Still at sixes and sevens
Battlestar Galactica - 4.2 or 4.4 Six of One
I snarked after the previously, just before Laura had to face off Kara, ‘Bet you didn’t see this coming, Madam President.’
This episode felt somewhat bitty to me. Some of it was good, some of it was intriguing, some of it felt overblown and it didn’t all hold together or make up for what had been.
There’s trouble among the Cylons as represented on the only basestar that counts, because One (as played by Dean Stockwell) is not impressed that others are talking about the Five openly. But things have changed, (brunette) Six says. His response is to propose they ‘reconfigure/lobotomise’ the Raiders because one of them recognised Sam and saved him. The vote is tied, until Boomer votes against the rest of her number. (Everyone is SHOCKED but it’s not like Boomer and Caprica or Kara’s captor hadn’t shown signs of individuality.) So One starts work on the raiders, but this brunette! Six’s response (and I loved all that was going on in Helfer’s performance at this point) took off the chip that had kept the Centurions dumb (essentially) so that they would be sentient enough to shoot the Cylons who’d wanted to lobotomise their brethren. (Thus giving sentience to the most robotlike flavour of Cylons we’ve seen.) I didn’t notice whether Boomer was one of the victims - and won’t they get resurrected (with a grudge) anyway? (Although I sided with not doing this to the Raiders.) I also wonder if this will make them all revisit Deeanna (I hate how they’ve just randomly adopted the human names some of the copies had for all of them, because it’s really to make it easier for the viewer instead of being true to the character(s)). And if the viewer is me, the name hasn’t stuck and I’m going by the actor or their appearance if I didn’t know them previously.
The other big change was that Gaius is seeing himself now, not Six. (As ever, I wanted to see Caprica ASAP to ascertain if her spirit guide had changed too.) With a cravat and trimmed hair, Gaius Baltar has a pretty different look suddenly now. Anyway, we learned all this because the (male) Three of the Four had decided Tori should try to get information out of him about the remaiing secret Cylon (who they figured could be Kara because she wouldn’t have been around to hear the music, although all her blather about Earth increasingly suggests she’s not to me, but the writers are going to need some explanation for why the last one wasn’t activated. It would be nice if said explanation made sense.) Which meant sex. Which was icky, and I felt for her as she cried her way through it. (Roslin didn’t notice that her aide was nowhere to be seen after she was…threatened at gunpoint!?) Also, that whole thing with Sam seems to have been entirely disregarded for plot and because Kara returned? Granted, having your whole sense of self rocked to the core is going to be the most pressing matter for both of them, but still a couple of lines or nod to that would make me les irritated.
I am more dubious about the significance of the extended musical metaphor Gaius blabbed on about than Tori and the other Three will be. I suspect it’s the monotheism message that may be more important. Tori was also informed that Cylons suffer as she was doing.
Tighe continues to be Tighe, so I was reassured that Helo was also going along to rescue Roslin and try to talk Kara down, except Kara had Starbucked the situation by the time they got there, yielding the gun to Roslin as she berated her for not trusting her and taking them away from Earth. Laura shot, but missed - at first I just thought it was a bad aim, but it made Adama think maybe Kara is invulnerable now (how? Beyond being a main character? Again, expecting them to write some kind of explanation for eactly what happened to Starbuck and her ship when she visited Earth.)
Witnessing Kara’s anguish did make me more sympathetic to her, although I still think that her crazy antics are terrible tactics. Lee only believes her because he’s in love with her, and Adama’s also motivated by love to some extent, although I appreciated his giving her a chance to prove her ramblings are true (how though? Is she just going to come back again and say ‘I’ve found Earth’ and…how is that going to play out differently?)
Kara’s lines about being on Earth, smelling it and all that really confused me, because I’d got the impression that she’d just flown around it, taken some pictures, not landed. I think the take out was meant to be around her sense of having been there before tying into the ‘this has all happened before motif. But so many plotholes/questions…
Anyway, Laura and Bill have reached the point where they know each other well enough to trade some emotional blows that landed. And in an episode where Laura had really good hair, she had to sffer some hairloss because of the cancer treatment.
There was SUCH a big song and dance about Lee leaving, and I could not get over how he is just leaving the ship for some other ship in the fleet. In the past, this has happened in the blink of an eye. Even allowing for him leaving the military, it was ridiculous in terms of the attention it got in the ep. I guess it’s good that he is on better drinking terms with his dad and he got to say goodbye to Dee/the show remembered Dee existed, but that and Lee and Kara’s big goodbye snog left me feeling unmoved, because those two have got in their own way so much.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/460463.html.
