It’s funny how one scene can really turn an episode on its ear and turn it from meh to must-watch.

It’s a shame I had to wait through the entire episode to get there with this week’s 24, but the mano-a-mano between Renee and Vlad, as she’s on her knees next to the river and Vlad has a gun pointed at her face, demanding the truth was riveting.

My TV signal on Monday kept cutting out, so I only caught little snatches of the episode, mostly involving the crappiest sideplot since what may or may not have happened in Denver in Season 6.

I finally got to catch up on Hulu tonight and couldn’t believe how much Annie Wersching sold that final scene. You saw how tortured she was inside and she was actually telling Vlad the truth – if he didn’t go for the deal, she really didn’t have anything left.

The background of being undercover with the Russian mob and Vlad’s abuse of her makes her relatively fast acceptance of Jack last season make a little more sense. And it gives a different tone to the scene where she berates Jack for his methods, asking if he doesn’t care about anybody.

With the death of Mr. FBI Goody Two-Shoes boss last season, the last person she cared about, other than Jack, was gone. Two of her colleagues turned out to be moles, she went all Jack Bauer on a bunch of guys and Jack almost died.

I think the most amazing thing about Wersching’s understated performance was the over-the-top theatrics of the Dana Walsh/Jenny-oh-I-just-don’t-CARE-what-her-name-is storyline. The only good thing to come out of that insane scene was that we know why, supposedly, CTU didn’t know about her background – she was a minor when she went to prison.

Of course, given that it was for attempted murder and her employer is, oh, CTU, you’d think that the agency would have the resources to uncover such a past. Particularly given how many moles they’ve employed in the past. Someone so susceptible to blackmail? This is like Lynne back in, what, Season 5?

Was I the only one who was watching, thinking, “Come ON, Starbuck, you can totally take this guy. Why are you whimpering like a little girl?”

Sigh.

And president Hassan’s wife leaving him in the midst of a huge international crisis? I mean, I know the guy cheated on you and all, but your timing really sucks, lady.

Anyway, as I said, the end of the episode totally redeemed it and I am completely in love with Annie Wersching, even though she only cut off that guy’s thumb and not his whole hand, as I’d originally thought.

Oh, and having Leoben from BSG and Sark from Alias on board? w00t! I’m a happy girl.

Bookmark It

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.

Bookmark It

I first “met” this actor in Battlestar Galactica, in the pilot episode.

He played Leoben Conoy, trapped with Cmdr. Adama until he’s found out to be a Cylon and killed by the commander’s hand, in the pilot miniseries.

We saw him again, now and then, over the course of the first couple of seasons, but really got to know him in Season 3, when he kept Kara captive in an apartment designed to look like hers back on Caprica. She kills him over and over and over again, and he just is reborn and goes back to her – with full knowledge of her murder of him.

By Season 4, he was full fledged crazy, but cool, convinced Kara was the answer to the question of life the universe and everything – and the question wasn’t “What is six times nine?”

I’d never seen Rennie before, but then I saw him again in one of the few almost decent episodes of the Bionic Woman remake. He was in an episode of Supernatural, which I just caught up on over the fall. He’s been in this, that and the other thing.

Then, just two weekends ago, he shows up in the very last minute of Harper’s Island, playing the really bad John Wakefield. He did it so well that I didn’t even recognize him until my husband pointed it out, as we were watching “The X-Files: I Want to Believe.”

I was stunned at how crappy this film was. And that Rennie was playing some menacing guy with a bad Russian accent.

Oh, Callum, how could you do this to me?

OK, it’s not your fault, really. I’m sure you agreed to do the film before you realized how awful it would be and then just didn’t want to go back on your word. Right?

Bookmark It

I’ve been thinking altogether too much about Battlestar Galactica lately. Not sure why.

Maybe because news has come out about The Plan telemovie. Maybe because Katee Sackhoff was cast in Season 8 of 24. Maybe because the Season 4.5 DVD drops next month. Maybe because I have the Caprica DVD sitting on the piano, mocking me for not having watched it yet.

Maybe just because I haven’t been able to cope with the fact that the series is over and it was just that frakkin’ good.

But I was thinking to myself about all the ways the new series was better than the old, and I realized that the old series doesn’t quite get its due among fans of the reimagining.

