I reviewed it already, and you can read that here.

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Before I share my thoughts about the telemovie, I have to say this: If you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to be spoiled, click away NOW. Consider yourself warned.

So the idea behind “The Plan,” ostensibly, was to tell the untold story of the Cylons. The plan they had when they attacked the Colonies in the miniseries.

Problem is, The Plan itself boiled down to, “First thing we do, let’s kill all the humans.” (With apologies to Shakespeare.)

We knew that already. What this telemovie did – and did quite well – was to explain what happened with many little plot points, such as:
• Who did Caprica Six turn and speak to, turning over a metal case, when Baltar left her on that fateful day on Caprica in the miniseries (Cavil).
• How did Boomer’s programming work? How was she “activated”? (A statue of an elephant. Yes, really. An elephant. Why? Beats the hell outta me.)
• What really happened with the water supply being blown out. What really happened with Boomer shooting Adama (she obviously overcame her programming out of love for Adama, or else she would have just shot him in the head, killing him instantly).
• What really happened with that copy of Caprica Six (meaning, her hair was as platinum blonde as CS) with the glasses in Season 1 who accused Baltar of almost exactly what he had done down on the planet, but with poorly photoshopped images (one of her doppelgangers, a prostitute, walked a lot faster than she did and managed to elude the Marines after her, then took off her wig and the actual Six was ordered to airlock herself by Cavil).
• What was Simon’s deal? (One of his copies was married to a human and airlocked himself out of resurrection range in order to not blow up his ship, and his family. Another version was with Anders on the planet.

Other things I liked about the movie were that it showed how at least one of most models, even Cavil, ended up caring deeply for the humans. Leoben couldn’t get Starbuck and her special destiny out of his head. Boomer didn’t kill Adama when she had the chance because she truly loved him as a father (plus, she and Caprica Six were truly devastated when the humans they were leading to safety were slaughtered by Centurions). Simon killed himself rather than his wife and stepdaughter. Even the Brother Cavil with Anders grew to care about the motley crew of survivors he led. We still got very little sense of Doral and unfortunately we saw none of D’Anna.

And I liked that Simon was such a large part of the telemovie, because we hardly saw any of him for the entire run of the series and he always seemed so interesting to me.

I also liked the little moments where there was contact between the Final Five and the Significant Seven, which ranged from extremely significant (Cavil with Ellen on Picon in the strip joint) to minor (when the Five came to the airlocking of the two Cavils.

The things we didn’t find out, that I very much would have liked to have seen, were still vast:
• How, exactly, did Caprica Six’s body manage to shield Baltar from the nuclear explosion when she herself was destroyed?
• Who were each of the Significant Seven modeled after? We know Cavil was a copy of Ellen Tigh’s dad. What about all the others? I’m sure they all were based on someone from the Final Five’s lives.
• What about Daniel, the boxed No. 7 that was but a footnote in the original series, yet drove all the fans bat-guano crazy?
• Why did Leoben FREAK OUT when he saw Kara was dead on Earth? I mean, c’mon, the man FLIPPED THE HELL OUT. He couldn’t have run away any faster if Cylon-eating Dobermans had been on his tail.
• More about the Centurions. They came first, they had self-awareness first, they created the Significant Seven with the Final Five’s help. And how, exactly, did Cavil manage to erase the memories of the Final Five AND the memories of all the other models? It seems that would be connected to his control over the Centurions and Raiders.
• The backstories of the Final Five, how they were planted on the Colonies. They couldn’t age (or could they?), so how did their hanging around for 40 years work out?

I knew the whole issue of how the Final Five ended up leaving Earth and coming to the Colonies wouldn’t be addressed here, but that’s a miniseries/telemovie I’d LOVE to see.

In all, I felt the movie was a wonderful character study, especially of Cavil. When he knifed that boy after giving him a piece of apple, it became obvious we had never misjudged his character. The Cavil on the Galactica was obviously the Cavil who ended up in charge of things back at the Colony. He was irredeemable and it didn’t much matter what happened, he hated the humans and being modeled after them. That’s a story, I admit, that I’d like to see, as well.

