Battlestar Galactica: Season Last

Two weeks!

i'd care if last season made any sense

(but of course i'll watch it)

Sci-Fi Channel was running promos for this during every single break during the Twilight Zone marathon.

Not that they had much else to do, since the only other adverts they had were either for other shows or life insurance or odd exercise equipment.

What about those crazy towels that guy is always yelling about?

sham-wow?

> What about those crazy towels that guy is always yelling about?

Worst final cylon possibility ever.

More Grace Park storylines, please

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/photos/uncategorized/2009/01/12/bsg_propaganda_3_3.jpg

Anybody watch Face of the Enemy? I thought it was actually pretty good, though splitting it into 10 parts made it way more confusing that it needed to be. Also it nicely patches in a dangling plot thread from Season 3. Gaeta and Eight do a really good job.

god what a tragedy this show is

having re-watched the entire run recently I kinda have to agree with s1ocki - not about the specific shark-jumping point (I think the slow reveal of the cylon culture/in-fighting has been great, fwiw) - but about how there's a lot of squandered promise here after the first season and a half or so. This last season was a lot of time-wasting (especially whenever the stories focused on Bambi Jamber or Starbuck) and they've now convuluted everything so unnecessarily I'll be really surprised if there's any truly satisfying way to pull it all together.

Although the Planet of the Apes cliffhanger was pretty great.

it is true that a lot of tension evaporated when it became clear that the cylons DON'T actually have a plan

also plz no more of that lawyer guy, terrible character

I'm looking forward to:

1. The clip show

2. The Wizard of Oz tribute episode (acceptable alternates: A Christmas Carol or It's a Wonderful Life.)

3. The introduction of a new, adorable child character.

4. The crossover with a popular cop or medical drama.

pretty great show all the way through save a lot of the lee adama stuff

fat lee was great though

4. The crossover with a popular cop or medical drama.

Was brilliant when it was Homicide/Law & Order crossover.

i don't even care who the 5th is anymore

okay that's a lie

god what a tragedy this show is

Why yes. Yes it is!

Hahah! Well put.

so i really want some kfc now

haha. We saw this at the Bagdad in Portland. 500-600 geeks in attendence. I kept yelling out "FRIIIIEEEED CHICKEN" during each advert break. What a weird cross-promotion.

Also, suffice it to say, the more mystical stuff, the better, just as long as it gets explained 'fore season's end.

if tigh's wife is the 5th, then wtf is kara thrace? i wish this show even tried to make sense

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2009/01/final-fifth-cylon-ellen-tigh-battlestar-galactica-dualla-dee-.html

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/tv/index.ssf/2009/01/battlestar_galactica_ron_moore.html

A lot of times in the podcast, you'll say things like, "I know people are interested in this, but that's really not where the story's going." You didn't really deal with the toasters becoming sentient again, that sort of thing. After I watched "Revelations," I thought it was a great ending, but I jotted down a list of things that still had to be dealt with. I'm wondering, without you giving it away, whether these things are going to be addressed or whether these are things that we're thinking a lot more about than you were.

Do you have a list?

Yeah.

Okay.

Obviously, the identity of the final Cylon, we will find this out?

Yeah.

The origin and nature of the Final Four and how they different from the rest of them?

Yes.

The origin of the rest of the skinjobs?

Yes.

What happened to Earth and what happened to the 13th Colony?

Yes.

Who, if anyone, is orchestrating all of this?

Basically, yeah. I don't know if it's going to be wrapped up in a neat bow. The show has an answer for it, whether it's a satisfying answer, I don't know.

Will "All this has happened before and it will happen again" be explained in some way?

Yes.

The opera house?

Yes.

What happened to Kara when she went through the Malestrom?

Pretty much.

Identity and nature of the "head" characters?

Yes.

Tigh and Six's baby, and whether that means Cylons can breed?

Yes. That's not a "yes" to whether they can breed -- the question will be answered.

The fate of Boomer and whether there are other 1's, 4's and 5's floating out there?

Yes.

Roslin's health?

Yes.

i read a theory that starbuck is the child of ellen and tigh and so she is the first hybrid.

Is this a no spoiler thread or can we talk about specific stuff that happened?

once a show has aired, it's all fair game

ie, it's no longer a spoiler. someone who hasn't seen the episode has no business clicking on the thread.

Okay, cool. Thanks.

I really liked the episode. I was not very excited about the 5th being Ellen (I wanted it to be Gaeta), but Ron Moore is pretty good at making things fit eventually so I will not be too Angry Fangirl about it and just see what happens. I do like how out of all the possible epic love stories, Saul and Ellen Tigh are the couple with the love that will echo through the ages.

My favorite part of the show was Leoben's reaction when Kara told him that the hybrid told her she was the harbinger of death and would lead them all to the end. It's like he suddenly realized that Oh wow, she is a whole lot crazier than even I thought...

And I totally cried when Dee shot herself, even though I was never a big fan of her character. I wasn't expecting that! I was actually sure we were about to find out she was the 5th. I even said, "Damn, she is the final Cylon" and then BLAM.

Also, when they blew the resurrection hub, one of the Cylons said that now there was no difference between humans and Cylons, but I think last night when Leoben and D'Anna both realized that they actually had no fucking clue what to do next, and when it became clear that the Cylons do not actually have a direct line to God or any kind of a plan or even superior understanding of how things work - that's when the human/Cylon differences really fell away.

someone who hasn't seen the episode has no business clicking on the thread

i forgot to check US tx date so am now spoilered. oh well.

blame yourself

Loved the drunk Adama/Tigh yelling session. and Adama with Duala's body in the morgue. Olmos is incredible. I'm glad they spared us the flashback of Anders playing 'All Along the Watchtower'...the guitar fretboard stuck in the sand felt pretty lame to me. I was watching it going "please don't flashback, please don't flashback'.

I always thought Ellen was a Cylon, which makes it feel too obvious to actually be true.

What a downer of an episode! The only thing that has me worried is that the preview for next week looked like filler.

I love this show.

Crazy ep, I loved it too.

Remember when they first introduced Ellen, and they thought she had died in the initial attacks, so there was Cylon suspicion? Then again in the first season I think almost every character was suspected to be a Cylon at some point.

The Dee thing was incredibly depressing, she was probably the sweetest character on the show. They were totally playing her up to be the Fifth Cylon in that scene though, they way she was humming that tune so oddly, I thought they were calling back to the 3rd season finale. Which made the BLAM all the more shocking.

I wonder why we didn't get Tory's flashback - I bet that'll be a deleted scene.

latebloomer those links were GREAT, btw

this was some bullshit

Kara as harbinger of doom now seems to mean simply that she led the whole fleet back to Earth, which had been destroyed. Or is that too simple?

I still effing hate Ellen as a character. They'll have to work hard to get me to like her given that she's taking screen time away from more interesting people.

isn't she, like, dead though? how's that gonna work out, i'm wondering.

My theory at the end of the episode last night was that Ellen was a red herring and that each of the other four would have visions of people they knew as cylons in their previous lives (Tyrol seeing Callie, etc.) and, well, god knows where that would have gone. But Ellen just seemed so deeply unsatisfying as the final cylon. And she's dead!

one more article for those interested:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-et-cylon-2009jan17,0,6147971.story?track=rss

Oh man, I feel bad for poor, inevitable putz who hasn't seen this episode but checks out the Battlestar Wiki entry on the Thirteenth Tribe, which starts, The Thirteenth Tribe, a group of early generation Cylons...

But Ellen just seemed so deeply unsatisfying as the final cylon. And she's dead!

Well, there's something about Earth that enables reincarnation somehow -- the Four, plus Kara -- so as far as we know right now, her death may only be a temporary setback.

not to mention the fact that the actress who played Ellen said she was in nine episodes this season (interview linked somewhere)

right, I'm really just talking about my initial reaction.

but she's not dead

I think my thinking at the time was something along the lines of well, last we saw her she was dead and we've not seen any of the final five able to download/resurrect. And if she'd downloaded into one of the cylon's ships you'd think one of them might have noticed.

maybe they only resurrect at the "opera house"

when did kara hear about the hybrid's prediction? that was in Razor right? and the only person that heard it died with that baseship. i forget so much of this show :-(

I think it was late last season.

not in razor. the hybrid told the badass girl in razor about the harbinger stuff.

Yeah, it was in the episode where Kara and the Shit Ship Crew find Leoben in a damaged heavy raider and he takes Kara, Athena, Anders, and a red shirt to go get the rebel Cylons off the broken base ship. They're about to unplug the hybrid and a Centurion shoots an 8 who bleeds into the hybrids bathtub and the hybrid freaks and grabs Kara and is like "LOL u harbinger."

I'm just irritated that the show set up all these things that were supposed to have distinguished cylons from humans - 12 models (where's number 7?), multiple copies of each, incapable of sexual reproduction, capable of resurrection, they have a "plan", they have a coherent religion, they were created and designed by humans, etc. - have been progressively, casually stripped them away with these half-assed "well, not really" kind of explanations. I mean, we're talking about the title cards of the fucking show being made into red herrings in a fairly incoherent way. Lame.

I can see the irritation there - that's pretty much how I feel about Lost and Heroes, which are two shows that I once loved and now am only continuing to watch due to sunk cost bias. The way I look at BSG is that the Cylons did have a plan, but then the plan totally failed. That could have been the end of the show, I guess, but to me, when their plan hit the crapper is when the show got interesting - the best laid plans of mice and Cylon, etc. etc. It's like, everybody - humans, Cylons, and viewers - had this expectation of what the underlying story framework was going to be, but the show took a left turn, and I find that direction fascinating. I also agree that the explanations so far have been kind of half-assed, but I just figure that's part of the mystery and that eventually ALL WILL BE REVEALED. I'm heartened by the Q&A excerpt that latebloomer posted upthread, since it seems that Ron Moore recognizes that leaving all of these half-assed explanations in place would be majorly unsatisfying and plans to address all the remaining mysteries. So yeah, I guess it's all a question of response to that left turn into "Whoops, plan failed, now what?" territory. Also the possibility that I am being epically naive with all this faith in the writers and Moore/Eick to make wrap this up in a cohesive, satisfying package. Also maybe sunk cost bias - this is about as emotionally involved as I have ever been in anything fictional in my life.

Lost has evolved quite cleverly tho.

See, I think Lost, er, lost the plot pretty hard, although I still enjoy watching it and probably wouldn't argue too hard about it, since, you know, subjective tastes and all that.

xposty

your problem is that you remember too much :) did they really set all that up (Incapable of sexual reproduction?)

to be honest, right now i feel like the way this whole thing is going, we're actually going to learn at the end that the "humans" are in fact cylons that are one evolutionary cycle ahead

Yeah Jenny pretty much sums up my own feelings there.

http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/feature/2009/01/16/bsg_explainer/

This is pretty epic, it's a plot breakdown of everything that happened in seasons 1-4. I forgot more than half the plots in here - it's really crazy when you realize just how any concurrent stories they pushed through. While it does show there were a lot of stories that were just dropped (infamously, that whole Centurion free will thing) overall for the show there's far, far more good than bad and it is overall very coherent. But to be fair Moore has been pretty open about their flying-by-the-seat-of-their pants storytelling, especially with all those commentaries they put out week to week.

(OT but I think Lost completely redeemed itself over the last season and so, basically when they found the series end date it got back on track. I think the series as a whole has been great except for that dip in season 3).

