Battlestar Galactica: This Thread has Happened Before and Will Happen Again

[Whiskeyjack]

Was finally able to catch up with season 4 of the show, by recording all of the episodes shown in the marathon last Friday, and then watching them over the course of the past week. Can't wait for the new one tonight.

When Dee shot herself, my jaw hit the floor. I knew she was losing it a bit when they were on Earth...she came off as being very lonely. But I didn't see the suicide coming at all. At the end of her date with Lee, I even said to my wife that I hoped she would have a happy ending, because I've always liked her character. Then, a minute later.... *bam*. She's dead. :(

[potsherds]

[quote name='Whiskeyjack' post='1659918' date='Jan 23 2009, 19.51']Was finally able to catch up with season 4 of the show, by recording all of the episodes shown in the marathon last Friday, and then watching them over the course of the past week. Can't wait for the new one tonight.

When Dee shot herself, my jaw hit the floor. I knew she was losing it a bit when they were on Earth...she came off as being very lonely. But I didn't see the suicide coming at all. At the end of her date with Lee, I even said to my wife that I hoped she would have a happy ending, because I've always liked her character. Then, a minute later.... *bam*. She's dead. :([/quote]
Kittykat, that [i]was[/i] her happy ending. She ended on a high note, a good day. Those were rare for her. It made perfect sense to me.

[Guest Raidne]

[quote name='potsherds' post='1660008' date='Jan 23 2009, 15.49']Kittykat, that [i]was[/i] her happy ending. She ended on a high note, a good day. Those were rare for her. It made perfect sense to me.[/quote]

Nope. She said she was going to try to hold on to the (good) feeling as long as it lasted, and it did for a bit. [i]Then[/i] her facial expression changed back to anguish and pain in the mirror for half and second and [i]then[/i] she shot herself. So no, I don't think she went out on a high note.

Which, honestly, made no sense to me the way you put it anyway, but let's just not get into that.

[Werthead]

[url="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=REEGiAXqDjU"]Sneak preview clip [/url]from tonight's episode. Nothing too major but:

SPOILER: BSG

Lee makes a bit of a cock-up :)

[Lightsnake]

Poooooor Tyrol.

[Guy Kilmore]

Gaeta got interesting.

How much do you wanna bet that Adama is the leader that dies and not Roslin?

[Rockroi]

[quote]How much do you wanna bet that Adama is the leader that dies and not Roslin?[/quote]

Can't it be both?

Very "meh" episode. Another time the civilian, elected government tries to enforce the will of the people, another time Adama just ignores it, and another time everyone just lies down in the face of his ... enthusiasm.
Couldn't ANYONE say to Adama, "Excuse me, yes you- the pock-marked face guy who seems utterly incapable of understanding the phenomenon of "other people." Yes. uhm... you see, this may sound crazy, but you know that we- this society- so minuscule as it is - actually have to have some say in our life and our demise? We- the people who run the ships, live the lives, toil and die - WE should have some say in who we will spend our days with, how we will live, and now how we will die. And so we elected all these people- Tom Z among them. And our will was that THEY should be our voice. When their voice becomes too shrill, we will toss them aside, but that is OUR choice. NOT YOURS! So, WE decided that WE did not want to live next to Cylons- I know this may sound crazy to you, but the Cylons are responsible for the death of 99.99999998% of the people who existed in our lifetimes. So, yes, WE should have some say that even though there may be value in being next to Cylons, that the Cylons may have 'learned their lesson', and that they can assist us in our life/death, that we MAY STILL NOT WANT TO! That humans MAY not want to do what YOU- an unelected monarch -may want. See, yes, I guess you are intelligent, you are kindly (jury still out), but you are still a dictator, and sitting here at the edge of Armageddon, that is not how WE HAVE CHOSEN TO LIVE! So, please, take your sanctimonious babble, you high-minded arrogance, shove them up your tight-ass, and allow ME- a HUMAN BEING -decide how I want to live, how I want to survive, and how I want to die. I have chosen others to be my voice- as all sensible citizens will do, and they chose a course of action. Step aside and allow our will to be enacted. Even if it leads to our (almost assured) demise. Because at this point, the free will to chose HOW we end seems to be the only choice left to us."

Is that so hard?

[Crazydog7]

Well so wait is the fleet still in orbit of "earth?"


I liked the episode some interesting revaluations it is sure to heat up next week.

[DivisionByZero]

The two "sides," civilian and military, really need to learn how to get together, discuss things rationally, hear each other out, and reach a mutually satisfying compromise. It's always us vs. them with nothing in between! Now, I think Adama and the military side have almost always been right and the civilians have been rebelling for stupid, self destructive reasons, but still... They could prevent so many uprisings and mutinies if they didn't jump right to the "do what we say or we shoot you" bit.

