Valley of Darkness
In my last recap, I lamented that Scattered was merely a filler episode waiting for us to get to bigger and better things. So, along comes Valley of Darkness and, while it, too, is an episode that's acting as a filler piece in getting us to where we'll eventually be going, it's a really fun, diversionary type episode where the audience doesn't have to think too much. And I don't mean that in a bad way, at all. Every once in a while it's nice to have an action episode that doesn't make me contemplate ethics or morality or any kind of philosophical quandry.
Scale the mountain so you can climb back down to the cut.
1) Valley of Darkness starts with 47,874 survivors, one less than Scattered started with. Time will tell how many we lost in this episode.
2) I cannot bring myself to care about Billy and Dee's relationship. Does that make me heartless? I find both characters likable enough (and I come to love Dee in just a few episodes) but their interaction just falls completely flat.
3) I don't know if this is a continuity error or if it's legitimate, but why could Helo kill the centurions with his regular gun but the marines can only kill the centurions with their exploding bullet guns?
4) For whatever reason, I find it really creepy that there are so few bodies to be found on the surface of Caprica. Millions and millions died in Caprica City alone and billions would have been killed planet wide, but there's no one. It's one of those eerie touches that have made the scenes taking place on Caprica more unsettling. Now we find out that the cylons have moved the bodies to incinerators for disposal.
I find this disturbing in a way I can't really put into words. I guess, first of all, I'm not sure that I believe it. I don't believe that the cylons could get rid of that many bodies in that short of a time. But, even so, I can't help but have the image of large pits acting as mass graves just being torched. I don't do well with that kind of imagery in my head.
5) So, we have a big giant flobotnum in this episode. For those of you unaware, "flobotnum" is a word I've picked up from Joss Whedon and the staff of writers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to explain the magical plot device that either kicks everything off or solves everything. In this, we learn that the cylons are looking to get to Aft Damage Control so they could do some stuff. What stuff, I'm not sure, but I know it had to do with depressurization and something that sounded vaguely like airlocking.
Maybe I'm over reacting to the idea of the flobotnum but the whole thing with Aft Damage Control was like, "Look! The cylons have a goal and it's really really bad!" Maybe it was because they had that scene where everybody and their mother keeps talking about Aft Damage Control. Laura says it, Corporal Venner says it, Lee and Saul say it multiple times. It's like, "Okay! We get it!"
6) Let me talk about how awesome Laura is for a moment, okay?
First, once again, she proves how incredibly in control of everything she still is. She manages to get Corporal Venner to let her out of her cell with her persusasive stern voice. After that, she almost leads her party to safety. And now, she won't touch or fire a gun, but she leads with authority and a calmness that the other don't really possess. Is it because she's resigned to dying and that believes her death will be a good thing for the people so she's almost like, "Whatever happens is okay?" I don't know.
But then . . . She actually drops Billy during the gunfight with the cylons. And she avoids a couple bullets by mere centimeters.
Then, at the end, she is the one who deigns to allow herself to be lead back to the brig.
Clearly, anyone who thinks they're winning something over Laura Roslin knows nothing about Laura Roslin. She will own you.
7) Oh, man, but that shirt she's wearing? Not okay. It has a very strange neckline and looks vaguely like a silk night shirt. And she's been stuck in it for, like, four episodes now! So not fair.
8) Before I forget, let me try to map out the timeline. Valley of Darkness starts literally minutes after Scattered. Scattered takes place literally seconds after Kobol's Last Gleaming Part 2, which takes place minutes after Kobol's Last Gleaming Part 1. We learned in Kobol's Last Gleaming Part 2 that Helo was on Caprica for 51 days. We can't be sure of time lapses within episodes, but they've all been very contained to somewhat tight deadlines, so I don't think it's farfetched to think we're maybe 52 days off from the attack. Maybe 53 at the latest. I won't budge past 54 days.
9) Annoying character alert! I really can't stand Jammer. At all. But can I tell you a non-story? It was around 3:45 in the afternoon this past Friday and I put the TV on ABC because my mom watches Ellen at 4:00. I don't know what soap opera airs at that time. I think it might be General Hospital. But who do I see laying in a hospital bed? Jammer. With this really strange long-ish hair that looked like a wig. Totally weird.
But what I do kind of like about the intent of his character in this episode is that he's not a hero. A lot of characters on BSG rush headfirst into danger and they're usually very brave about it. Personally, if I were them, I'd probably running in the opposite direction and yeah, I'd be hiding like Jammer in one of those compartments. So, for as annoying as Jammer is, he's kind of like everyman.