Perhaps some of these issues will be addressed by Caprica (not the whole Earth/Kobol connection, though). Either way, that series looks to be very promising. I just have to watch it one more time before I write up my thoughts on that.

I’d love to hear everyone else’s thoughts on The Plan, so please let me know what was good, bad or indifferent about it.

Oh, and here’s a couple of cool BSG-related posts:
• From i09: 5 Things You Didn’t Know About BSG Season 4
• From the Hairballs blog on HoustonPress.com: Why Battlestar Galactica Kicks Star Wars‘ Ass

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A friend of mine finally finished watching Battlestar Galactica, thanks to his Netflix membership and wrote me to tell me how much he and his wife loved the ending – and asking me a couple of questions about the finale.

I think about the finale often, I’ll admit, and I haven’t erased it off my DVR yet, though I haven’t watched it more than twice. I’ve gone back and forth from loving it to being disappointed in the last few minutes of it.

But as I wrote back to my friend, whom I’ll call S., I realized it really was the perfect ending. It is what the show was about all along. Fate. Destiny. Faith. Whatever the personal belief of the viewers, this is what the show was about.

The belief in the one true god was a dividing line between human and cylon from the miniseries itself. Not the only thing that separated them, but it wouldn’t be the first time religion exacerbated a rift between two cultures.

As I wrote, I realized I was putting an awful lot of thought into my answers, so  I thought I’d share his questions and my answers here, too. I’d love to hear what others think.

• First, S. wondered why Cavil killed himself. His wife thought it was because he believed he’d be resurrected on the base ship, but he disagreed. “I thought there was no further opportunity for resurrection. That’s why he agreed to let Hera go, after he was promised that the Cylons would re-create resurrection.”

He’s right, in fact. There was no further opportunity for resurrection, at least not until the Cylons figured it out again, and that seemed highly unlikely.

Cavil killed himself, I believe, because he saw that his time was at an end. I think he killed himself almost BECAUSE there was no resurrection, rather than it spite of there being no resurrection.

Why? Because no matter what he said about the Final Five, he wanted to be one of them. They were his creators. When he saw the whole group of them together and then Tori was gone and there no longer was any hope for his resurrection, what did he have to live for anymore?

He certainly did not want to reproduce the “human” way, nor did he want to reproduce WITH humans. His back was against a wall and he did what all bullies/cowards do: He took the easy way out and ended his life so he didn’t have to figure out where to go from there.

The other question S. had was about the very final scene. It was obvious to him how Caprica Six could be there. She was, after all, a Cylon. But how could Baltar be there? S’s wife suggested they were the “angel” versions and S. thought that made perfect sense.

I completely agreed with his wife on this one, and I think that’s been pretty well established now (hey, he just finished watching, he hasn’t read anything about it to this point so he wouldn’t be spoiled!).

I reminded him of the visions both Baltar and Caprica Six had of the “Head Baltar.”

But then I wondered: Were the “earthly” versions of them actually angels as well? Forced to take human and Cylon form in order to push their races on the path they needed to go.

It kind of makes sense. After all, how in the world did Baltar survive the nuclear blast in the miniseries? It never really made any sense. How could Caprica Six truly have shielded him from that blast, which destroyed his home? She was destroyed and resurrected. And we never saw how Baltar got there.

Was Baltar truly an angel the whole time and Caprica Six an angel the whole time – not all the Sixes, just Caprica Six – in order to blend in and put humanity on a course to finally be at peace with the Cylons?

I’m starting to wonder. Of course, in some ways it doesn’t matter any more, it’s a moot point. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to know.

S’s final thought on the finale was a comment/observation, about Kara. He wasn’t so sure how he felt about her being an angel/ghost. But, he remarked, everything in the series had kind of made sense and had been explained. But Kara’s return never really did make any logical sense. Which was, of course, the point.

