslin got Starbuck to commandeer the Raider.)
Hell, in the aftermath of a real disaster that takes your population down to 50,298 (which, I hasten to add, is smaller than that of my suburb), I'd imagine that two laws would very quickly be passed. 1) every single male between 20 and 40 would be immediately conscripted ("Dirty Hands" skirts this issue, but only in an oblique way). 2) every single female between 20 and 40 would be required to marry and begin having children. Basically, you'd have to divide your population up between soldiers and baby-makers (old folks would have to raise the kids, I guess). Then Baltar's rant at the end of the episode about curtailing freedoms and making us more like the Cylons would ring true.
And even though that didn't happen, I'm still quite happy with the episode we got (besides, what I'm proposing would probably be too dark even for that show). Adama discovers that Dr. Cottle has been providing abortions on his ship for 5/8 months (delete whichever is appropriate; I'm not really going to discuss the Season Two Timeline Discontinuity here. Follow that link to an article written by people with even more time on their hands). Now, per the series bible and an early Season 1 commentary, Adama is supposed to be the main "Republican" on the show. (For what it's worth, I think this is the last time he's to the right of Roslin on an issue; they've certainly traded places by "A Measure of Salvation.") I think he'd be royally pissed that Cottle's been doing this sort of thing, but they have a brief glaring contest and then appear to get over it.
Roslin doesn't really have that option. The latest girl is from Gemenon, the planet of the devout wingnuts who believe that children (or at least female children) are the property of their parents until they turn 18. The Gemenese representative, basically a stand-in for Elosha (who died earlier in the season), pressures Roslin to force the girl to return to her parents.
(The writers mention, back in the commentary for "Home, Part 1," that they were deciding whether to kill Billy or Elosha in that episode, and that killing Elosha meant that they were sacrificing a plotline later on in the season where the priests would lean on Roslin for some sort of action. I would be willing to bet that they simply revived that plotline after Paul Campbell left, with the Gemenese rep standing in for Elosha.)
Roslin points out that abortion was legal in the 12 colonies and so it is still legal today. (Ah, but unless the Colonies had their own equivalent of Roe v. Wade, I kind of doubt that abortion was legal on Gemenon. Oh well.) So the Gemenese delegate storms away in a huff, and if she hadn't appeared earlier in the show, I would have assumed she'd been cast simply on her ability to do that, because she has to do it twice in this episode and then we never see her again (maybe she got nuked on Cloud Nine along with Lee's hooker-girlfriend).
Adama and Roslin have a chat where she lies in the manner discussed at the top of the page, and Adama points out that Roslin's first commandment was "make babies." She consults with Baltar, who by this point is already planning to "betray Roslin and run for President" (as Gina-Six conveniently tells us in the re-cap of the far superior versions of "Epiphanies" and "Black Market" that somehow never made it to air). Baltar tells her that the human race will be extinct in less than 20 years.
So Roslin gives a speech. Now, Roslin isn't my favorite character on the show; throughout the Miniseries and Seasons 1 and 2.0, she spends a lot of time being obstructive, liberal, holier-than-thou, and dying. (This in contrast to Baltar, who spends most of his time being deceptive, crazy, holier-than-thou, and living.) But credit where credit's due; the character is very well-written and almost flawlessly acted, and for my money this is one of Mary McDonnell's best scenes in the show (others including her confession scene in "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2," her absolutely heartbreaking "Captain Apollo" moment in "Crossroads, Part 1," and her "every bomb, every bullet" oath against Zarek and the subsequent "he is alive" appeal to the Cylons in "Blood on the Scales"). You can tell this is one of those hard decisions that she's going to regret, like the destruction of the Olympic Carrier.
In a way, this is the closest the show ever comes to "In the Pale Moonlight," that (in)famous Deep Space Nine episode where a Starfleet officer sells out his principles to keep the Federation alive. You get the sense that something similar is going on here... but you wonder if, in Roslin's personal log, she would have admitted that she'd do it all over again.
Baltar takes this opportunity to stab her in the back, the slimeball, and announce his candidacy for President. He's already been told to run by Zarek and, in the aforementioned flashback-to-something-that-never-actually-happened, Six. Head-Six shows up and applauds his decision, agreeing with her physical counterpart and continuing to blur the distinction between them even though by this point, especially with the introduction of Head-Baltar just around the corner, the writers have to know what she really is. I'm not complaining, but it's not like they're doing the slower members of the audience any favors (three of the four people I've watched "Downloaded" with were utterly confused by Head-Baltar).
Here's the thing about the abortion issue: nobody brings up the rights of the unborn or the right to privacy or anything like that (nor do they shy away from using the a-word). This is about Roslin being forced to make a hard decision that goes against her own political stance for the good of humanity. Which is probably the only way they could do this sort of an episode without completely showing their political colors and alienating part of their (decreasing) audience, but is still, all things considered, probably the best way for a drama like this to do it.
The other plot, the one that a lot of people mistake for the A-plot, is a lot more straightforward. Lee gets sent over to Pegasus to be the de facto XO to Barry Garner (John Heard, clearly having a ball and making this one-shot character more interesting than Fisk ever was), who disobeys orders, falls into a trap, and has to re-enact Star Trek II without any of the literary references or age-induced gravitas that made that film the masterpiece it is. Lee and Kara also argue, due in no small part to the fact that she frakking shot him in the previous episode, but it turns out that his real beef with her is that she can always get away with everything while he can't. (Was he already writing his "Crossroads, Part 2" speech in his head?)
Anyway, Garner pulls a Spock and Pegasus is able to jump away. Lee gives Garner a glowing report, even though the whole fiasco was Garner's fault in the first place, and then Adama puts Lee in command of Pegasus. Lee tells Dee he's leaving Galactica, not her, but that scene gets left on the cutting room floor and then put into the re-cap of several subsequent episodes. (I adore the full version of that scene, where Dee comes in on Lee and Kara embracing and doesn't get jealous, and then Kara tells Lee she'll leave the boots outside so he and Dee can get some privacy, and then Lee tells Dee Kara never jokes about that sort of thing. Maybe the reason I don't mind the Lee/Dee scenes being gutted is the fact that they're still in the deleted scenes on the DVD.)
From here through "Exodus, Part 2," it's full speed ahead, all guns blazing, with very little to complain about. Arguably the start of the longest run of great episodes the show had.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Who Review: Night Terrors
If Doctor Who never, ever, ever employs another child actor, it will still be too soon. This is what you get when you take the same damn plot from "Fear Her" and arfle bargh fargle.
Right. That's out of my system. I'll keep these paragraphs as short as I can to avoid ranting.
The Talons of Weng-Chiang is generally considered to be a classic, as is The Caves of Androzani, as is, for some unfathomable reason, Genesis of the Daleks. You know what all of these have in common? No, it's not that Bob Holmes either wrote or re-wrote them, although that's also true; it's that these have NO KIDS in them WHATSOEVER.
(Now, The Mind Robber, which I adore, had kids in it, but these kids were deliberately written to be creepy little pukes and not actually characters in their own right. They also got approximately one line and ten seconds of screen time each. None of them were asked to carry any serious weight, and, inasmuch as any kid can actually act, these ones did a decent job.)
In fact, the first time we had an obnoxious kid, the writers eventually killed him off. Then there weren't any kids for a while, and then they came back with a vengeance in the last two seasons (Remembrance of the Daleks, Survival). And then the show was CANCELLED.
