Aftermaths, exposition and conundrums
BSG 4.15 No Exit
It had been more than a week since I watched the show, so I thought ‘Why not?’ and did. The edge of the insurrection of the last two episodes had been blunted by the length of time, but the fact I’m now watching BSG whenever and certainly didn’t bother playing the next episode immediately is down to the show. But. of course, there was some aftermath with Lee and Roslin visiting the site of the Quorum’s massacre, Adama discovering that there was damage to the Galactica (conveniently timed damage, I thought, as they talked about the ship in the feminine and used the metaphor of her being sick to the bone.) By offering the Chief his job back, despite his being revealed to be a Cylon and everything that had happened so recently, but then insisting on an all-human crew then wobbling when Galen suggested a biological Cylon resin thing to patch her up, Adama was shown to be nowhere near to resolving some of the issues that led to the insurrection. I know they’ve got rid of the ringleaders and none of the main characters hold those grievances, but those issues and grievances haven’t gone away. And of course, there was Sam and his bullet wound.
So, we got a new preamble, which seemed to skip over the discovery of the Cylon thirteenth tribe for me, because getting to Earth was such a big deal for so long. That led into the resurrection of Ellen, about which I was only mildly surprised, though I hadn’t anticipated it, because it didn’t seem as if there would have been copies of the mysterious Five waiting on the resurrection ships, which would have been around when she died. But since we’d seen Boomer, Caprica and even D’Anna resurrected, it made sense, and it’s not the worst retcon, er, flashback, but I can only hope the writers had checked that what happened with the other characters who interacted with her tracked - including the Centurions - I don’t have the bandwidth or memory to do that work. And yeah, I used those words deliberately.
Kate Vernon and Dean Stockwell had oodles of fun with their characters’ reunion and subsequent clashing. Ellen being mother, creator, believer dealing with an unbeliever led to enough tension that the exposition drop wasn’t too bad. And Boomer watched it all (really unsubtle cut to Tyrol at one point when they’d been talking about love there, show. You need to pay more attention to Boomer if you’re heading back there.) It’s a shame I have no idea when exactly she decided to rescue Ellen from John’s forced operation, which contrasted with what Sam went through in the episode.
So, Ellen is alive again, while her beloved Saul is fathering a child with one of their children, as this episode made them out to be. Saul seemed to be more interested in his unborn son than he’s ever been before. Oh, and the discovery that the Five were a different…generation to the seven models may have implications for that pregnancy, although we also learned that the Cylons on Earth were biologically reproducing.
Ellen is always and forever a lush, even now that she’s got all her memories back and a new body.
So that whole reunion was mainly contrasted with Sam, post vision, trying to share all he remembered with the other three. At least the fact that they’d travelled from Earth to the colonies in relative time explained some of it - I appreciated the writers’ graft to try to make sense out of all of this, although do Sam and Father Whasthisname being visibly older trak? I got really confused about who the Sevens are currently when there was talk of Seven being Daniel first (and if he was an artist, I guess I can understand why Kara wished/hoped she was it, to explain whatever happened to her. Which they’ll have to explain at some point.) But the naming of Cylons makes still my head hurt.
I was very dubious abut Kara getting to decide whether Sam should be operated on. Was his competence to make the decision so impaired? I know he was frustrated with his aphasia, whih affected his communication, but he seemed to understand the risks, it’s just that his priority was so clearly to transmit his regained memories (Galen and Tori being so in love got a chuckle, but there was a lot of extraneous detail.) Also, they may be technically married, but it’s been a dysfunctional relationship for ages, and Kara was being selfish as she admitted, instead of trying to make the best call for his wellbeing. It was totally fair of him to raise how he’d supported her in the past. Admittedly, there was was no obvious good call to make, but I wasn’t entirely onside with her making the call anyway.
Roslin used her sickness and disinclination to do the hard work (fair enough, but is she ever going to willingly return to sickbay?) to make Lee her Veep and the person really running things, or so I guess. I was glad, although I don’t care as much as I did when I first raised it, when he said the reconstituted Quorum should represent humanity as a fleet, not the now defunct colonies.
So, it was the Centurions who had developed monotheism, which the Five embraced. That is another frustratingly interesting detail that I don’t trust the show to give enough attention to.
Sam sometimes, intentionally, reminded me of the Hybrids with his babbling, but now he is braindead, and presumably can’t be killed and resurrected. Cue more guilt for Kara to carry around (quite rightly) and wallow in.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/469450.html.