So I thought I’d do an old-fashioned matchup and see how the two stack up:

• Adama: Sorry Lorne Greene, I know you’re dead and all, and you were definitely awesome as Cmdr. Adama back in 1979, but Eddie kicks your ass. Edward James Olmos scared me in the way that the commander of a mixed civilian/military fleet should. When Lorne got mad, I felt like I’d disappointed my grandfather. When Eddie got mad, I wanted to hide under the sofa. Advantage: Reimagining.

• Starbuck: This is a tough one. Many were taken aback when Starbuck was turned into a woman for the new series, but I thought that Katee Sackhoff did a great job of embodying the spirit of Starbuck at the start, but then turning the character into something of her own. But how can you not love the classic Dirk Benedict character, cigar in mouth, winning at Pyramid games, romancing the ladies? I’d call it a draw. I can’t decide.

• Apollo: A young Richard Hatch v. Jamie Bamber? In and of itself, that’s a nearly impossible decision to make. But I have to go with the classic flavor here. Old-school Apollo was always good, always made the right decision and was damn cute while making it. New-school Apollo had great abs, but made bad choice after bad choice, screwed over Dualla and just made me want to slap him silly on more than on occasion. Advantage: Classic.

• Fight scenes: Hands down, the new series. Part of this was due to the advances in special effects, of course. But part was also because the old one recycled the same freakin’ scenes over and over and over and over again. How many times did you see the triangle of Cylon fighters flying in perfect formation, with one Colonial viper on their ass, shooting them up? Did the Cylons learn NOTHING from previous fights? These new Cylons were crazy! They randomly flew around, shooting anything that moved. And the fighters themselves were Cylons! There’s a twist. Advantage: Reimagining.

• Baltar: No contest. The new Baltar was a sniveling genius who just wanted to have sex with women. Old-school Baltar was evil with a capital E. John Colicos looked mean and evil and scary. You did not want to cross this man. A little-known fact is that an alternate ending of the original miniseries had Baltar being killed by the Cylons because the humans weren’t completely wiped out. He argued that his colony was supposed to have been spared. They beheaded him. So that’s why he did it. Yeah, I have the boxed set of the original series, the one that comes in the centurion-head-shaped box. Don’t judge me. Advantage: Classic.

• Cylons: “By your command.” That roving red eye. That humming sound whenever they walked into the room (hard for them to sneak up on anyone with all their clanking metal and that humming, but still cool). And some of them even had those little toga-ish skirts, which was just so stylish. But the idea to have the Cylons be Centurions, Fighters, Base Stars and the human form? Soooooo cool. The fact that they were all partly organic and that all machines were Cylons was a stroke of genius, IMHO. Advantage: Reimagining.

• The Quorum: Frankly, both versions of the Quorum of 12 needed to be slapped into submission. In the old series, they were always second-guessing Adama, despite his being proven right EVERY SINGLE TIME. Idiots. And they were all a bunch of really old white guys. The new quorum, however, typified every single thing that’s wrong with modern-day politics. Wait – they’re basically the same thing. I gotta call it a draw. I hated both of them.

• Pets: Old series wins this one, hands down. No daggits? No Muffit, real or mechanical? Come on, Moore & Eick. You totally could have gone the merchandising route. Advantage: Classic.

• Boomer: Another major character turned into a woman. But whereas the old Boomer was a loyal pal to Apollo and Starbuck and generally a third wheel, Sharon Valerii was third wheel to no one. She was, however, a Cylon, and almost killed Adama. I gotta go with Herb Jefferson Jr. on this one. He only tried to kill Cylons. Advantage: Classic.

• Aliens: Now this is a weird one. The old series had those weird bugs in the miniseries, some chicks with three eyes and a whole bunch of planets they kept mistaking for Earth that had humans on them. The new one: Nothin’. There were humans and Cylons and that’s it. I can’t decide which is better, but for realism, I’d have to go with the new one, because if there were a whole bunch of habitable planets out there, what are the odds that they’d all be just like Earth and evolve beings just like those on Earth? Advantage: Reimagining.

• The Galactica: She was an awesome ship in both series. Huge, well-armed and with all sorts of funky hiding places. I have to go with the new Galactica, though, because she wasn’t all networked up and showed her age. I liked her external design better, too. Advantage: Reimagining (but not by a heckuva lot).

Score

Reimagining: 5
Classic: 4
Draw: 2

Not too shabby, Glen A. Larson.