10) Thanks to a great point raised by blog friend Dom Sisti, I have a two part point. It relates to character responses to their names. In Valley of Darkness, the only way Billy can get Dee to pay attention to him is to use her rank: Petty Office Dualla. There's a parallel to this in Fragged, so I'll address my thoughts about them in that recap, but the seeds were sown in this episode.
11) Now on to Caprica . . . I love how Kara is so casual with the Arrow of Apollo. She does, at least on some level, believe that the Arrow of Apollo is important to finding the location of Earth, but she's just kind of ambling through the Caprican City streets with it clutched loosely in her hand and even sits on it when she visits her apartment.
12) Kara's home. How strange that it's almost exactly as she left it. I really love her reaction to her father's music and to her leather jacket and to her stash of cigars. It's hard to really put ourselves into the position of these characters, but when watching the show it's important to kind of imagine what it would be like if your home no longer existed. And you never had a chance to say goodbye. Here, Kara gets a chance no one in the fleet has and I tend to find that somewhat moving.
13) I find that this quote sums Kara (and her relationship to everyone she knows) up very well: "Everyone I know is fighting to get back to what they had. I'm fighting because I don't know how to do anything else."
14) Now onward to Kobol! I have to give another shout out to Bear McCreary. The music that accompanies Baltar's dream (which is, fitting, called Baltar's Dream) is seriously amazing. What is so amazing (to me) about McCreary's compositions is that they act in direct contrast to typical sci-fi music. There's something very earthy about much of the music, yet something really exotic. The music is familiar but strange. And I just really love it.
15) Isn't it interesting that Adama is the one who kills the baby in Baltar's dream? I don't have anything to say about it beyond that, but it just kind of struck me.
16) It may be a dream sequence, but I think it's pretty damn ballsy of the BSG writers and producers to have Commander Adama, one of the good guys, drown a baby in a lake.
17) RIP: Flyboy (death by cylon torso shredding) and Socinus (death as a result of injuries incurred in the raptor crash).
It's not the best episode but Valley of Darkness is a fun episode that sets us up nicely for the coming episode (which is, I'm afraid, another set up episode). I'm enjoying the building storyline and slowly but surely putting together the pieces of the storyline. For that, I'm going to give Valley of Darkness 4 airlocks out of 5.
Scale the mountain so you can climb back down to the cut.
1) Valley of Darkness starts with 47,874 survivors, one less than Scattered started with. Time will tell how many we lost in this episode.
2) I cannot bring myself to care about Billy and Dee's relationship. Does that make me heartless? I find both characters likable enough (and I come to love Dee in just a few episodes) but their interaction just falls completely flat.
3) I don't know if this is a continuity error or if it's legitimate, but why could Helo kill the centurions with his regular gun but the marines can only kill the centurions with their exploding bullet guns?
4) For whatever reason, I find it really creepy that there are so few bodies to be found on the surface of Caprica. Millions and millions died in Caprica City alone and billions would have been killed planet wide, but there's no one. It's one of those eerie touches that have made the scenes taking place on Caprica more unsettling. Now we find out that the cylons have moved the bodies to incinerators for disposal.
I find this disturbing in a way I can't really put into words. I guess, first of all, I'm not sure that I believe it. I don't believe that the cylons could get rid of that many bodies in that short of a time. But, even so, I can't help but have the image of large pits acting as mass graves just being torched. I don't do well with that kind of imagery in my head.
5) So, we have a big giant flobotnum in this episode. For those of you unaware, "flobotnum" is a word I've picked up from Joss Whedon and the staff of writers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to explain the magical plot device that either kicks everything off or solves everything. In this, we learn that the cylons are looking to get to Aft Damage Control so they could do some stuff. What stuff, I'm not sure, but I know it had to do with depressurization and something that sounded vaguely like airlocking.
Maybe I'm over reacting to the idea of the flobotnum but the whole thing with Aft Damage Control was like, "Look! The cylons have a goal and it's really really bad!" Maybe it was because they had that scene where everybody and their mother keeps talking about Aft Damage Control. Laura says it, Corporal Venner says it, Lee and Saul say it multiple times. It's like, "Okay! We get it!"
6) Let me talk about how awesome Laura is for a moment, okay?