I think the end will satisfy, but the fact Moore he loves the Sopranos finale should probably give you a clue about how "traditionally" it will end. I'm not expecting an exciting guns blazing shoot-out - remember, it was entirely possible that the S4 finale of finding earth could have been IT, the series finale, if contracts didn't get worked out. The real finale's probably gonna be horrible, bleak, depressing and a least a little illogical and abstract. I'm looking forward to it immensely.

I can see how some of the stuff that's happened would be annoying to someone who watched the show from the beginning, but as someone who's started watching only in the last year or so, I've really enjoyed the last two seasons of BSG, and last night's episode was real good, I thought. Too bad the dude who plays Apollo can't act.

The last two seasons of Lost have been awesome, but I agree with an article I read that said the show was better when it didn't center so much on Ben. He's so interesting that he kind of takes away from what made the show great in season 1 ... a bunch of strangers trying to find a way to build a community on a strange island. When the show moved away from that, I think it lost a lot of what made it special. Also, season 1 was shot on a different island than the following seasons, and I think that island was much nicer to look at than the island they've used since.

What actually happened at the end of the Sopranos? I probably watched about five episodes of the show throughout it's entire run so I'm familiar with the characters, but never saw the series finale.

The real finale's probably gonna be horrible, bleak, depressing and a least a little illogical and abstract. I'm looking forward to it immensely.

My husband predicts it will be similar to the ending of Neon Geneis Evangelion (lol nerds), which was bleak, depressing, illogical, and abstract but still really cool.

i love the bit in this episode when Adama is walking to Tigh's cabin and just passes a fistfight in progress without giving a shit

Me, too! And all the people with their heads in their hands and the Frak Earth graffiti... Galactica went all Hieronymus Bosch.

Adama's drunky "How the frak would I know?" in the morgue was WOAH.

^haha, oh god, my reaction was exactly that. Previous drunky Adamas had no prepared for that line. They really amped up pretty much every actor going to pieces, didn't they? A lot of really good performances this ep - that interview which stated this was the last episode to be made right when the strike hit, and everyone gave their craziest effort knowing it might be the last to be filmed.... I think the episode director mentioned in that interview how Olmos really carried those emotions to everyone on set.

My husband predicts it will be similar to the ending of Neon Geneis Evangelion (lol nerds), which was bleak, depressing, illogical, and abstract but still really cool.

amazingly crazily SUPER fucking OTM, Shakey Mo Collier.

ehhh this was ok... so hard to give a shit after all the stupid nonsense they've been up to the last few seasons, all the really obvious let's-throw-shit-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks storytelling

also i was thinking how lame it was that they've reduced their 2 really strong female characters to basically catatonic wrecks and then like 5 seconds later dee offs herself haha

I still really, really like and enjoy this show.

Worst/best commercial placement ever:

agh that was some bad acting in that scene

that cracker's splash into the soup was kind of unconvincing, i agree.

Heh. I thought the tomato soup explosion was way overdone.

wait i thought someone sneaked up and shot dee and everyone just thought she'd shot herself.
i think i have forgotten how to watch tv shows!

i don't know, i still like and will watch this show until it is over. i like how absolutely everyone is falling apart.

ha whaaaaat

i srsly thought that!! i still don't believe you guys.
maybe i need to eat more vitamins and also not watch a 45-min tv show over the course of 2.5 days

my roommate thought that also. MORANS!

i used to be good at this!
maybe i just didn't want to believe
the graffiti on galatica's walls was depressing enough

It was depressing. I am having similar denial about Ellen being the fifth, because I really want it to be Gaeta.

I will watch and enjoy this show to the end, too, and no amount of s1ocki telling me that it sucks will change that. Sorry, s1ocki.

I was underwhelmed. At this point I am going to watch the rest of the episodes to see how it ends, because I'm compulsive like that.

Was Starbuck burning the wreck she found at the end? Was half-asleep when I was watching.

I liked the episode. Finding Tigh's good-guy antics intriguing.
I assume next ep we'll be smashed with Baltar cuz he was absent in this one.

dont take it personally jenny!! im just calling it like i see it!!

i'm keeping my eyes closed when opening this thread, just popped in to say that i only realized today that season 4.0 is out on dvd, so at least i can get halfway caught up!

Starbuck was burning the body that she found in the wreck.

I don't take it personally, s1ocki! I'm just a fan, not a writer/producer/director/actor so I have no personal stake in your opinion. I think it's sincerely amusing that rarely a day goes by that you don't mention your dislike of the show.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/01/17/statler_waldorf_080117_mn.jpg

no its cuz i like it but im sad its gone so wrong and yet im holding on for the dim hope it gets better! scratch a cynic, etc

I'm still not convinced that Ellen isn't an old 6.

Damn right, Polyphonic.

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/dbenedict/2009/01/19/lt-starbuck-lost-in-castration/

COMEDY GOLD

MEN HAND OUT CIGARS, WOMEN HAND OUT BABIES!

Richard Hatch must be chuckling over it all.

Love the small scene of Adama picking up the piece of litter.

So does this mean he won't show up as God before the show ends?

Also, Doc Cottle was great as always.

I think it's interesting that the 'Nurse Chapel'/Layne Ishay character(played by Jamie Bamber's wife) is allowed to keep her accent, whereas Bamber switched to a (North) American one.

("he" = Dirk, in my post above)

I'm still enjoying this, but I have to say the Baltar/Caprica interaction was what really turned me on to this show. It's disappointing that they seem to be done with Baltar as a character (and I get this terrible "yuck" feeling having to watch Tigh and Caprica together).

I think (perhaps hoping) that Baltar is just waiting in the wings for his awesome comeback. If they're wrapping up everything, he MUST be a major player. Surely. Right?

I'm still clinging to my theory that he's the REAL first human/cylon offspring. But who knows? Besides Moore, anyway.

I think (perhaps hoping) that Baltar is just waiting in the wings for his awesome comeback.

I'm predicting some kind of Jim Jones/Jonestown event for Baltar and his followers.

I still get a kick out of how most of the tech is Roddenberry-era/mid-20th-Century N.American stuff...

(with minor exceptions)

i feel like a whole lotta people involved in making this season of the show just totally gave in to their alcoholism or something and settled for being miserable wrecks
and that makes me sad :(
yet i hold out hope that they saw the light and pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and made, like, the last three episodes brilliant and amazing.
gah, stupid hope

i feel bad now complaining about this show but this last ep was just like errrghghhghg

does anyone really give a shit about tom zarek's political maneuvering the 293829392th time

and since when are tigh and that six like openly lovey-dovey??

and since when is all the acting soooooooo bad

pretty awesome direction the storyline is taking imo, everyone either suicidal or ready to mutiny. btw admiral adama brushes his teeth a lot when he's on edge and pissed off, it seems.

mutiny IS interesting! and yet it is being made boring. what happened to, yknow, ACTION???
i'm all for introspective dramatic moments of despair but cmon let's not kid ourselves, part of the reason we all loved this show in the first place was the space fighting. maybe they ran out of money? because srsly every time i though 'ooh there's going to be some action/conflict with some kind of apex to it' that just did not happen... everything keeps falling flat! which is not to say i'm not hanging in to see what happens. i'm so on board. maybe it's some kind of meta thing where we're supposed to feel miserable too.

This episode felt like they had to just catch up a bunch of old threads to make sense for the future - like how Tyrol's baby could be a Cylon hybrid, and the mass of ridiculous coincidences that have secret Cylons did terrible things to Gaeta, leading to his mutiny. I agree with some comments above - these elements, the mutiny, the impending Baltar cult implosion, even the political stuff (oh BSG, how you hate democracy so much) should be more exciting than it is.

Ron Moore directed this episode for the first time (he also wrote this), I think it could be his fault, frankly, it seemed kind of sloppy. The Starbuck/Gaeta scene in particular seemed less moving than it needed to be.

whoa! totally disagree, s1ocki. thought this was one of the best episodes in YEARS.

and since when are tigh and that six like openly lovey-dovey??

The one crap part of this episode, I thought. Otherwise I thought it was great-- not sure why people here are hating on it this much. Concur with x-post.

I thought the direction was very good on the whole. I'm happy for the show to take a breather and catch up on things. It put the characters where they need to be for the remaining 8 episodes. As much as I want the questions answered, I like the world of BSG and its characters enough to want this kind of thing, as opposed to Lost, where I don't care about the people as much as I want my mind totally fucking blown every ten minutes.

the show's been taking a breather for the last three seasons... every time something actually happens, like finding earth, they're like ok nothing to see here move along folks chief and cally have some more relationship issues to work out... i mean at this point they're having them from BEYOND THE GRAVE.

>whoa! totally disagree, s1ocki. thought this was one of the best episodes in YEARS

Totally OTM. Seeing the "written and directed by" Ronald D Moore in the credits gave me the same warm, fuzzy feeling that it used to when The Sopranos got that treatment by David Chase.

o_O

Don't really see what's o_0 about liking it when the creator of a show gets to write and direct an episode. Whenever David Chase, or Joss Whedon or Alan Ball do this they normally knock it out of the park and I thought RDM managed it with this episode.

hey guys, i'm all caught up, so i can complain now too!

I'm with s1ocki. I thought the episode was pretty awful. That opening scene with Tigh and 6 seemed like a weird dream sequence, due to the horrible acting/directing. When Tigh lit up a smoke, and was sort-of blowing it away from 6 DURING HER ULTRASOUND, things just felt surreal. The scene with Gaeta and Starbuck was too long and cruel. The pathetic "no more questions" press conference was pointless and silly. Maybe RDM is using the last season to show what happens when leadership fails miserably.

I liked this last episode, maybe more than the premiere - primarily because everything that happened in it actually followed some kind of discernible logic, and they answered a couple of poitns that had been bugging me (yes cylons can apparently breed and Cally's kid is not a hybrid). On the other hand, old man cancer sex = do not want, and how many fuckign shots of Adama brushing his teeth do we need to see...

Also the mutiny angle makes total sense - of course everyone is going to blame the failure of this expedition to Earth on the leadership, and given how many risks they took and corners they cut and sacrifices they made to get there yeah it makes Adama and Roslin look REALLY bad.

On the other hand, um yeah we already went through this mutiny/"why are YOU in charge" sorta shit back in Season 1, if I'm not mistaken.

I am super-annoyed that they have so backgrounded Baltar and apparently dropped the whole Caprica 6-Baltar psychic connection angle entirely.

This show kinds of annoys me. Feels very WE ARE MAKING THINGS UP AS WE GO ALONG these days. Still entertained enough, but I have a feeling the payoff to all this is going to be contrived and disappointing.

It doesn't help that RDM has given a bunch of interviews admitting that they DID make it up as they went along. Maybe he should have saved those for a few more weeks. Or maybe it's my fault for reading them.

I think that's the nature of TV though. Shows live season to season, so its pretty rare - or at least a fairly new and still unusual phenomenon - to have shows with a preconceived arc because half the time people working on the shows are expecting to get cancelled/lose a star/face a writer's strike/whatever. I think the Sopranos works unbelievably well in this respect (I assume the Wire does too, from what people have told me), but its pretty rare. Shows aren't really started with an ending already in mind.

It's a little easier for the Wire or the Sopranos, because both of their endings are these nihilistic "and-it-continues" sort-of deals. Shows like Lost or BSG, which are built around some major reveals, seem like they should have this shit thought through in advance...