Now am I saying that bad child actors got the show killed? No, a glorified accountant who would rather sell toys than produce good stories got the show killed, aided by a fat script editor who loathed him but loved Bob Holmes and violence, and later by another script editor who had a teeny bit of a bone to pick with Margaret Thatcher. But mostly it was the glorified accountant. But the kids didn't show up until the show's audience was five guys and a dog; at that point, you're desperate enough to try anything to keep the show on the air.
So there's a kid. A kid who prays to Santa* to "save me from the monsters." And despite the fact that the end of the episode manifestly proves that the Doctor is not the intended recipient, the Doctor gets the message anyway. (Moffat Cliche Number 12: the psychic paper is an e-mail inbox as well as just a fake ID.)
*No, not really, but since Doctor Who is pretty atheistic and Amelia Pond prayed to Santa at the beginning of "The Eleventh Hour," I'm going to use Santa as the go-to deity of choice for every denizen of the Whoniverse from here on out.
So the Doctor gets this message and comes a-running, because that's what he does, and it's not like they can keep paying the Nation estate all those royalties, so he can't go after the Daleks, and it's not the end of the season yet, so he can't go after the Silence.
Amy and Rory go around interviewing all the wrong people (and it's telling that the guy I sympathize the most with is the "evil" landlord). A little old lady who's definitely not as short as the camera keeps trying to make her gets eaten by a trash heap. The Doctor sees George the Fantastic Child Actor peeping through a window, so naturally he sends Amy and Rory down a floor so he can cause trouble by himself. They take the elevator.
Okay, credit where credit's due: the show does a good job of misleading you and making you think that the apartment block in general, or maybe the lift, or maybe the cupboard is what's haunted. Or maybe it's just George the Fantastic Child Actor doing such a phenomenal job that you don't want to think about him at all.
Okay, blame where blame is due: Amy and Rory take the ELEVATOR to go down ONE FLOOR. Bargle argh farl.
They get what they deserve when the elevator crashes and pukes them out in a wooden house with wooden pans and wooden food and a glass eyeball and a gigantic fake lantern. By the time Amy and Rory left that room, anybody in the audience who hadn't figured out that they were in a freaking dollhouse lost their right to vote.
Because, as I've said before and will certainly have to say again, Moffat Cliche Number One is: the audience gets ahead of the characters. Always.
So the Doctor meets George after scamming his way into George's father's confidence.
See, maybe the episode is supposed to be about parenting fears. Moffat says as much in the "behind the scenes" thingy. But what's the more realistic fear, that your son's an alien or that an absolute lunatic with a penchant for getting innocent people killed, a man who has turned a blind eye to the suffering of literally trillions of intelligent beings because the Daleks might one day do one good thing can scam his way into your life and turn it upside-down?
Is this unfair? Bringing up an episode from before the current star was born? No, not really. Not given the number of times in the previous season that we saw William Hartnell's face. Not given the fact that the initial BBC America broadcast of this episode also included a commercial for Law and Order: UK, citing the inclusion of "Fifth Doctor Peter Davison" in the cast as an incentive to watch. (What is it with that show scooping up British sci-fi veterans?)
So they quickly discover that all of George's demons are locked in his closet (subtlety was never Moffat's strong point). The Doctor argues that they can't just open the closet, because then the episode would be over. Then after about ten minutes of boggling, the Doctor decides that, yup, the closet needs to be opened. He does, and then George freaks and starts screaming "SAVE ME FROM THE MONSTERS! SAVE ME FROM THE MONSTERS!" and the Doctor and Daddy get sucked into the closet.
Now for one horrifying moment I thought the Doctor was going to be sucked in but Daddy wasn't, and that we'd then have to sit through a gender-flipped re-enactment of the end of "Fear Her," but at least Mark Gatiss is marginally smarter than that. (Was Gatiss the one with all the daddy issues back in Season 2? I don't remember and have no wish to look.)
And then the episode marks some time, in contrast to the previous half-hour of marking time. Amy gets changed into a wooden doll, because hey, why not? (And to be fair, charging the army of dolls was a frakking stupid idea and she deserved what she got.)
Now at this point it's pretty clear that the things in George's closet aren't the monsters; everything else, including the Doctor, is. This would be clever if... let's see... "The Pandorica Opens" and "A Good Man Goes to War" hadn't already done that (Moffat Cliche Number Two: The Doctor is a Monster). So the Doctor gives some technobabble about George being an alien that needs to be loved, and then yells at George from inside the cupboard, and then George comes in to stop the doll-zombies because, whoops, our intrepid writers have written themselves into a corner again, and then Daddy saves George from the doll-zombies, and then everyone who was zombified comes back to life and everyone's a happy family again and just when the sweetness of it all was getting absolutely sickening and you realized that you had no frakking idea what the hell just happened or how the problem even started in the first place...
...that creepy song the wooden dolls have been singing throughout the episode tells you that, yup, time is running out for the Doctor.
See, the TV audience is too jaded at this point. Doctor Who is a cash cow, and there's no way the BBC is just going to outright cancel it (although given the quality of this season, I don't know how much I'd complain if they did decide to put it down). It is no longer enough to just do an in-Universe "OMG Doctor's gonna die" thing; you have to actually pretend it's real in the real world too (as usual, Battlestar Galactica did this better).
So here are my thoughts overall; the theme is, probably, acceptance. Okay, fine. The kid's an alien but he'll be fine, sure, whatever, the Doctor isn't exactly known for picking up all the pieces after an adventure. The twist, to the extent that it's comprehensible, is halfway decent. But George's powers are explained in about five seconds while a bunch of other stuff is going on, and I couldn't possibly tell you what made him so afraid in the first place.
George the Fantastic Child Actor actually has very little to do except at the end, and by no means is he the worst child actor the show has ever had.
For once, the big "thing the Doctor missed" sailed over my head, probably because we saw the photo album for all of about five seconds. It wasn't like they were harping on it with every other line, like they were the two-headed Aplans back in "The Time of Angels." But Amy and Rory have suffered. It pains me to say it, because Amy hasn't done anything quite as obnoxious as Rose, but there's a clear parallel; suddenly, near the end of her voyage with the Doctor, the companion becomes really thick and unable to take care of herself.
And why is the dollhouse bigger on the inside? Once upon a time (as recently as "Doomsday"), that was a Time Lord thing. The Silence have a TARDIS-like perception filter, maybe they have a bigger-on-the-inside thingy as well.
And here's the thing: Moffat was great when he wrote self-contained, stand-alone stories. In RTD's show, he never got to do running arcs. And in that show, he delivered "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances," which rightfully stole the Hugo from BSG's "Pegasus," and "Blink," which likewise won over Razor. (He also did "Girl in the Fireplace," which robbed "Downloaded," but I'm trying to just list his accomplishments here.) Since taking over, he also gave us "A Christmas Carol," which I frankly think is the best episode, regular or otherwise, that New Who has ever had. But he's also gotten wrapped up in (hell, has staked his entire tenure as a showrunner on) this massive Kudzu plot that is highly unlikely to have a satisfying conclusion.
Anyway, "Night Terrors" isn't actually any better than "The Rebel Flesh," but I'm giving it a bonus point for not stealing its plot from Blade Runner, BSG and Avatar.
3 out of 10. The twist is clever, but it's also the only thing the episode has going for it.
Right. That's out of my system. I'll keep these paragraphs as short as I can to avoid ranting.
The Talons of Weng-Chiang is generally considered to be a classic, as is The Caves of Androzani, as is, for some unfathomable reason, Genesis of the Daleks. You know what all of these have in common? No, it's not that Bob Holmes either wrote or re-wrote them, although that's also true; it's that these have NO KIDS in them WHATSOEVER.