Bookmark It

Poor Starbuck. Serves her right for trusting Gaius Baltar.

Oh, did I mention that spoilers abound? Read at your own risk.

For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in a stream of stars – pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across the eternal seas of space and time.

That quote is from Henri Beston, from his book, “The Outermost House.”

It has such resonance for last night’s episode.

The Galactica is, itself, an island in the sea of stars, and also is islanded – stranded – in the sea of stars, as it has nowhere to go and is about to fall apart.

And they are “pilgrims of mortality,” with Starbuck the harbinger of death and, herself, dead. Or not.

OK, I have to tackle this episode character by character, as I usually do, or else my pea brain might just explode.

Boomer

I knew it. Boomer does actually love the Chief. Her pretend projected world on Picon was not just a ruse to mislead Tyrol. She loved him, dreamed up a whole place where she could be with him.

With no chance of ever being accepted back in the Fleet and no desire to truly be a part of the Cylon world, she created her own world. Eventually, seeing she had no chance to ever be with Tyrol (New Caprica pretty much solidified that for her), she decided if she was going to be a Cylon, she was going to be CYLON. She aligned herself with Cavil.

Still, she loves Tyrol. If she could be accepted as human again, she’d do it in a heartbeat. But she knows it’ll never happen.

And so she sees in Hera the child she never got to have with Tyrol. She didn’t want to, and that’s why she treated her like so much cargo. But in the end, she saw this child, this frightened child. And Hera knows that – so she calls to Boomer.

Cavil

I’m not exactly sure what he wants from Hera. Is he looking for a way to use Hera to unlock resurrection? To unlock procreation? As a tool? As a guinea pig to dissect?

By the way, wtf is that ship/facility that Cavil is in? Was that the ship the Final Five traveled in to find the 12 Colonies? Whatever it was, it was very cool.

Baltar & Caprica Six

Caprica Six has, indeed, changed. When she brought Athena and Hera back to the fleet those many episodes ago, she knew she’d be thrown in the brig. But she accepted it.

She no longer harbored any feelings for Baltar, seeing him as she did on New Caprica and with his “harem,” and feeling what she did for Tigh – though, I can’t say I’m sure exactly what’s up between them anymore. Are they even still together now that Ellen’s back and Caprica Six miscarried?

By the way, I honestly believe that Baltar still has these intense feelings for Caprica Six and that wasn’t an act.

Ellen & Saul Tigh

What’s up with that?

OK, I totally think Kate Vernon needs to win an Emmy.

I liked Ellen Tigh again this week.

She does so love Saul. And she loves her “children.” She really sees this as the future of her race that she tried so hard to save.

Ellen isn’t merely a Cylon. She’s truly something more. She’s not the One True God, or anything, but she is definitely what that god is working through.

Anders

He has become a hybrid in some weird way. I mean, he’s still a Cylon, but he’s echoing everything the hybrids have said. What is going on in his head? Was his reaction to Starbuck the goo pool talking or was that just the only words he could get out to tell her not to kill him?

And, note, he did say Starbuck was the “harbinger of death,” not of the apocalypse. She is death. And, apparently, she’s also dead.

Starbuck

OK, I had to do her last, because if I had started with her, I’d never have gotten off her.

First off, love her sitting on the can while talking to Baltar (who’s seeing Head Six). And nice, Baltar, pretending you don’t remember the name of the woman who called out another man’s name while you were having sex with her. Right.

Anyhow, I actually thought it was kind of nice to see him being a scientist again in studying Starbuck’s dog tags. And I understand why she went to him. She couldn’t go to Doc Cottle. He had his hands full with lots of dying and injured Colonials and Cylons, and she couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t tell anyone.

Of course, Baltar went and told EVERYone. Loved it when she slapped him.

But I’m glad he blurted it all out. Honestly, I grew tired of no one knowing what was up with Starbuck. At least it’s out in the open now. She died on Earth. She is still among the Colonials, but how? We will know the truth, they promise.

So where do we stand now?

Starbuck’s photo is finally up on the memorial wall – for good – between Kat & Dee. And she’s OK with it.

Lee’s still all in love with her, but she’s all in on Anders.

Galactica’s falling apart, Roslin’s dying and Adama’s finally going to move it all over to the Base Star, the only ship in the fleet that can defend it. (I was a bit disappointed that Adama just did the whole “scream and freak out and trash my quarters” thing again this episode.)

