Is it just me, or does the FTL jump effect look different now from how it used to?
And they changed the opening title sequence! The music has been altered. It ends with the standard BSG title card, rather than the insignia. They've added text about the survivors looking for a home called Earth. This is good, since I previously complained that the season one opening was favoring Cylons as characters. This show is about survivors finding Earth, so it's good to put that. They also include a number of survivors, 47,000+. Does this include those who are Cylons? I wonder if this figure will change if people die off the show. But most significantly, they've chopped off the montage of upcoming clips form the episode. It's a shame because I really liked that part. It added some dynamism to the opening. I can understand an argument against teasing images from the episode, but couldn't they have kept it and just used footage from previous episodes in that montage? The music and the quick cuts embody what the series is, and makes it more desirable to watch. This bland, elegiac title sequence gets boring.
Back on Caprica, Sharon tells Starbuck that she is the real Sharon, and says she can prove it by relating the story of how she and Starbuck first met. Um... I'm really confused now. I can see how one Cylon can die and have those memories transferred to a new body. But isn't each individual still different? Why would two different Cylons, even the same model, have the same memory if neither of them is dead? Do all Cylons of the same model retain memories of each other? Is every instant of their consciousness transmitted to the rest? That doesn't make sense either. Why would Boomer not know she was a Cylon then if other Sharons were walking around knowing they were? I'm so confused! The only way this is remotely plausible is that Boomer met Starbuck, then died, then was replaced by a new Boomer Cylon before anyone realized. And that's weak. I really have no way to explain this otherwise though, and it bothers me. I guess the writers have decided that the Cylons are whatever they want them to be, but it's making things hard to follow for me. Maybe there WAS a real Boomer who was taken by the Cylons and then replicated?
The Baltar/Six story makes even less sense now. I hope that the coming episodes shed some light on this. They are going to have a child? But she's not even there!!
When the guys are getting shot at after returning with the med kit (and what a lame reason to separate the group), who is shooting at them? What has become of Baltar and the guy dying on the ground? Who else is on Kobol?
Sad to say the dark, shaky, zoomy camera work is back with a vengeance. Once again, I sat through an action sequence of flying Vipers and had little idea what was going on. The Cylons have a new ship? Okay. Maybe that's how they transport people, since the Raiders obviously don't. In fact, we know it is because there were Centurions inside it. But when there was all that weapons fire, and the bursts surrounding the ship, I literally said, "What am I looking at? Maybe it looks cool, but if I don't have any idea what it is, I don't care that it looks cool. Once more there were zooms for the sake of zooms.
Adama is still right that networking computers is a bad idea. Boy did they get lucky this time around! And judging by the ending, maybe not as lucky as they think.
The episode is called "Scattered", yet no one is really scattered, are they? Galactica is just separated from the fleet. It would have been interesting had the whole fleet actually been scattered, and they had to figure a way to find them all. This actually illustrates a problem I had with the FTL travel from the beginning. I'm not sure it's safe for a convoy to be traveling in this fashion. And can you really "jump" faster than light? Wouldn't you need to accelerate? Then again, Einstein said nothing could accelerate faster than light; are they trying to honor this? Why even introduce FTL? The old show didn't have it and didn't need it. As was illustrated in the miniseries and "33", traveling by jump increases the possibility of people getting left behind. I guess they only use it in emergencies. I don't think it's a good idea though.
The flashbacks pretty much just don't work for me in this episode. I mean, it's nice that Tigh is thinking about Adama, but they get repetetive, and they are so short that we have no context for what we are seeing. Some might argue this is good, as Tigh wouldn't necessarily be remembering everything that happened on a given day in the moment. But I think we could have used a little more. They kind of don't go anywhere, ultimately. We see Tigh with hair and Adama with a moustache that makes him look funny, and we learn that Adama got Tigh back into the fleet. But that's it. I've watched the deleted footage of all the flashbacks. Some don't work, and I'm glad they were cut. But I think more of the opening in the bar when they met would have helped. In the episode, we just get a handshake: "Hi, I'm Adama. Hi, I'm Tigh." There's no context for that. When you know what came before, it means a little more. At least I'll say this; having shot it means the actors know the backstory so when they play scenes of remembering, they can really remember, even if we the audience don't know all the details.
I like that Tigh doesn't hold back in beating Boomer. Not that I'm fond of seeing women beaten. But she's a Cylon, and it's right for the characters. He also asks the right questions; who gave the order to shoot? Are there other Cylon pilots?
Someone in the beginning of the episode questioned whether shooting Adama was part of some bigger Cylon plan. I hope it is, because the whole "they've got a plan" thing still feels random and silly to me.
We end with another "to be continued", so I hope that some of the hanging questions here are resolved.
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