(Now, The Mind Robber, which I adore, had kids in it, but these kids were deliberately written to be creepy little pukes and not actually characters in their own right. They also got approximately one line and ten seconds of screen time each. None of them were asked to carry any serious weight, and, inasmuch as any kid can actually act, these ones did a decent job.)
In fact, the first time we had an obnoxious kid, the writers eventually killed him off. Then there weren't any kids for a while, and then they came back with a vengeance in the last two seasons (Remembrance of the Daleks, Survival). And then the show was CANCELLED.
Now am I saying that bad child actors got the show killed? No, a glorified accountant who would rather sell toys than produce good stories got the show killed, aided by a fat script editor who loathed him but loved Bob Holmes and violence, and later by another script editor who had a teeny bit of a bone to pick with Margaret Thatcher. But mostly it was the glorified accountant. But the kids didn't show up until the show's audience was five guys and a dog; at that point, you're desperate enough to try anything to keep the show on the air.
So there's a kid. A kid who prays to Santa* to "save me from the monsters." And despite the fact that the end of the episode manifestly proves that the Doctor is not the intended recipient, the Doctor gets the message anyway. (Moffat Cliche Number 12: the psychic paper is an e-mail inbox as well as just a fake ID.)
*No, not really, but since Doctor Who is pretty atheistic and Amelia Pond prayed to Santa at the beginning of "The Eleventh Hour," I'm going to use Santa as the go-to deity of choice for every denizen of the Whoniverse from here on out.
So the Doctor gets this message and comes a-running, because that's what he does, and it's not like they can keep paying the Nation estate all those royalties, so he can't go after the Daleks, and it's not the end of the season yet, so he can't go after the Silence.
Amy and Rory go around interviewing all the wrong people (and it's telling that the guy I sympathize the most with is the "evil" landlord). A little old lady who's definitely not as short as the camera keeps trying to make her gets eaten by a trash heap. The Doctor sees George the Fantastic Child Actor peeping through a window, so naturally he sends Amy and Rory down a floor so he can cause trouble by himself. They take the elevator.
Okay, credit where credit's due: the show does a good job of misleading you and making you think that the apartment block in general, or maybe the lift, or maybe the cupboard is what's haunted. Or maybe it's just George the Fantastic Child Actor doing such a phenomenal job that you don't want to think about him at all.
Okay, blame where blame is due: Amy and Rory take the ELEVATOR to go down ONE FLOOR. Bargle argh farl.
They get what they deserve when the elevator crashes and pukes them out in a wooden house with wooden pans and wooden food and a glass eyeball and a gigantic fake lantern. By the time Amy and Rory left that room, anybody in the audience who hadn't figured out that they were in a freaking dollhouse lost their right to vote.
Because, as I've said before and will certainly have to say again, Moffat Cliche Number One is: the audience gets ahead of the characters. Always.
So the Doctor meets George after scamming his way into George's father's confidence.
See, maybe the episode is supposed to be about parenting fears. Moffat says as much in the "behind the scenes" thingy. But what's the more realistic fear, that your son's an alien or that an absolute lunatic with a penchant for getting innocent people killed, a man who has turned a blind eye to the suffering of literally trillions of intelligent beings because the Daleks might one day do one good thing can scam his way into your life and turn it upside-down?
Is this unfair? Bringing up an episode from before the current star was born? No, not really. Not given the number of times in the previous season that we saw William Hartnell's face. Not given the fact that the initial BBC America broadcast of this episode also included a commercial for Law and Order: UK, citing the inclusion of "Fifth Doctor Peter Davison" in the cast as an incentive to watch. (What is it with that show scooping up British sci-fi veterans?)
So they quickly discover that all of George's demons are locked in his closet (subtlety was never Moffat's strong point). The Doctor argues that they can't just open the closet, because then the episode would be over. Then after about ten minutes of boggling, the Doctor decides that, yup, the closet needs to be opened. He does, and then George freaks and starts screaming "SAVE ME FROM THE MONSTERS! SAVE ME FROM THE MONSTERS!" and the Doctor and Daddy get sucked into the closet.
Now for one horrifying moment I thought the Doctor was going to be sucked in but Daddy wasn't, and that we'd then have to sit through a gender-flipped re-enactment of the end of "Fear Her," but at least Mark Gatiss is marginally smarter than that. (Was Gatiss the one with all the daddy issues back in Season 2? I don't remember and have no wish to look.)
And then the episode marks some time, in contrast to the previous half-hour of marking time. Amy gets changed into a wooden doll, because hey, why not? (And to be fair, charging the army of dolls was a frakking stupid idea and she deserved what she got.)
Now at this point it's pretty clear that the things in George's closet aren't the monsters; everything else, including the Doctor, is. This would be clever if... let's see... "The Pandorica Opens" and "A Good Man Goes to War" hadn't already done that (Moffat Cliche Number Two: The Doctor is a Monster). So the Doctor gives some technobabble about George being an alien that needs to be loved, and then yells at George from inside the cupboard, and then George comes in to stop the doll-zombies because, whoops, our intrepid writers have written themselves into a corner again, and then Daddy saves George from the doll-zombies, and then everyone who was zombified comes back to life and everyone's a happy family again and just when the sweetness of it all was getting absolutely sickening and you realized that you had no frakking idea what the hell just happened or how the problem even started in the first place...
...that creepy song the wooden dolls have been singing throughout the episode tells you that, yup, time is running out for the Doctor.
See, the TV audience is too jaded at this point. Doctor Who is a cash cow, and there's no way the BBC is just going to outright cancel it (although given the quality of this season, I don't know how much I'd complain if they did decide to put it down). It is no longer enough to just do an in-Universe "OMG Doctor's gonna die" thing; you have to actually pretend it's real in the real world too (as usual, Battlestar Galactica did this better).
So here are my thoughts overall; the theme is, probably, acceptance. Okay, fine. The kid's an alien but he'll be fine, sure, whatever, the Doctor isn't exactly known for picking up all the pieces after an adventure. The twist, to the extent that it's comprehensible, is halfway decent. But George's powers are explained in about five seconds while a bunch of other stuff is going on, and I couldn't possibly tell you what made him so afraid in the first place.
George the Fantastic Child Actor actually has very little to do except at the end, and by no means is he the worst child actor the show has ever had.
For once, the big "thing the Doctor missed" sailed over my head, probably because we saw the photo album for all of about five seconds. It wasn't like they were harping on it with every other line, like they were the two-headed Aplans back in "The Time of Angels." But Amy and Rory have suffered. It pains me to say it, because Amy hasn't done anything quite as obnoxious as Rose, but there's a clear parallel; suddenly, near the end of her voyage with the Doctor, the companion becomes really thick and unable to take care of herself.
And why is the dollhouse bigger on the inside? Once upon a time (as recently as "Doomsday"), that was a Time Lord thing. The Silence have a TARDIS-like perception filter, maybe they have a bigger-on-the-inside thingy as well.
And here's the thing: Moffat was great when he wrote self-contained, stand-alone stories. In RTD's show, he never got to do running arcs. And in that show, he delivered "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances," which rightfully stole the Hugo from BSG's "Pegasus," and "Blink," which likewise won over Razor. (He also did "Girl in the Fireplace," which robbed "Downloaded," but I'm trying to just list his accomplishments here.) Since taking over, he also gave us "A Christmas Carol," which I frankly think is the best episode, regular or otherwise, that New Who has ever had. But he's also gotten wrapped up in (hell, has staked his entire tenure as a showrunner on) this massive Kudzu plot that is highly unlikely to have a satisfying conclusion.