I am super-annoyed that they have so backgrounded Baltar and apparently dropped the whole Caprica 6-Baltar psychic connection angle entirely.

i just watched season 4.0 on dvd and there was a deleted scene where 6 says he's become the man she always wanted him to be and that he doesn't need her anymore, and then she fades out yoda-style.

yeah but try and sell that to a network exec. They're gonna see any prescribed ending as an unnecessary limit to potential $$$

x-post

it seemed like a pretty important scene to cut out, although i assumed that was the deal when psychic baltar appeared to give himself advice/get himself laid that one time.

Look Shakey if the tagline for your show is "they have a plan" it seems to me that it would be prudent as a writer to have at least an idea of what that plan is.

i just watched season 4.0 on dvd and there was a deleted scene where 6 says he's become the man she always wanted him to be and that he doesn't need her anymore, and then she fades out yoda-style.

!! what?! THAT IS SOME BULLSHIT. I guess I should watch the deleted scenes. Is this before or after Baltar hallucinated a copy of himself talking to him...

Look Shakey if the tagline for your show is "they have a plan" it seems to me that it would be prudent as a writer to have at least an idea of what that plan is.

I totally agree (see my griping upthread)

yeah but try and sell that to a network exec. They're gonna see any prescribed ending as an unnecessary limit to potential $$$

x-post

― Courtney Love's Jew Loan Officer (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, January 26, 2009 11:22 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you can think shit out in advance and not necessarily have that = definite ending to the show.

xpostage

Lost bugs me a lot lot less, cuz it seems to me that the creators of that show had an arc that they completed at the end of Season 3 and then they created a new arc which started with Season 4 and has an ending all set up for it. That I don't know why the statue has four toes or whatever bugs me a lot less cuz the show seems to have at least some sort of logical direction.

Is this before or after Baltar hallucinated a copy of himself talking to him...

it was after, in one of the last few episodes. right before he goes out to do one of his broadcasts.

Lost bugs me a lot lot less, cuz it seems to me that the creators of that show had an arc that they completed at the end of Season 3 and then they created a new arc which started with Season 4 and has an ending all set up for it. That I don't know why the statue has four toes or whatever bugs me a lot less cuz the show seems to have at least some sort of logical direction.

― Alex in SF, Monday, January 26, 2009 11:25 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the four toes thing is ridic - can't someone make a statue with four toes without it implying that the creator has four toes

No. I assume that Matt Groenig must have four toes because Homer does.

at the beginning of season 4 it felt like the writers knew what they were doing, even if they were cleaning up after some random elements (like the identities of the final 5, etc.). and i'm still enjoying the season but it seems like the writers are flailing now.

it was after, in one of the last few episodes. right before he goes out to do one of his broadcasts.

wow.

given how central that whole psychic link vs. hallucination subplot was and how well it was handled and what a great character Baltar is I'm just... man...

very disappointed.

they really blew the final five thing imo... like you could have introduced some more secret cylons and done in it a suspenseful way but it was just like yup, here they are... and they're not going to do anything.

The final final fifth made the reveal on the previous four seem like a work of fucking genius though.

yeah the impotence/ignorance of the final 5 is very wtf (like, why were they so special to the other cylons? they don't know/can't do shit!)

unless Tigh havin the super-sperm is some final 5 thing (that could've been a good angle - Tirol and Tigh and the others bein able to spawn as compared to the other models)

guys

Hey now that one dude can air guitar along to a crappy rendition of "All Along The Watchtower".

i'm guessing stuff will be revealed

"that could've been a good angle - Tirol and Tigh and the others bein able to spawn as compared to the other models"

Well they just killed that shit.

little nitpicky things about BSG that bother me in a Comic Book Guy fashion:

-the population number not changing in the credits, even after a ship with 600 people on it gets blown up

-someone will get a massive head wound (like tyrol getting wrenched by callie) and be fine in the next scene, and then other people will have scratches for three episodes

-people seeming to leave their kids unsupervised in their quarters all the time, which is why i was glad to see dee babysitting that one time. have they ever mentioned Galactica Daycare or anything?

not like i want the show to get bogged down in stupid details, but since they try so hard at realism for certain things i can't help but think about it.

"i'm guessing stuff will be revealed"

I'm sure it will. I just have no faith that it won't just be completely outta thin air bullshit at this point.

didn't "inner six" kinda disappear when her "flesh and blood" counterpart showed up

Hey now that one dude can air guitar along to a crappy rendition of "All Along The Watchtower".

lolz

Nope, she was around for quite a bit after that.

OH FUCK HOW COULD THEY BLOW IT LIKE THAT

didn't "inner six" kinda disappear when her "flesh and blood" counterpart showed up

no. she did when a 6 apppeared on the deck in Season 1, but when the actual Caprica 6 showed up, Baltar was still seeing his hallucination version, who implied that she was somehow somebody/something else. Guess we'll never know now!

(that could've been a good angle - Tirol and Tigh and the others bein able to spawn as compared to the other models)

yeah, since they already age apparently. another thing that bothers me is that it would be such blind luck that 4 out of the 5 are still alive, given all the casualties. it was just such a random "pick some cast members who aren't doing much else and make them cylons" move.

sorry i'm putting way too much thought into this show.

-the population number not changing in the credits, even after a ship with 600 people on it gets blown up

wait I thought this has been changing. Or at least it was changing in seasons 1 and 2 when my wife was keeping track.

Now they are down to 30-something thousand. At that size, you really start to wonder how anything gets built, etc.

it was just such a random "pick some cast members who aren't doing much else and make them cylons" move.

Tigh's being a cylon is pretty genius, I think. The rest = eh who cares.

What does it even mean to be a cylon if you have free will, you can make babies, and you don't get resurrected.

i don't think it's been changing this season, but whatever. i remember that when lee changes the number on his dry-erase board after dee's death that it was different from the credits number by at least a few hundred.

What does it even mean to be a cylon if you have free will, you can make babies, and you don't get resurrected.

i think that's their point!

so um why was there a war in the first place then

or rather, why did cylons appear to have programming guiding their behavior for the first few seasons but now they no longer do

I'm suspecting that this show may have a Matrix Revolutions-style explanation.

they evolved

xxxx-post

I think it's clear from the premiere episode that they DO get resurrected somehow, even if it's not in the same way as the other cylons.

IMO this show benefits more from watching the episodes together as a season rather than in real time as they air.

With hiatuses and waiting you forget what happened last time and makes the show seem more confusing than it really is.

btw guys, you know we're all cylons, right? at least according to what they found out when they landed on earth.

i don't think it's our earth

IMO this show benefits more from watching the episodes together as a season rather than in real time as they air.

yeah, i forgot everything that had happened in season 3 but it was nice to watch season 4.0 and go directly into the new episodes.

it was the earth with the cylon Dylan and the cylon Manhattan?

I just watched everything in sequence leading up to the current season and it made this show seem even more incoherent than I had thought possible btw

at this point I think the only way I could laugh this show off and be satisfied is if they went the total WTF route and had some Supreme Being make an appearance and explain everything away deus ex machina a la Time Bandits or Oh God!

"I am the Golux," the Golux said, "The only Golux in the whole world, and not a mere device."

IIRC Moore blogged the day after the Sopranos finale talking about how the ending of that totally inspired him, so if you use that as a sign...

he's also said elsewhere he's not gonna do that ending

also re: the infamous "Plan" from the first couple seasons

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1286130/

(aring after the show ends)

So they are explaining the plan separately? Good idea!

I can smell the advertising $$$ already

save your 2 cents

F'real, if this turns into an endless slog of tie-ins and spin-offs I'm gonna punch Moore in the neck, right after I punch myself in the neck for not seeing it coming.

caprica: enterprise

Jesus Hussein Christ, when you invent a worst case scenario you don't fuck around, do you?

http://http://www.mysmiley.net/imgs/smile/evilgrin/evilgrin0036.gif

http://http://www.mysmiley.net/imgs/smile/evilgrin/evilgrin0036.gif

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2080/2418979372_08cd8af49d_o.jpg

I think The Plan, as well as future spin-off movies, were said or implied to take place before during the run of the show, definitely not after the end.

I wonder if the show will have pissed away all the fans' goodwill by the end of its run.

Really hope it doesn't but it's looking likely that its going down that route.

I don't know if I'd go that far, I still think it's a great show, it's just not as heart-pumping as when it started - this is pretty inevitable for just about any TV series that's run this long (except maybe The Wire).

where is Baltar/Col Tigh roommates sitcom spinoff

Which is Hanks and which is Scolari?

I was thinking more Matthau/Lemon

did you see that episode where they wiped out humanity... and it was all just a big misunderstanding LOL

really boring episode

how much of this bullshit is left

guessing here but:

mutiny will lead to chaos, during chaos the other cylons reappear and start fucking shit up

I predict another shitty trial/legal drama episode somewhere in there (impeachment of Roslin, treason for Adama, etc.)

lol if there's another trial episode with shadesy mclawyerman i will fly to wherever ronald d. moore is and personally give him a wedgie

yeah, that lawyer sucks. speaking of which, was the cat running around his quarters a hallucination that Lee couldn't see?

^do not give shit

worst character on this show by a million miles

the lawyer character becomes totally okay when he's not wearing his sunglasses

Genius at work:

This whole little subplot about Nicky's real father being discovered was something we, you know, decided in the writers' room... Once we had decided that Tyrol was a cylon, that automatically meant that Nicky was another Cylon hybrid. And we had said, very clearly, on the show... that Hera was the only hybrid between human and Cylon. And I didn't want to change that, Hera's role in the firmament of the show is very firmly established in my mind and I had a specific place where I wanted it to go, and then suddenly we had this additional problem if Tyrol was a Cylon. So we did have some conversations at the end of season 3, when we decided to make Tyrol a Cylon. And the long and the short of it is, somebody said, "Well, what if he's not the father?" and we all kind of laughed, and then we said, "Actually, that makes sense."

Yeah fucking brilliant.

lol

The writers obviously had their plan nicked by the cylons.

One of the interviews above did make an interesting comparison - while the creators of Lost have claimed all along they've had a roughly set story and ending to the saga, the BSG writers and Moore have been far more open about admitting that they're just making it up as they go along, and the mistakes they've made, especially in those commentary tracks. It's still painful to hear things like the S4 Centurion free will angle basically got scrapped for time.

i thought it was still developing when baltar was sermonizing to the centurion on the base ship (and it seemed to at least pretend to listen to him, like a cat), but i guess not.

Latest internet theory (so obviously it's true) I've read:

Baltar was killed in his house - that clip that's always shown in the title sequence - during the mini-series alongside the Six but has been resurrected Starbuck-style.

what IS starbuck-style anyway?

http://www.wohlmut.com/kevin/pictures/starbuck-n-starbuck-at-starbucks.jpg

That photo needs a copy of Moby Dick on the table in front of them to be complete.

I'm guessing that's from before his column.

that's more like it!

the dialogue's still hamfisted but this ep felt almost like older galactica.

i only ask that when they finally regain control, execute whoever you have to but please spare racetrack

^seriously. heartbreaking to see her be a part of the mutiny.

seelix, too:-( though i could see that one coming.

John Dahl's TV work is kinda outshining his theatrical stuff now.

Sitting here in bagdad theater now, mark verheiden is on stage doing q&a for 600 drunk geeks.

And he answered my dirk benedict and writing process questions.

haha what were your questions and how did he answer them?

exciting episode, with a minimum of silly things!

He mentioned that Richard Hatch had been involved with the show and had no problems with the different take on it, and that they probably wouldn't be sending out any offers to DB anytime soon now.

I asked him about the tonal/topic shifts in the series from episode-to-episode, whether that was by active design or just happened. He replied that a lot of it was based on the subject matter for that ep("mutiny ep" vs "politickin' ep") and other things due to the fact you had 7 guys writing this show.

