All in the Name of Fairness--The Plan
I finally sat down and watched The Plan this evening (because there were tons of things I should've been doing but didn't particularly want to do. Tomorrow is going to be a crazy busy day, but oh well.). I actually enjoyed it, though I'm glad I'd read reviews first so I knew what to expect and what not to expect so as not to be disappointed. I agree with the general consensus that its shortcoming is its lack of a strong narrative arc--the best way I can describe it is that it feels like it's two reconstructed subplots that were cut from the series proper for running time, which in a way is a good thing since that means it's well-integrated, but they don't feel like they stand on their own as a story. But, there were some really great scenes, I laughed a lot, and I really love Jane Espenson for two statements she made in the audio commentary.
-Doral was hilarious! "His jacket was burgundy. This one is teal." And they get all the shitty jobs! Technically, we got more insight into the Simons and Cavils than any of the other Cylons, but the Sixes and the Dorals got the best scenes and lines.
-Prostitute Six (what are we calling her?) was awesome, too. It's really amazing how many different ways Tricia Helfer can reinvent the same base character.
-I think I kinda ship Jean/Sam a little bit now? And of all the things that were supposed to change how I viewed them upon re-watch, I think that little bit with Jean's horror at the Cylons being human-form and Sam dragging her out of there will affect me the most, particularly in "Faith."
-There was some mad religious symbolism going on with the kid handing Cavil an apple and then Cavil stabbing him in the side. I'm thinking it was conflating Eve and the Serpent, with humanity being the serpent by offering selfhood and the ability to love to the Cylons, with Cain and Abel, with Cavil killing the boy not only as a symbolic rejection of that ability to love but also in jealousy of the Five's love for humanity over himself. Or maybe I'm reading to much into it, I don't know.
-Speaking of reading things into it, yay, the Hybrid paraphrased W.B. Yeats! She completely flipped the quote on its head (and rightfully so), but excerpts from "The Second Coming" are most definitely in there.
-I particularly liked The Plan because it didn't joss any of the ideas I've been amassing for my 2,000-year Final Five Epic (only they're not really "final" if they're the originators, are they?). In fact, it even gave me some new ones, and--even more thrilling--confirmed and bolstered some things I was going to do anyway without any canon support or reference. Something Boomer said particularly made me squee, but...I can't say what yet.
-I watched with subtitles on, like I usually do with BSG episodes where there's Hybrid, and the ship Simon is on is the "Cybele," which makes sense: she's a Greek goddess. But it irked me to no end that everyone was pronouncing it "CY-bel." It's "SIH-bel-lee," folks. You're the polytheists; you should be able to pronounce the names of your own deities correctly.
-I was surprised at the fact that there was almost no Tory and very little Ellen and Saul in the show. Saul, I understand, because his story was pretty thoroughly told in the series. Tory and Ellen's relative absence disappointed me, though I'm not really sure what I would have shown them doing once they got into the Fleet anyway. Also, is it just me, or did it appear that it was too expensive to get clearance to show even recycled footage of Mary McDonnell?
-Okay, did anybody else think about how weird shooting the Gianne/Simon sex scene must've been, because EJO was directing, and Gianne was played by EJO's wife?
-I didn't listen to the whole audio commentary with EJO and Jane Espenson, but I did fast forward my way through to scenes here and there where I was particularly curious about what they had to say. One that I knew I had to stop and watch was the Gaeta-Baltar scene in the brig, where Gaeta brings in the screencaps of the security footage and clears Baltar's name. I wanted to see if they'd comment on the fact that, like many of the recycled scenes, they cut that one down, but in particular they cut out the infamous hug, and then cut to Cavil leading Shelley Godfrey through a head full of naked women. Here is the very entertaining transcript of Jane Espenson's audio commentary from those two scenes (EJO's there, too, but his comments aren't nearly as much fun):
One of the many steps in the utterly fascinating Gaeta-Baltar relationship. Gaeta is such a great, utterly human character. Alessandro.
We had all these-we had a number of naked female pilots, we have this one naked male pilot-There! [sing-songs] I saw a penis!
There was a great deal of effort to get that penis on film, so that it wouldn’t be unfair. Which I thought was the perfect way to phrase it, that it’s sort of not fair to include all of the bonus footage of all the naked women and no naked men in it, so that-but it was a very shy actor, so there was a lot of effort to get that small piece of footage.