Anyway, "Night Terrors" isn't actually any better than "The Rebel Flesh," but I'm giving it a bonus point for not stealing its plot from Blade Runner, BSG and Avatar.
3 out of 10. The twist is clever, but it's also the only thing the episode has going for it.
BSG: Sacrifice
(In which Billy gets shot down by Dee, and then gets shot down in a more literal sense.)
"With respect, sir, I am the best shot in or out of the cockpit."
-Starbuck, "Bastille Day"
"I think it was friendly fire. I think I hit him."
-Starbuck, "Sacrifice"
"We've all been trained in capture simulations."
-Dee, "Bastille Day"
Is it unfair to compare this episode to "Bastille Day?" I don't think so. Apollo, Dee and Billy all get captured by elements of a violent mob, while the "I-never-wanted-to-go-into-politics" President yammers on about not negotiating with terrorism. (And we haven't even seen all the repercussions of the last time Lee negotiated with a terrorist...) Also, the leader of the mob gets special billing, and despite their protestations to the contrary, it really is all about them.
Our episode opens with Dana Delaney's character, Sesha Abinell, writing a manifesto while remembering how her hubby died in a Cylon attack. On the wall is a picture of Sharon, her face obscured by shadow. Because if there's one thing that Season 2.5 likes to do, it's reference Apocalypse Now.
Meanwhile, Dee shoots Billy down. Then she goes over to Cloud Nine and talks to Lee about it, saying she doesn't really know where their relationship is going. I'd assumed it was going nowhere, seeing as she'd gone back to Billy at the end of "Epiphanies" and Lee had gone off to frak that single-mom hooker in the episode no-one wants to talk about. But apparently there is a thing. Now I said the Lee/Dee thing didn't bother me as much as it bothers the other fans, and that's true. It's been set up since at least "Resistance" that Dee's carrying a torch. And I guess Lee has a thing for her because she's Mission Control?
So they flirt in the hallway, then they both go up against Tigh, then they flirt in the gym, then Dee asks him if he's serious, then there's a great deleted scene from "Resurrection Ship" where they talk about things going to hell, and then there's a less-great deleted scene in "Black Market" where Dee admits that she doesn't really care to be alive either. Yeah, it's not a great romantic story, but it's not Attack of the Clones either. (Although, when Dee leaves him in "Crossroads" and talks about how the system doesn't work, I did have an uncomfortable flashback to AotC. As Plinkett would say, "supports fascism.") Nobody even brings up the whole officer-enlisted thing, and when it becomes clear that the relationship is serious, Adama bumps Dee up to Lieutenant to get around that issue. There aren't any real obstacles to their relationship, other than the various other things Lee cares about (Starbuck, due process of law).
Because that's how relationships work (or don't) on Battlestar; rarely are they undermined by external forces. It's not that Lee goes out of his way to screw up Starbuck/Anders; they just do that to themselves. Cally was set to kill herself before Tory showed up. Athena and Helo do end up happily married, but only after they both spend 50 days in a nuclear wasteland, then she nearly gets raped and he ends up starring in "The Woman King." Saul loves Ellen even though she's a terrible influence. My point is that there are no matches made in heaven here. Lee and Dee have at least a physical attraction to each other, and it's probably deeper than that, but their conflicting personalities and values ultimately get in the way. Dee's the complete opposite of Starbuck, and Lee is somewhere in the middle. Ultimately, nobody's going to walk away happy.
So hooker-mom left you because she didn't want to be your dead-pregnant-ex surrogate, and then you frakked things up with Starbuck because you didn't want to be her Anders surrogate, and now here you are with Dee. That kind of sucks for her. And then Billy shows up at the bar and complains that Dee "let [him] propose to [her]" when she knew she was going to meet Apollo at the bar anyway. And then Lee hauls Ellen Frakking Tigh off into the bathroom! I wonder what, precisely, Dee was thinking right then.
Then Sesha and her cronies take over the bar and take hostages. Now, I get Lee's decision to save Ellen over Dee: the XO's wife is a more valuable hostage than Petty Officer Dualla. It just would have been nice for him to have made that point to Ellen, because within minutes, she goes swanning out to tell them that she's the XO's wife. And then she tells them that they've made the biggest mistake of their lives.
Lee does the Aliens trick (he sets off a false alarm) so that they can send someone in. That someone is Kara Thrace, who was also getting some R&R over there, proving once again that she cleans up good. She gets inside the bar, but cover is blown. A firefight ensues, and Kara, the best shot in or out of the cockpit, shoots Lee. So, Starbuck, you frakked Zak; you killed Zak; you almost frakked Apollo; you almost killed Apollo. Are we sensing a pattern here?
Dee (understandably) panicks and asks Billy to get something to stop the bleeding. I don't have to think too hard to guess what Billy was thinking right then. But when one of the thugs threatens him, Billy points out that if the Admiral's son dies, no-one here gets out alive. How is it, Dee, that a civilian is cooler under fire than someone who was trained for this sort of thing? It's a complete 180 from "Bastille Day." (Okay, okay, Dee cares a lot more about Apollo than Billy does. Still, I don't really think that this episode does her any favors, which is sad because I do like Dee. Hell, throughout the entirety of "Unfinished Business," I was thinking no, Lee, no, Kara is nothing but trouble. Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy "Unfinished Business," but that's a story for another day.)
Abinell wants the copy of Sharon who's down in Galactica's brig, and with time running out before Lee bleeds to death, Adama appears to cave. A suspiciously-not-pregnant body is wheeled into the bar. Sesha puts two bullets in Boomer's head (bullets that seem to to virtually no damage) before realizing that it's Boomer, not Sharon.
On re-watching this episode, I noticed that the re-cap did not, for once, include a shot of Cally pulling a Jack Ruby on Boomer. This might be the only time in the history of the show where a really important plot element from a previous episode doesn't crop up in the re-cap. (Don't quote me on that; I previously said that "The Farm" was the only episode where the A-story takes place on Cylon-occupied Caprica, completely forgetting about "Downloaded.")
So then Sesha tells her goon to "kill the girlfriend." (She knows that Dee and Apollo are "together.") Billy gets a gun from one goon and manages to kill another one, before he too goes down. The marines come in (and also storm the Astral Queen for good measure, since some of the shots are re-used from "Bastille Day") and shoot the rest of Sesha's mob to hell. Sesha's corpse ends up draped over Boomer's. Poetry.
Then Dee, who's spent the last ten minutes kneeling over Apollo, scrambles over to Billy's body. Again, this is not her finest hour. But then, both men she cares about got shot within minutes of each other; this is just a bad time for her all around.
Roslin and Adama argue about whether or not Adama's plan was worth it, since Billy's dead and Apollo's in sickbay with a bullet in his chest (and as fate would have it, it's going to be more than a year before he gets in a Viper again). Dee sits by Lee's bed, holding his hand and telling him that she's not going to leave. Starbuck looks on, unnoticed in the background. Between this and the way "Resurrection Ship" ended, we have a love triangle on our hands.
And then the episode ends with a few shots of Sharon, while ominous music plays. Except that she is one of the good guys at this point, and both "bad" things she does from this point on (not out Cavil as a Cylon, and shoot Natalie) stem from her maternal instincts (grief and protection, respectively). So go figure.
This isn't exactly one of the stellar episodes, and though the ending is a lot cleverer than the one in "Bastille Day" (oh, did no-one mention that your term is up in 7 months? Silly me), it overall suffers comparatively.