2-3 people were there with handycams, so vid of it will no doubt surface soon. I'm the 2nd guy asking questions.

loved this ep!! so much going on!
i know part of the payoff is the build-up, but i take back nothing; prev several eps were still full of problems. but man! this! :D
(yeah, at heart, i am an action fan)

What a cliffhanger, I've got to wait a week to see who got blown up?

what's the big secret between gaius and felix that he(gaius) mentioned as they were speaking on the phone?

They're referring to some stuff that happened on New Caprica that surfaced in the webisodes that ran as a teaser to this last batch of episodes. Those are conveniently located here: http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/webisodes/

That bit with Baltar saying "No, I'm honoured but I don't want to take your statue; you can keep it." to the cult lady was golden.

Mark V said that Jamie Callis had the idea for baltar to call gaeta during the read-thru, so he wrote it in that night

jesus enough with the webisode references... seriously fuck that fanboy shit

HOWEVER

this was a really good episode. FINALLY get to see the actual central characters quit moping around DO some shit. and i'm always a fan of the all-star team-up.

this is the stuff the show is good it; not trials and prophecies and baby daddy drama.

otm fucking sweet episode.

Starbuck owned everyone

So many things I loved about that episode:
Starbuck kicks ass, takes names!
Apollo + Starbuck fight the bad guys. Wee!
Adama + Tigh show the kids how to kick it old school. Loved the shot from underneath while Adama was shooting through the door. He's my hero.
Baltar! Cowardly, preening, shifty wonderful Baltar! Loved when he was hugging that chick with the askance look elsewhere...yes, yes, I'll miss you GET ME THE FRAK OUT OF HERE
Chief with the escape plan. Pls let him grow a beard so he can kick serious ass again.

Wee!!

Best episode ever.

i get the feeling the rest of the season will be along these lines

And dean stockwell hasn't even shown up yet

i really hope Baltar's harem all die. they can't let people this annoying survive.

also there are still far too many journalists. wtf do they even do - reports to camera? who would even be bothered to print a fleet-wide newspaper at this point (run this back to s1 i guess)?

i know, it's like, the fleet has one doctor and like 30 jostling journalists?

i thought about it actually, and i GUESS it makes sense that a bunch of them were on... air force one? whatever the president's ship is called, i'm blanking on it, when the shit went down. but ya, how many surviving media outlets can there possibly be?

they don't even have a blogosphere

it was destroyed in the initial onslaught

when the Cylons network the fleet up to upgrade the FTLs they can at least have an intranet

i hope if adama & posse win and the cylons do network the fleet they turn out to be bad guys all along

actually what better NOT happen is that the uprising gets suppressed next episode and then the show just moves onto the next thing like it's been doing the past couple of seasons.

Wasn't there a huge plot point in the miniseries about how the battlestars were able to survive because they were the old ships in the fleet and NOT networked?

i hope if adama & posse win and the cylons do network the fleet they turn out to be bad guys all along

I was hoping for this as well.

actually what better NOT happen is that the uprising gets suppressed next episode and then the show just moves onto the next thing like it's been doing the past couple of seasons.

my guess is this is exactly what will happen and uprising will be resolved via Gaeta's death/suicide. (This whole thing with Gaeta the anti-cylon crusader is fucking totally nonsensical considering his complicity in Baltar's administration)

but he was only "complicit" so he could help the resistance from inside, right?

Did you watch the webisode thingy? It explains his motivation pretty well.

I don't have time for these webisodes - I caught part of one where Gaeta appeared to be having some kind of relationship with a Sharon and was mildly irritated by it

and my point about Gaeta's complicity is that he of all people should be sympathetic to the moral quandaries of leadership and the difficulty of guessing which strategy will best ensure survival.

wait i thought gaeta was gay-ta?

but wait lemme guess his real motivation is that he's a frustrated closeted homo

lolz x-post

gaeta & hoshi sitting in CIC

People aboard Gaeta's Raptor begin to die under mysterious circumstances, while hope of rescue diminishes. The "Pilot" Eight is electrocuted after using wirecutters with the insulating cover stripped from the handle. Brooks dies of a morpha overdose while the others are sleeping, which is at first speculated as a suicide. The rest suspect the Sweet Eight, but they are not certain. Eventually the Eight kills Shark and Easy in their sleep, leaving only herself and Gaeta. He is angry with her, but she says that she did it for them because they needed the oxygen. He is still angry, and she argues that he needs to realize that people kill when it makes sense to do so. She also mentions that back on New Caprica, she was actually killing most of the people he asked her to save, since they were the most important members of the resistance.

The Eight further implies that on some level, Gaeta knew what was going on, and is thus even more guilty of aiding the Cylons in their occupation than was Gaius Baltar. In a flashback, we then see that it was Baltar's threat to reveal Gaeta's role in the executions ("I know about your Eight") that caused him to try to kill Baltar in his cell in the episode "Taking a Break from All Your Worries", by stabbing him in the neck with a pen. Gaeta becomes so enraged that he kills the Eight, leaving him as the sole survivor aboard the Raptor.

Gaeta considers suicide by overdose of his morpha, but Hoshi and Racetrack finally find him. Back aboard Galactica, Gaeta declares that the humans should end their alliance with the Cylons.

"the Sweet Eight"? ha ha ha

It was pretty silly. But that's mainly because Gaeta has always reminded me of Sideshow Bob.

Sharon = the Easy Eight

whoa! but yeah i'm of the no-webisodes-watching camp, ohwell
xposts

it is kind of horseshit to put that crucial plot/character stuff in webisodes imo

like, that actually sounds a lot better than most of the stuff in recent episodes!

^^^OTM

It really shouldn't be relegated to those of us who have nothing better to do at work. xp

"gotta cut that, need more room for the Adama teeth-brushing shots"

ugh yes did not want

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cold_Equations

but the webisodes were TERRRRRRRIBLE.

RIP Quorum (good riddance, lol)

pretty good episode. normally i would hate on the show for handling this situation so quickly, but i think it was a good idea. we all knew how this would end. the ellen tigh teaser for next week is promising.

next week's ep has partially leaked:

These last two episodes have been fantastic, very very entertaining, exactly the kind of crazy drama I was expecting from the final season. I wonder what happened to Anders, though I figure that'll be handled next episode.

Lawyer guy had one of his only funny lines, when he referred to his "pen pal!"

ya when gaeta said trial and then lawyerman showed up I was like oh nooo but it was ok

The Chief went all John McClane down some tubes and I'm guessing what he found in the engine room means that the Galactica itself doesn't survive the series.

That was a cool moment. Also seemed like something of a callback to "Water" from the first season with the weird markings on the walls.

he found something? i thought he just disabled the ftl...?

yeah it looked like cracks in the walls or...?? anyone get a better look at it. we were like WTF?!?! when that happened...

yeah, he was staring at cracks in the hull

Random thoughts after several beers consumed in the course of watching this:

Very entertaining & compelling. I'm glad that they paid off several shots of Tyrol crawling thru Jeffries Tubes. I expected the cracks in the hull to be some recognizable pattern(like another mandela), but I guess not.

I had figured that either Gaeta or Zarek wouldn't survive the ep and that one would off the other; funny how that turned out.

Romo did a good job this ep, what with having limited screen time, not having his shades, shivving the dude, and final conversion from True Neutral to Neutral Good in his last scene.

Also, one of the random things that occured to me whilst watching this is something many different(incl. Scott Keith & others) wrote about when WWE/WCW were still battling it out; you could have all the soap-opera/plot-twists/intrigue you want, but what decided it all and what it all came down to was the action in the ring. I get the same feeling from this show; all the political intrigue and mystical visions and whatzits are great, as long as they're held together by tight/taught action plotlines.

Tricia Helfer is far, FAR more attractive w/ her natural hair/haircolor than the platinum dye-job.

Hoshi looks like Mark Wahlberg. I half-expected Hot Dog to blast his Viper out of the sky.

Randomly scanning thru the titles of the remaining eps on imdb, I like the fact that some of them have the vibe of classic science fiction(and Ellison/Pohl-era Star Trek, naturally) with names like 'Islanded in a Stream of Stars'

I wonder how they made the determination as to which actors keep their accents and which ones to switch

mandala, rather

all kinds of awesome.

Romo Lampkin! Yessss!!

Is it just me or did the cracks in Galactica's hull look like huge claw marks? I mean, I know it's not Lost so there's no likelihood of monsters but they just looked kind of...weird

I expected Zarak to just haul off and shoot the quorum...but SO much better that he has henchmen do it.

My shrink analysis of Gaeta is that he was trying to put Galactica's figurative 'leg' back. I couldn't help but feel for him, right to the end. I mean he's a cock for even going through with the coup, but that he honestly thought he could somehow restore the natural order of things, 'set things right'...against Zarak he just seemed so wideyed, it was sad.

More Baltar! Much more Baltar pls!

yeah it looked like cracks in the walls or...?? anyone get a better look at it. we were like WTF?!?! when that happened...

― mikebee (BATTAGS), Sunday, February 8, 2009 6:37 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

o right of course

vid from Mark Verheiden's Q&A in Portland last week. I show up at 11:10 to ask my two-part question.

dammit:

http://cbsrpdx.cbsradio.com/global/video/popup/pop_playerLaunch.asp?vt1=v&clipFormat=flv&clipId1=3403086&at1=Entertainment&h1=Mark%20Verheiden

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2009/02/battlestar-galactica-gaeta-blood-scales-angeli.html

Interview with the writer

my thoughts on this right now are mostly:
<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3
which means hearts
which means love
so easily swayed

we will us all our weapons
i will use my eye teeth
!
rraaadddd

i really need to stop reading these interviews. these guys have no idea what they're doing. their success is nothing more than luck.

lol @ Jefferies Tubes!!!

kingfishee, you do realize that Romo lifted some shades after he penstabbed that marine.

yes but he didn't smirk his way thru the entire ep while wearing them

The scene is kind of wicked, too. We’re supposed to believe that Gaeta’s been spared. It takes place in Gaeta’s quarters (Ron’s idea). And Gaeta speaks of himself in the present tense, how he wants people to know who he is, or something to that effect.

fail

By that moment, it is pretty clear he's talking about his "legacy", but when they open that scene with him in his own quarters as opposed to the brig, I think the intention was to mislead the viewer a bit into thinking he might have been spared.

Yeah, that "eye teeth" moment of super angry Roslin thinking that Adama was dead and hungry for blood was magnificent!

ya i'm saying that was a fail, it was so obvious that he had not been spared. since when do people reminisce like that in movies & tv shows except right before they get killed??

ugh. ok episode but so unthrilled with the fact that this s1ocki prediction was totally correct:

actually what better NOT happen is that the uprising gets suppressed next episode and then the show just moves onto the next thing like it's been doing the past couple of seasons.

i mean seriously! is there anything that's going to happen next episode that couldn't have happened two or three episodes ago? after an entire mutiny, insurrection, revolution etc etc etc nothing has changed! (except, ok, the communications officer, the vice-president and some nameless politicians have been killed. and anders is hurt but not dead.) ugh.

dude, the communications officer post isn't going to fill itself...

I know it was a kind of corny character-building moment, but I did love Gaeta's "restaurants shaped like food" line. Dude should record some kind of Was Not Was monologue song.