It had been more than a week since I watched the show, so I thought ‘Why not?’ and did. The edge of the insurrection of the last two episodes had been blunted by the length of time, but the fact I’m now watching BSG whenever and certainly didn’t bother playing the next episode immediately is down to the show. But. of course, there was some aftermath with Lee and Roslin visiting the site of the Quorum’s massacre, Adama discovering that there was damage to the Galactica (conveniently timed damage, I thought, as they talked about the ship in the feminine and used the metaphor of her being sick to the bone.) By offering the Chief his job back, despite his being revealed to be a Cylon and everything that had happened so recently, but then insisting on an all-human crew then wobbling when Galen suggested a biological Cylon resin thing to patch her up, Adama was shown to be nowhere near to resolving some of the issues that led to the insurrection. I know they’ve got rid of the ringleaders and none of the main characters hold those grievances, but those issues and grievances haven’t gone away. And of course, there was Sam and his bullet wound.
So, we got a new preamble, which seemed to skip over the discovery of the Cylon thirteenth tribe for me, because getting to Earth was such a big deal for so long. That led into the resurrection of Ellen, about which I was only mildly surprised, though I hadn’t anticipated it, because it didn’t seem as if there would have been copies of the mysterious Five waiting on the resurrection ships, which would have been around when she died. But since we’d seen Boomer, Caprica and even D’Anna resurrected, it made sense, and it’s not the worst retcon, er, flashback, but I can only hope the writers had checked that what happened with the other characters who interacted with her tracked - including the Centurions - I don’t have the bandwidth or memory to do that work. And yeah, I used those words deliberately.
Kate Vernon and Dean Stockwell had oodles of fun with their characters’ reunion and subsequent clashing. Ellen being mother, creator, believer dealing with an unbeliever led to enough tension that the exposition drop wasn’t too bad. And Boomer watched it all (really unsubtle cut to Tyrol at one point when they’d been talking about love there, show. You need to pay more attention to Boomer if you’re heading back there.) It’s a shame I have no idea when exactly she decided to rescue Ellen from John’s forced operation, which contrasted with what Sam went through in the episode.
So, Ellen is alive again, while her beloved Saul is fathering a child with one of their children, as this episode made them out to be. Saul seemed to be more interested in his unborn son than he’s ever been before. Oh, and the discovery that the Five were a different…generation to the seven models may have implications for that pregnancy, although we also learned that the Cylons on Earth were biologically reproducing.
Ellen is always and forever a lush, even now that she’s got all her memories back and a new body.
So that whole reunion was mainly contrasted with Sam, post vision, trying to share all he remembered with the other three. At least the fact that they’d travelled from Earth to the colonies in relative time explained some of it - I appreciated the writers’ graft to try to make sense out of all of this, although do Sam and Father Whasthisname being visibly older trak? I got really confused about who the Sevens are currently when there was talk of Seven being Daniel first (and if he was an artist, I guess I can understand why Kara wished/hoped she was it, to explain whatever happened to her. Which they’ll have to explain at some point.) But the naming of Cylons makes still my head hurt.
I was very dubious abut Kara getting to decide whether Sam should be operated on. Was his competence to make the decision so impaired? I know he was frustrated with his aphasia, whih affected his communication, but he seemed to understand the risks, it’s just that his priority was so clearly to transmit his regained memories (Galen and Tori being so in love got a chuckle, but there was a lot of extraneous detail.) Also, they may be technically married, but it’s been a dysfunctional relationship for ages, and Kara was being selfish as she admitted, instead of trying to make the best call for his wellbeing. It was totally fair of him to raise how he’d supported her in the past. Admittedly, there was was no obvious good call to make, but I wasn’t entirely onside with her making the call anyway.
Roslin used her sickness and disinclination to do the hard work (fair enough, but is she ever going to willingly return to sickbay?) to make Lee her Veep and the person really running things, or so I guess. I was glad, although I don’t care as much as I did when I first raised it, when he said the reconstituted Quorum should represent humanity as a fleet, not the now defunct colonies.
So, it was the Centurions who had developed monotheism, which the Five embraced. That is another frustratingly interesting detail that I don’t trust the show to give enough attention to.
Sam sometimes, intentionally, reminded me of the Hybrids with his babbling, but now he is braindead, and presumably can’t be killed and resurrected. Cue more guilt for Kara to carry around (quite rightly) and wallow in.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/469450.html.