The Plan

I've finally watched The Plan, and despite all of the hype surrounding it, the movie simply proves that there was in fact no plan at all, as I've suspected since the first season. I was hoping for a plan that would make it make sense, but the show itself clearly shows that there were a lot of different ideas floating around and that the Cylons had no unified plan. This fact ultimately makes The Plan a failure.

I like the little touch of the Universal logo being integrated into the start of the movie. I also like that the opening titles were not seen, unlike in Razor. However, Razor this ain't. That was a great movie. This is only okay. It's interesting that they use the Final Five for voiceover of the usual pre-cap sequence. Unfortunately, the constant reminders of who the Final Five are (and ultimately the closing use of audio from "No Exit") make this movie impossible to be viewed early on. Razor could still be watched after "The Captain's Hand" and nothing would be lost. But even though this movie is set around the time of "Lay Down Your Burdens" as a framing device, it cannot be watched there unless you have already seen the whole series. Or, I suppose it could be watched there, but it would spoil things astronomically. That's kind of a shame.

The overhead shot of the Final Five in the resurrection tanks reminded me of the sleeper pod opening of Alien.

The one big redeeming factor of this movie is Dean Stockwell, who essentially carries the whole movie. If you are a Dean Stockwell fan, it is worth watching for his performance. But I fear that this movie will not play well in isolation as there is very little internal plot, and the sequence of time jumps so quickly that no real context is given if you haven't already watched the series.

For some reason, there is nudity in this movie. I don't know if this is just Eddie Olmos indulging himself or what. The series at times implied nudity and danced around it for television (such as the naked Sharons). I think there's a point at which including some peeks during scenes like that isn't too bad. But why are there topless bartenders? Those seem just thrown in purely to be salacious. Nudity in the sex scene is one thing, but I don't get the gratuitous boobies. I wonder how that will be cut around for the television airing. There was also nudity in the locker room which reminded me of that bit in RoboCop where the guys and girls dress together and it's no big deal.

For me, truly the greatest thing about this movie's existence, and the only real reason to watch it, is that for once in BSG history we finally get to see the attack on all 12 colonies. Or on most of them anyway. One of my biggest complaints about the miniseries was that it was so focused on Caprica. It's great to see all of the destruction that was rampant throughout the system. I don't really like that the base stars are hinged in the middle and can spin around to make these points. That seemed thrown in just to look cool. It was also good to see the pyramid team and what they were doing at the time. We were told about it way back in season 2, but it's different to see it. I don't really like that Simon is the team doctor though. That seems unnecessary. Also, the little badges that the team have on their shirts remind me of Star Trek insignia.

So... this plan that the title speaks of is just Cavil's plan? We are told that the plan was the destruction of all humanity, but that didn't happen. I'm curious why it didn't happen, really. It was a total nuclear barrage! Why wouldn't they have attacked even harder? Why not keep nuking the place? I get that the fleet survived because they didn't have networked computers. I'll buy that. But looking at it this way, if the Cylon plan was to completely annihilate humanity, why are people still alive on Caprica? It makes the survival of Helo and the pyramid team (and the women in the farms) seem really silly. And the existence of the farms isn't really explained. If the plan was to kill them all, why are they experimenting with them? How long has this been going on? At least on the old show, when the colonies were destroyed, they were destroyed. All that was left was the fleet. Keeping that Caprica story was maybe one of the biggest mistakes for the series in its first season because it undermines the Cylon threat.

But anyway, the "plan" we've been told about at the start of every episode was NOT this plan! No matter how much they try to double-talk it, we were told that "they HAVE a plan"; that's have, not had. But really this isn't a plan of a "they" but of a "he", Brother Cavil. It is HIS plan we are watching unfold, and it is confined to the fleet. It has nothing to do with the Cylons who are chasing them nor with the stuff going on on Caprica. They try to tie in Caprica by putting a Cavil with the pyramid team, but his schemes there are really more confined to trying to extract apology from Anders, and he has little to do with the broader machinations on the planet. It turns out this plan we've been told of all along was really just Cavil wanting to make his "parents" feel sorry for making him so human.

What about the transponder things from the miniseries that led to the suspicion of Cylons in the fleet? Why is this not touched on? That seemed to be a major part of the Cylon plan (rather than the Cavil plan), and it is completely ignored. I like the bits where we go into the episodes, like "33", but why ignore the Olympic Carrier incident? This would have been a perfect opportunity to answer whether or not there were Cylons on board.