One last thing I wanted to touch on: Adama has a conversation with Sharon about whether or not she would identify the (six) remaining Cylon models. She says "no" for no real reason (because the real reason is that if she could, and did, the show would be over). It's pretty obvious that the writers need to come up with a good reason why this is... and it's not surprising that the concept of the Final Five is introduced at around the same time that "Athena" gets accepted by the rest of the crew.
"With respect, sir, I am the best shot in or out of the cockpit."
-Starbuck, "Bastille Day"
"I think it was friendly fire. I think I hit him."
-Starbuck, "Sacrifice"
"We've all been trained in capture simulations."
-Dee, "Bastille Day"
Is it unfair to compare this episode to "Bastille Day?" I don't think so. Apollo, Dee and Billy all get captured by elements of a violent mob, while the "I-never-wanted-to-go-into-politics" President yammers on about not negotiating with terrorism. (And we haven't even seen all the repercussions of the last time Lee negotiated with a terrorist...) Also, the leader of the mob gets special billing, and despite their protestations to the contrary, it really is all about them.
Our episode opens with Dana Delaney's character, Sesha Abinell, writing a manifesto while remembering how her hubby died in a Cylon attack. On the wall is a picture of Sharon, her face obscured by shadow. Because if there's one thing that Season 2.5 likes to do, it's reference Apocalypse Now.
Meanwhile, Dee shoots Billy down. Then she goes over to Cloud Nine and talks to Lee about it, saying she doesn't really know where their relationship is going. I'd assumed it was going nowhere, seeing as she'd gone back to Billy at the end of "Epiphanies" and Lee had gone off to frak that single-mom hooker in the episode no-one wants to talk about. But apparently there is a thing. Now I said the Lee/Dee thing didn't bother me as much as it bothers the other fans, and that's true. It's been set up since at least "Resistance" that Dee's carrying a torch. And I guess Lee has a thing for her because she's Mission Control?
So they flirt in the hallway, then they both go up against Tigh, then they flirt in the gym, then Dee asks him if he's serious, then there's a great deleted scene from "Resurrection Ship" where they talk about things going to hell, and then there's a less-great deleted scene in "Black Market" where Dee admits that she doesn't really care to be alive either. Yeah, it's not a great romantic story, but it's not Attack of the Clones either. (Although, when Dee leaves him in "Crossroads" and talks about how the system doesn't work, I did have an uncomfortable flashback to AotC. As Plinkett would say, "supports fascism.") Nobody even brings up the whole officer-enlisted thing, and when it becomes clear that the relationship is serious, Adama bumps Dee up to Lieutenant to get around that issue. There aren't any real obstacles to their relationship, other than the various other things Lee cares about (Starbuck, due process of law).
Because that's how relationships work (or don't) on Battlestar; rarely are they undermined by external forces. It's not that Lee goes out of his way to screw up Starbuck/Anders; they just do that to themselves. Cally was set to kill herself before Tory showed up. Athena and Helo do end up happily married, but only after they both spend 50 days in a nuclear wasteland, then she nearly gets raped and he ends up starring in "The Woman King." Saul loves Ellen even though she's a terrible influence. My point is that there are no matches made in heaven here. Lee and Dee have at least a physical attraction to each other, and it's probably deeper than that, but their conflicting personalities and values ultimately get in the way. Dee's the complete opposite of Starbuck, and Lee is somewhere in the middle. Ultimately, nobody's going to walk away happy.
So hooker-mom left you because she didn't want to be your dead-pregnant-ex surrogate, and then you frakked things up with Starbuck because you didn't want to be her Anders surrogate, and now here you are with Dee. That kind of sucks for her. And then Billy shows up at the bar and complains that Dee "let [him] propose to [her]" when she knew she was going to meet Apollo at the bar anyway. And then Lee hauls Ellen Frakking Tigh off into the bathroom! I wonder what, precisely, Dee was thinking right then.
Then Sesha and her cronies take over the bar and take hostages. Now, I get Lee's decision to save Ellen over Dee: the XO's wife is a more valuable hostage than Petty Officer Dualla. It just would have been nice for him to have made that point to Ellen, because within minutes, she goes swanning out to tell them that she's the XO's wife. And then she tells them that they've made the biggest mistake of their lives.
Lee does the Aliens trick (he sets off a false alarm) so that they can send someone in. That someone is Kara Thrace, who was also getting some R&R over there, proving once again that she cleans up good. She gets inside the bar, but cover is blown. A firefight ensues, and Kara, the best shot in or out of the cockpit, shoots Lee. So, Starbuck, you frakked Zak; you killed Zak; you almost frakked Apollo; you almost killed Apollo. Are we sensing a pattern here?
Dee (understandably) panicks and asks Billy to get something to stop the bleeding. I don't have to think too hard to guess what Billy was thinking right then. But when one of the thugs threatens him, Billy points out that if the Admiral's son dies, no-one here gets out alive. How is it, Dee, that a civilian is cooler under fire than someone who was trained for this sort of thing? It's a complete 180 from "Bastille Day." (Okay, okay, Dee cares a lot more about Apollo than Billy does. Still, I don't really think that this episode does her any favors, which is sad because I do like Dee. Hell, throughout the entirety of "Unfinished Business," I was thinking no, Lee, no, Kara is nothing but trouble. Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy "Unfinished Business," but that's a story for another day.)
Abinell wants the copy of Sharon who's down in Galactica's brig, and with time running out before Lee bleeds to death, Adama appears to cave. A suspiciously-not-pregnant body is wheeled into the bar. Sesha puts two bullets in Boomer's head (bullets that seem to to virtually no damage) before realizing that it's Boomer, not Sharon.
On re-watching this episode, I noticed that the re-cap did not, for once, include a shot of Cally pulling a Jack Ruby on Boomer. This might be the only time in the history of the show where a really important plot element from a previous episode doesn't crop up in the re-cap. (Don't quote me on that; I previously said that "The Farm" was the only episode where the A-story takes place on Cylon-occupied Caprica, completely forgetting about "Downloaded.")
So then Sesha tells her goon to "kill the girlfriend." (She knows that Dee and Apollo are "together.") Billy gets a gun from one goon and manages to kill another one, before he too goes down. The marines come in (and also storm the Astral Queen for good measure, since some of the shots are re-used from "Bastille Day") and shoot the rest of Sesha's mob to hell. Sesha's corpse ends up draped over Boomer's. Poetry.
Then Dee, who's spent the last ten minutes kneeling over Apollo, scrambles over to Billy's body. Again, this is not her finest hour. But then, both men she cares about got shot within minutes of each other; this is just a bad time for her all around.
Roslin and Adama argue about whether or not Adama's plan was worth it, since Billy's dead and Apollo's in sickbay with a bullet in his chest (and as fate would have it, it's going to be more than a year before he gets in a Viper again). Dee sits by Lee's bed, holding his hand and telling him that she's not going to leave. Starbuck looks on, unnoticed in the background. Between this and the way "Resurrection Ship" ended, we have a love triangle on our hands.
And then the episode ends with a few shots of Sharon, while ominous music plays. Except that she is one of the good guys at this point, and both "bad" things she does from this point on (not out Cavil as a Cylon, and shoot Natalie) stem from her maternal instincts (grief and protection, respectively). So go figure.
This isn't exactly one of the stellar episodes, and though the ending is a lot cleverer than the one in "Bastille Day" (oh, did no-one mention that your term is up in 7 months? Silly me), it overall suffers comparatively.
One last thing I wanted to touch on: Adama has a conversation with Sharon about whether or not she would identify the (six) remaining Cylon models. She says "no" for no real reason (because the real reason is that if she could, and did, the show would be over). It's pretty obvious that the writers need to come up with a good reason why this is... and it's not surprising that the concept of the Final Five is introduced at around the same time that "Athena" gets accepted by the rest of the crew.