We’re hurtling toward some sort of ending that’s not going to satisfy anyone.

And you know what? I’m pretty good with that. At this point, I think I don’t want a satisfactory ending. I want an ending that’s uncomfortable and sad and wholly unsatisfactory – but completely satisfactory in an unsatisfactory way.

Bookmark It

And so we move one step closer to the end.

The fandom seems a bit split by Someone to Watch Over Me, with some believing it advanced our knowledge of what, exactly, is going on and others wondering what the frak they were watching. I started more in the camp of the latter, but with time and pondering, I’m more convinced that we learned a heckuva lot, though I’m still not sure exactly what.

OK, so I’ll just let you read what others had to say, in this week’s edition of the blog carnival:

First off, Tru presents BSG – 7 down, 3 to go posted at True Science Fiction. He points out that now Starbuck also has a head person, the piano player who may or may not be her father (but at the very least represents him). Does that mean she’s a hybrid?

Norman Doering presents Battlestar Galactica: “Someone to Watch Over Me” posted at A Blog from Hell. He outlines the two main storylines and has some interesting thoughts about the musical score and links to Bear McCreary’s excellent blog. As usual, Norman has some excellent turns of phrase, such as “exposition dump-itis.”

Ms. SP presents There’s a Somebody I’m Longing to See posted at Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All. She watched the episode a second time immediately after it ended its first run-through, even though she still isn’t quite sure what happened. But Starbuck and Tyrol, she realizes, were both faced with mirages.

Kenneth Hynek presents Someone to Watch Over Hera & Starbuck posted at Kenneth Hynek. All I can say is, wow. Lots of good stuff here, so here’s what he had to say by way of introduction: ” I was reminded, watching “Someone to Watch Over Me,” of an earlier “Starbuck“-themed episode, which (not coincidentally?) came near the end of one of the show’s seasons (its third). Of course, I’m speaking about “Maelstrom,” in which Kara has to confront one of her personal demons — her relationship with her mother — before she can pursue her destiny to its next stage. This episode puts her through a similar situation, albeit without the apparition of Leoben Conoy guiding her through it; this time, however, the demon she’s confronting is her relationship with her father. ”

Erika presents Battlestar Galactica – “Deadlock” posted at Seriality. She hated Deadlock, as did many in fandom, though I actually liked it. Her reasons are well spelled out, though. But one thing: The last 3 (D’Anna) decided to stay beind on the nuked Earth. She’s done. That was the last episode Lucy Lawless filmed.

Roberta presents BSG So Say We All Blog Carnival – I have a new theory! posted at CouchSlobs – A Monument To Human Idleness. Roberta is on the “Daniel is Starbuck’s father” train, and I’m with her.

Nina presents Battlestar Galactica Season 4.5 Epi. 17: Someone to Watch Over Me posted at Blog It Out Bitch. As usual, Nina points out some of the best lines in the episode, including Tigh’s oh-so-appropriate “What the frak?!” when Kara is playing The Final Four Theme (which Bear McCreary describes as pretty much All Along the Watchtower, but different).

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of so say we all using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags:
so say we all, blog carnival, battlestar galactica.

Bookmark It

I was a bit torn on how I felt about last night’s episode of BSG.

There wasn’t much action, and we didn’t get many answers.

But the more I thought about it, the better it seemed.

Though it seemed the episode would be All About Starbuck, Boomer was really the focus and the key.

Honestly, until amost the very last, I found the entire storyline somewhat of a puzzle.

Why would she beat up Athena? Why wouldn’t Adama and Roslin take into consideration that Boomer risked her own neck to bring back Ellen Tigh? Why did she want Hera?

See, I’d been thinking the past couple of weeks that the reason Boomer sided with Cavil lay solely with the fact that Ellen was there, and she wanted to ensure nothing would happen to one of the Final Five. She didn’t really break with her line; she did it to save a Final Fiver from the insane Cavil.

Wow, was I wrong.

It all sort of clicked when Tyrol went back to the “home” he shared with Boomer and their child and found it utterly empty, abandoned. Now, there still is the question as to whether it truly was abandoned, or if he just wasn’t able to project his wife and daughter in the same was as Boomer. And she did, after all, tell him that no matter what happened or what anyone said, she did truly love him.

I believe she did love him at one point; maybe still even does, in some sort of way.