I give this thing some credit for answering certain lingering questions and for trying to integrate well with previous episodes. Some of this works very well, like Cavil's rescue of Ellen Tigh. I also like the explanation about Shelley Godfrey. We learn that the suicide bombing was Cavil's idea (why, I'm still not sure. If he wanted to do REAL damage, wouldn't he have sent the guy down to the engine room with the suicide vest?), but I like that it's pointed out that the bombing was a failure. When it aired I thought "so they blew up an empty hallway; big deal." Some other elements just don't entirely work. I don't really buy that certain elements like that bombing were plotted so early as they were here. Also, the Leoban story doesn't integrate as well as it should. I don't understand why the order is never given to blow up any of the other ships in the fleet. The movie seems too focused on Galactica, and not on the other Cylons we know are milling about on other ships.

I do like the Simon in the fleet and his relationship. It's an interesting dynamic that plays into the themes the show explored about Cylon/human relationships. The internal Cylon tension between destruction and love is played out in microcosm here. But again, why is he on the Galactica?

Even with all of the Cylons we see here, do we get to the total of 8 in the fleet that Sharon gave us back in season 2? I don't think so. But there are a few more Sixes met here. Also, reference is made to D'Anna, but her work seems to be unrelated to everything else. I guess they couldn't get Lucy Lawless for the movie.

I hate the Sharon stuff, which to me is the biggest failure of this movie. Watching the first season, she doesn't know for sure that she is a Cylon, she only suspects it. But here, we are told that she DOES know. How do they reconcile that fact? They have it so she only remembers who she is when holding a magical elephant figurine! Does this seem stupid to anybody else?

I do like that we learn what became of all the human corpses. Back in "Kobol's Last Gleaming" or thereabouts Kara asked why there are no bodies in the streets. Here we see that they have been gathered and incinerated by the Cylons. What is not made clear is... why? What good is this? Were they ever planning to use these planets, or did they just want to kill all the humans? It's an explanation, but it still betrays an underlying unanswered question.

The later half of the movie doesn't play as well because events jump even more, and it becomes difficult to keep track of after awhile. It's also curious to me that there is no mention at all made of the Pegasus. It might have been interesting to see Gina in the start of the movie and her assignment on Pegasus. Maybe they tried to not step on anything Razor had already done.

There's a weird little subplot with an orphan boy who keeps trying to hang around with Cavil. His name is John. Is he meant to represent Cavil's "younger self", the human self that he avoids? When Cavil killed him, it made me realize that there was a lost opportunity to explain what happened to Boxey. I know the actor is probably all grown up now, but they had a real chance here to explain his sudden absence.

I'm confused about Tyrol's dream. Was he having that dream before the conversation where Simon's wife talks about jumping off the rail? The editing made that unclear to me.

Ultimately, this movie is disappointing because we know where it's all going and in the grand scheme of things it doesn't add anything big. It fills in a few little gaps, and those are appreciated, but it really doesn't stand well on it's own. A good job is done editing together old and new footage, at times using alternate takes and angles from original episodes, and it's nearly seamless. But it just makes me realize what a shame it was that the series was so slapdash from the beginning, and that it could not be entirely explained. It's a good try, but unlike Razor, I don't feel the need to see it again any time soon. But maybe if I ever feel like watching seasons one and two again (which is doubtful), I'll intersperse it with The Plan.

Favorite line: "His jacket was burgundy. This is teal."

BSG: Season 4 review

The fourth season was I guess better than the third, but not by much. There were a couple of good ideas floating around, and it's good to get back to the show being about Earth. But then they found Earth, and it made everyone go crazy, so maybe it wasn't so good after all.

The body count was far too high for me this time around. It smacks of desperation to me for so many primary characters to die, especially in a series that is ostensibly about the survival of humanity. Dualla deserved better. Zerek deserved better. And the Tigh/Six baby did too. You can tell when a series is running out of ideas when they start writing in random pregnancies, and often series where it is obviously a desperate device will then kill said baby. And we got that here. It reminds me of that Promised Land episode (and believe me, my mother was a fan and I would never have watched the show on my own) where the mom had a baby. It was a two-parter and I predicted it would die next week. And it did. Because when you've already got seven people crammed into a trailer, are you really going to throw a baby into that mix week to week? There's also a danger of characters like that ruining a show's dynamic. Dil hurt Rugrats some, and then the show was destroyed by Kimmie. Anyway, the Tigh/Six fetus in the end was a red herring and a waste of our time.

There were a lot of wasted elements in season four. So many elements were started, then either ignored or written off quickly. While they tried to make the most out of the Baltar cult, there just wasn't a story there, and it always felt forced to me. The mythology of the series was almost entirely rewritten, so not everything works together. The "Face of the Enemy" webisodes implied that alliance with the Cylons was a bad idea, but this never really comes about. NOTHING bad really comes of it, so we were being teased with nothing. We had a similar issue with the return of Kara Thrace, which still doesn't make sense. Her appearance and the slap-dash explanation thrown in were about as bad as all the times Baltar was dead but then wasn't on the old series. And then as we got to the finale, we had Ellen turn out to be a Cylon, which completely changes things on New Caprica, sudden mutinies, suicides, loads more annoying Roslin, a magic bullet and a ship coming apart at the seams. It all seemed manufactured to end, rather than naturally ending.