I realized in writing my response that it did make perfect sense for Kara to be an angel. She gave her life to her destiny. Her destiny was to find Earth and lead both races to it. And then to find the next Earth and lead both races to it to start over.

But it made me realize that one thing truly was never explained: How did her mother know she had a destiny? Did her mother have any idea what this destiny was? I’d have loved to have understood her mother more.

And her father – well, Kara being an angel/ghost makes me believe that perhaps she really was playing piano with her father on Galactica. Her father could have been an angel/ghost, and guiding her along to give her the clues she needed to fulfill her destiny. The only difference is that everyone in the fleet could see Starbuck. But they had to see her in order to trust her at all. Only Kara needed to see her dad.

That’s all I’ve got for now. However, we do have The Plan telemovie airing this fall, and an article on i09 promised we’d actually learn why Boomer stuck by Cavil, which has been a rather baffling point as well.

And, it appears that yet ANOTHER treatment of BSG, this time with Glen A. Larson’s blessing, could be coming to the big screen, according to HitFix.com, helmed by Bryan Singer.

I have to say, I’m good with that. Even though it would be a different take on it, I’ve never been able to get enough of BSG, even the cheesy Galactica: 1980.

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Can’t wait! Here’s the trailer for the Battlestar Galactica telemovie airing this fall, “The Plan.”

Looks fraktacularly awesome, naturally:

(Hat tip to i09, where I originally saw it posted.)

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I’ve not ended the So Say We All blog carnival for simply one reason: Battlestar Galactica: The Plan – the BSG telemovie – airs in September and from what I read this weekend on SciFi Wire, it’s gonna be amazing.

It’s written by Jane Espenson and directed by Edward James Olmos and it’s not exactly a secret what it’s about: It’s the Cylon perspective on basically the entire series. How and why the Cylons did what they did.

I think it’s a brilliant move because we pretty much were conditioned to believe the Cylons were just bad, unfeeling machines. Sure, they were given more humanity than the original BSG allowed, but in the end, they were bent on the destruction of humanity and, being human, that didn’t go over too well with us, the viewers.

Lest we forget, it was humanity who made the first move, by making slaves out of the machines. (I have the Caprica miniseries on DVD, by the way, and just haven’t had a chance to watch it. I’m hoping the slow summer season gives me the opportunity to watch it and finish Season 1 of Torchwood, too, but that’s another story for another day.)

One of the nice things about the telemovie, I believe, is that it’s going to give more airtime to some of the lesser-known characters. We had lots of time with the various iterations of Six, we got lots of D’Anna and the Sharons. Leoben had a not insignificant amount of screentime. But considering his role in everything, Cavil didn’t get as much play as one might have expected.

And Simon and Theodore (sorry, Aaron) got so little screentime it was easy to forget one or both of them. Aaron had virtually no facetime with the audience after the miniseries and Simon was in those couple of episodes that took place on the radioactive Caprica when Starbuck met Anders, and then showed up most as window dressing after that.

One might think we’d see more of those two in particular because they sided with Brother Cavil, and this is, after all, Cavil’s war.

Olmos pretty much confirmed that much in the SciFi Wire article, saying Dean Stockwell was basically the star of the telemovie:

I have to tell you right now, Dean Stockwell is a brilliant artist. He does a magnificent job of leading The Plan. The Plan is exactly that. It was how they planned to do what they did and what happened. It was monumental. All I can tell you is it’s an extraordinary look at the Cylons, how they masterminded what they did.

It’ll be interesting, too, if we learn more about the Final Five Cylons’ backstories, which seems possible. And maybe more about Daniel?

Olmos thinks the telemovie will give fans a reason and desire to go back to the beginning of the series and watch it again, with a new perspective.

I’d wager he’s right. After all, we don’t need much of a reason to go back and watch it all over again.

It’s supposed to air in September and I, for one, can’t frakkin’ wait.

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