Re: BSG Finale

>> seriously, if you haven't seen the show, it's on Netflix in HD
>
> Well, in the U.S., at least.  :/  (Here in Canada, Netflix has the 1970s
> series -- and Galactica 1980, too! -- but not the reboot.  Sigh.)

Heh. After I finished watching the new BSG series, I started watching
the 1970's series and found it... difficult. The most fun was spotting
which elements had been imported and reworked in the new series.

> And I'll add a few extra spoiler lines of my own.
>
> Five...
>
> four...
>
> three...
>
> two...
>
> and one.
>
>> Okay, so, the good stuff...
>>
>> 1)  Starbuck was some kind of angel? Is that what we're meant to believe?
>
> Well, she's a deus ex machina.  A plot device.  Yeah.  :)

I read this same complaint elsewhere, and I guess I don't see it as
much of a problem. The writers could have chosen any number of ways
for the fleet to find Earth, and I liked that they chose something
weird and thematically elliptical.

My only real regret about Starbuck was that I never really felt that
she found any sort of redemption. By the time her character died, I
pretty much hated her. It's one thing to root for a flawed and
difficult character (like Tigh), but Kara was *so* dark, angry, and
cruel, that it almost felt like a relief to see her go.

When she returned with that big smile on her face, saying, "I've been
to Earth, and I'm gonna show you the way," I was hoping the
resurrection would serve as a reboot for her character, and we'd see a
new Kara. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. I think that's one reason
I was so pleased (relieved?) to see her do something wonderful, then
vanish, presumably into some sort of happier afterlife.

>> 2) Chief crushing Tory's neck might be the most pimp
>> move I've ever seen on television. I loved Cally, and was
>> pissed at the way they kind of trashed her character
>> after she died.
>
> Are you referring to the way they "revealed" that she had
> been sleeping with someone else?

Well, yes (though they alluded to the fact that Cally became pregnant
before her and Chief were married, so it wasn't quite *so* bad).

But also Chief's ramblings about how he didn't really love her at all,
and simply settled for "whoever was left." Also, all that business
about her being shrill, demanding, smelly, etc. I get that Chief was
grieving, and confused about his identity and the whole meaning of
life, the universe, and everything, but we never got a moment showing,
"Hey, I didn't really mean all that," so we're left to assume that
those were his true feelings. But we never *saw* her being any of
those negative things, so I just felt like it was injustice to a
lovable minor character.

> They basically *had* to do that because they wrote
> themselves into a corner when they "revealed" that
> Chief was a Cylon. Cylons can't have kids -- that's
> what makes that one child (Boomer's and Helo's, if
> memory serves?) so special -- so if Chief and Cally
> had a kid, then obviously neither of them could be
> Cylons.  But if Chief *was* revealed to be a Cylon...
> then obviously they had to dedicate an entire episode
> to explaining who the "real" father was.

Well, that was the simplest solution, yes, but not necessarily the
only one. Don't forget that by the time this business popped up, the
rules of the BSG universe seemed to be getting rather, um, fluid. All
kinds of crazy stuff was going on that seemed to contradict precedent,
and there's no reason they couldn't have done something more creative
to explain the existence of Cally and Galen's son.

Cally conceived while they were on New Caprica. Perhaps she'd been
unwittingly implanted with a child for some experimental reason (like
what was going with Kara back on old Caprica). Or maybe she *did*
conceive a baby with Chief, because the Cylon biology was evolving on
its own and becoming more compatible with human biology (and the kid
becomes a monster or something). Stuff like that.

> Speaking of which, have you seen the BSG movie The Plan?

I haven't seen it, primarily because I heard mixed things about it,
and read a few reviews that said it might ruin the original couple of
seasons for me. Is it worth watching? (FWIW, I was one who never
really had much problem with the direction the show took in it's final
two seasons. I like continuity, but I'm not anal about it, and if
there's a plausible explanation, I'm good.)

> Yeah, that Zarek moment was a stunner, even for someone like me who didn't
> get around to watching Season 4.5 until after I had already found out how
> the series ended.

Oy. How/why did *that* happen?

>> Nit-picks:
>>
>> 1) I'm not much of a grudge-holder, but I did feel it was unreasonable to
>> expect us to sympathize with the Cylons in the final season. I mean, in the
>> pilot, Caprica Six MURDERED A BABY IN A STROLLER.
>
> Huh, I'd forgotten that detail.

I've wondered if my inability to cut the Cylons some slack is due to
the fact that I essentially watched four years' worth of episodes in a
couple months. Crimes that were distant memories to the regular viewer
still felt very fresh to me during the final season.

>> 3) Ellen being the final Cylon. Felt random to me, and sort of robbed her
>> original death scene of it's considerable power.
>
> Yeah.  Especially when her resurrected self turns out to be so all-wise,
> all-knowing, whatever.  They *tried* to bring back some of the tension
> between her and Tigh, but it didn't really work.

No, it didn't. I also wish Tigh and Chief, two of the most ardent
Cylon-haters, hadn't turned out to be skinjobs themselves. I
understand why it's interesting to explore, but both of them just felt
like a slap in the face.

>> 1) Helo needed to die. I wanted someone to kill him.
>> Gaeta, Starbuck, Adama, Athena, Apollo... anyone
>> would have sufficed. I was very, very disappointed
>> that he lived to see new Earth. Gaeta was executed
>> for trying to stage a coup, meanwhile Helo consciously
>> betrayed humanity and snuck behind everyone's back
>> to save the lives of the killers who were hunting them
>> -- and everyone more or less knew it. No consequences?
>> Frak that guy.
>
> Y'know, I can't remember what you're referring to, here.

Well, Helo generally had a rather haughty and self-righteous air about
him, but specifically I'm referring to "A Measure of Salvation"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Measure_of_Salvation), the episode
where they discovered a whole space station full of dead and dying
Cylons who'd been obliterated by a virus. Apollo figures out that if
they kill the remaining Cylons within range of a resurrection ship,
the virus would spread throughout the entire Cylon fleet and destroy
them once and for all.

Helo, however, is opposed to this because it's "genocide," so he
raises a stink, but it eventually out-voted. The Galactica dangerously
jumps into the Cylon fleet, but when they go to execute the Cylons,
they find them already dead (killed before they were in range of the
resurrection ship). Helo sabotaged the air systems in their cells in
order to save the Cylon fleet from the virus.

Adama and Roslin figure out who did it (though they never say the name
out loud), but Adama refuses to pursue the matter, presumably because
there was some moral question about it all to begin with.

Now, again, perhaps the original crimes of the Cylons were still too
fresh in my memory, but this all seemed absurd. The Cylons literally
murdered 99.9% of humanity, and was relentlessly pursuing the
remaining 0.1% to murder them as well, and Helo's got a stick up his
ass about "genocide?" Really?

As far as I was concerned, every death that happened from that point
forward, every piece of suffering, was directly Helo's fault. (I
received a small piece of satisfaction recently, when I read an
interview with Aaron Douglas [Chief Tyrol] and discovered that he felt
exactly the same way. Apparently he greatly disliked the character of
Helo for that very reason).

-- 
-pcg
 [email protected]

-- 
dadl-ot mailing list
http://mail.thehood.us/mailman/listinfo/dadl-ot_thehood.us
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.music.dadl.ot