Movie Watch: Battlestar Galactica, The Plan

Battlestar isn't necessarily a show which is it a love it or leave it kind of affair - there's plenty of elements to go around, though they might not always create the grand cohesive goodness Battlestar fans had found.

One element was the relatively mysterious backstory. You have a race of robots evolved well past their original specs, seemingly hell-bent on the destruction of humankind, but with a lot of religious overtones and several (including the opening scene) references to "a plan."

You can imagine the desire fans might have to see an entire movie devoted to said plan. Sadly, the movie serves more of side story, weaving various points of the previous plot (in particular the first couple of seasons) with added, more Cylon heavily, perspectives. It serves as one part swan song, another part prologue, to an already decent story.

The problem is that if you aren't a Battlestar fan, there is nothing here for you. You'll be lost as there is a lot of assumed knowledge about the show, you're missing many, many salient points and quite honestly, the production is at its highest when it reuses previously shot material.

If you are a fan, you'll probably find a good deal of entertainment, even if it is short in actual information. The backstories on the Cylons makes for good fodder, especially the machinations of Cavil. It's kind of like one good drive around the block before leaving the house for good.

Very, very slight spoilers ahead.

My only real complaint, as one who watched the whole series, is that "the plan" is really just "genocide" which doesn't do anything to explain the particulars of the Cylons, their relationship with God(s), their true history, or any higher motives to sending many, many, many nuclear warheads humanity's way.

So kinda recommended, but mostly just for fans.

TV Watch: Battlestar Galactica Series Finale

I'm not sure it is possible to talk about this without being pretty spoiler-ific. If I had to write a summary, it would be simply that it was good, great and places, but overall the finale proved a successful cross-section of the show.

In short - there were some kick ass action scenes, some drama bordering on melodrama, some religious muck and occasionally the thing that just doesn't make any real sense, and possibly never was supposed to make any real sense.

So that said, into the spoilers.

While I thought the whole "who is a Cylon" routine was pretty neat, it was also something of a sideshow compared to the rest of show's somewhat weighty subplot - finding Earth, survival of all mankind, who Kara's sleeping with, etc. The finale intersects a lot of the action with the Opera House dream, and there's a sliding percentage of the show's metaphysics which creep in as the action goes on.

I liked the finale, but I think I could have used that percentage growing a little slower. By just slightly over half of the two hour episode, it feels like we're in epilogue mode. Much of the falling action here just feels very convenient, especially the colony's decisions about their new Earth, the destruction of the fleet and so on. It's a very tight package to prove the bigger point the show has been building, that Galactica's overall plot is based on a repeating cycle between two opposing forces.

The finale started with my favorite parts of the show - the military scifi stuff, and ends with my least favorite - a weird combination of A Space Odyssey and some bits that feel like the throwaway parts of a Heinlein novel.

But even my least favorite parts felt like they resonated well, and especially when tied with the many Caprica flashbacks we've been getting recently - the show at least ends on solid footing.

A great episode, all in all, and a great season to finish the show.

For Sunday: Battlestar Galactica At The United Nations

Enjoy the finale tonight, folks.

TV Watch: Battlestar Galactica Catch Up

I think Saul said it best when he quipped if it would be handy to have a chart. A recap of the show's events up to this point is like a Greek tragedy meets space opera which, at the very least, fits the show's basic themes.

Spoilers abound here, obviously.

I referred to the "final Cylon hunt" as something of a reverse murder mystery, where where it is more like hunting for a body than a killer. The resolution proved just as that would pan - a sea of red herrings before you find the real fish. Was it Baltus, with his seeming Cylon-like visions? Or Kara who certainly seemed to have visited a resurrection ship? Or an important background character like Dee?

Nope, it was Saul's wife? Don't even really know what we should do with that. It feels a little anti-climatic to me, and I can only hope the writers will make it work in the end.

The real open question, I think, is what the hell is Kara? Not a Cylon, but ... dead? She's a zombie? I'm also a bit confused on the whole "Cylon Earth" angle. It was a whole planet populated by clones of twelve people? Or was that just the models that survived to resurrect in space?

I think I get where they're going though. Cylons, humans - just sides of a coin which have been destroying each other, fleeing, repopulating, destroying, repeating history for thousands of years. Betting the "unknown Cylon helmet" turns out to be something human and that there are others Earths out there as well.

TV Watch: Battlestar Galactica, Revelations

Finally getting this up, I know.

Spoilerifics to follow. Read at your own risk if you haven't made it to Season 4's mid-finale.

I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting from this episode, especially with all the buzz that was surrounding it. This probably wasn't it. Somehow I had assumed that the precipice that the Cylon rebels and the Colonials had created was going to follow with some kind of epic level tragedy. It made me wonder things like, would the creators destroy the show's namesake and that kind of thing.

This is what I love about shows with finite endings. The show can take any angle it needs and it doesn't have to worry about keeping the handsome hero around for ratings.

What we got was much better, I think. My only real complaint is that it feels a little bit like we got shortchanged with the impact of the four being revealed, although seeing Adama go to pieces was a pretty choice scene and Lee's standoff with D'Anna was well worth it as well.

I'm guessing that we'll have more of to follow. Instead, the writers wanted to get us to their end scene of choice - the broken, apocalyptic, devastated remains of Earth.

Not that the sight was a huge shock. Firstly this is a show which has never allowed characters to get off easy. Second, if we follow that the show has more than a little religious undertones, then we won't get grace just by parking ships in orbit.