There was some good amidst it all. Once the damage had been done and the mythology had been confused, at least they made an attempt to make some sense of it in "No Exit". And there's that really nice moment when Tigh is talking about love and says he feels it less when he says the words. I think many men relate to that idea, and that's probably the best little piece in the whole season. It's good that they finally do get to Earth, and that a number of points from the old series are hit in some way or other. I don't like the reaveal that this is our distant past, as it leaves no good explanation for the quotes from Shakespeare, Defoe, Emily Dickensen, or "All Along the Watchtower". 

The "colony" where Cavil was conveniently hiding was nothing of the kind; it was a ship. So when was this ship built? Why was this ship built? Was it always hidden there? I didn't like that element at all.

Lee no longer being a pilot ended up dragging his character down because there was soon very little for him to do. He just became a politician, and after awhile they didn't know what to do with that. So that arbitrarily made him President. While the build-up to his leaving the service felt organic to me, what came next never did.

It's a shame that after the good that was Razor, the series returned to a pattern of fits and starts; sound and fury that signified very little. Not everything tied together, and that's too bad. Still, despite the didactic nature of it, the show did return to the themes it began with in the miniseries. Now, I hated that theme, but at least there's a certain poetry to that. And yet the cyclical nature of things ended up being the point of the show. And if that's the case, why does any of this matter anyway? All this happened before. With rumor of Bryan Singer doing his own version soon, must we accept that this will all happen again?

Best episodes: "Guess What's Coming to Dinner", "No Exit", "Daybreak" (though there's a lot wrong with it)

Worst episodes: "The Ties That Bind", "Sometimes a Great Notion"

Daybreak

And now we come to the finale. I've been lazy about posting these notes, so it's about time we do it.

The first thing to notice is that there are no flashes for what's coming in the episode at the end of the title sequence. This is the first episode to do this since the brought them back in season 2. It makes sense, since they wouldn't want to spoil the finale.

The episode's structure began to remind me very much of the finale of TNG, as it goes back in time, and ultimately to the future. And just as on TNG, we start not at the beginning of the series, but before the beginning of the series. Some of these flashbacks are interesting, some are not. In fact, the whole flashback structure made the episode feel much more like Lost than BSG. I don't much like Laura's flashback, but then I don't much like Laura. Why does she have that ugly bump thing in her hair that all the girls are doing now? I just plain don't understand it. There is nothing appealing about it. It just looks stupid. Like you're a conehead or something. Why were we introduced to her sisters only to kill them off, including the pregnant one? It didn't really seem like it connected to anything, it was just an event. And then she went and sat in a fountain for no reason. Somehow all of this leads up to her joining the President's campaign... really??

Hey, Zack's back! At least that's something. I was glad to see some of that relationship which was barely there in "Act of Contrition", but even here it is sidelined to have Kara and Lee all over each other while Zack is passed out on the floor. Missed opportunity. 

Oddly enough, the character with the best flashback is Baltar. With him, we actually get to see a kind of character arc which will also inform his future. I like meeting his father. The best part of it was how Gaius was chided for changing his accent. That's a nice bit of continuity from last season and in a series that has played fast and lose with established facts, I like that they made something of that. It's great that he will eventually come full circle at the end so that he will say that he is a farmer when on Earth.

As long as we're comparing BSG to TNG, am I the only one who thinks it odd that Ron Moore destroyed the Enterprise in Star Trek Generations, and here is destroying Galactica at the end of BSG?

I don't like the Anders flashback much. I mean, I like that we actually get to see more of the triad team (I'm still not calling it pyramid), but I don't like all that business about perfection. It is a way for them to act as if he was always that way and to try to point out he was always a Cylon, but it falls flat for me. I guess though they had nothing else for him to do since he's comatose in a tub and will soon fly into the sun.

I don't get the thing with the pigeon and Lee. It doesn't signify anything. It's just there taking up screen time. They cut the Boomer/Helo flashbacks from the aired version but kept this? The only significance is that I realized that pigeon is the only animal we have ever seen on this show. Ever. Unless there were a few birds in some Caprica backgrounds, that's the only animal we've ever seen on a planet. Isn't that odd? When Roslin mentioned how Earth has far more wildlife than all of the twelve colonies, I couldn't help laughing. "Yeah, all the colonies had was one pigeon!" Of course, that raises the obvious question of how pigeons evolved on two seperate planets. But then, the original series had dogs (or daggits). 

