And, if you need a Battlestar Galactica fix before then, I may be able to hook you up. Apparently, SciFi did another set of webisodes, entitled The Face of the Enemy. It’s 10 short episodes (around 4 minutes each), starring Grace Park and Alessandro Juliani (er, that is, Felix Gaeta). You can watch them here. I’ve watched half of them so far, and they’re not too bad. Then again, it’s been months since a BSG fix, so I’m not sure how useful my opinion is. SciFi could probably dangle a model of the Galactica via fishing line in front of a black sheet with holes poked out for stars, and I’d cheer.

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.”)

]]> http://system13.org/2008/06/19/battlestar-galactica-wheres-it-going/feed/ 2 http://system13.org/2008/04/02/battlestar-galactica-i-need-my-fix-now/ http://system13.org/2008/04/02/battlestar-galactica-i-need-my-fix-now/#comments Thu, 03 Apr 2008 03:24:06 +0000 Josh http://system13.org/?p=526 Continue reading →]]> 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 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.

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.

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.

Perhaps the most prominent religious component is the series’ overarching theme: the human survivors’ search for Earth. That search is motivated by ancient religious texts’ references to a 13th tribe of humans that established a civilization on a distant planet called Earth. Various religious relics and ruins, both on the 12 colonies and elsewhere in the galaxy, provide clues to Earth’s location.

This is what I’m getting at: I assume that, at some point or another in the series, the Colonial Fleet will reach Earth. If the 13th Tribe made it to Earth and then proceeded to live their lives for a few thousand years, the language they used would have developed, changed, evolved. Even if the 13 Tribes had all originally spoken the exact same language, by the time the Colonial Fleet arrives at Earth, the language should have diverged, following different developmental paths. Take the Scandinavian countries, for example. Norway, Denmark and Sweden are practically on top of each other, and look how Old Norse developed into the similar but different languages of Norwegian, Danish and Swedish¹ However, it’s not even made clear as to whether or not the 13th Tribe was ever with the other 12 Tribes, so we don’t even know if they spoke the same language.

When the Colonial Fleet reaches Earth, if the 13th Tribe is still there, living out their lives, how will the communication between them be portrayed? Will the 13th Tribe speak the same language as the Colonial Fleet, just with different idioms and perhaps a slightly different vocabulary? Will they speak exactly the same way as the members of the Fleet speak? Will they speak some foreign language, which must be translated before the Fleet members can understand?

I suppose I could be considered a nitpicker, but this really does bug me. Obviously, since the show was made by English speakers with an English-speaking cast, the language that the people of the fleet speak is English. But are we to assume that it’s really “English”, or a different language altogether? Considering England is on the planet Earth, which is what the fleet is trying to find, how could the language the fleet speaks be called English? You have to have an England before you have an English language. So, let’s assume that really, the fleet isn’t speaking English. They’re speaking, let’s say, Caprican. It wouldn’t make any sense for the fleet to arrive at Earth, only to find that the inhabitants speak Caprican instead of English (or French, or German, or… you get the idea).

There’s one last facet of this that I see. One could argue that all 13 Tribes spoke the same language originally, and that the language – whatever it may be – hasn’t changed at all. That argument, however, kind of slaps one of the major themes of the show right in the face: evolution, namely, the evolution of the Cylons. If the show is based on robots evolving to look and behave exactly like humans, how could the makers of the show even entertain the idea of saying that the original language of the Tribes hasn’t evolved at all?

Any ideas on this? How could the makers explain this in a respectable way? And by “respectable way”, I don’t mean by essentially ignoring the issue, like they did in Stargate SG-1.

1. Actually, Danish and Swedish come from the East Nordic language group, whereas Norwegian comes from the West Nordic group. [More here.] That being said, I still think they’re a good example of how language changes over time.

I can’t believe they introduced four new Cylons. I think everyone was expecting one new Cylon, but four? And the four they chose! Sam and Tory Foster (the President’s aide) aren’t big deals; Tigh and Tyrol, however, are huge. I’m anxious to see how Tigh’s character progresses in the next season. When will the others find out about the new Cylons? How will they respond? How will Admiral Adama respond? They’ve been friends for their whole lives; they’ve hated Cylons together for years. And now it comes out that Tigh is a Cylon.

Tyrol is a huge deal for one major reason: there are now two human-Cylon hybrids instead of just one. Hera, from Athena and Helo, and Tyrol and Cally’s child (who’s name I can’t remember at the moment). I haven’t quite figured out what the big deal is about the hybrids, though. Roslin from the start has been obsessed with the hybrid kid, and now she’ll have a second one to obsess about.