First, once again, she proves how incredibly in control of everything she still is. She manages to get Corporal Venner to let her out of her cell with her persusasive stern voice. After that, she almost leads her party to safety. And now, she won't touch or fire a gun, but she leads with authority and a calmness that the other don't really possess. Is it because she's resigned to dying and that believes her death will be a good thing for the people so she's almost like, "Whatever happens is okay?" I don't know.
But then . . . She actually drops Billy during the gunfight with the cylons. And she avoids a couple bullets by mere centimeters.
Then, at the end, she is the one who deigns to allow herself to be lead back to the brig.
Clearly, anyone who thinks they're winning something over Laura Roslin knows nothing about Laura Roslin. She will own you.
7) Oh, man, but that shirt she's wearing? Not okay. It has a very strange neckline and looks vaguely like a silk night shirt. And she's been stuck in it for, like, four episodes now! So not fair.
8) Before I forget, let me try to map out the timeline. Valley of Darkness starts literally minutes after Scattered. Scattered takes place literally seconds after Kobol's Last Gleaming Part 2, which takes place minutes after Kobol's Last Gleaming Part 1. We learned in Kobol's Last Gleaming Part 2 that Helo was on Caprica for 51 days. We can't be sure of time lapses within episodes, but they've all been very contained to somewhat tight deadlines, so I don't think it's farfetched to think we're maybe 52 days off from the attack. Maybe 53 at the latest. I won't budge past 54 days.
9) Annoying character alert! I really can't stand Jammer. At all. But can I tell you a non-story? It was around 3:45 in the afternoon this past Friday and I put the TV on ABC because my mom watches Ellen at 4:00. I don't know what soap opera airs at that time. I think it might be General Hospital. But who do I see laying in a hospital bed? Jammer. With this really strange long-ish hair that looked like a wig. Totally weird.
But what I do kind of like about the intent of his character in this episode is that he's not a hero. A lot of characters on BSG rush headfirst into danger and they're usually very brave about it. Personally, if I were them, I'd probably running in the opposite direction and yeah, I'd be hiding like Jammer in one of those compartments. So, for as annoying as Jammer is, he's kind of like everyman.
10) Thanks to a great point raised by blog friend Dom Sisti, I have a two part point. It relates to character responses to their names. In Valley of Darkness, the only way Billy can get Dee to pay attention to him is to use her rank: Petty Office Dualla. There's a parallel to this in Fragged, so I'll address my thoughts about them in that recap, but the seeds were sown in this episode.
11) Now on to Caprica . . . I love how Kara is so casual with the Arrow of Apollo. She does, at least on some level, believe that the Arrow of Apollo is important to finding the location of Earth, but she's just kind of ambling through the Caprican City streets with it clutched loosely in her hand and even sits on it when she visits her apartment.
12) Kara's home. How strange that it's almost exactly as she left it. I really love her reaction to her father's music and to her leather jacket and to her stash of cigars. It's hard to really put ourselves into the position of these characters, but when watching the show it's important to kind of imagine what it would be like if your home no longer existed. And you never had a chance to say goodbye. Here, Kara gets a chance no one in the fleet has and I tend to find that somewhat moving.
13) I find that this quote sums Kara (and her relationship to everyone she knows) up very well: "Everyone I know is fighting to get back to what they had. I'm fighting because I don't know how to do anything else."
14) Now onward to Kobol! I have to give another shout out to Bear McCreary. The music that accompanies Baltar's dream (which is, fitting, called Baltar's Dream) is seriously amazing. What is so amazing (to me) about McCreary's compositions is that they act in direct contrast to typical sci-fi music. There's something very earthy about much of the music, yet something really exotic. The music is familiar but strange. And I just really love it.
15) Isn't it interesting that Adama is the one who kills the baby in Baltar's dream? I don't have anything to say about it beyond that, but it just kind of struck me.
16) It may be a dream sequence, but I think it's pretty damn ballsy of the BSG writers and producers to have Commander Adama, one of the good guys, drown a baby in a lake.
17) RIP: Flyboy (death by cylon torso shredding) and Socinus (death as a result of injuries incurred in the raptor crash).
Click to viewIt's not the best episode but Valley of Darkness is a fun episode that sets us up nicely for the coming episode (which is, I'm afraid, another set up episode). I'm enjoying the building storyline and slowly but surely putting together the pieces of the storyline. For that, I'm going to give Valley of Darkness 4 airlocks out of 5.