But her abandonment by Tyrol after she had shot Adama and he thought he was still human and her subsequent “murder” by Callie (whom, let’s face it, we’d always known loved Tyrol) scarred her deeply.

We saw that way back in Season 2, when we saw her and Caprica Six back on post-apocalyptic Caprica, and the pair basically decided they needed to come to peace with the humans, rather than kill them all. Boomer felt more human than Cylon.

Then when she helped rule over the humans and saw the resistance and the complete inability for either side to accept the other – and saw Tyrol seemingly happily married to Callie, with a baby – on New Caprica, it seems something broke.

We’ve gotten so used, over the past couple years, to seeing Sharon as Athena, and forgot about Boomer, for the most part.

Yes, Boomer told Athena that Hera was still alive, and we saw Boomer when there was that fateful vote between the Cylon models and she split with her line, but we haven’t really thought about her much, no?

So Boomer was being honest with Ellen when she told her that Cavil was teaching her how to be a better Cylon and less human. It seems she wanted it that way; she believed she would feel less emotional pain if she were more in touch with her Cylonicity, perhaps?

The irony in all this is that by making the Final Five believe they were human for all these years, they made them, well, feel human. Except for Tori, they all are extremely in touch with what it means to be human, and the Tighs in particular don’t seem to want that to change. Anders is so excited to have gotten all his memory back that he’s a bit hard to read, even though he truly believes the mission they were on – to warn the humans not to exploit the Cylons and for the two races to live in harmony – was right and just and the only way to stop the cycle.

I realized today that unless this effort succeeds, the next cycle has already begun  – a people wandering the stars, looking for a new home. Instead of being split into 13 tribes, one of which heads off in a completely different direction, they are one tribe – for the moment. However, the Cavil faction of Cylons is still out there, and could still end up being the spoiler and settling somewhere and starting the cycle all over again a few thousand years from now.

And so that brings us to Starbuck.

I believe the mysterious, non-existent piano player was actually Starbuck’s father and/or Daniel. Starbuck has some deep connection to the Cylons, that much is obvious. But what does that song have to do with everything? It connects Starbuck, her father, the Final Five and Hera.

Once again, a piece of music is key. (Bear McCreary must be pleased.)

And whatever connects Hera to the Final Five and Starbuck also connects them somehow to Roslin. Don’t forget, she had the Opera House visions. And she knew immediately when Hera was taken.

Is it possible that there are more hybrids than we realized? Is it possible there is this One True God who is connecting these people in an effort to stop them from killing one another?

Three more episodes. Next week: “Islanded in a Stream of Stars.” (Link to preview.)

As Galactica continues to deteriorate, Adama resists the need to abandon the ship and Baltar emerges as an unlikely voice of hope.

Is it just me, or is that supposed to sound not only as if they are an island in a stream of stars, but also as if someone (I) landed in a stream of stars? Obviously some significance, but what, exactly, I will have to wait six more days to determine.

So Say We All: The Battlestar Galactica Blog Carnival hosted here on Tuesday. Come to read some of rather interesting articles about BSG. Submit links here.

Bookmark It

I don’t think I need to repeat how fantastic I thought Friday’s ep was, so I’m not gonna say much here. Let’s just get into the week’s

submissions, no? (I can’t believe there are only five episodes left!!!!!) By the way, if after reading all this, you still want more, head over to Mo Ryan’s blog at the Chicago Tribune and check out her Q&A with the writers. We will find out what Starbuck is and we’ll get more Boomer. Oh, and the devastation on Earth was, indeed, the result of a Cylon Civil War.

Nina presents Battlestar Galactica Season 4.5 Epi. 15: No Exit posted at Blog It Out Bitch. She has a very interesting theory about Starbuck that actually makes more sense than mine. Be sure to check out the pre- and post-episode questions. Amazing how many questions the ep actually did answer.

Tru presents BSG – 5 down, 5 to go posted at True Science Fiction. John/Cavil’s rebellion against the Final Five is very much the stuff of nightmares for every parent of a teenager, he notes.

Norman Doering presents A few Pieces of a Puzzle posted at A Blog from Hell. “In a way,” he says, “Ellen Tigh is our Doctor Frankenstein and Cavil is her monster. The others making up the final five are apparently just a collection of Igors.”