I have in my notes "Why is Caprica doing that?" but since it's been almost two weeks, I don't remember what it refers to. But I'm sure I had a point there somewhere.

Now Romo gets to be President? How the frack does that make sense? Is there no law of succession anymore? I mean, that's how Roslin got to be President in the first place. What makes her think she can just pick the random lawyer? Never mind that the office is essentially useless once they hit Earth. It's also a shame when the sleazy lawyer seems more honest than President Roslin.

Hooray! We get to see the old-school Cylon Centurions again! 

And finally we get the reappearance of Head Baltar. It's a nice beat when both Gaius and Caprica realize they can each see them. 

When Helo was shot in the leg, I wrote "Helo's gonna die". And I totally expected it. At first, I thought it a cheat, since they brought him back from death in the miniseries only to kill him at the end of the show. But on the other hand, it seemed to make the most sense. Moore loves the body count, so I figured they'd kill Athena and Helo and then Six and Baltar would raise the baby just as was predicted way back in season one. ...Only that didn't happen. Helo disappears for awhile, but then we see him with a crutch on Earth and everything is fine. Um, what? So all of that stuff from "Kobol's Last Gleaming" onward about Gaius raising the baby NEVER HAPPENS. So he was lied to by an angel? Why then should we believe anything anyone says on this show?? That's a BIG point to never pay off!

I know it's the finale, and they were on a tight schedule. The effects for the most part are good, but in all the battle sequences on the colony ship, the Centurions never look quite right. They look rendered poorly so that the lighting on them doesn't quite match. They look like they were composited in. This is a shame, since they had really been getting good at this.

I have to say, all of the intercutting with the opera house stuff was done in such a way that it almost worked. It's probably the highlight of the episode, and really gives the feeling that it was all connected. Of course, given a minute's thought it makes no sense at all. Why the connection to an opera house on Kobol anyway? why do the final five have glowing hoods? None of that ever actually goes anywhere, but I'll call it a valiant attempt at making connections. At least then some of those events play out. Sadly, the whole Kobol element pretty much drops out of the show, which makes so many of these things confused.

I really don't like or understand Baltar's little speech about God at the end. His ecumenical theosophy that "God is a force of nature beyond good and evil" is silly, at least to this universe. "Good and evil, we created those." Really? So what got them banished from Kobol in the first place? I can sort of see how God would be beyond what humans might define as good and evil, but there must still be things that are good and things that are not, right? Isn't mankind creating his own destruction an evil thing? And frankly, there has to be some kind of "god" entity on this show. HAS to be. Not just because he sent angels, either. The basic mythology of the show is that humans were banished from Kobol by the gods, the Lords of Kobol. Who were they? Were they really the Greek deities? We don't know, but we are led to believe no. Fine, but they have to be SOMEONE, right? Moore's basic mythology, which he laid out on podcast after podcast was that man created Cylons, essentially playing god, and for that they were banished by god or the gods or whoever. So there is SOME deity that set it all in motion. We've also been told that the Cylons believe this power to be the one true God, and that the other gods are false. So were the "Lords of Kobol" real angelic beings who acted as gods on Kobol? Or was there one God there who became twisted in the stories into many gods later on? The most curious thing about it is that angel Six was so adamant that there is only one God and that Baltar would be his instrument. So if she is really an angel, you'd think she really would speak for this God. But then, for the first two seasons, she was still very Cylon in nature, so maybe none of it makes sense. In any case, I really expected as the show went on for there to be a God who wasn't the Lords of Kobol and wasn't quite the Cylon God either, but was an expression of some ultimate truth that both cultures knew about. Instead we are told that god is an indefinable force. Great Gaius. How very "Star Wars" of you.

I like that Tyrol finally learns about Callie and what a jerk Tory was. Did he need to kill her right then? Maybe not. But I'm glad she got what she deserved.

I hated the fact that "All Along the Watchtower" ended up being coordinates, primarily because I expected that. I had that figured out three episodes ago. But she's sitting there trying to plug it into algebra? Though I also have to ask why the song happens to contain the coordinates to Earth. Is this some expression of "god", or is it just a really lucky coincidence? I also hate that Kara has to do the obvious thing of quoting "There must be some kind of way out of here," when she punches it in. What's most offensive about that to me is that it quotes the Hendrix version, not the original. Dylan never sang "kind of", and that phrase weakens the punch of the line. 

What do you know, there's another Earth. Just like I predicted, it really is all like the original series. Only in the old show, the "real Earth" was the second one. Here, the "real Earth" was the ruined one, and this just happens to be our Earth which is not the Earth the prophecies spoke of. Confused yet? It's very lame to me that they just decide to call it Earth. 