[Rockroi]

[quote]The two "sides," civilian and military, really need to learn how to get together, discuss things rationally, hear each other out, and reach a mutually satisfying compromise. It's always us vs. them with nothing in between! Now, I think Adama and the military side have almost always been right and the civilians have been rebelling for stupid, self destructive reasons, but still... They could prevent so many uprisings and mutinies if they didn't jump right to the "do what we say or we shoot you" bit.[/quote]

But the military (just a weird euphemism for Adama), does more than just hold their collective guns to the heads of the civilians or their ELECTED leaders (by contrast, nobody elected Adama). Adama:

-Blatantly ignores the dictates of the elected community;
-Contradicts the elected leaders to the point of bringing about mutiny and the edge of rebelion (as divisionerror points out);
-Arrests, blackmails, and isolates elected officials or anyone else who has gathered up any authority that could rival his own;
-Shows NOTHING but contempt for those who have the temerity to disagree with him (the writers of the show are nice enough to 1) never make it so Adama is wrong, 2) remove him from power due to an injury so that the rival can call Adama's surrogate on the wrongdoing, 3) make it so the rivals to Adama are too stupid, greedy, or narrow minded to never capitalize on Adama's arrogance or 4) make the populace forgetful of Adama's almost criminal behavior); and
-Bully those who support those who disagree with him.

In other words, Adama is a benevolent dictator, and the more I see of Adama, the less "benevolence" I see. The more of the show I watch, the less I like of him (and I have never liked him, or the completely disbelieving acting job Edward James Almos does). And I know that the show will not call him on his pomposity. Its disappointing.

[Brude]

The Gaeta stuff was good (I hear this episode is supposed to take place just after the webisodes, which explains his motives on an even deeper level). The rest of the episode I didn't much care for, thought it was kind of a mess actually. The only other part that worked for me was the meeting early on where they are trying to decide if they should outfit the fleet with Cylon jump technology. Tyrol's trouble figuring out what pronouns to use was funny - and interesting that Tigh seems to have figured out how to intergrate his newfound status into his life. One the one hand his girl's got a little Cylon bun in the oven which he's estatic about, on the other he's still fully devoted to the Colonial Fleet.

[Ran]

Adama was right about this one. The fleet needs the technology, and the fleet can't have some people with the technology and some people without. Zarek is an incredibly self-centered son of a bitch. He's serving his myth rather than the fleet. Adama couldn't care less what the fleet thinks of him, so long as at the end of the day it's around to manage another day.

I liked this episode well enough, and I've always been fond of Olmos's portrayal of this tightly-wound admiral. He really carried the episode. Good stuff with Tyrol, too. _And_ Gaeta, who's joined the dark side. The mutiny will be interesting to see play out.

As to the dying leader ... yeah, I'll buy that Adama is dying. It's going to be a Whiskeyjack situation, people telling him he should see the doctor, his putting it off, and then it's too late.

[Werthead]

Interesting episode. Reminiscent of Season 1, which is always good. However, watching it I was acutely aware of a mental ticking clock saying "ONLY EIGHT EPISODES LEFT" and I had to question whether this episode, which was all set-up and no payoff (Adama and Roslin getting their freak on excepted), could have been structured better to push the story forward a bit more.

The Nicky retcon was a bit dubious. Unlike the other Penultimate Fourers, the writers claim to have had it in their mind that Tyrol could have been a Cylon since the Season 2 finale (hence his weird dreams and later finding the Temple of the Five on a whim), so they should have taken that into account when giving him a son. Whilst this retcon does explain Cally's mental state swiftly deterioating once they got back from New Caprica (since presumably she now had to see Hot Dog every day), it did come out of nowhere. It would have worked [i]slightly [/i]better if Cally hadn't known about it either. As it stands it feels like the writers didn't want to have to deal with a second half-Cylon kid.

I like the fact that rather than Zarek simply 'losing' and walking off muttering darkly, he's clearly not just going to let this one go and things are going to escalate. Gaeta's turn to the dark side is also reasonable given his history, especially from the webisodes. Tyrol and Tigh's conflicting reactions to their Cylon natures was also well-handled.

But 50 billion people on the Colonies? That's 30 billion more than the last population estimate (in the [i]Resistance[/i] webisodes). Interesting to see if that is the new official figure or not.

[Bronn Stone]

[quote name='Werthead' post='1660862' date='Jan 24 2009, 08.23']The Nicky retcon was a bit dubious. Unlike the other Penultimate Fourers, the writers claim to have had it in their mind that Tyrol could have been a Cylon since the Season 2 finale (hence his weird dreams and later finding the Temple of the Five on a whim), so they should have taken that into account when giving him a son. Whilst this retcon does explain Cally's mental state swiftly deteriorating once they got back from New Caprica (since presumably she now had to see Hot Dog every day), it did come out of nowhere. It would have worked [i]slightly [/i]better if Cally hadn't known about it either. As it stands it feels like the writers didn't want to have to deal with a second half-Cylon kid.[/quote]

But it ALWAYS felt like the writers didn't want to have to deal with another half-Cylon kid. From the moment of Tyrol's revelation, in the back of my mind was a concern that the Cylons didn't seem to give a rat's arse about Tyrol and Cally's kid. Hera was HUGELY important to them. But never Nicky. And yesterday we found out why. I found it a perfect 'a-ha' moment.