The episode, though -- come on, even as a patly-concluded two-parter, that was TEH EXCITEMENT. Best story since New Caprica. Who knows if they'll maintain the momentum (probably not), but I'll take what I can right now.

one thing i'm still not sure of is why faster FTL drives or whatever the hell they are were so important as to risk a complete mutiny... didn't feel like a particularly urgent crisis.

They were afraid that the Cylons would install backdoors again, also simmering racism/speciesism that didn't want to get any closer with those hot skinjobs.

Kind of wish there were more action in this episode, particularly given the previous cliffhanger.

& i think the reason why Adama etc found the faster FTL drives so important (tho i don't think they knew they were courting mutiny: the run up to the mutiny suggested that the core group had become completely out of touch with popular sentiment even on galactica) was that the fleet needs to find a planet to settle on and soon otherwise they will run out of food/fuel/etc. and die in space.

i think the reason why Adama etc found the faster FTL drives so important

Hence the bit with Tyrol finding the engine room falling apart.

scenes in the engine room btw were A++++

man zerek and gaeta's little naughty schoolchild smile exchange at the end

Yeah, what was that. And consider also Balthar's final benediction, with cigarillo for mitre: "I know who you were"(or is it "are"?) I don't think things will be as they were, not with the Quorum dead, and Lee agrees with those who still don't want Cylons in the chain of command, he just didn't want a mutiny, coup, etc, but he could still go in some other direction, probably with the soldiers who switched back and forth from Gaeta and/or Zarek to the Admiral (who isn't gonna forget how they did that).

I love how the FTL drive is just a crazy piston, a gear, and a weird mechanical ball that just move FASTER THAN LIGHT! The drive looks like something from the old Event Horizon set. With all those mechanical parts and energy, no wonder the ship is falling apart!

they should've used a plasma dome with a few extra blue diodes stuck on

I have given up hope of this show making any sense but if they maintain the pacing of the last couple episodes then at least it will make for an entertaining last season. Luckily lawyerman didn't ruin this last episode with a bunch of aimless pontificating.

This show is still making more sense than Lost. I hope Fat Lee comes back and saves the day, possibly while talking to the ghost of Dee.

Jeezus, the line to get into these things keeps getting longer.

hi, i'm a cylon

and i'm a brain surgeon

lol

i hate how rushed and incoherent all their reveals are. i have no idea what dude was talking about.

PC guy was a nice touch

i thought that was good job of packing in an enormous, almost comical, amount of exposition without it seeming corny. and it sort of makes sense if i don't think about it too hard....

so, how did the 13th colony make robot servants 1000s of years ago to the same design as the 12 colonies a hundred years ago. oh, who cares. that's what fan wikis are for.

So, I guess that's it for my "Ellen is a matured 6" theory.

I think they have exposition episodes and action episodes, where the action ones have a few events with big repercussions, and exposition episodes where they just spill huge amounts of plot. Not exactly a balance, but they're both intense enough now that we probably aren't going to get much more character study than Adama brushing his teeth.

Ellen's acting and dialog were pretty great.

Definitely, she did an excellent job - very impressive how different and fully realized Ellen was. I liked this episode a lot because it was really similar in concept to that Season 2 or 3 episode which went back and explained what happened to Boomer after she downloaded following the Adama assassination attempt (which I believe is the same character in this episode), filling in really important story gaps in a compelling way.

So the original Daniel is Starbuck's father, no?

gotta be

I liked the understated Adama/Tyrol scenes in this episode. "My XO's a Cylon"

Scarier prediction: it's Starbuck's mother

okay episode - some really good moments but in general way too much semi-nonsensical exposition. Ellen was good. Cavil was great. But no Baltar = teh lameness.

Lack of Baltar was made up for by Hodgman's "word salad".

PC guy was very distracting.

Actually enjoyed the information overload in this ep, but then again I'm an incurable nerd who eats this shit up.

Anyone notice the bit in one of Anders' spiels about how the five started seeing mysterious invisible head characters (akin to Baltar's "Head Six") before earth was nuked?

I like how anders had to be capped in the head before he started talking like one of the basestar hybrids.

Say, are they ever going to explain where those FTL-navigator hybrids come from?

they said that the mechanical ones made them when they were experimenting wiht making skin jobs.

Let me see if I have this: humans made Cylons while still on Kobol, humans left Kobol to found the 12 colonies while the Cylons went off to Earth to make horny. Nuclear apocalypse hits Earth (1000 years ago?), the 5 upload to the ISS and do some Einsteinian space voodoo to stop aging as they travel all the way back to the 12 colonies (to stop the Centurions from attacking the humans, or from creating their own skinjob monstrosities?) in time for the first Human-Cylon war (~40 years ago). The Cylons "mysteriously" retreat, during which time the 5 are developing skinjobs and resurrection tech and religion for them. Cavil is born, throws a fit, "kills" the 5 and monkeys with the brainchips in their new bodies so that they don't remember who they are, then kicks them to the human curb.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_L7UDk1sicd8/SZJGrWD8SPI/AAAAAAAAACg/h3q0t_TVqpU/s400/-1.jpg

dumb question but the #8 that took Ellen away from the Base ship wasn't actually Boomer right? but where'd she get the Raptor from?

Dean Stockwell's face in this episode was an utter treasure.

leeee adama

humans made Cylons while still on Kobol, humans left Kobol to found the 12 colonies while the Cylons went off to Earth to make horny.

this is the part that doesn't make sense to me - if there were OG cylon skinjobs that could reproduce how are they different from humans, exactly? I guess there's the resurrection thing

They're not that different from humans at all, hence them being the 13th tribe. The thing that's sketchy to me is that "this has all happened before" seems to imply to me that cylons have risen against humans before, not that the centurions rose up against the skinjob cylons a thousand years ago. Was there a centurion versus human uprising we don't know about that ended up preceding the centurion versus skinjob one, making it a real cycle?

They do make a mention of them "rediscovering" resurrection technology

Can Chief grow his beard back now? Plz?

that's an odd way to characterize callie

AYOOOOOOOOOOO

facepalm

xposts:

he sings!

this ep seemed like a setup for Caprica, and it actually got me interested. DAMMIT.

Yeah, I was kind of confused... isn't one of the main characters of Caprica supposed to be named Daniel? I was trying to figure out if it was a coincidence or some moment that's supposed to be insight into the (direct-to-dvd) pilot.

craprica is going to be more like it

Reasonable bulleted list versions of the back story brain dump here (and definitely seek out the recap in the comments that Maureen Ryan mentions) and here.

I felt like some of the exposition was a little forced, but I love back story so I was forgiving. I love John Hodgeman, too, but he was distracting and his presence reminded me that I was watching a TV show and messed with my immersion/suspension of disbelief.

The concept of the monotheistic god originated not from the Final Five, nor from their new skinjob creations, but from the robotic Centurions

quite puzzled by this - and remember Baltar telling that one Centurion there was only one God earlier in the season?

"messed with my immersion/suspension of disbelief"

we could make a big list of these. most memorable jarring thing for me was the NCC1701 serial number on some hatch once. wah.

quite puzzled by this - and remember Baltar telling that one Centurion there was only one God earlier in the season?

I remember, but we don't know what the Centurion's response was since he blew up. The Centurion cocked his head, which at the time I interpreting as a sign of interest, but in hindsight, it might have been more of a "Are you kidding me, little meat man? I wrote the book on the One True God!" gesture.

they're talking about the old Centurions, the type that the original Cylon war was fought against.

Floor or table?

was this on last night?

yup. I just realized why the Caprica 6 thing ended the way it did, and it took me sleeping on it to figure out.

wow, whoda thunk they'd start dropping the ball again this close to the end?

Shitty shitty episode.

I'm kind of sad that they revealed Ellen being a trifling bitch was part of her real personality and not just part of her 'programmed' self. She was so much more composed last episode!

I love John Hodgeman, too, but he was distracting and his presence reminded me that I was watching a TV show and messed with my immersion/suspension of disbelief.

He didn't bother me that much. This is the same show with Humvees, corded telephones, and FTL drives - suspension of disbelief disappeared in season one.

Floor or table?

The look on Starbuck's face as Tigh and Ellen were tonguing each other on the wing of the raider. That was the look on my face during that scene.

@kingfish - Pls explain...

The death of Caprica Six's baby caused Anders to revive, right? Like it was resurrected into his body.

Loved 6 working her magic on Baltar once again: "All we need is inner strength...AND GUNS!"

is it too obvious to think that somehow Ellen & Tigh reuniting caused the baby's termination? because almost as soon as they hooked up, Caprica started having cramps etc. or is there some other explanation?

On the bright side, Baltar was amazing as usual, and Tigh has a couple of really nice moments.

His grandfather was a belt sander, haha.

Okay, here's my saturday night effortpost:

I liked this ep; so far in this season, you've had an ep of heavy reveals(1st one), a heavy politicking one(bleah), two high action ones(great), a full-on expository info-dump(good), and now this one, which was far more emotional and relationship-based in its focus.

My take was that much of the ep was based on the integration of human & cylon at all levels social, biological, and physical. You have:

-a baseship in a human fleet,
-a battlestar with both human and cylon flag officers,
-heavy raiders flying patrols with vipers,
-mixed cylon-human work crews,
-cylons adding photos of lost loved ones to the human memorials,
-at least one married human-cylon couple who've produced a healthy hybrid child(hee hee, this is starting to sound like "V"),
-and even down to the very core fabric/superstructure of the Galactica itself being both repaired and strengthened by cylon "cartilage"(connective tissue, geddit?).

This has been a recurring theme ever since the 1st half of this season, with the cylon civil war. You had a fully cylon("pure") society breaking apart to the point of open warfare and mass extinction(boxing of Deanna). The breakaway group runs to the human fleet for help and joins it in its mission("we go to Earth...together").

Tigh makes this explicit in one of the latter sick bay scenes, where he goes on about how an all-human or all-cylon society won't work(the bit about how its been tried before and they nuked themselves 2000 years previous) and that the only way anybody is going to survive as a civilization is as a multi-ethnic group.

Caprica Six was pregnant with Tigh's child(a child he was going to name after his human best friend) but that child was pure cylon, and since those kind of cylons can't biologically reproduce, it wasn't going to make it. Cylon-Cylon mating can not result in offspring("we tried forever to have a son!" Ellen repeats). The only way cylons can advance or even survive as a species is with humans.

Or maybe not and Ellen fucking with Caprica Six and all the emotional distress and damage caused the problem. Maybe the fetus did download into Anders. We'll see in a week.

Also, props to Michael Hogan for having to convey all the character work he's done with the use of only one eye.

Oh and my bet is that whatever Starbuck is(evoluntionary step? daughter of human and cylon?), so is Baltar and maybe Roslyn. These are the only humans that have visions. I wonder if Doc Cottle will be revealed as God.

One of the local geeky radio talkshows speculated that it'll turn out that they're all cylons; the "humans" are only a slightly more advanced model that can differentiate and sexually reproduce.

Thanks, kingfish! Before reading your exposition I HATED this episode.

i just caught up through 'no exit' (stupid hulu is putting an 8 day delay on the rest of the episodes).

the talky "let's try and dig ourselves out of this narrative hole" exposition is pretty clunky and obvious, but i'm still enjoying their attempts to bring it together. dean stockwell's speech about wanting to be more than human was great, that was some classic sci-fi shit.

i'm squinting to avoid spoilers about the most recent ep but it sounds like it's going downhill. :(

Without spoilaring anything, it was another digging-out-of-narrative-hole episode.

i like baltar's skeptical "follower", she reminds me of maura tierney

holy hell this episode was so fuckin boring

are they really building up to ANOTHER insurrection??

all my least favourite things - bickering cylons, prophecy/baby talk, baltar speechifying to his dumbass followers

That lengthy Baltar/cult subplot is some bullshit.