I guess there was some mention about it, but I'm a little vague on how the rest of the fleet got to Earth. There was one line about it, but it was still not clear to me.

We soon come to learn that this is Earth in our distant past. Which means the entire series took place literally "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." This also is a great departure from Larson's series, which featured brothers of man "even now" beyond the heavens. 

It's a curious thing, this connection to the original show. Essentially, this episode pays homage to it while simultaneously betraying it. Just as in the original series, mankind reaches Earth and essentially builds its early civilization. But this plays out so much differently. I think the whole attitude can be best expressed by that last shot of the fleet. We get a fly-by that is meant to replicate the shot of the fleet we saw at the end of every old episode, complete with elements of the old theme music under it... and then they all fly into the sun and are destroyed. It's almost as if they are flying the old series into the sun.

I guess the whole "dying leader" thing goes nowhere. I wonder how the Geminons feel about their prophecies not coming true. That's an angle that really should have been played but never was. I'm glad Roslin finally died though. Still, why does Adama just decide then to live off by himself? That seems pretty dumb to me.

Of course the whole notion that all of the fleet would just decide to forsake technology and live like savages, hoping that the neanderthals wouldn't kill them is silly too. I also don't like that it places these events in sub-saharan Africa. Despite where fossilized "human ancestors" are found, I don't buy the African genesis stuff. All early civilization is in the Middle East. I can't jump on the idea that a few simian bones means we evolved in Africa. How do we know these are even ancestral hominids? How do we know mankind evolved at all? How do we know these aren't just extinct species of ape? They call them ancestors because they want to believe it. Still, it just doesn't make logical sense to me for man to evolve in Africa, and then develop writing and iron and wheels and calendars and architecture in Sumeria. Especially if I'm to believe the Galacticans had all of this!

The one thing I will say about the whole ancient Earth thing though is that I'm glad that there was no pangaea. We saw the continenatal masses from space, and they looked pretty much as they do now. I don't really buy the whole pangaea thing since when you really think about it it doesn't make sense. I can believe there are tectonic plates and fault lines and that there's a slight continental drift. But to believe that all of the continents were one big one based solely on the idea that South America's east coast looks a lot like Africa's west coast is silly. There is LAND between them under the ocean! The continents are not just floating islands on the sea! Furthermore, if we are to believe that "native Americans" came over on a land bridge between Russia and Alaska, that would mean that THOSE continents were connected over on that side. If the pangaea argument is correct, not only would Russia and Alaska not be connected at that time, but they would be FURTHER apart! But I digress.

Kara Thrace being the angel of death was a total red herring, and essentially a lie. She never brought about the destruction of humanity (not even close), nor did she really bring death. And then we are to believe she was, what, an angel? That her mission was to bring them to Earth? NO! Her mission was to bring death! Who sent her? Where did she come from? She was corporeal! We saw her and felt her! We watched her pee for crying out loud! So where did she go? Is this just to make her like Jesus or something? And even Jesus physically rose in the same body he died in; Kara did not! Her story makes absolutely no sense at all.

And then suddenly we flash forward 150,000 years. I'm no scientist; is that time frame supposed to be accurate? Anyway, we are led to believe that Hera is the "mitochondrial Eve" from which we all sprung. ...What? So Hera is so important because she was us? That's it? And that means that we are all part Cylon! So I was right; this whole show IS about the Cylons. Why have scientists not found any evidence of any of the other 40,000 humans there; only this one girl? And what about the modern clothing that they were wearing? Why haven't they found zippers in their archaeological digs? And again, how exactly are the skin-job Cylons machines?? They seem just biological. Did Hera only inherit the Cylon biology, but not the mechanisms? And more interestingly, who did she mate with? Was it a human, thus diluting the Cylon blood, or was it a neanderthal? Is the gradual dilution of Hera's Cylon blood over time the reason that we no longer have magic blood that cures cancer?

I knew Ron Moore would give himself a cameo. I don't like that angel Six and Baltar appear at the end. They seem to be there for no reason at all, other than to give this didactic message to us. Nobody sees them except us; so why do WE see them as Six and Gaius? I really hate the ending. It's just obvious and preachy. "Watch out humans, or you could destroy yourselves again..." As if we didn't get that that was the point of the series from the very beginning anyway. And note, they fled from the colonies to escape war and all, then they become us. So isn't this all really inevitable? All this has happened before, and it will all happen again, so do we really have any control over it anyway? And to top it all off, AGAIN I have to sit through "All Along the Watchtower", this time the actual Hendrix recording, as we look at the evolution of robots. I like the driving percussive element, but honestly I don't get why the Hendrix version gets so much devotion. He doesn't even know the words! Can anyone tell me what he sings after "plowmen dig my earth"? Because it sure isn't Dylan's lyric!

