The Good the Bad and the Wha?
Last night Disk 6 of Series two of Battlestar Galactica finally showed up at Video Station so I went home and watched the disk, and since the lack of sleep the night before, went to sleep (and still slept through the alarm this morning).
So, onward to the review
Downloaded
What a great frelling episode! It dealt with the Cylon’s 6 and 8 that had the most interaction with the Humans: the 6 that was on Caprica with Baltar and the 8 that was on Galactica that shot Adama. Happy BD Joy time when 6 comes to and has her very own “Gaius ghost” *glee* . The 3 (Biers (Lawlass)) in charge wants “Caparica 6” to help out the “Galactica 8” get back in the groove and give up her sleeper persona. Stardrunk’s boy toy shows up for a bit. But really it was all about the 6 and the 8. So much good here with those two. What I also liked is that “Caprica 6” is as lost and unsure of herself as Gaius is on Galactica…and that the “ghosts” are the Perfect Image of both Gaius and 6 in the minds eye of the other. It ends with the implication that the 3 with them get’s boxed.
Roslin kidnaps a baby….
Which is again a nice bit of plot allowing you to think about who is the greater evil; Humans or the Cylons, or are they just two side of the same coin.
A great Episode…a Solid A.
Lay Down Your Burdens: Part 1 & 2
Okay…..
Again will you please stop using footage in the “Previously On” portion of the intro that only shows up in the “Deleted Scenes” footage. If a scene is important enough to be used in the Intro, then maybe you should include it in the frelling show. Also, will you please, please, PLEASE stop using “Special Guest Stars” as the NewScaryCylonOfTheDay….because it gets old and removes the mystery from the plot…..idiots.
Just a thought.
So…
What a let down these two episodes were.
Gah!
So…without any discussion or anything even talked about since Ep 5, somehow someone has decided to let little miss Drunken McStupid go ahead with her plan the waste lives and material to rescue some folks back on Caprica….and with a bit of Deus ex Machina they can do it in 10 jumps instead of 250 jumps, and they are going to do it without the entire fleet (which, if several people already seem to be able to make the jumps there and back, why was this an issue in the first place?). So off they go….and Racetrack finds a planet.
Wheeeee!
Baltar and Roslin debate.
For completely unknown reasons the current Mama Boomer decides to help out on the rescue…and when the guest star turns out to be a Cylon….says she didn’t report it because they killed her baby. WTF? She already told Adama that she wouldn’t tell him who the other Cylons in the fleet were, and they toss this bit of stupid into the mix. All that they needed to do was just refer back to the fact that she knows but wouldn’t say....because it still makes no sense as to why she would help on the rescue mission if they killed her baby, but not tell Stardrunk that the priest as a Cylon because they killed her baby. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.
Tigh and De subvert democracy.
Gaeta reports it (and somehow became an assistant to President Baltar?!)
Rescue goes badly.
Cally is annoying.
Guest star turns out to be a Cylon….again.
Apollo eats…a lot (he is eating or drinking something in every scene).
Baltar becomes President.
Tortured 6 blows up Cloud 9…and we have no idea why. She was a sleeper 6 and a lot like Boomer, so did she pick up some program from the Reporter 3? Again, no clue. But in the deleted scenes it is implicated that this 6 has become aware and is in contact with Reporter 3.
The Cylon’s say that they are no longer out to destroy humanity…and take off. Only to find the remains of Cloud 9 and then the humans. Why? No clue. Was it all an elaborate set up? Again, no clue. Or was it simply the whole “OhNoes…OurDrunkenWhoringPartyShipGotToastedWeMustLandNow!! Thing?
Humans settle New Caprica, and in a year no one has managed to build one freaking building. Not one house, not one bar, not one...anything. Compare this to "Deadwood" where there is a whole freaking town built in 5 MONTHS and with about the same if not less population. No clue where all the tents came from....a sporting goods ship? Did it all come from the Black Market ship? No clue as the fog of “One Year Later” flashes on the screen.
Which brings up a good point: What this series needs is an Al Swearengen as the head of the Black Market. I mean, talk about someone who would have at least as much power and influence as Adama, Baltar or Roslin.
Cylon’s occupy New Caprica.
Cally and Chief get married and Cally is preggers.
Stardrunk and Anders get married?
Anders is sick and somehow the black market seems to have gone away once everyone is planet side…again, no clue as to how and why this happened.
Some guy finds Anders.
Apollo gets fat.
Wow…..so after all of that even Berman could come up with a better season ender than these two.
Rate them a D-
And again tons of plot in the deleted scenes that should have been included in the show since they all effect plot….but don’t worry I am sure that they will be included in a “Previously On” some time next season.
Overall the second series was uneven and poorly done. There were still some bright spots where the show clicked, and when we hit those bright spots it was glee time for sure. But, sadly the second season spent WAY TOO MUCH time on poorly written plots, and things that made no sense character or plot wise, and took the cheap way out when there were several better ways to go.
Who I want to see tossed out an airlock:
Cally
Starbuck
Apollo
Saul Tigh
Ellen Tigh
De Dualla
Anders
Who I want to see more of:
Baltar
Ghost Baltar!!!