I agree, but anything to get more Baltar in the show I will accept.

In the wings, fine, but this turgid crap is overdoing it.

don't really get the baltar love. I guess there's been a great deal of character development with him compared to other characters?

I just find him to be a pouty bellend imo.

season one guilty ass baltar was some of the best stuff on the show but they seem to have no idea what to do with him

I don't know, there's something about the actor and character that makes him always fascinating to watch, with every crazy situation he wrangles his way into and out of. In particular now, his awakening and becoming more of this corrupt Jesus figure, to his own surprise against his selfishness. I loved that scene with "...AND GUNS!" too.

no way. Baltar's cowardly ass is one of their most enjoyable plot devices. He toodles off down the rabbit hole thinking he's pulling the strings when it's ALWAYS 6, feeling all pleased with himself for being so wonderfully smart...til baltar suddenly finds himself up to his eyeballs and it's omg how did it all get so pearshaped.

the fact that they're bringing him back now hints at a good old fashioned clusterfrak.

At least the 6 mirage thingo is still on the table. Was terrified they'd let that drop.

xpost yeah I guess they had to bring him back to the fore, he's always been shown to be a v significant character.

yeah, Baltar's great but all the people and plots around him have been completely boring these past few seasons, and he continues to be great *despite* his surroundings and not because of them. especially since they seem to have forgotten him for a whole season + and his subplots always seem to be an afterthought. none of it really matters to the main thread, and if (when) they try to shoehorn it in there it's going to look as hackishly inserted as it should, because this show is nothing if not supremely hackish. and Kingfish was OTM, which leads me to believe it's either the direction or acting that makes me just BORED TO TEARS by this last episode. seeing it all on paper it sounds pretty great, in practice it's just the MEH of the century.

xpost

...except in the past season and a half when he was off doing something that no one really cared about.

yeah i was obv referring to earlier seasons

i know i'm not supposed to like episodes like this but i enjoyed it.

xpost i get ya wilter. that's what makes it so frustrating! this is easily the most inconsistent tv show i've ever watched til the end. the dedicated fanboyisms i read online occasionally stymie me...it's not THAT good on the whole, and when it is it doesn't last to long, as if the crew were playing hot potato or something.

Loving the use of Cylon tech to fix that giant Battlescar Galactica. That has absolutely got to be building to something mind-blowing.

yuh and they made the point of saying it was biological or whatev

Loving the use of Cylon tech to fix that giant Battlescar Galactica. That has absolutely got to be building to something mind-blowing.

― we r from twitteronia, we connect (Autumn Almanac), Monday, February 23, 2009 12:19 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

like another show trial?

this about justice slocki! justice!

and lots of scenes of scowling and drunken self-pity

probably why i relate to the show so much

Hey, I wonder if the killing of Zarek & peggy & the quorum was the show's way of ensuring there cannot possibly be any more fucking trials.

ugh sorry, having a tuomas day

the cylons seem to be having a trial for boomer next week according to the preview

GREAT

OH GOD NO

:D

YouTube not available.

Fucking useless iphone.

i can't wait to KNOW THE TRUTH

the truth is out there

..behind the garage, under a tarp. it smells bad.

"biological": Battlestar Galactica is gonna have a baby (the ship is, that is)! Although also: anybody heard talk of a spinoff--?

at the end of 'no exit', right before adama notices the crack in his room they show him heading for the sink to brush his teeth and i was like "noooooooo"

Anyone else notice how Adama keeps popping pills? I really hope they don't make something big out of that, it's just something Olmos is improvising for effect.

He's been drinking a lot more as well.

When Ellen asked if anybody had a drink, Adama produced a flask from his boot!

straight bootleggin'

I actually liked this episode, but mostly cuz there was a lot of goofy acting going on (Tigh esp, but also Baltar). They had to get rid of the 6s baby, that was too much of a monkeywrench. Obviously baby died cuz its parents were no longer "in love" lolz. Baltar subplot is indeed kinda lame (s1ocki OTM - what, ANOTHER insurrection?) but any time he's on screen is good, and soooo glad they aren't done with the psycho-6-Baltar angle, cuz that was always one of the best things about this show and has never really been explained.

super xposty to kingfish's excellent summary:

cylons can't biologically reproduce

hasn't this been refuted, i.e. the generation of cylons that the Five come from can reproduce, it's just that Ellen and Tigh weren't able to (as sometimes happens with humans)?

One of the local geeky radio talkshows speculated that it'll turn out that they're all cylons; the "humans" are only a slightly more advanced model that can differentiate and sexually reproduce.

i actually kind of go for this.

also i am firmly in the pro-Baltar camp: Kate Vernon chews up scenery, but I cringe every time see comes on screen. but the Baltar-Caprica stuff is always compelling

I was getting really tired of Baltar/Caprica (really not liking her as "Caprica 6" for a name, though) until the "..and GUNS" line. Baltar's dialogue is one of the few things that can repeatedly verbally ask the television if it's kidding me.

hasn't this been refuted, i.e. the generation of cylons that the Five come from can reproduce, it's just that Ellen and Tigh weren't able to (as sometimes happens with humans)?

This is what I thought, but I could be wrong.

I've never seen any indication that the other Cylons know about Baltar's mystery muse, even though (especially since?) she may be the key player, ever since getting Baltar to pass along codes for attack on the Colonial planets.

^^^this

the generation of cylons that the Five come from can reproduce, it's just that Ellen and Tigh weren't able to

if that's the case why weren't Anders and the indian cylon (I forget her name) squirtin out babies during their across-the-universe journey to the 12 colonies

He never felt that way about her.

He never her

he prefers his wimmens more self-destructive than malevolent?

let's see, you're the last 5 people of your species, on a cross-the-cosmos mission to save your long-lost ancestors, and reproducing is not at the top of your priorities list. right.

this whole "they can't reproduce because they aren't in LOVE" is like some midichlorian-style silliness

goooood the baby stuff is sooooo boring. they've really painted themselves into a corner with this whole cylon reproduction controversy eh

^^^yes

who gives a fuck

xxxp Nah, it's like some "shit some crazy lady would trot out" silliness. If you think no one would ever scream this, in the face of reason and scientific fact, in real life, then you need to meet some of the people out there on the street.

Still, that was part of where I thought they incorporated too much of the Ellen-as-crazy-drunk part of her we previously new about into her cylon persona.

I can't say I do, I just find it annoying.... at this point I am kinda hoping they throw in the towel re: believability/coherence and just go for a George Burns/Ned Beatty/Ralph Richardson-as-God style reveal. "Oh you silly humans, you see, I created cylons one day by mistake... something to do with the problem of free will..."

x-post

if that's the case why weren't Anders and the indian cylon (I forget her name) squirtin out babies during their across-the-universe journey to the 12 colonies

it's a little bit of a cop-out, but
1. as far as i can tell, Tigh, Tyrol, and Tory really remember next to nothing about their old lives, and Sam's memory was just returning. so we don't really know that they didn't have children at some point
2. Ellen said that the five of them had to re-invent resurrection for the Centurions. If they had to re-invent it, then doesn't that sort of imply that that "species" of Cylons was reproducing in some other way?

I'm not positive, obvoiusly, but that's how I understood it.

she may be the key player, ever since getting Baltar to pass along codes for attack on the Colonial planets.

It was the real Caprica, not HeadCaprica, who passed on the codes.

let's see, you're the last 5 people of your species, on a cross-the-cosmos mission to save your long-lost ancestors, and reproducing is not at the top of your priorities list. right.

I thought it was said that they had to go into some kind of suspended animation, since it took them a thousand years to find the Colonies at sub-FTL speeds?

I don't remember the suspended animation bit, but I do remember him saying "relativistic speeds", which could/would account for the time difference

what no time for hyperspeed sexing

the way Baltar's bitches handled those guns = encouraging sign that they will accidentally shoot each other very soon

mega x-post to Jordan

If you don't want to wait 8 Huludays and also don't mind lower-resolution quality: http://www.surfthechannel.com/show/16.html

Hey, I just realized why the blonde chick in this Vampire P.I. show 'moonlight' looks familiar; she's the fucking 'Girl in the Fireplace'!

GREAT EPISODE! the Tyrol/Boomer thing hooked me right back in, it's as if two seperate groups of writers took on the last two weeks.

yeah, much more compelling (and it was a different writer, wasn't it? is it really that simple?)

with just two episodes left, that suggests we've seen the last of hera, doesn't it? is there ANY way to find them?

(or, alternately, is there nowhere for the plot to go unless they chase boomer back to the main cylon fleet?)

my initial reaction is that we're heading towards a wrap-up in which two paths diverge - Hera and the "main" Cylons (Cavil et al), and Starbuck (who now appears to be the real first Cylon-Human offspring) and the fleet and the rebel Cylons. And then it all happens again in a few thousand years.

maybe i was too high, but i didn't quite get Starbuck being 'the first real Cylon-Human offspring'. I mean obviously she's tapped into something primal and she was hallucinating her father playing the piano in the canteen but...can you shed some light on that for me?

Well it seems 99% certain now that Kara's father was Daniel, the missing 7th Cylon that Cavil hated. From there we have two options, IMO:
1. Kara is the offspring of Daniel (Cylon) and Socrata (human). Hence the first real Cylon-Human offspring. Obviously they haven't said this explicitly but all evidence is pointing that way.
2. Kara is actually a full Cylon herself, a totally new model created by Daniel.This would be a hell of a curveball, but given that Ellen and Cavil seem to believe that all the Daniels were destroyed, I guess it's possible.

maybe i was too high, but i didn't quite get Starbuck being 'the first real Cylon-Human offspring'. I mean obviously she's tapped into something primal and she was hallucinating her father playing the piano in the canteen but...can you shed some light on that for me?

My take is that Starbuck's father is the "Daniel" model Cylon that Cavil had boxed way back. If I remember correctly, the album/tape cover of Father Starbuck's music even said "D. Thrace." Since it was called "Live at the _something_ Opera House" I'm wondering if it refers back to the opera house hallucinations people were having a couple seasons back.

x-post

Dreilide Thrace.

At the helice opera house.

Now somebody find out the significance of Helice

This episode started off stupid (lolz another trial!? like I give a shit) but by the end had turned into something pretty cool - I like the idea of Boomer and Athena being opposites/enemies, dunno how far they're gonna go with that. Starbuck being a cylon/hybrid/whatever is kinda the only plausible explanation they have left to get themselves out of the corner they wrote her character into. Disappointed that they brought back All Along the Watchtower, that is some lame shit.

It only sounded that much like their "Watchtower" briefly (thank Gods the nerf cover vocals didn't come back). "Hera's plugged into something that's manipulating us," approximately (goes with my spectulations about Balthar's mental muse, regardless of the Six who was indeed external enough for the President to later remember seeing with Baltar, back on pre-attack Caprica)(and remember the Club Med Head idyll the secret Six used to take Baltar back to? Tyrol's dream home with Sharon and their teenage daughter seemed almost unbearably beautiful compared to rotting old Galactica, and was unbearable once he realized the ruse)

Tyrol really blew it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helice

from ancient Greek history, of course

I'm betting on Tyrol not surviving the show; he's had two loves/wives die and/or do massive emotional damage to him, and the main ship he's part of ain't going to last the battle with Cavil.

So I figure he'll do some self-sacrifice to redeem himself; anything from flying a raptor into a base ship or going into a warp core room to fix the FTL drive w/o the proper protective equipment.

