Battlestar Galactica thoughts

SPOILER WARNING

* I thought that was a pretty bad episode.

* Do you think we had enough shots of Bill Adama looking up at the ailing bones of the Galactica with concern in his eyes, or should they have thrown in another dozen or so?

* I don’t even know how to describe the dropped ball that is having neither Saul nor Ellen discuss the fact that Saul killed Ellen.

* After crawling through vents for hours to keep the ship from jumping away from President Roslin and the loyalist ships, then singlehandedly saving the ship by discovering the systemic rot in its infrastructure, then accepting the job of Chief once more, Galen just up and decides to abandon it?

* And his step-baby?

* The problem with writing dialogue for mystics is that it’s really easy for them to simply sound stupid, which is exactly how Ellen sounded when she said that knocking Caprica Six up is proof that Saul loves her. These people are brilliant machines, but during this moment of crisis they suddenly sound like Chicken Soup for the Soul.

* I’m really unsatisfied with how the Baltar storyline is playing out. If you recall, last half-season we saw Head-Six miraculously manipulate Baltar’s physical body in order to prove the existence of God. Then for a while he sounded like a true believer, as one might expect. Then he had that one scene where he ranted about how God owed the people an apology for shitting on them, and were there any consequences from Head-Six? Doesn’t seem like it, as in this episode Baltar smarmily “agrees” that God may have abandoned his followers in order to get himself off the hook for doing the same, and then a few scenes later Head-Six is back, helping him reassert control of the group and arm them. So all those great, weird speeches he gave about how God loves us because we’re already perfect, and then how God owes us an apology–that was all just really convincing acting? He didn’t believe any of it? None of it was Head-Six instructing him in her sincere convictions? He’s still just a slightly more altruistic version of the old shifty Gaius? I don’t like that at all.

* There’s something un-pull-offable about Roslin offending Caprica Six by suggesting her baby only matters in a prophetic sense as opposed to a personal one–this is the same Caprica Six who shut down the defense system and is responsible for the murder of billions, not to mention that baby whose neck she snapped for no reason in the miniseries. I know all the rebel Cylons have grown and changed since then–and I actually think that aspect of the show works, because it stands to reason they’d only start changing their minds about how the world works when they begin meeting people who aren’t among the seven completely identical types they’ve spent their lives with up until that point, so they’d get new input–but has Roslin really changed that much? I mean, Boomer’s in the clink, but Caprica’s receiving apologies on behalf of the fleet from the President?

* I don’t buy Adama giving Gaius weapons, either. I’m not even sure what Gaius’s argument for why they need the weapons was.

* I wanna see Lee in a flight suit again.

* When Adama pulled a flask of booze out of his uniform I almost started to think that the show was making a point, but the rest of the episode just made it seem like “character drinks booze” is their fallback signifier for “character is upset,” as always.

* The whole tone of the ep was really awkward, don’t you think? Like, trying to be funny at times but not pulling it off, and thereby undercutting the serious stuff? And most of the dialogue about people’s feelings wasn’t clearly delineated enough for us to be able to understand where they were coming from, so combine that with the uncertain dramedy feel and scenes like Caprica’s miscarriage, which could have been knockouts, ended up weightless and incoherent.

5 Responses to Battlestar Galactica thoughts

  1. Jon Hastings says:

    I don’t think Jane Espenson is a very good writer (although on a show like this, you can’t lay all the blame on one person).

    Ellen did bring up Saul killing her – she had some line about how he poisoned her and is still trying to poison her.

    For me, though, the only thing in the episode that I flat out didn’t buy (rather than, like with the guns-for-Gaius thing, was able to fill-in-the-blanks to my satisfaction) was the Chief voting to leave the fleet. It was out of nowhere, it wasn’t explained, and it was a sharp reversal of everything he’s done over the last few episodes. It was only there to set up a situation where Ellen had the deciding vote, but since the whole “Cylons are strictly majority-rules” was basically just now made up by the writers it was pretty lame. That’s a problem of fantasy/sci-fi in general, but, specifically, BSG is bad when it retcons in these little things that, all of a sudden, we’re supposed to care about.

  2. Ohhhhhhh, yeah! I remember hearing her say “poison” in that scene when they were all talking over each other but didn’t catch exactly what she said. And now that you explain what she said…wow, that’s still not enough of addressing this issue, and it’s silly to boot. Ugh.

    I agree with you about Espenson. It’s nice not being a Whedonite so I don’t have to pretend otherwise!

    The Chief thing is definitely egregious.

  3. Tom Spurgeon says:

    Shut up, you robots.

  4. Carnival of Battlestar

    * First, this seems like as good a place as any to collect the links to all my Battlestar Galactica posts for this final half-season. * Episode 4.5.1: Sometimes a Great Notion * Episode 4.5.2: A Disquiet Follows My Soul…

  5. A man, a Plan, a canal, Adama

    So the Battlestar Galactica prequel series Caprica debuts this Friday night. Sort of: They did that weird SciFi/Syfy double-dip where they released the “uncut” pilot on DVD first and show it on TV months later. That’s what they did for…

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