Ultimately, the end is a letdown as it was always going to be. The abandoned most of the mythology a long time ago, and then had to find a way to make things seem like they connected. Well, it doesn't all connect. The Kara Thrace story doesn't resolve. The show gets back to it's preachy nihilistic origins. Ultimately, Gaius comes off the best; he even essentially gets away with the destruction of mankind from the miniseries! So this guy who was supposed to be a villain, ends up buddy-buddy with angels who watch over mankind! And I hate that it all comes down to that song; I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to hear that song again.

I'm glad it's over anyway. End of line.

Favorite line: "A perfect face, perfect lace, find the perfect world for the end of Kara Thrace." Why is Anders rhyming? I find this very funny.

Island in a Stream of Stars

I've only watched the extended version of this. There are a lot of good moments in it, but it drags in a couple of places. 

I am so annoyed that we find out that Cavil is at some other colony. There's another colony? And there's been one all the time? Why haven't we heard about this before? 

Baltar has apparently come to the conclusion that Head Six is an angel. I entertained this notion some time ago, and thought this might be where the show would go with her (especially since she outright said once "I'm an angel of God"). But when I really think about it, that explanation doesn't entirely work. Baltar continues to explain it by saying he sees angels in the forms of people he cares deeply for. Does that mean he cares deeply for himself? He saw a Head Baltar back some time ago. Was that an angel too? Why was that one a Baltar when all the rest of the time it is Six? Does Caprica still see a Baltar as well? Furthermore, I have a hard time believing that it's an angel's job to essentially have sex with Baltar with the frequency Six does in the early seasons. 

It was good to see Baltar actually doing scientific work again. Remember when he was a scientist? Of course, his experiment only leads him to proclaim that Kara Thrace is an angel walking amongst them, but it was still good to see. I'm still waiting for an explanation of the whole Kara is harbinger of death story. She is SO not an angel.

It was good to hear Anders say that again, but I don't like him as a kind of hybrid. It's just too weird. How did they get away with pulling him from sickbay and hooking him up to the systems? And the explanation that the gunk they are putting on the bulkheads is responsible for all the power outages is pretty lame. But I like that the lights flicker as Anders blinks, and I like how that wasn't explained for a good half hour. 

It's odd that Boomer finally discovered a maternal nature just as she turns Hera over to Cavil. It's funny that Hera projects the food in her hand as a cupcake. 

There came a point when Adama came to his quarters and started throwing paint on the walls until finally crying on the floor that I started rolling my eyes in boredom. We've seen this a dozen times before. How many big Adama meltdowns does this show really need? I'm just so tired of them. It reaches a point where it's no longer dramatic, it's just the standard Adama thing; it becomes a joke. I hope there isn't another one in the finale.

And now we have finally reached the finale. Soon, I shall be viewing the full extended version of "Daybreak", the much talked about end of the series. Will it be good? Unknown. Will it be satisfying? Unlikely. Will I be glad when it is all over? Undeniably.

Someone to Watch Over Me

I'm glad to see that there's a new Quorum of sorts, just as Lee suggested. That was pretty quick. But I am shocked that they actually went through with allowing Cylon representation in this quorum. That seems flatly ridiculous to me. Why isn't there more opposition to this? Were all those who would have complained silenced after the mutiny?

The show has spent so much time with silly things like New Caprica, the Final Five, and Baltar the underground hero that I had actually completely forgotten that Boomer and Tyrol were an item. Curious, but true. I like the little montage thing they did showing her being shot while we heard Tyrol's drunken ramblings from earlier in the season about how he settled for Callie. The additional information about Boomer's projection life of a house on Picon was interesting. I could understand why Tyrol would want to save Boomer from execution. Doesn't it seem odd though that Adama still wants her in the brig, even after she essentially died for the crime of shooting him? But in the end, Boomer plays everyone for a sap. Tyrol swaps her with another Eight to save her from execution, and then she runs off with Hera! This was the plan all along! I do not understand why Boomer is SO evil now. It's like she's a completely different character (and keeping track of all the Sharons is starting to be very hard). I wonder whether Hera knew that it wasn't Athena right away, or did she have to wake up in a box before she figured it out. 

With Boomer being so bad, are we supposed to now think that execution was a good idea? Is the point of the story that compassion makes you weak?

Early on, I was thinking this was a pretty good episode. I liked that we were getting back to elements from season one. But then it became a Kara story and I lost interest. I knew that Hera's drawings would end up being music. The flash of the image during the end of the main titles solidified that for me. So I was just waiting for them to get there. I want to know who this piano player guy is and why he knows Kara so well. At first I thought he might even be her father, but that was never said. Then I thought maybe he's an angelic representation of her father, but everyone else seemed able to see him. So I don't know.