I honestly think that the decision that Nicky wasn't Tyrol's was made at the time the decision was made that Tyrol was a Cylon. The show is obviously full of retcons. But I don't think this is really one of them.

[G'Kar]

[quote name='Werthead' post='1660862' date='Jan 24 2009, 11.23']Interesting episode. Reminiscent of Season 1, which is always good. However, watching it I was acutely aware of a mental ticking clock saying "ONLY EIGHT EPISODES LEFT" and I had to question whether this episode, which was all set-up and no payoff (Adama and Roslin getting their freak on excepted), could have been structured better to push the story forward a bit more.[/quote]

This is my fear as well. We are at the point where things need to start making sense, and that just hasn't happened. What are the writers going to do, wait until the last 5 minutes of the series and then explain everything? :dunno:

I'm liking this darkness in Gaeta, and the scene between him and Starbuck was chilling. Say what you want about the show, the acting has been excellent throughout IMO.

[Ran]

Speaking of Zarek:

Obviously, Adama was bluffing that he had the goods on Zarek. Did Zarek's reaction to this extortion mean that he thought Adama had caught him playing dirty, or did he just believe that Adama had carefully forged a dossier full of stuff that Zarek couldn't do anything against?

It wasn't clear to me whether Zarek really is corrupt, using the office of the Vice-President to enrich himself (doubtless, in his mind, to have all the resources he can have to "fight teh cause"), or whether they both know it's untrue, but Adama seemed to have made up evidence to the contrary.

[Werthead]

According to the podcast, RDM really wanted Nicky's real father to have been Figurski, but the other writers thought that was just wrong :D

[quote]As to the dying leader ... yeah, I'll buy that Adama is dying. It's going to be a Whiskeyjack situation, people telling him he should see the doctor, his putting it off, and then it's too late.[/quote]

[url="http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2009/01/battlestar-galactica-ron-moore-disquiet-follows-my-soul.html"]Possibly a covering line [/url]but:



[quote][b]"Adama keeps saying he doesn’t feel well in the episode. Is that, again, just the “disquiet”? What’s that about? Is it just that he’s very tired?"[/b]Yeah, it’s just that, there are just so many things weighing on him. He’s been drinking a lot. He’s been taking pain pills. He’s just not feeling good.

[b]"I can see that. I just didn’t know if there was anything more to it than that. I don’t know if I can take anyone else checking out."[/b]

It’s not a sign of something deeper.[/quote]

[Lord of Oop North]

[quote name='Ran' post='1660881' date='Jan 24 2009, 11.56']It wasn't clear to me whether Zarek really is corrupt, using the office of the Vice-President to enrich himself (doubtless, in his mind, to have all the resources he can have to "fight teh cause"), or whether they both know it's untrue, but Adama seemed to have made up evidence to the contrary.[/quote]
When Tigh looked at the dossier, it was full of "Laundry Lists". So yeah, big bluff.

I'm sure Zarek is using the Office to enrich himself ... he did the same thing when he was a member of the Quorum.

[raft]

[quote name='divisionerror' post='1660556' date='Jan 23 2009, 23.46']The two "sides," civilian and military, really need to learn how to get together, discuss things rationally, hear each other out, and reach a mutually satisfying compromise.[/quote]
Diplomatstar Galactica?

good episode. The starbuck vs. gaeta scene was fantastic. I'm not too worried about the pacing--at this point nobody's gonna stop watching the show because the story wasn't pushed forward fast enough in any one episode, right? let's see how the rest of it plays out first.

[Anya, Vengeance Demon]

I was a little let down by this episode, especially after last week's. It seemed like they were trying for an episode that on the surface resembled a safer, more stand-alone episode, but ending with a feeling of, well, disquiet, because Adama can't actually bluff his way through this the way he might have been able to a couple of seasons ago. All that is fine, but they didn't push the second part quite hard enough to make it work, for a bunch of reasons:

1) Gaeta isn't so prominent in Galactica that his alliance with Tom Zarek is threatening in and of itself;

2) Gaeta's transformation isn't so much surprising as inevitable given what's happened to him over the past couple of years; and

3) so far as we saw, he's only just talked to a few extras we've never seen before. It's not like Gaeta is a renowned leader of men.

I have no problem with the plotline, and I'm sure it will turn out to be interesting, but they needed to give something a bit more there.