It does raise some interesting questions though - who exactly did all the bomb dropping and when. If the Cylons were, in general, unaware of Earth, then why exactly were there five hidden models that knew the way? How much of this ties into the "This has all happened before" mantra from a season or so ago.

Especially since, in reality, the four didn't know the way to Earth. They were just there to help open the envelope. Starbuck was the messenger - or rather Starbuck's ship was the messenger.

And to paraphrase Starbuck, it all makes it seem like there's someone pulling the strings. If you look at the whole show as an organized plan to rediscover Earth ... which seems the only explanation since Earth would still be missing without some pretty divine intervention, the real remaining questions would be - who is the puppetmaster?

Or rather, without putting to deep a point on it, the show is asking: Who is God?

And should we read too much into the fact that the final model is as of yet unrevealed. Would they be one and the same? Was D'Anna being specific with the whole "there are four" statement in the sense that the fifth isn't part of the fleet or that the fifth was already on the Baseship?

My money is still on Roslin, Baltar or some yet unseen character. Definitely looking forward to the show's conclusion.

TV Watch: Battlestar Galactica, Sine Qua Non And The Hub

Yeah, I know I'm behind on Galactica. And still am, I haven't caught Revelations from Friday yet. I actually still have about half of my truckload of entertainment that I armed myself with to survive the flight home. I've got Doctor Who, 30 Days, there's even a couple meerkats in there...

Spoilers be here for the two episodes listed above.

That said, the two that I did catch up on were quite awesome. The show is walking this fine line between bizarre hocum pocum and really tight character conflict. Just how well the hocum pocum will work is to be determined, but there's at least a lot of interesting takes on religion. The end of The Hub, where Roslin feels gipped for having saved Balthazar but not gotten her golden ticket home was a wonderful depiction of all the characters involved.

Apparently the scene with Tigh and Adama where Adama mentions how many times he has to repair his model ship might be an in-show reference to breaking the ship during an ad lib take on the set.

I'll wait on any more final five speculation until I can catch up. Don't want to ramble on and on about a guess when for all I know D'Anna has been singing like a bird last week.

TV Watch: Battlestar Galactica, He That Believeth in Me

Personally what I like about Battlestar Galactica is its ability to reduce itself to very discernible bits.

In this episode - that would space dogfights and mistrust. From the view of the cockpit and the command center, you get the gritty military SF that has made the series so unique in the genre, comparable to Firefly in this regard, and then in the hallways and various rooms of the Battlestar - what's almost something of an inverse murder mystery. We're not trying to figure who was killed - we're trying to figure out who never was really alive.

Firstly, the ambush and the retreat is fairly telling of the Cylon fleet. There has been a lot of indication that the race sees themselves as essentially the hand of God. Here - it is practically the only explanation. It's not that they're out to exterminate the entire human race, they're playing their part in man's morality play. They're the flood to God's Noah. So while the whole show probably could have ended in the first half hour of this episode, the Cylons retreat as soon as they realize that the new forms have been activated.

Which brings us to what well definately be huge theme for this final season, as clearly laid out by the show's intro text ... who is the final Cylon?

Obvious suspect right now is Kara. It's hard to explain her ability to be blown to bits and return in a flashy new ride with a free round trip to Earth thrown in to boot. Of course, that pre-supposes that the Cylons are sitting there waiting on Earth and the counter-argument to the Noah theory above is that the Cylons are intentionally allowing a weak group of humans to limp back to Earth to finish the entire job (or, as we've seen, there are factions of both). It also assumes that the Cylons would have some reason to make a big show of infiltrating BSG ... something they haven't really done before.

My guess? Kara's something else. I think the show is quickly moving into a stage where atheism isn't really much of an option in the mythos and Kara's seeming rescue may be more of an act of divine intervention than anything else.

So our next most likely candidate would be Baltar. He's already suspected it, he seems to share the visions that Cylons are capable of having (although Kara might now fit that as well) and he seems to be preaching the religion of the Cylons as well. He might be their messenger and their messiah. Yet, if anything, Baltar is far too obvious - a traitor and opportunist on an epic scale. If Baltar would be "revealed" as a Cylon - it would be essentially anticlimatic.

I think this leaves three likely candidates: The Old Man, Lee and The President. Out of these, I'd say Roslin is my favorite. She has visions, she shared a vision with Six, she's been cured by Cylon hybrid blood and she's potentially leading the fleet away from Earth.

Perhaps this episode set up what will be the arching conflict of the final season - Starbuck versus Roslin.

Get Your Cylon Detection Kit Handy

Here's your public service announcement that tonight kicks off the last season of Galactica. While I'm a huge fan, I'm all for the curtain being closed on this portion of the the Battlestar mythos. I think they've milked it for a decent story and a decent story deserves a decent ending.

Battlestar To End With Season 4

Slashdot confirms the fluctuating rumor of Galactica's end - detailing a press release which states creative reasons for ending the show "on their own terms".

I think it's probably a good idea. If they want to extend the franchise, spinoffs will probably do more justice to the storyline than trying to stretch this one out. Lost is a great example of what can happen to your premise when you do things like add Nikki and Paolo into it.

Beyond The Red Line: Battlestar Game

Beyond The Red Line is a total conversion using the Freespace 2 engine that allows you to fly Viper missions from the Battlestar Pegasus. Looks like they have Windows, Linux and Mac demos - and I would get them while they're hot since I don't see any notice about legality posted on the site so who knows how long this will be available.