Ghost 6
Caprica 6
Galactica 8
Mama Boomer
Helo
Roslin
Adama
Dr. Cottle
Kat (who was missing in the last two Eps?!?)
Tom Zerek (great political scheming…Richard Hatch does good work here)
Chief
Comments
Well ... you get *some* of what you're looking for.
The lack of progress in the building of the New Caprica settlement is indeed odd. I can only attribute it to two things: (1) inept administration on the part of the Baltargula administruation, and (2) these guys aren't pioneers who grew up in wooden houses and low tech settlements, but the products of a highly technical civilization. Plop them down in an alluvial plane with no trees or even any nearby large rocks, and folks are going to be ... well, living in tents and scavanging broken ships for hunks of metal to make a large raised sidewalk, The End.
Yeah, lame. And the whole episode really should have taken two or three or four, rather than simply saying, "We don't want to explain how we got there, just ... One Year Later."
Posted by: *** Dave | January 16, 2007 12:40 PM
I guess that is the part that bothered me the most.
“One Year Later”
…and all we have to show for it is this lousy Tent City.
Granted, they are not low tech people use to all the requirements of frontier living (and you know, that could have been a whole season of entertainment right there**), but they have high tech equipment to over come such things as cutting wood and quarrying rock. So, what are all those people doing besides milling about and playing Pyramid? No clue. To me it looked like the end of Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy writ large with a whole lot of useless people standing around doing nothing but trying to decide what colour they should make the wheel.
They have a union….why? We do not know. What are they doing? Farming? Hunting? Not building anything obviously.
**Missed opportunities:
A whole season could have been spent on the frontier life of New Caprica.
-Baltar dealing with getting (or not getting as the case may be) things done alone could have been a major theme. Does Zerek take on the Cheney role and work from behind the throne? Does Ghost 6 continue to provide insight and guidance? Do the Prisoners that Zerek represent get left on the prison ship that the control, or do they get to come to the surface too? Or are they Merc labour that gets transported back and forth to the surface every day to work?
-With Roslin loosing, do the Fundie Types that are her base go on a Jihad now that they are not going to Earth as prophesized?
-With as much bitching as the Civilians did over little things like food and such, how would they deal with actually having to build a settlement from scratch? Having to work? Having to do things to make the society work? A good 50% of the population has skills that no longer have any use…what do these folks do now? In a way it would be like volunteering to go to a Cambodian “re-education” camp…except without the torture and killing hopefully.
-The forced de-militarization of Galactica and Pegasus.
-Caprica 6 and Galactica 8 and their dealings within the Cylon civilization. Much more could be done here…and much more of how Cylon Society works.
-What do the hidden Cylon ops do now that they have no contact with the main Cylon host? Do they start working along side the Humans? Do they keep working under their old programming? There could have been a lot to explore there.
-Now that the humans are all together in one place do they get along or are there tribal frictions?
-What is the outcome of a nuke going off in the middle of the fleet on the one ship that has anything like plants and such? No clue.
-Adama v Baltar. A lot of fun to be mined there. Would Roslin still be there to help him? Would there be politics with Zerek/Balter v Adama/Roslin? A huge missed opportunity there.
-Stardrunk/Anders and Chief/Cally. While annoying for me, there could be a lot of things to do there. What does Stardrunk do now that she has to actually contribute to society? Anders? I mean, there is not going to be much need for a professional Pyramid player in a society that can’t even build a single building in a year. Does Stardrunk actually grow up and become something, or does she continue on her path of useless self-destruction?
-Helo is still on Galactica with, I will assume, a still alive Mama Boomer? What happens? Does she get spaced? What happens with them? And now that it is now out in the open that there is an alive 8 on Galactica, what does the fleet do?
Gah!
Just. So. Many. Missed. Opportunities. There. To. Count.
Posted by: Boulder Dude
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January 16, 2007 1:58 PM
http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/ffn/index.php?date=2006-10-18
Posted by: Mal | January 17, 2007 6:37 AM
I tried watching this show when it first came on. It reminded me of any of a number of bad soap operas...in an "outer space" setting.
They may as well have named it "All the Days of My Children's General Passions." Or some similar moniker.
Campy as it was, the original series at least was uncomplicated enough that if you missed a couple episodes, you still had a frellin clue what was going on.
Posted by: Sam | January 17, 2007 4:35 PM
Hey! No tossing my wife out of an airlock! No! Bad BD! Bad!
Posted by: Percy | January 18, 2007 6:53 AM
Thank to Random for the FFN, I remembered that one and it made me laugh all over again. But, the way the show does the previews is like say having been really drunk and forgetting all about the sex/florplay you had and being told about it later. ;P
Sammy, really it is the overly Payton Place bits where the show falls apart. If the stuck with Humans v Cylons, What it means to be human, slimy politics, then the show rocks.
Lee, I cleared up the De thing too Dualla so as too not cause confusion. ;P No, we would not want to toss DeAnn out the airlock. ;P
Posted by: Boulder Dude
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January 18, 2007 7:43 AM