THIS SHOW SUCKS

mad boring episode until boomer set things off. a nice bit of fast-paced show not tell between tyrol springing her from he brig and her drugging hera in order to smuggle her on board the raptor. way too much starbuck crap to then not explain more about her earth corpse deal.

what is going on in the heads of the writers to make them think this piano-playing ghost dad bullshit is what anyone wants to see

last act was pretty good though

Tyrol got played like a... piano!

So there's a show next week and then the episode after that is two hours, right?

there's a regular episode, then part one of the finale which is an hour, then part two, which is supposed to be the big the two-hour extravaganza*.

wow i will be so excited if the show's big reveal is that a cancelled cylon model has been manipulating time and space and life and death due to magic "it's inside the SHIP!" powers!

god, what a load of crap. and the music critic in me says, "that's the song that is 'happy and sad at the same time'?"

tyrol fantasy land = vancouver suburbia!

this show, yes, sucks. ugh.

liked two things, though: the opening montage with Starbuck's speech to pilots (toothpaste, etc) and the intercutting, which was probably the best-written sequence of this whole half-season. and the dark, whoa-they-went-there off boomer with helo.

the opening montage with Starbuck's speech to pilots

why are #6s and #8s among the pilots again? couldn't really see the point (seeing them shooting down Raiders? meh)

Assumed either the depleted ranks post-mutiny needed filling, or perhaps they were there to help coordinate the basestar with galactica.

Also it was Felgercarb brand toothpaste.

the "All Along the Watchtower" thing makes me cringe every time. how can a show that is normally so good with music get it so wrong on a piece of music so crucial to the show?

i gave up on this show a long time ago, but came back to it when i heard this was going to be the final season. coming back into it with extremely low expectations has probably enhanced my enjoyment of the show.

the thing that has really bummed me about this season is that i feel like the writers are focusing on the least interesting people and aspects of the show. i'm so sick of the whole BABIES = FUTUER crap and almost hope that the next episode opens with the shaky hand-held camera zooming in on Hera being unceremoniously shot out of a Cylon base ship airlock. *Thoonk* I want more of Starbuck's brand new ship, and wtf was that shared dream the president was having all about? MOAR Dean Stockwell, too, plz.

i wish they'd bring back that smarmy creep Cylon dude

are there still many Leoben copies around? did the one we last saw running in fear from Starbuck stay on Earth (with D'Anna)?

MST3K could have had loads of fun with Richard Hatch's version:

Man I watched five minutes of this last night and it's kinda unredeemable.

the Starbuck stuff was all brutally bad.

Oo bastods go watch WWF! What brand of toothpaste does the Admiral use? The same as Starbuck's last tube? h'mmmmmm....

THIS SHOW SUCKS

― cutty, Sunday, March 1, 2009 1:15 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dudes... the look on tyrol's face when he saw the growth marks on the wall... aghhhhhh

this show has been like 60% about his love life for the last 3 seasons... who gives a shit

no one's making you watch it tho!

be fair, it's also been about everyone else's relationships.

why do shows like this always turn into soap operas?

it's almost perverse, the writer's attempts to alienate their viewers.

not that i personally think it's all been bad, i still enjoy the show.

just that they really seemed to have lost their heads after the new caprica arc ended.

like, stuff only really happens at the beginning and ending of seasons. why pad it all out with ghost dads and phantom cats and shit?

jesus

actual shit happened in this, i can't complain too much. ejo is a terrible episode director though.

yeah, there was a lot of shit

adama's bukkake scene was cute

seriously that is some prime lolsome actorly indulgence there

get the guy a room full of model ships to smash, tables to angrily knock stationary off of, a mirror, and a bunch of paint to roll in and he's in hog heaven

get the guy a room full of expensive antique model ships

haw!

So apparently they're bringing up Katee Sackhoff(who's from the area) to the portland showing next week. This ought to be interesting.

i have to say, at this point i'm fucking sick and tired of Adama-Tigh-the ship stuff. How is it that he is dominating the show so much? (Remember when it seemed like every episode was about Apollo? Now I'm happy whenever he gets a couple of lines, just for a change of pace.)

This episode was awfully annoying.

SPOILER ALERT

So I guess the finale is going to be a two hour long episode where the Galactica ship is put on trial for treason and insubordination. Apparently Adama has a breakdown in the courtroom where he throws coffee and pencils everywhere.

Limping to the finish line like an overweight, overtired runner who just ate a dozen doughnuts for the sugar rush.

This episode disappointed me. Not enough attention is being paid to the shit that intrigues me.

what total total garbage

this was the second (or third) last episode?

THIS?

just endless, endless rambling meaningless conversations

want some paint to roll around in?

yes please

this is what happens when writers enable actors

weeping and paint

Currently wondering how BSG could be improved if the Cylon dream song was Jagger & Bowie's cover of "Dancin' In The Streets" instead of the dubious "All Along The Watchtower" cover.

only if it resulted in a re-enactment of the video

ok, paint scene wasn't very good, but i didn't mind this episode. at this point you gotta just be banking on the finale.

i thought it was cool a little detail to put an old-school centurion raider in the hanger of the cylon colony or whatever it was

you'll take what you can get at this point eh ;)

they need a do-over episode, because there's no WAY that counts towards the finale. that should be the "a very special" episode, you know how Christmas episodes got tacked on back in the day. Eddie, I love you man but if you ever so much as glance in the direction of a camera again I will TASE you. Self indulgent, herky-jerky, montagey waste of my time.

Did anyone get St-Elsewhere-finale panic, seeing Hera playing with the model ships? I swear if this shit's her dream I will stab someone.

that would make this awesome theory more plausible.

this show is just taking itself way too seriously right now. i want to see shit blowing the fuck up at this point in the show. save the spiritual revelations and tear-jerking performances for the last 10 minutes of the finale or at least integrate it into the final battle. seeing Adama crying and rolling around in paint is the exact opposite of what i want to see from this show right now. there was plenty of time for that a few episodes ago (and we got it in spades). it's not like dude is crying about anything new, even!

Well, they went ahead and installed networking on the galactica, so there's that.

Cylon hq looked like some zentradi/robotech masters shit.

http://www.merzo.net/robotech/sizesold.htm

turn to page 61 y'all

i know it's really late in the day for this but why is the #6 allowed to have so many different looking versions of herself but no others? i hate the blondest one so much

pretty much want nobody to survive at this point

and what bad luck to finally get rid of the old quorum only to end up with a new one even more annoying and stupid

I think it's because Tricia Helfer wears wigs and Grace Park still has her own hair.

Part of me wants to watch the last couple of episodes to see how it ends, but it has been so so bad I don't know if it's even worth it.

as if you would sit thru all of this season only to then not watch the finale tho (i have faith that it will at least be the best episode of the season)

Yeah, that's probably what I will do. It's not like I haven't watched worse.

And the final shot is a guy in a jumpsuit and two robots in a row of theater seats going "Huh."

Does anyone NOT think that Starbuck plugging in Sam is going to end up making them jump somewhere, possibly to the hidden cylon colony?

Also, wtf at the harbinger of death thing coming up again. We know, guys, we know.

and what bad luck to finally get rid of the old quorum only to end up with a new one even more annoying and stupid

― Hard House SugBanton (blueski), Monday, March 9, 2009 11:47 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol i know

i feel like the entire show is basically equivalent to the hybrid cylons' babbling right now.

terrible episode

I'm kinda hoping finale is of the EVERYBODY DIES variety

i hope it's everybody rolling around in paint and crying

seems obvious Galactica's gonna go out in a "blaze of glory" crashing into the cyclon colony on self-destruct or something

crashing into a paint scaffolding

i do think Tigh has been pretty great recently this season tho - consistent at least

recently

Tigh's been the best character/actor for a long time now, esp after Baltar got shunted to the side

Baltar's speech on the deck = the only mildly interesting thing that happened this episode

baltar's speeches are never interesting

also lolz with dragging out this Starbuck bullshit - Kara came back from the dead TWO WHOLE SEASONS AGO

i predict the climax of the finale will be baltar giving a religious-themed speech to the new quorum at a big trial while roslin moans "heraaa" and helo works out his romantic problems... all in the opera house

why does Helo always have that "geez something stinks in here" expression on his face

snob

when boomer brought hera to the evil purple evil cylon evil (did i mention that it's supposed to look evil?) ship, i desperately wanted Cavill to grab her and immediately feed her to a giant evil lizard god.

an unexpected CRAZY SUPREME NEW PRESENCE (note: not a piano-playing father), preferably lizard-shaped, is the only thing that could save this.

who gives a shit about Hera - Cavil/the cylons already had her once, for months, why is their having her now such a big deal

Imperious Leader and/or Lucifer would be acceptable

heraaaaa

http://www.fightingtigersofveda.com/lucifer.jpg

OR Cavil clones Hera to make unstoppable army of impossibly cute evil little girls sent on suicide missions to Galactica

I just hope that there's no more Cavil dialog that's a straight rip of Agent Smith from The Matrix, wtf guys.

Agent Smith's dialogue was straight ripoff itself who cares

Stockwell so wasted this season. one of the best actors on the show if not the best so would've preferred they adjust the story to include him more - whatever he does in the finale i doubt it will make up for this absence.

at this point "too little dean stockwell" just seems like 1,301 on this show's list of problems

Totally disagree. More Stockwell please.

i didn't say it wasn't a problem!

he's high up on the list of ways to immediately improve an episode

I want to see him drunkenly paint something and then fall into the paint crying.

followed by teeth brushing

Adama-Cavil paint-off

That should be the final Human-Cylon confrontation definitely.

#8s rolling around in paint also works for me

Tricia Helfer and Starbuck mud-wrestle for the win.

the writers were basically giving it all away in that scene where roslin & adama were smokin' space weed together.

I'm happy to admit this show ain't as good as it used to be, but I still really enjoy it -- it's nowhere near Buffy Season 7 levels of disappointment.? And I actually kind of enjoy EJO's moments of ham. His many, many moments.

I still think the biggest mistake BSG made was blinding Tigh -- way to go, making the best actor on the show the least able to express himself...

i don't know if it made that much difference really

Lampkin's gotta be in the finale right?

And I actually kind of enjoy EJO's moments of ham. His many, many moments.

I have to admit, whenever I have a crisis now my first impulse will be to start crying and rolling around in paint.

Was that the Cylon goo he was rolling in, or was it just paint?

Lampkin's gotta be in the finale right?

god I hope not

i actually enjoy his presence in the "so bad it's good" vein

xxp

The goo was green. Maybe it was goo that was left out overnight and had gone off.

Starting to think that the final episode will feature Adama and Laura piloting a deserted Galactica on a suicide death ram into Cavil's basestar and/or the colony.

that's exactly my prediction as well. would be better if it didn't happen in the final ep though.

didn't Hera crash the model Galactica model into the basestar in someone's dream or something?

really kind of sick of the psychic visions in this show btw.

Starting to think that the final episode will feature Adama and Laura piloting a deserted Galactica on a suicide death ram into Cavil's basestar and/or the colony.

I really hope this isn't what happens.

oh its gonna happen allright

I fully expect "All Along The Crap Tower" to be playing while it happens.

You are right! I think I will have to get Bill Adama-style drunk to get through this.

I'm not sure about the ramming, but I'd put good money on kingfish's "Tyrol going into a warp core room to fix the FTL drive w/o the proper protective equipment" guesstimate

Also, if that was a conveniently placed bucket of paint, rather than Cylon goo, then yes, that makes that scene about 1,000 times sillier than I thought. (My partner, who was a house painter, also blasted his technique.)