Jayson Peters presents “Battlestar Galactica: No Exit” — It’s all coming together posted at Nerdvana. He points out that Ellen Tigh wasn’t the Final Cylon after all, and that Moore & Eick were all tricky on us, hiding a No. 7.

Ms. Smarty Pants presents Hell is Clunky Exposition posted at Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All. Not a fan of the exposition dump (as Norman, above, called the episode), Ms. SP still found there to be some interesting answers, not least of which is that the Final Five all had “head angels” like Baltar has. Hmmm. What the frak does that mean, though???

Roberta presents BSG So Say We All Blog Carnival – brainfry anyone? posted at CouchSlobs – A Monument To Human Idleness. She managed to pull her frazzled brain together enough to ponder Daniel (and express relief that my urgent cries of WHY IS SHARON NO. 8??? were finally answered) and express rather interesting thoughts about the Cylons’ desire to be more human.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of so say we all using our
carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our
blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags:

so say we all, blog carnival.

Bookmark It

Before I get into the meat and potatoes of what may just be the best episode EVAR of BSG, I would like to say, “Thank you Ron Moore and David Eick.”

I have lamented many times that I am totally confused as to why the Sharon model is an Eight, yet there are only seven models of “new Cylons.”

Bless their hearts, there actually was a method to their madness and we got our answer.

By the way, have I said yet that you shouldn’t read if you didn’t watch? No? Well, I have now.

OK, so I just need to say this: WOWWOWWOWWOWWOW. Just. W.O.W.

My mind is still reeling, having just finished watching the episode on Hulu, so let me just recap to make sure I’ve got the backstory straight:

Humans made the Cylons on Kobol as a slave class. They rebelled. When the tribes  left Kobol, 12 created the astrologically named Colonies and the 13th were the Cylons, who ended up on Earth.

OK, so far so good. Once the Cylons blew themselves up (are we to assume that the current Civil War amongs the Cylons is also something that happened before and therefore is happening again?), Ellen, Saul, Galen, Tori and Anders downloaded to a ship orbiting the planet, because they saw the apocalypse coming and worked furiously to rediscover the resurrection technology.

They didn’t have FTL technology, so it took them thousands of years to reach the Colonies, where they’d planned to tell the humans to be nice to the Cylons (because, I’m sure, that would have worked), and found themselves in the midst of the First Cylon War.

Cylons were having one hell of a time developing hybrids, but the arrival of the Final Five enabled them to gain that technology. So they immediately ended their war against the humans and went away somewhere to get all human. Explains the suddenness with which the war ended, leaving Husker to ponder wtf (frak) was going on.

• Side note: I believe more than ever that the young blonde girl trapped on that planet whom Husker tried to save is somehow connected to Starbuck. Why? The “lost” model, the Seven (Daniel), was an artist. Starbuck’s always been artistic. Ellen said that Cavil (sorry, John) had “corrupted the genetic material” for the Daniel. Could Starbuck somehow be a way that the Final Five managed to save some of the work they’d put into the Daniel? This would also make the antagonistic relationship between Tigh and Starbuck even more … twisted.

OK, so back to the story at hand.

Ellen seems to have made the One, Cavil/John, too much in the image of her father, who appears to have been a colossal ass. Talk about an Oedipal complex John has.

Somehow, likely because there were so many copies of him, the Cavil/Johns managed to trick the Final Five (or, the Original Five, which is really what they are) into an airlock and killed them. When they resurrected, he put some kind of blocker in their brains and la di da, shipped them off to the Colonies to have a front-row seat to the apocalypse.

Ellen’s right, though. Cavil/John was never able to actually KILL them, finish them off for good. Despite being able to do that to Daniel (Cain and Abel, perhaps?), he couldn’t off his parents.

He could, however, torture and have sex with them, which is what he did on New Caprica. I mean, ewww. Especially seeing as Mommy didn’t know she was his Mommy. Cavil/John seriously needs to see a shrink.

And so here we are.

