Battlestar Galactica

Warning! This entry has major spoilers about the mid season finale of Battlestar Galactica, “Revelations.” If you’ve not seen it yet, well…

Alright, are all of the folks who’ve not yet seen it off the ship? Good. Moving along.

“Revelations” blew me away quite a few times. I never expected the four Cylons to be discovered half way through the final season - I figured it’d happen in the last 3 or 4 episodes. Even more shocking, though, was the arrival of the Colonial Fleet at Earth halfway through the season. I expected that event to take place in, say, the next to last episode of the show. As finding Earth has been the primary end point of the entire show, now that they’ve arrived at Earth and found it to be a smoldering nuclear waste, the question is: where to now?

It’s possible that Earth isn’t totally destroyed, but I can only think of one explanation for that, and it doesn’t hold up very well. It’s possible that the landing crew from the Galactica landed in an area that recently suffered a nuclear war, and that the rest of the planet is still teeming with life. This is a real stretch, though - you’d think that if they can plot courses through space and pick up ships on Dradis, they’d be able to do some sort of planetary scan. That, and I gotta’ say - it’d be pretty lame if the second part of the season started out with Adama going, “Oh, oops - we landed 300 miles too far this way, over here everyone, hooray!”

So, let’s assume that Earth is toast - then what? Honestly, I’ve no idea. The Colonial Fleet just heads off into space again, hoping to come across a habitable planet? That doesn’t seem right, and I’m not sure if half a season is enough to start up another story arc anyway. And where are the other Cylons?

I had expected the Colonial Fleet to arrive at Earth, followed by the arrival of the Cylons, leading to a final gigantic space battle. The inhabitants of Earth might even jump in and help take down the Cylons, and everyone lives happily after. Now, though, I’m lost as to where the show’s going. What do you all think?

(One other note: does anyone else think that Tory’s name is a nod towards the Loyalists of the American Revolution? Out of the four revealed Cylons, she’s the only one who really went back to “her people.”)

I’ve been doing pretty well in keeping my cool about the return of Battlestar Galactica this Friday (as in, the day after tomorrow!), but I’m now craving a Battlestar Galactica fix. This evening I watched the two half-hour specials about the show, Battlestar Galactica Revealed and Battlestar Galactica: The Phenomenon. (As of right now at least, you can watch the first one here, and the second one here.) Neither really showed anything that most fans don’t already know, but still - watching snippets from episodes I’ve seen, listening to the people talk about it, thinking about where it’s headed - has got me absolutely wanting Friday night to be here right now. Where’s my flux capacitor when I need one?

I’m feeling extraordinarily geeky right now; when the second special ended, I realized that I was grinning from ear to ear and fidgeting in my chair. I need my Battlestar Galactica fix! Only two more frakking days to go. Two more. I’ll be okay. Really. Two days to go.

I’ve not written anything about Battlestar Galactica since November, due to there not being much to write about. We were given Battlestar Galactica: Razor, which was good, but it was also almost 5 months ago.

I remarked in that post that Battlestar Galactica was going to be gone until April of 2008, and luckily, we now found ourselves nearing April. Season 4 will start up on April 4th, a mere 25 days away. (When you’ve waited nearly a year, 25 days is nothing.) Truth be told, I’ve been looking forward to it coming back, but I haven’t been excited per se. What I needed, apparently, was to actually watch some Battlestar Galactica, even if it was an 8 minute recap of seasons 1 through 3.

The recap is currently here, but in case Scifi.com pulls it from the main BSG page or hides it in a nest of links, you can also watch it here. If you’ve not seen seasons 1 through 3, I really do recommend you watch them - they’re excellent - but if you’re strapped for time, the recap will at least get you ready for season 4. If you’ve watched all of the seasons thus far, the recap is a good refresher. It’s also got some pretty funny narration - “There’s a bun in the toaster.” Heh.

25 days… I think I can hold out that long.

I’m nearly a month behind on this, but I suppose if I could go a month with not knowing, plenty of other Battlestar Galactica fans could do the same. In a nutshell: we’ll be getting Battlestar Galactica: Razor, a 2 hour special, on November the 24th. After that, the Battlestar Galactica signal will go dead again until April. This is truly foul news. When I learned earlier this year that Battlestar Galactica would be mostly gone until 2008, I assumed that by “2008″, they meant “January of 2008.” Wishful thinking, I suppose. As it is now, besides the Razor special, Battlestar Galactica will have been off almost a year when Season 4 starts up. I think I may end up going back and rewatching Seasons 1 through 3.

In checking out the Razor website, I saw this at the bottom:

From October 5 through November 16, SCI FI whets Battlestar fans’ appetites every Friday night with “Razor” Flashbacks during all-new episodes of Flash Gordon. All the flashback clips will be available on SCIFI.COM immediately after broadcast.

Written by Michael Taylor and directed by Wayne Rose and Felix Alcala, these intense, roughly two-minute segments tell the story of young William “Husker” Adama’s rookie Viper mission during the first Cylon war. In addition to fighting for his very survival against relentless Cylon centurions, Adama makes a terrifying discovery that will come back 40 years later to threaten him, the crew of the Pegasus and the survival of the human race.

Well, that would have been nice to know back at the beginning of October. Then again, maybe it’s for the better; now I can watch all of the Flashback things back-to-back. Why, that’ll give me nearly 15 minutes of Battlestar Galactica! (I feel like a junkie saying that.)

If you’ve not seen the Flashbacks, check ‘em out; part 1 is here. A warning, however: don’t watch it at work! I just started to watch it at work, and was greeted with a sex scene. I guess I’ll have to wait until I get home this afternoon for my BSG fix. Figures.

Rumors that Battlestar Galactica would end with its 4th season have been zipping around the internet for a few months now. A few weeks back, Edward James Olmos said at an award ceremony that fans should enjoy the series, because the 4th season would be its last. The producers immediately issued a statement saying that this was incorrect, and that when it was time for BSG to end, they’d let fans know.

Well, unfortunately, they have. Frak. I opened up Google Reader a bit ago, and one of the new items fro my “battlestar galactica” search feed, was this: Next ‘Battlestar’ series will be its last. Apparently Eick and Moore, the executive producers of the show, issued this statement today:

“This show was always meant to have a beginning, a middle and finally, an end. Over the course of the last year, the story and the characters have been moving strongly toward that end and we’ve decided to listen to those internal voices and conclude the show on our own terms. And while we know our fans will be saddened to know the end is coming, they should brace themselves for a wild ride getting there - we’re going out with a bang.”

Frak, frak, frak. This is a real bummer.

I suppose there is one bit of good news: the first episode will be ‘Razor,’ which will air in November. The rest of the season will start up in early 2008. Good news, for sure, but it certainly doesn’t make up for the fact that my favorite TV show is disappearing after the next 22 episodes.

I was hoping that perhaps the information was wrong, so I did a searh on Google News for another article that could confirm the information. Unfortunately, I found one. An official statement about the ending of the series is supposed to appear tomorrow.

I say again: frak.