I was so afraid that the song she was going to play would end up being "Someone to Watch Over Me". While I'm glad it wasn't, I'm so sick of "Watchtower" being used again and again. I hope Bob Dylan is at least making money off the use of his song.

Why didn't we know until now that those things on the Galactica retract? That's cool! 

What began as a decent exploration of latent feelings in Tyrol devolved into a lot of Kara drinking and whining, more stupid use of the song, and a Boomer who is just mean for no reason. I got bored with the episode. I am glad that at least the opera house dreams are coming back into play.

Deadlock

The more I think about it, the more it seems making Ellen a Cylon was just an excuse to fix the mistake of killing her. I could tell Moore was really enamored with the character and only killed her because it was "dramatic", so now he can resurrect her as a Cylon. The problem with there being so many Cylons in the fleet for so long though is it strains credibility. What about medical exams? Wouldn't something have indicated they were Cylons? I know the miniseries made it seem like they were indistinguishable from humans, but there must be SOMETHING different about them. And why didn't Baltar's Cylon detector know that Tigh was a Cylon? We know that Hera has blood cells that are different from human cells. So shouldn't that mean that any Cylon could just get a blood test that would prove they weren't human? If that's the case, you'd think there would be blood samples from Ellen and Saul that would have been noticed in 40 years!

What about them is machine, exactly? They must have some kind of metallic element or computer drive somewhere. We know there are access ports in the arms of the Eights. So why is this such a surprise?? And how do they reproduce anyway; how does technology pass on biologically? Even the Borg had to be born organic and supplemented afterward. It just seems that the skin-job Cylons are completely biological; so how exactly does that make them machines?

It's funny that Ellen gets all mad at Saul for sleeping around, when it's usually Ellen who's frakking anything that moves. The fact that they have now shaded this relationship with incestuous overtones is disturbing.

The doctor says that Caprica Six is four months pregnant. I'm confused now. Does it really seem like it's been four months to you? They started frakking at the start of season four. Then they followed Kara to Earth. Nine days later, Gaeta was the lone survivor on the raptor. Then there was a mutiny. Now I can see it maybe being one month or even two, but four? I detest how this show plays so fast and loose with time!

The whole baby thread was once again a waste! They killed it off. Why? Because it's Hera that's important, and none of the other Cylon babies can survive. They retroactively made Tyrol's son not his so he wasn't a Cylon baby. They've now killed Tigh's son. It makes you wonder why they even wrote it in in the first place! But of course, at the time they probably didn't plan on bringing Ellen back. I'm all for discovering things along the way, but there is just to much writing by the seat of the pants on this show. It can be done, but too many huge story points just come out of nowhere. 

I've never been a fan of Ellen Tigh and the bickering between her and Saul. So to have to endure it again (so much so that it leads to a dead baby) was a chore.

On the other side, we have Baltar trying to regain his sheep, and trying to be humanitarian as well. There is good stuff there. I like his speech to Adama about protecting the human civilians. And I have to chuckle at his reaction to Six when she suggests bigger guns. All of this proves to me that he is not a villain, and certainly nothing like the Baltar of the original series. But I don't think the whole "Gaius and Six will raise Sharon's baby" thing is ever going to be resolved. And what about all the opera house visions?

Boomer has really been sidelined as a character. It's been so long since she's been on Galactica, I had to stop and think about why she should be in the brig. 

No Exit

Well, there's a pre-cap again, and it's a doozy. It includes most of the stuff from previous pre-caps, but also a lot more. So much so that they dispensed with the usual "previously on Battlestar Galactica" recap, for perhaps the first time in the series' history. As I suggested a little while ago, they now say "There are eleven known models." Note that the stuff about how they have a plan is no longer present. And I was just saying "Wouldn't Ellen have downloaded?" when lo and behold she was!

There's a lot of exposition thrown out in this episode and unfortunately it doesn't all work. Certain questions become doubled. It turns out it was the "Final Five" who created the current skin-job models, essentially making Ellen their mother. There's a lot of standard mythological "I love you because I made you" discussion between Ellen and Cavil, who we learn she had named John, which he hates. But what is puzzling is that she speaks of him as being a little boy at one point. Are we to believe that these models started young and then grew up? Or was this all badly written metaphor? But the really big problem with this revelation is that Cavil seems to know full well who the Final Five are, that Ellen is his maker and that he was involved in creating the others. This flatly contradicts some of the things he said last season where he talked about how it was not their place to know who the Final Five were and that the original programmers didn't want them to know. So we are to believe that Cavil always knew, and was just lying about all of that to hide the fact that he was responsible for their identities being secret? If that's the case, doesn't that make the whole New Caprica exercise play very differently? In this scenario, Cavil knows Tigh is a Cylon, so torturing him and pulling out his eye is just vengeance play on his part. But why would he sleep with Ellen Tigh? What sort of twisted Oedipal complex does that speak to? The story also gets confusing because we have to remember that there isn't just one John Cavil. So do they all have the same memories? Or is this Cavil the original and all the others are copies?