He's an Starship admiral not a painter, dammit.

i still dont get the whole abandoning the galactica thing... its pretty fuckin stupid if you ask me, as a plot device and as an actual strategy

god i fucking despise this show now :(

Ohh it's not THAT bad

It's pretty crappy these days.

i cant think of a show i liked that much that jumped the shark that badly.

i don't watch it any more i just read the thread

this show is still a'ight, season 1 was the peak obv but it's still enjoyable albeit ridiculous.

shark-jumping moment was the escape from New Caprica - show's seemed pretty lost since then

I'm glad I didn't watch the show when it was good, because I'm enjoying this dumb season quite a bit.

"Tyrol going into a warp core room to fix the FTL drive w/o the proper protective equipment" guesstimate

Has anyone done the "I am, and always will be, your friend a cylon" joke yet?

Actually what if this whole series was nothing but an extended trailer for the Star Trek reboot?

I have a horrible feeling so many plot lines won't get resolved that it'll have been nothing but an extended trailer for DVD spin-offs and that Caprica shit.

^^this

make it three

shark-jumping moment was the escape from New Caprica - show's seemed pretty lost since then

to me, there have been so many shark-jumping moments on this show, that the shark-jump term just doesn't apply. i quit watching in disgust after the Resurrection Ship arc when they did that stupid throwaway black market episode, in which what had been a major character was unceremoniously killed off.

A friend then convinced me to come back to it just in time for the season 2 finale where they skip a year and land on New Caprica, which was ballsy enough for me to get back into the show.

I don't think the show has sucked since the escape from New Caprica. Minus the dumb 'Watchtower' song, that Cylon reveal ep was pretty cool. It's been up and down. I still hold out hope for a great finale.

Look at me, all Cap'n-Save-a-Show. :S

cap'n, you can't save this one

rub some load on you, crash the show into the cylon homebase and call it a day

SPOILERS:

Jamie Bamber, Lee "Apollo" Adama: “In the finale, it goes back to the beginning of Apollo and Starbuck, and you see where they come from. I think it’s as satisfying as it can be.”

The end of the show is like the scene in Adaptation where Kaufman is writing the history of the world from the Big Bang.

“In the finale, it goes back to the beginning of Apollo and Starbuck, and you see where they come from. I think it’s as satisfying as it can be.”

do not care where bambi jamber came from, sorry

it probably ends up with apollo and starbuck in the cave and they turn out to be adam and eve.

except starbuck actually turns out to be a man and its ADAM AND STEVE making cylon copies

so is the next one the last?

is it like a double episode jammy?

one hour ep and then a two hour finale

Second to last and then a double episode jammy.

wonder if itunes will be charging more for them

make it three

Make it four.

I haven't totally written off the show, but this season certainly has the highest variability in great/dismal episodes. Episode 1 of the mutiny was terrific. Too bad it resolved so meh-ly.

Thing is, we got two things:

1) a show about grand romantic gestures
2) a show set on a ship

And there ain't nothing a more tragic grand romantic gesture than the Ultimate Sacrifice of ramming/detonating the very thing the show's named after into the heart of the enemy. Hell, we already took out two base ships with the only other surviving battlestar in a big-ass dramatic moment, why not do it again. Heavy drama n' shit.

Or rammmg the SDF into the Zentradi mothership(or whatever), blowing up the Enterprise(twice), flying the Liberator into a grand climatic suicidal battle, ramming the Enterprise into whatever it was from the last movie or something yadda yadda yadda. Paste in your own fave example.

I was going to make a comment of RTD trying to blow up the Tardis if he could get away with it, except that show ain't about Life Onboard A Boat.

It's not like it's unheard of for a kamikaze movement coming from a guy who's an unabashed WWII nerd?

Moment, rather

they already sacrificed the Pegasus in this way tho so it would suck just to rehash that. i like that Galactica itself is on the verge of destruction tho.

i cant think of a show i liked that much that jumped the shark that badly.

LOST.

the difference is lost found its footing and came back... BSG never recovered RIP BSG

A 'Battlestar Galactica' panel discussion at the United Nations

The "Battlestar" contingent on the panel will consist of executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, as well as stars Mary McDonnell (who plays president Laura Roslin on the show) and Edward James Olmos (Admiral William Adama).

UN representatives on the panel are Radhika Coomaraswamy, special representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict; Craig Mokhiber, deputy director of the New York office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights; and Robert Orr, assistant secretary-general for policy planning, executive office of the Secretary-General.

The panel will be moderated by "Battlestar" fan Whoopi Goldberg.

What a world this could be, if we would all resolve our conflicts through paint-rolling rather than violence.

All of a sudden I'm wondering if Moore was a Model UN geek in high school (like yours truly).

and getting high in sick bays

xp

i think the UN should sanction battlestar for crimes against tvmanity

^^this

this logo always makes me laugh when i see it:

http://www.fda.gov/graphics/FDAlogos1999/graphics/logo1.gif

oh 70s typefaces, will you be with us always?

People started waiting in line before noon today. We were outside for only about 2.5 hours. There's like 600 in the theater now, and at least 100-200 folks still outside. Katee and her family and her boyfriend are here somewhere.

We got about 6+ laptops in the audience, and several dozen iPhones clicking away.

And I'm almost done with my first pitcher.

That was easily the worst episode of this show I've seen.

haha i can't wait to watch it

awesome

I enjoyed it.

I also got to ask Katee my questions, too.

Anyway, singularity: lay yer money that we get time travel in the final ep.

All set-up again, but that's okay. At first I really didn't want the flashbacks to Caprica, but after the show I kind of appreciated them more. Also I dug how they spent the last 8 episodes setting up how horribly depressing it all is to get people into the "suicide mission oh why the fuck not" mindset.

Everyone dies just as RDM runs out of ideas.

almost caught up, tonight's is the first episode I'll watch as a broadcast. this is the first TV show I've seen every episode of since Twin Peaks, so maybe that's why I'm getting the same feeling of a show that's gone off the rails as new writers were added, bouncing between wild improv and playing it safe with straight soap opera. I'm terrified to watch the whole thing again, they've taken so many liberties, but I'm still really enjoying the show. this final 'humans & cylons must live together plot arc' is the only way this show could have ended.

watching it with a friend who missed seasons 1-3! I warned her (I know, how could I let her), but she tried the first episode of season 4 and loved it and she likes the disorientation. she's a big Donna Haraway fan so the idea of a soap opera that works through the emotional impacts of relationships / cohabitation with multiples with manipulative psychic networking powers is going to be fun no matter what. and it is. I'm not sorry I loved the Boomer episode.

I mean the whole thing where Athena's mad at Helo because he couldn't tell it was Boomer seducing him, at first it came across as boilerplate, but afterwards it really did seem like a particularly modern situation

It's happened to me more than once. Me too.

dating robots is so...complicated

Booooooooooooorrrrrring. I hope they all die.

"Everyone dies just as RDM runs out of ideas."

If this was true the show would have ended three years ago.

...and yet you kept watching and posting to complain about it

Here's a theory about why.

All the survivors of the destruction of Caprica are unusually hot.

I mean, that's not all that keeps me watching, but it sure doesn't hurt.

"...and yet you kept watching and posting to complain about it"

Well I didn't really start getting annoyed until the beginning of this season (which they were kind enough to split in two) and at this point I am too invested to stop watching which makes me want to complain even more.

I'm still digging this show greatly and am super-psyched for the end.

Loved the Caprica flashbacks, esp Baltar's Dad, and I really liked seeing Zak with Kara and Lee...like the band back together, it was kinda nice. Anders looked way younger...I almost believed it was an outtake from the beforetime.
Excited about the 'one last ride' finale...it's a cool way to go out, I think.

more happened in the 'previously on BSG' intro than in the rest of the episode.

there was a short sequence of BSG ppl packing up and leaving that we hadn't actually seen 'previously' in there. wuh?

zack in real life. roslin's family tragedy. baltar's dad and a reminder that he lost his pig-under-the-arm accent. we need this stuff?

more happened in the 'previously on BSG' intro than in the rest of the episode

i guess that's why they didn't bother with a proper intro before the titles

are these caprica flashbacks going to mean anything? hard to see the relevance (altho nice to see more of that location - obv they're warming up the CGI cityscape for the spin-off)

what the hell with Cap#6 and Baltar's Dad?

I kind of think she killed him, and Baltar never bothered to follow up even though he suspected all was not well, choosing instead to live with the more convenient fiction that he had done right by his dad by making him happy and comfortable.

wtf was the deal with the drunk Lee + bird scene.

Also really hated the scene where Helo talks to the reporter.

Also, why can't Roslin just cry in the shower like a normal person.

xp to my self That would reinforce Lee's accusation that Baltar had never done anything with pure, unselfish motives, plus it's also a nice parallel with Gaeta's self-deception on New Caprica about the "get out of jail" lists that were really death lists.

I didn't really get the pigeon either.

i think the pigeon is cylon model #7

wtf was the deal with the drunk Lee + bird scene.

this was my reaction to the Roslin eating sushi scene. so boring that all i could think about was how did New Caprican civilization end up with sushi.

really frustrating episode. might have been okay a few episodes or seasons ago, but fuck this calm-before-the-storm stuff.

nice to finally see the origin of lee's hatred of pigeons

lol

who here is emotionally invested in hera's rescue

also like... "bad guy" cylons have been so removed from this show for so long does it really feel like there's been any build up to a final confrontation with them?

also i feel bad for mary mcdonell man... crying in the fountain?? i feel like her acting has taken a nosedive as her character has gotten worse and worse. im also beginning to think ronald d moore has a thing about making strong women catatonic with grief

who here is emotionally invested in hera's rescue

I'm emotionally invested in the eventual fate of the Galactica. I'm hoping the humans just abandon it to drift in space until some other show comes along and fixes her up.

also did they ever even bother to TRY to explain the coincidence of the final 5 being among the 50,000 or so odd survivors of the cylon attack that killed billions o fpeople?

^would involve all along the watchtower

if lee hadn't chased that pigeon surely the final 5 would have perished in those attacks.

HE BROKE A WINE GLASS TOO

^ they're really packing so much detail into these last few episodes.

did roslin ever go on that blind date? omg what if it was going to be with adama but then the attacks happened

http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/zuckered-scifi-channel-and-website-to-be-rebranded-as-syfy/

ZUCKERED: SciFi Channel And Website To Waste Money Being Rebranded As "Syfy"

Everyone knows that corporate rebranding costs a bundle. So it makes no sense in this climate of economic crisis and budget cuts and staff layoffs that NBC Universal would waste money like this. Yet already put-upon GE shareholders are being Jeff Zuckered yet again. Stuart Elliott's always interesting advertising column in The New York Times reports that the Sci Fi Channel and its website today will introduce its new name of "Syfy" and its plain vanilla logo and lame new slogan "Imagine Greater", effective as of July 7th. Adding to the idiocy is that there's already a company called SyFi Global, an information technology company. Arguing that the name "Sci Fi" was so generic it could not be trademarked, the channel's rebranding campaign "seeks to distinguish the channel and its programming from cable competitors." Both Bonnie Hammer and Dave Howe over the years actually sat though many meetings where a name change was debated. The corporate and brand identity consultancy Landor Associates as well as two London marketing agencies were hired at what I'm sure was great expense. Meanwhile, Sci Fi Channel's programming mostly really Zucks.