I snarked after the previously, just before Laura had to face off Kara, ‘Bet you didn’t see this coming, Madam President.’
This episode felt somewhat bitty to me. Some of it was good, some of it was intriguing, some of it felt overblown and it didn’t all hold together or make up for what had been.
There’s trouble among the Cylons as represented on the only basestar that counts, because One (as played by Dean Stockwell) is not impressed that others are talking about the Five openly. But things have changed, (brunette) Six says. His response is to propose they ‘reconfigure/lobotomise’ the Raiders because one of them recognised Sam and saved him. The vote is tied, until Boomer votes against the rest of her number. (Everyone is SHOCKED but it’s not like Boomer and Caprica or Kara’s captor hadn’t shown signs of individuality.) So One starts work on the raiders, but this brunette! Six’s response (and I loved all that was going on in Helfer’s performance at this point) took off the chip that had kept the Centurions dumb (essentially) so that they would be sentient enough to shoot the Cylons who’d wanted to lobotomise their brethren. (Thus giving sentience to the most robotlike flavour of Cylons we’ve seen.) I didn’t notice whether Boomer was one of the victims - and won’t they get resurrected (with a grudge) anyway? (Although I sided with not doing this to the Raiders.) I also wonder if this will make them all revisit Deeanna (I hate how they’ve just randomly adopted the human names some of the copies had for all of them, because it’s really to make it easier for the viewer instead of being true to the character(s)). And if the viewer is me, the name hasn’t stuck and I’m going by the actor or their appearance if I didn’t know them previously.
The other big change was that Gaius is seeing himself now, not Six. (As ever, I wanted to see Caprica ASAP to ascertain if her spirit guide had changed too.) With a cravat and trimmed hair, Gaius Baltar has a pretty different look suddenly now. Anyway, we learned all this because the (male) Three of the Four had decided Tori should try to get information out of him about the remaiing secret Cylon (who they figured could be Kara because she wouldn’t have been around to hear the music, although all her blather about Earth increasingly suggests she’s not to me, but the writers are going to need some explanation for why the last one wasn’t activated. It would be nice if said explanation made sense.) Which meant sex. Which was icky, and I felt for her as she cried her way through it. (Roslin didn’t notice that her aide was nowhere to be seen after she was…threatened at gunpoint!?) Also, that whole thing with Sam seems to have been entirely disregarded for plot and because Kara returned? Granted, having your whole sense of self rocked to the core is going to be the most pressing matter for both of them, but still a couple of lines or nod to that would make me les irritated.
I am more dubious about the significance of the extended musical metaphor Gaius blabbed on about than Tori and the other Three will be. I suspect it’s the monotheism message that may be more important. Tori was also informed that Cylons suffer as she was doing.
Tighe continues to be Tighe, so I was reassured that Helo was also going along to rescue Roslin and try to talk Kara down, except Kara had Starbucked the situation by the time they got there, yielding the gun to Roslin as she berated her for not trusting her and taking them away from Earth. Laura shot, but missed - at first I just thought it was a bad aim, but it made Adama think maybe Kara is invulnerable now (how? Beyond being a main character? Again, expecting them to write some kind of explanation for eactly what happened to Starbuck and her ship when she visited Earth.)
Witnessing Kara’s anguish did make me more sympathetic to her, although I still think that her crazy antics are terrible tactics. Lee only believes her because he’s in love with her, and Adama’s also motivated by love to some extent, although I appreciated his giving her a chance to prove her ramblings are true (how though? Is she just going to come back again and say ‘I’ve found Earth’ and…how is that going to play out differently?)
Kara’s lines about being on Earth, smelling it and all that really confused me, because I’d got the impression that she’d just flown around it, taken some pictures, not landed. I think the take out was meant to be around her sense of having been there before tying into the ‘this has all happened before motif. But so many plotholes/questions…
Anyway, Laura and Bill have reached the point where they know each other well enough to trade some emotional blows that landed. And in an episode where Laura had really good hair, she had to sffer some hairloss because of the cancer treatment.
There was SUCH a big song and dance about Lee leaving, and I could not get over how he is just leaving the ship for some other ship in the fleet. In the past, this has happened in the blink of an eye. Even allowing for him leaving the military, it was ridiculous in terms of the attention it got in the ep. I guess it’s good that he is on better drinking terms with his dad and he got to say goodbye to Dee/the show remembered Dee existed, but that and Lee and Kara’s big goodbye snog left me feeling unmoved, because those two have got in their own way so much.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/460463.html.