I noticed long ago that the "numbering" of the Cylons skipped 7. Obviously if there are 12 that just means that one of the Final Five was 7, but that seemed odd. Of course, the numbers are wrong because when they wrote that Sharon was an 8 they had no inkling of a "Final Five" storyline. So how do they fix this? They just say that there was a 7 line that Cavil messed with and that was the end of him. The Sevens were artistic and were named Daniel. A little part of me can't help thinking that perhaps Kara IS Daniel. Cavil's messing with the genetic code resulted in a female Daniel who still acted masculine in some ways (thus flipping off the fans who complained they made Starbuck a girl). Of course, this is probably nonsense. We know who Kara's parents were. 

The bullet in Anders' brain is so obviously a "device" it's not even funny. It's an excuse to get him talking. It smacks of the kind of soap opera stereotype we often hear: "My husband is a robot, but he thinks he's human, but since he got shot in the head, the bullet is making him remember his past robot lives". I'm going to call it the "magic bullet".

Anders' story is that the Final Five were the only Cylons to escape the destruction on Earth because they invented resurrection. Then they traveled to the other colonies to warn them about building robots, but it was too late because it was all happening again. ...Okay. We also learn that Earth Cylons could reproduce. What I don't understand about all of this is why D'Anna saw the Final Five as angelic glowing beings in the Kobol opera house. Firstly, because the Final Five aren't there, they are in the fleet. Secondly, because I don't really see what's so special about them, aside from the fact that they created the other models. Is it just that the D'Annas were programmed to view the Final Five as god-like beings? I don't get it. And going by to my complaint from before that the discussion of the "Final Five" being in the fleet was wrong since Ellen was not in the fleet; we now know she was on a Cylon base star! Did D'Anna know this? And where are the other Cylons that Sharon said there were way back in season 2???

They call in a brain surgeon, and it's Jon Hodgman? If the series wasn't a farce already, I think it just turned that corner. And he isn't even given a serious role to play; he's given goofy dialogue that makes him just a joke. If my brain surgeon showed up and he was Jon Hodgman, I would demand a new surgeon! He probably went to a hobo medical school.

Lee suggests that they rebuild the Quorum but that representation should be by ship rather than by colony. Well, duh. Doing it by colony worked for awhile because most of the ships were colonially homogenous. But after New Caprica, they should have done this! That just makes more sense. Why is nobody smart enough to figure things out in a timely fashion?

Is there supposed to be significance to Ellen offering Sharon an apple and then eating it herself? It certainly seems like they want it to have significance. Never mind that Adam and Eve (or Woman as she was known then) did not eat an apple (I don't know where that idea got started; probably some confusion with Snow White). I don't get what it means. Is Ellen the serpent? Is Ellen Eve? Is this supposed to be temptation or not? It's like they threw it in to make the audience go "Aha!" but it really doesn't seem to signify anything.

On the other hand, one can clearly see Cavil as a Cain figure (not the Admiral, the Biblical murderer). He murder his brother Daniel because he didn't get the favor he sought from his mother. There are also echos of Data and Lore from TNG. 

While we're on Star Trek parallels, we once again get into First Contact territory. Cavil complains how limiting the flesh is and how he wishes he were more mechanical. This is eerily reminiscent of the Borg Queen telling Data how they used to be organic ("flawed, weak") but evolved to include the synthetic. The Borg Queen sees the machine elements as perfecting the flaws in their nature, and Cavil sees things similarly. So Ron Moore is once again just repeating himself.

There was a fleeting reference to angels at one point, and I'm not sure where that is going either. Is it going to turn out that there is some analog to the Holy Kryptonians from the original series? It's also curious that the idea of one God came from the Centurions. Why did they develop a theological faith? It does explain why Cavil is so dismissive of it, since he was present when this idea was programmed into the other models. But doesn't that still cheapen so much of the story?

Galactica is falling apart now? May I just ask that if the ship was really suffering so much damage, why did nobody notice it until now? And Tyrol says he's got some organic Cylon stuff that can fix it. ...So really the ship has cancer, but the magic Cylon blood can cure that too!

In essence, this episode functioned much like the "Two Fathers/One Son" story on The X-Files, attempting to lay out and fix the mythology of the show. Similarly, certain details fell through the cracks. It was a decent episode, and I like these sorts of expositional stories, but at this point I don't believe the mythology will ever make the kind of sense that it should.