While the other two, Sam and Tory, aren’t as huge as Tigh and Tyrol, they still introduce some interesting problems. A Cylon helping the President? That won’t bode well with the population if it gets out. And, if Starbuck rejoins the Colonial Fleet (more on her in a minute), I’m sure her husband being a toaster won’t go too well, either.

On the topic of Starbuck… well, I’m lost. I don’t think she’s a Cylon anymore. The end of the episode, with Starbuck dropping in next to Lee and saying “hi”, was a major surprise. I think they’re going into uncharted water with her, probably furthering the whole subplot about her being a prophet of some sort. Whether she ends up being divine, or a Cylon Starbuck trying to trick Lee, we won’t know until 2008, but I’d wager that it’s the former and not the latter.

Regarding Gaius Baltar’s trial and the outcome, I was actually happy with it. As I’ve mentioned before in my posts about Baltar, I hate him. He’s arrogant, sneaky, and just generally unlikable. However, that doesn’t change the fact that what Lee Adama said is true: just because you don’t like someone doesn’t mean you can kill them. He was also right in that, while Baltar did surrender to the Cylons and signed the death order, what choice did he have? None, really. He could have refused, they would have killed him, and then went on with their plans anyway. I was also happy to find out that Admiral Adama saw the light and voted for Baltar’s acquittal.

There’s one last bit that I’m wondering about. I know nothing about Sam and Tory’s past, and very little about Tyrol’s, so I’ll skip them and get right to Tigh. We know about Tigh’s past: he’s been in the Colonial Fleet for nearly his whole life, and Bill along with him! So if he’s a Cylon, does that mean Cylons that look like humans grow like real humans? When Cylons have died before, and are then shown being downloaded into a new body, the bodies have been fully developed. We’ve never seen a child Cylon. But if Tigh really is a Cylon, the Cylon human-lookalikes have to be able to grow, otherwise Tigh would have looked exactly the same for the past 40 years while he’s been in the service with Bill.

I hope they have all of this figured out, because currently, from my point of view, it looks like they’ve opened a can of worms they might have needed to leave closed. Any ideas?

Wow. What an episode. I’m still a bit shocked over what happened at the end, with Starbuck dying (kind of, anyway; see below). It was certainly not something I was expecting. I’d heard rumors about Katee Sackhoff leaving Battlestar Galactica this season, but I figured if she were going to die, it’d be during the season finale.

Now, having said that… about that dying bit. I’m not totally buying it. What with the “destiny” stuff from the Cylon Loeben, coupled with the mandala thing that Starbuck has been drawing her whole life, I’m quickly starting to think that Starbuck is a Cylon. The text on the last page of the episode guide at Scifi.com is also making my internal speaker yell “Danger, Will Robinson!”:

Now, with her body trapped in a doomed Viper and her mind lost in visions, she must overcome that fear if she is to be whole.

I think if Starbuck were really dead, it’d simply say that she perished, or was killed due to the ship imploding, or something along those lines. But “she must overcome that fear if she is to be whole“? I don’t think Starbuck is really gone; I’m thinking she’s one of the final five Cylons.

Of course, I could be totally wrong: she could be dead, and that could be that. But I really don’t think that’s the case. I’m also hoping that’s not the case; Starbuck is one of my favorite characters on the show. I’ve really enjoyed the character, even if she is a bit puzzling at times. She’s not too hard on the eyes, either.

While it was a good episode, I’ve gotta’ say: it’s not as good as the season started out.

Season 3 started out with some amazing episodes. Occupation, Precipice, and both parts of Exodus were absolutely excellent. I think every fan of BSG probably still remembers when Galactica dropped into orbit, launched the Vipers, and then jumped out again; it was a pretty cool moment. While the show is still pretty good, the past few episodes (and really, this season as a whole after the huge bang of a beginning) have kind of been dragging. The episodes themselves aren’t bad, it’s just I’m starting to feel like the creators of the show don’t know where to go with it now. The humans have gotten away from the Cylons for now, and it has been 49 days since the last contact. They’ve captured Baltar, but haven’t yet started his trial. It seems we’re just kind of jumping from one stand alone plot to another: Chief and Cally in the airlock, the racist doctor who was killing patients, the Colonial Pilot who escaped from the Cylons. What ever happened to that guy, Bulldog? He escaped from the Cylons, he damn near killed Adama, and then, apparently, he disappeared. A whole episode devoted to him just for him to never be seen again? Bleh, I say.

I wish the makers of the show would get back to how the storyline was moving in Season 2: lots of fighting between the humans and Cylons, and lots of major plot developments. While Season 3 is coming along alright, the main plot is dragging, or perhaps just.. stuck, completely. Where are they on finding Earth? When is the trial for Baltar going to begin? What’s the deal with Starbuck’s past, which was hinted at very briefly, a few episodes back? Quit introducing new, mostly extraneous stuff and give us some juicy plot bits, folks. Please.