Monday, September 5, 2011
BSG: Six Degrees of Separation
This is the first episode written by Michael Angeli, a man about whom I know little and wish to know less. Basically, I'm not at all surprised that his first effort includes an extended "comedy" scene in a bathroom and ends on gratuitous shots of Tricia Helfer undressing (although to be fair, the episode also contains the most plot-centric sex scene since The Terminator). Angeli's other efforts include such gems as "A Measure of Salvation" and "The Woman King," but to be fair, he also gave us "The Son Also Rises," which introduced Romo Lampkin, and "Blood on the Scales," which concludes my favorite arc on the show.
...so from that data, it appears that any Angeli episode in which Helo doesn't do something important is going to be more well-recieved than an episode in which Helo does play an important part.
So anyway, Baltar got the majority of the human race nuked because he was thinking with the wrong organ and let a Cylon into the defense mainframe. In this episode, another copy of that Cylon arrives and presents damning (false) evidence of his guilt. So basically, this episode is going to live or die based on how sympathetic you find Baltar.
And in real time, it's only been, what, two years since the Miniseries, where he did not steal a nearly-blind woman's seat. And that is the best example of a "good" thing Baltar has done: he did not do a bad thing.
You listen to the audio commentary for the Miniseries, and you find yourself wondering how smart Moore and Eick really are. Apparently, it was actor James Callis who came up with the idea to make Baltar funny (and therefore remotely likeable); without that, this episode would have been dead in the water from the word go.
So here are the only reasons to root for him:
1: he's funny.
2: he has a really hot imaginary girlfriend.
3: his Cylon detector may be the key to saving the human race. Except if you watch the show all the way through, it's not. He never uses the detector to out one single Cylon. But at this point you don't know that. As far as you know, it's still an important asset for humanity's survival.
Now, credit where credit is due; this episode does have one really awesome moment in it. You might think it has two or three (the third being the aforementioned gratuitous shots of Tricia Helfer undressing), but the second one's really more of a cheap gag than an awesome moment. It's still funny, but by no stretch of the imagination is it as side-splittingly hilarious as some people seem to think the "You've messed with the wrong Gaius" line is. (Oh, wait. That groaner was in this episode too. And actually, that one's Moore's fault.)
The one that really doesn't count comes after Head-Six walks out on Baltar and he gripes about it being his fantasy, so he'll just dream up someone else, maybe a brunette. Sure enough, somebody bangs on his door, and it's Dee, a brunette. To quote Starbuck in "Disquiet," "Rimshot. Applause, applause."
The one that is awesome, though, comes immediately after this. Baltar is summoned to CIC, where what we think is Head-Six is waiting for him, only she's more covered up than usual. Adama tells Baltar that Shelly Godfrey has brought some disturbing accusations against him. Baltar asks where Ms. Godfrey is, and it takes him for-frakking-ever to realize that she's the Six right in front of him.
And thus begins the first story where the guilty-as-sin Dr. Baltar is accused of doing something he's actually not guilty of. It's hard for me to be engaged in a story where a guy is falsely accused, but he's actually guilty anyway. Basically, Godfrey-Six has faked a picture of Baltar planting a bomb in the Defense Ministry's mainframe the day before the attack. Adama doesn't have the magic photo enhancer from Blade Runner on him, so it's down to Lt. Gaeta to analyze the reflection in the photo and see whether or not it actually is Baltar.
Baltar starts scrambling to save his own ass; he corners Gaeta in the bathroom, then does the same thing to Godfrey-Six, appeals to the President, and finally, when the image is resolved, he tries to just smash the computer screen. Good grief, Baltar, I thought you were some kind of genius. Is this real? Just how smart is Baltar, really, even when Six isn't messing with him?
So then Gaeta re-analyzes the picture and discovers that it is a fake anyway, and then Godfrey-Six disappears. Per The Plan she was a Cylon and she was airlocked. And this is one of the reasons I take a selective view of The Plan's veracity; "Daybreak" proves that Godfrey-Six isn't the only blonde who just vanishes into thin air once her mission is complete. Baltar seems to have jumped the gun on the whole "angel of God" thing, asking if Godfrey was ever real at all...
Because Godfrey-Six did two things: she got Baltar to convert, and she put him above all future suspicion. This is why his trial at the end of Season 3 focuses only on his collaboration on New Caprica and not his... indiscretions prior to the fall of the Colonies. If God is really watching out for Baltar, then Godfrey-Six did a great job keeping him safe.
But no, per The Plan she was actually a Cylon trying to discredit him. You want to discredit Baltar and his magic Cylon detector? Activate Boomer and have her accuse a certain someone in Adama's inner circle of being a Cylon. Adama won't believe it (because he sure as hell didn't in "Revelations") and will declare the whole thing a fake. Boom, done.
Speaking of Number Eight, this is the episode where Sharon and Helo frak and concieve Hera. Helo's been running around on Caprica for a while, dodging Cylon patrols, getting rescued by Sharon, and finally rescuing her in turn. Here we learn that he's actually had feelings for her all along. Despite the fact that Sharon is a Cylon, one who (as far as we know) is just faking her affection for Helo in order to have his baby, this is still a far more realistic and believable love story than the one in Attack of the Clones...
One last thing. Baltar gains access to the lab by setting off a fire alarm. It takes CIC all of about ten seconds to realize that the alarm is a fake. Contrast to 4.12, "The Oath." (Gaeta was there, he saw how they figured out the alarm was a fake, and filed that information away for three years.)
Baltar works as a character the same way that Zarek works; he's usually right, but people don't want to acknowledge that because of his past. Each man serves himself first and foremost, but what's good for him happens to also be good for the fleet/democracy (until 2.20 and 4.13, respectively). The problem is, in this episode, we never see any of Baltar's redeeming qualities on display. Instead, he's lustful, panicky, stupid, cowardly, wrathful, and underhanded.
...so from that data, it appears that any Angeli episode in which Helo doesn't do something important is going to be more well-recieved than an episode in which Helo does play an important part.
So anyway, Baltar got the majority of the human race nuked because he was thinking with the wrong organ and let a Cylon into the defense mainframe. In this episode, another copy of that Cylon arrives and presents damning (false) evidence of his guilt. So basically, this episode is going to live or die based on how sympathetic you find Baltar.
And in real time, it's only been, what, two years since the Miniseries, where he did not steal a nearly-blind woman's seat. And that is the best example of a "good" thing Baltar has done: he did not do a bad thing.
You listen to the audio commentary for the Miniseries, and you find yourself wondering how smart Moore and Eick really are. Apparently, it was actor James Callis who came up with the idea to make Baltar funny (and therefore remotely likeable); without that, this episode would have been dead in the water from the word go.
So here are the only reasons to root for him:
1: he's funny.
2: he has a really hot imaginary girlfriend.
3: his Cylon detector may be the key to saving the human race. Except if you watch the show all the way through, it's not. He never uses the detector to out one single Cylon. But at this point you don't know that. As far as you know, it's still an important asset for humanity's survival.
Now, credit where credit is due; this episode does have one really awesome moment in it. You might think it has two or three (the third being the aforementioned gratuitous shots of Tricia Helfer undressing), but the second one's really more of a cheap gag than an awesome moment. It's still funny, but by no stretch of the imagination is it as side-splittingly hilarious as some people seem to think the "You've messed with the wrong Gaius" line is. (Oh, wait. That groaner was in this episode too. And actually, that one's Moore's fault.)