Thing is, this episode answered SO many questions:
• Why the Final Five didn’t know who they were.
• How Ellen managed to escape Caprica and end up in the fleet. (Baltar’s Cylon tester thingy didn’t work on her, because she was a different sort of Cylon, I’d suppose. If memory serves, her test truly did come up negative. Or, did we just never know how it really came up, after the snafu with Sharon?)
• Why in the name of all that is holy Ellen and Saul stayed together. Their love, truly, transcended time and space.
• Why Boomer broke with the rest of her line. She stayed with Cavil/John (I believe now) because she knew that if she didn’t, Ellen eventually would be killed and the answers to so many questions might never be answered.
• For that matter, why Cavil/John boxed the D’Annas and refused to go along with the Sixes in unboxing her and joining with the humans.
• Why Cavil/John limited the ability of the Centurions and Raiders to think — they had the belief in the One True God and were a connection back to the Final Five. It wasn’t until Natalie removed that barrier that a Raider connected with Anders. Or was it just that was the first time a Raider had come face-to-face with one of the Final Five because it was Anders first mission? Think about it — Tyrol, Tori, Tigh and Ellen were never out in the thick of it. There wouldn’t have been an opportunity for them to come face-to-face with a Raider.

Other thoughts:
• Loved the moment where Ellen offers an apple to Boomer. Garden of Eden, anyone?
• Loved when the Centurion in the resurrection chamber retracts his claws to help Ellen out of the goo tub. How sweet.
• The fact that the Centurions were the ones to develop the belief in the One True God sheds a whole new light on the conversation Baltar had with a Centurion back when he first came aboard the Base Ship with Roslin after they joined forces with the Rebel Cylons. Remember how the Centurion cocks his head? That’s because he was probably all like, “What the frak is this human preaching to me about One True God?”
• OK, Moore & Eick – you’ve answered why Sharon is a Model Eight, not Seven, so riddle me this: The old-school Cylons could speak. How come the new-model ones can’t? Or is that also part of the limitation on their intelligence?

I love this frakkin’ show. I’m sure I’ll come up with a whole bunch of other thoughts and questions in the coming days. The So Say We All blog carnival will post sometime Tuesday – submit your article here if you want to join in the fun.

Bookmark It

The thing that has kept running through my brain since Friday night is this: What the frak is Starbuck?

It would seem she’s not a Cylon. We know the final Cylon is Ellen Tigh. Don’t we? (Questions – was Ellen resurrected somewhere before the resurrection hub was destroyed? Is there another resurrection hub somewhere for the Earth Cylons? Did Brother Cavil know she and/or Saul were Cylons?)

But we know that there’s a dead Starbuck on Earth. She did crash-land there and die. Her dogtags, her wedding band, her ship. All were there. And we know that she’s the harbinger of death. But what does that even mean????

Leoben seemed to think she was the final Cylon until they saw her dogtags. Then he seemed so uncertain about everything. I found that a bit puzzling, because the dogtags would initially have seemed to confirm it to him. Until she mentioned what the hybrid had told her.

Then, Leoben couldn’t get far enough away from her. But the Leobens have always known something about Starbuck and her destiny. They just didn’t know what they knew.

The only thing I can think of is something that makes no sense chronologically, but I’ve believed from the moment I saw the Razor telemovie.

Remember the scene where Husker’s in the creepy Cylon building with all the human parts in tanks, just before he finds out an armistice has been signed?

Some people are trapped in a room and he can’t quite get the door open. One of those trapped in there is a young girl with blonde hair.

I’ve been convinced ever since that she was Starbuck.

Now, the Cylon Wars were 40 years ago, and Kara Thrace isn’t 40.

But what if she’s some sort of hybrid who ages differently? Obviously, the Cylons were creating hybrids there. Perhaps she’s the missing link, of a sort. I’m not sure which link, even, because we don’t know how the Earth Cylons fit into all this yet.

But we know that Hera and Nicholas (Tyrol’s son) are hybrids. But they’re different kinds of hybrids, as Tyrol is an Earth Cylon and Sharon’s a New Cylon. What does that even mean? I don’t know.

The theme of the show is and has always been, “All this has happened before and all of it will happen again.” The Cylons and humans obviously intermingled (intermarried?) on Kobol. The Earth Cylons had some sort of Civil War that culminated in the destruction of the planet and the race – which might happen again with the Cavil v. Six war among the New Cylons.

Did Starbuck die on Earth before or after they made the jump there? Why was her distress call not even activated until four of the final five were uncovered?

Who, or what, is Starbuck? Is she alive? Is she dead? Is she a hybrid? Is she a hallucination? Will the final episode end with her taking a shower, telling Zack Adama she had the weirdest dream last night?

OK, I’m obviously joking with the last one there, but I’m really intrigued, and curious to find out the rest of this story.

Nine more weeks to go.

Bookmark It