They go on to speak intelligently about how it's not only "fair" but reflective of a culture with unisex bathrooms and not so much by way of nudity taboos, but I just felt the need to share 1) Gaeta love! and 2) humorous attempts at equal-opportunity nudity.
-Doral was hilarious! "His jacket was burgundy. This one is teal." And they get all the shitty jobs! Technically, we got more insight into the Simons and Cavils than any of the other Cylons, but the Sixes and the Dorals got the best scenes and lines.
-Prostitute Six (what are we calling her?) was awesome, too. It's really amazing how many different ways Tricia Helfer can reinvent the same base character.
-I think I kinda ship Jean/Sam a little bit now? And of all the things that were supposed to change how I viewed them upon re-watch, I think that little bit with Jean's horror at the Cylons being human-form and Sam dragging her out of there will affect me the most, particularly in "Faith."
-There was some mad religious symbolism going on with the kid handing Cavil an apple and then Cavil stabbing him in the side. I'm thinking it was conflating Eve and the Serpent, with humanity being the serpent by offering selfhood and the ability to love to the Cylons, with Cain and Abel, with Cavil killing the boy not only as a symbolic rejection of that ability to love but also in jealousy of the Five's love for humanity over himself. Or maybe I'm reading to much into it, I don't know.
-Speaking of reading things into it, yay, the Hybrid paraphrased W.B. Yeats! She completely flipped the quote on its head (and rightfully so), but excerpts from "The Second Coming" are most definitely in there.
-I particularly liked The Plan because it didn't joss any of the ideas I've been amassing for my 2,000-year Final Five Epic (only they're not really "final" if they're the originators, are they?). In fact, it even gave me some new ones, and--even more thrilling--confirmed and bolstered some things I was going to do anyway without any canon support or reference. Something Boomer said particularly made me squee, but...I can't say what yet.
-I watched with subtitles on, like I usually do with BSG episodes where there's Hybrid, and the ship Simon is on is the "Cybele," which makes sense: she's a Greek goddess. But it irked me to no end that everyone was pronouncing it "CY-bel." It's "SIH-bel-lee," folks. You're the polytheists; you should be able to pronounce the names of your own deities correctly.
-I was surprised at the fact that there was almost no Tory and very little Ellen and Saul in the show. Saul, I understand, because his story was pretty thoroughly told in the series. Tory and Ellen's relative absence disappointed me, though I'm not really sure what I would have shown them doing once they got into the Fleet anyway. Also, is it just me, or did it appear that it was too expensive to get clearance to show even recycled footage of Mary McDonnell?
-Okay, did anybody else think about how weird shooting the Gianne/Simon sex scene must've been, because EJO was directing, and Gianne was played by EJO's wife?
-I didn't listen to the whole audio commentary with EJO and Jane Espenson, but I did fast forward my way through to scenes here and there where I was particularly curious about what they had to say. One that I knew I had to stop and watch was the Gaeta-Baltar scene in the brig, where Gaeta brings in the screencaps of the security footage and clears Baltar's name. I wanted to see if they'd comment on the fact that, like many of the recycled scenes, they cut that one down, but in particular they cut out the infamous hug, and then cut to Cavil leading Shelley Godfrey through a head full of naked women. Here is the very entertaining transcript of Jane Espenson's audio commentary from those two scenes (EJO's there, too, but his comments aren't nearly as much fun):
One of the many steps in the utterly fascinating Gaeta-Baltar relationship. Gaeta is such a great, utterly human character. Alessandro.
We had all these-we had a number of naked female pilots, we have this one naked male pilot-There! [sing-songs] I saw a penis!
There was a great deal of effort to get that penis on film, so that it wouldn’t be unfair. Which I thought was the perfect way to phrase it, that it’s sort of not fair to include all of the bonus footage of all the naked women and no naked men in it, so that-but it was a very shy actor, so there was a lot of effort to get that small piece of footage.
They go on to speak intelligently about how it's not only "fair" but reflective of a culture with unisex bathrooms and not so much by way of nudity taboos, but I just felt the need to share 1) Gaeta love! and 2) humorous attempts at equal-opportunity nudity.