The one that really doesn't count comes after Head-Six walks out on Baltar and he gripes about it being his fantasy, so he'll just dream up someone else, maybe a brunette. Sure enough, somebody bangs on his door, and it's Dee, a brunette. To quote Starbuck in "Disquiet," "Rimshot. Applause, applause."
The one that is awesome, though, comes immediately after this. Baltar is summoned to CIC, where what we think is Head-Six is waiting for him, only she's more covered up than usual. Adama tells Baltar that Shelly Godfrey has brought some disturbing accusations against him. Baltar asks where Ms. Godfrey is, and it takes him for-frakking-ever to realize that she's the Six right in front of him.
And thus begins the first story where the guilty-as-sin Dr. Baltar is accused of doing something he's actually not guilty of. It's hard for me to be engaged in a story where a guy is falsely accused, but he's actually guilty anyway. Basically, Godfrey-Six has faked a picture of Baltar planting a bomb in the Defense Ministry's mainframe the day before the attack. Adama doesn't have the magic photo enhancer from Blade Runner on him, so it's down to Lt. Gaeta to analyze the reflection in the photo and see whether or not it actually is Baltar.
Baltar starts scrambling to save his own ass; he corners Gaeta in the bathroom, then does the same thing to Godfrey-Six, appeals to the President, and finally, when the image is resolved, he tries to just smash the computer screen. Good grief, Baltar, I thought you were some kind of genius. Is this real? Just how smart is Baltar, really, even when Six isn't messing with him?
So then Gaeta re-analyzes the picture and discovers that it is a fake anyway, and then Godfrey-Six disappears. Per The Plan she was a Cylon and she was airlocked. And this is one of the reasons I take a selective view of The Plan's veracity; "Daybreak" proves that Godfrey-Six isn't the only blonde who just vanishes into thin air once her mission is complete. Baltar seems to have jumped the gun on the whole "angel of God" thing, asking if Godfrey was ever real at all...
Because Godfrey-Six did two things: she got Baltar to convert, and she put him above all future suspicion. This is why his trial at the end of Season 3 focuses only on his collaboration on New Caprica and not his... indiscretions prior to the fall of the Colonies. If God is really watching out for Baltar, then Godfrey-Six did a great job keeping him safe.
But no, per The Plan she was actually a Cylon trying to discredit him. You want to discredit Baltar and his magic Cylon detector? Activate Boomer and have her accuse a certain someone in Adama's inner circle of being a Cylon. Adama won't believe it (because he sure as hell didn't in "Revelations") and will declare the whole thing a fake. Boom, done.
Speaking of Number Eight, this is the episode where Sharon and Helo frak and concieve Hera. Helo's been running around on Caprica for a while, dodging Cylon patrols, getting rescued by Sharon, and finally rescuing her in turn. Here we learn that he's actually had feelings for her all along. Despite the fact that Sharon is a Cylon, one who (as far as we know) is just faking her affection for Helo in order to have his baby, this is still a far more realistic and believable love story than the one in Attack of the Clones...
One last thing. Baltar gains access to the lab by setting off a fire alarm. It takes CIC all of about ten seconds to realize that the alarm is a fake. Contrast to 4.12, "The Oath." (Gaeta was there, he saw how they figured out the alarm was a fake, and filed that information away for three years.)
Baltar works as a character the same way that Zarek works; he's usually right, but people don't want to acknowledge that because of his past. Each man serves himself first and foremost, but what's good for him happens to also be good for the fleet/democracy (until 2.20 and 4.13, respectively). The problem is, in this episode, we never see any of Baltar's redeeming qualities on display. Instead, he's lustful, panicky, stupid, cowardly, wrathful, and underhanded.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
An addendum to "A Measure of Salvation"
So I whined a lot about how this episode and "The Hub" took wildly different approaches to "genocide," and I still think that that argument more or less stands up. But I did just want to touch on one possible argument for the defense, which occurs in "Guess What's Coming to Dinner." Natalie-Six tells everyone just how important death is to life:
"In our civil war, we've seen death. We watched our people die. Gone forever. As terrible as it was, beyond the reach of the Resurrection Ships, something began to change. We could feel a sense of time. As if each moment held its own significance. We began to realize that for our existence to hold any value it must end. To live meaningful lives we must die, and not return. The one human flaw, that you spend your lifetimes distressing over - mortality - is the one thing...well, it's the one thing that makes you whole."
So here... it's some sort of "gift," for lack of a better term, and unlike the Cylon disease, which kills you painfully within a matter of days, losing resurrection at least lets you live out your life. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuut... it's still "genocide," because the Cylon race can't reproduce.
"In our civil war, we've seen death. We watched our people die. Gone forever. As terrible as it was, beyond the reach of the Resurrection Ships, something began to change. We could feel a sense of time. As if each moment held its own significance. We began to realize that for our existence to hold any value it must end. To live meaningful lives we must die, and not return. The one human flaw, that you spend your lifetimes distressing over - mortality - is the one thing...well, it's the one thing that makes you whole."
So here... it's some sort of "gift," for lack of a better term, and unlike the Cylon disease, which kills you painfully within a matter of days, losing resurrection at least lets you live out your life. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuut... it's still "genocide," because the Cylon race can't reproduce.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Is BSG Really a Liberal Show? Season 2
Honestly, there's not much here. Anyway, let's dig in:
Roslin bans abortion.
First of all, that they actually use the a-word is telling. Liberals call it "choice" whenever they can. After "fighting my whole life for a woman's right to control her body," Roslin bans abortion because her first commandment was "make babies." Now this is interesting, because apparently abortion was legal on 11 of the Colonies before the attacks, but not on Religious-Right Gemenon. (Although, "the girl is the property of her parents until she's 18?" That's going a little bit too far.) So actually, Roslin's executive order is the complete opposite of Roe. As opposed to overturning laws banning abortions in the majority of the country, Roslin overturns laws legalizing abortion on most of the Colonies. And, oh yeah, she's one of the good guys. And Baltar the slimebag is the one who calls her on it!
Also, she hasn't fought her whole life for a woman's right to control her body; in that one episode I really don't like to talk about much, she tried to have Sharon's baby aborted, over the mother's objections. You know what? Between that and kidnapping the kid, it's not surprising that Athena doesn't say "oh, you have cancer again? Go ahead and stick my daughter with a needle, sure." (Blah blah, commentary, blah blah stem cells and fetal blood, blah blah.)
Roslin's cancer cure apparently had something to do with stem cells.
Except that never made it onto the screen. Good job. File that under: why I think "Epiphanies" is the worst episode of the show.
Baltar's election.
So having pegged his opponent as a religious nutjob, a charismatic guy with no experience to speak of becomes President. And it's a disaster. (Meanwhile, over on Doctor Who, a charismatic guy who literally did not exist eighteen months ago becomes Prime Minister. And it's a disaster.) I can only point out that these episodes ran in 2006 and 2007, respectively, because otherwise they look like outright jabs at Obama.
Lt. Thorne would fit right in at Abu Ghraib.
Well, yeah, that's true. But then, pretty much everyone realizes that Abu Ghraib was an atrocity. Bush may have been a terrible president, but he wasn't Cain.
Demand Peace, Make War on Man
Hilariously undermined by the fact that it was organized by a Cylon. We don't hear a peep from this group after Gina nukes herself and Cloud Nine. Great missed opportunity for Zarek to denounce the suicide bomber in "Epiphanies," by the way.
The Press
"Freedom of the press is not a liberty to slander."
-Adama.
I love that line. And then there's D'anna Biers, who is "so sick of people like [Adama] questioning [her] patriotism" when it's blatantly obvious that she has none.
Conclusion
Yeah, once again, there might be some clever liberal subtext running around underneath all this, but I guess I'm just too thick to see it.
Roslin bans abortion.
First of all, that they actually use the a-word is telling. Liberals call it "choice" whenever they can. After "fighting my whole life for a woman's right to control her body," Roslin bans abortion because her first commandment was "make babies." Now this is interesting, because apparently abortion was legal on 11 of the Colonies before the attacks, but not on Religious-Right Gemenon. (Although, "the girl is the property of her parents until she's 18?" That's going a little bit too far.) So actually, Roslin's executive order is the complete opposite of Roe. As opposed to overturning laws banning abortions in the majority of the country, Roslin overturns laws legalizing abortion on most of the Colonies. And, oh yeah, she's one of the good guys. And Baltar the slimebag is the one who calls her on it!
Also, she hasn't fought her whole life for a woman's right to control her body; in that one episode I really don't like to talk about much, she tried to have Sharon's baby aborted, over the mother's objections. You know what? Between that and kidnapping the kid, it's not surprising that Athena doesn't say "oh, you have cancer again? Go ahead and stick my daughter with a needle, sure." (Blah blah, commentary, blah blah stem cells and fetal blood, blah blah.)
Roslin's cancer cure apparently had something to do with stem cells.
Except that never made it onto the screen. Good job. File that under: why I think "Epiphanies" is the worst episode of the show.
Baltar's election.
So having pegged his opponent as a religious nutjob, a charismatic guy with no experience to speak of becomes President. And it's a disaster. (Meanwhile, over on Doctor Who, a charismatic guy who literally did not exist eighteen months ago becomes Prime Minister. And it's a disaster.) I can only point out that these episodes ran in 2006 and 2007, respectively, because otherwise they look like outright jabs at Obama.
Lt. Thorne would fit right in at Abu Ghraib.
Well, yeah, that's true. But then, pretty much everyone realizes that Abu Ghraib was an atrocity. Bush may have been a terrible president, but he wasn't Cain.
Demand Peace, Make War on Man
Hilariously undermined by the fact that it was organized by a Cylon. We don't hear a peep from this group after Gina nukes herself and Cloud Nine. Great missed opportunity for Zarek to denounce the suicide bomber in "Epiphanies," by the way.
The Press
"Freedom of the press is not a liberty to slander."
-Adama.
I love that line. And then there's D'anna Biers, who is "so sick of people like [Adama] questioning [her] patriotism" when it's blatantly obvious that she has none.
Conclusion
Yeah, once again, there might be some clever liberal subtext running around underneath all this, but I guess I'm just too thick to see it.
Is BSG Really a Liberal Show? Season 3
There's so much delicious material in Season Three to sink our teeth into. What stands out in particular are: the occupation of New Caprica, "A Measure of Salvation," "Dirty Hands," and Baltar's trial.
So let's just jump right in.
The Occupation of New Caprica
With the use of night-vision cameras by the baddies and Tigh's use of suicide bombers, there's a not-very-subtle comparison going on to the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. It's undeniable that the writers were trying to tie it in with current events, and bravo. It's just that if you want to paint "Amerika" as the Cylons, then do your research; I'm pretty sure everybody down in Gitmo is as intact as they were when we captured them. If we actually did gouge out someone's eye, I'm amazed the media hasn't harped on it incessantly. Also, fundamental difference: Laura Roslin is not Sadaam Hussein. So yeah, I get the allegory. It just, you know, doesn't really hold up.
"A Measure of Salvation"
Please see the extremely long-winded review.
"Dirty Hands"
Well, yeah. The whole theme of the episode is "Woot! Union!" but to be fair, the only indication that there's any sort of economy anywhere is that we're three years in and Tigh and Starbuck can still find booze. Ain't nobody getting all the compensation they should be getting, but Roslin's plan to chain everyone to their job is frakking stupid. Just ask anyone who's ever made it 2/3rds of the way through Atlas Shrugged. Anyway, I'll give you this one just cuz. And do remember that I did actually like the episde.
Baltar's Trial
I was a tad frustrated that they didn't get Caprica-Six in to testify about the fact that Baltar's kind of the one responsible for all the exploding stuff in the Miniseries. But all they had to go on was a Cylon's word and one hallucination Roslin had, so that wasn't surprising; it probably wouldn't amount to much in a court of law. But then Romo and Lee pull out all the stops and get away with far too much in the cross-examination, so go figure.
Anyway, Baltar is on trial for collaborating with the Cylons at the point of a gun. Except, really, he was just a figurehead. The whole decision to try him for things that happened offscreen (see the commentary for "The Woman King" and various episodes after that) was pretty dumb in the first place, but then they replaced it by going after him with chargest that really, don't stick particularly well, especially after Roslin already offered a blanket pardon for all collaborators. Try him for leading the Cylons to the Algae planet!
"Collaborators"
Not really evidence for the prosecution, per se. Rather, what we see here is that Tigh et al have gone a tad off the deep end (and remember that they were the ones who used suicide bombers; not exactly the most ringing endorsement of that tactic).
Conclusion
Yeah, this is the most liberal season of the show's history. It's also, really, the only one.
So let's just jump right in.
The Occupation of New Caprica
With the use of night-vision cameras by the baddies and Tigh's use of suicide bombers, there's a not-very-subtle comparison going on to the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. It's undeniable that the writers were trying to tie it in with current events, and bravo. It's just that if you want to paint "Amerika" as the Cylons, then do your research; I'm pretty sure everybody down in Gitmo is as intact as they were when we captured them. If we actually did gouge out someone's eye, I'm amazed the media hasn't harped on it incessantly. Also, fundamental difference: Laura Roslin is not Sadaam Hussein. So yeah, I get the allegory. It just, you know, doesn't really hold up.
"A Measure of Salvation"
Please see the extremely long-winded review.
"Dirty Hands"
Well, yeah. The whole theme of the episode is "Woot! Union!" but to be fair, the only indication that there's any sort of economy anywhere is that we're three years in and Tigh and Starbuck can still find booze. Ain't nobody getting all the compensation they should be getting, but Roslin's plan to chain everyone to their job is frakking stupid. Just ask anyone who's ever made it 2/3rds of the way through Atlas Shrugged. Anyway, I'll give you this one just cuz. And do remember that I did actually like the episde.
Baltar's Trial
I was a tad frustrated that they didn't get Caprica-Six in to testify about the fact that Baltar's kind of the one responsible for all the exploding stuff in the Miniseries. But all they had to go on was a Cylon's word and one hallucination Roslin had, so that wasn't surprising; it probably wouldn't amount to much in a court of law. But then Romo and Lee pull out all the stops and get away with far too much in the cross-examination, so go figure.
Anyway, Baltar is on trial for collaborating with the Cylons at the point of a gun. Except, really, he was just a figurehead. The whole decision to try him for things that happened offscreen (see the commentary for "The Woman King" and various episodes after that) was pretty dumb in the first place, but then they replaced it by going after him with chargest that really, don't stick particularly well, especially after Roslin already offered a blanket pardon for all collaborators. Try him for leading the Cylons to the Algae planet!
"Collaborators"
Not really evidence for the prosecution, per se. Rather, what we see here is that Tigh et al have gone a tad off the deep end (and remember that they were the ones who used suicide bombers; not exactly the most ringing endorsement of that tactic).
Conclusion
Yeah, this is the most liberal season of the show's history. It's also, really, the only one.
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