'But we were always, always, always like that.'
Right now, I have a hard time separating my enjoyment of Battlestar Galactica from my hopes and expectations for the remainder of the season. I have a hard time saying whether I am interested in and appreciative of the story as it is playing out, or whether I am only desperate to know what's going to happen. I do feel prepared to say this much: I don't think one final season will turn out to have been enough. I don't mean 'enough for me'; Lord knows if I were the one offered the chance to decide whether the show should drag on year after year, I'd probably give in to temptation (even if only because I suspect I'll get lonely without it). I mean: I don't think one final season will turn out to have been enough to tell the story adequately.
It's been a while since I've seen the first half of season 4, but it bothered me even then that so much happened, so fast, during the first two or three episodes. It seemed to me that there needed to be about half a season for the Final Four reveal, the Cylon Civil War, Starbuck's return and the whole poop ship debacle. It all seemed rushed.
This half of the season may be moving at a more reasonable pace, but there's so much *plot*, and I'm beating my little wings against the Fourth Wall, because this is my last chance to see some of my favorite characters - LAST CHANCE - and here we are, more than halfway through the remaining ten episodes, and with the exception of certain very fortunate main characters who have been well-served by the present movement (Adama, to a lesser extent Laura Roslin and Chief Tyrol, and especially Saul Tigh), it's just been... crumbs. I don't mean to be unappreciative, because the more good drama happens for characters like Ellen and Saul and Anders and Tyrol, the more I take them into my heart; I do care. But this series could turn out to have the slambanginest conclusion a series has ever seen, and I still think I'll be heartsore about it. Twenty episodes, then ten, then four? We used to have time for Characters Who Aren't Cylons. I don't think we do anymore.
He's got his hands on his hips. *pan away* He's got his chin in his hand!
*facepalm*
Some Interesting Stuff from Tonight:
-I'm still feeling the Daniel-is-Starbuck's-father theory, especially given the piano thing. Piano in the bar, which Starbuck makes a point of noticing, and a blonde child - baby-Starbuck, in all probability - playing a piano in the ad for next week. Piano music is virtually the only pre-existing detail we associate with Starbuck's father (as far as I can remember). Starbuck's comment about watching Tigh and Ellen go at it was also funny, but if it was meant as some eleventh hour foreshadowing, it was also pretty heavy-handed.
-So the Cylons-need-love-to-conceive idea turns out to be more literal than I ever thought. I had assumed Caprica Six was able to get pregnant because there was something about the Tighlons that differed from other male Cylon models. But it would seem as though Six's pregnancy depended so directly on her psychological security that Ellen's vitriol was enough to cause her to lose the baby. Do you think the potential for Cylons to become pregnant relates to or depends on their capacity for projection? It's as if there is a fragile illusion that is focused and supported by love; the illusion permits the pregnancy, and if the illusion is disrupted, the pregnancy is also. (Poor tinuviellen; I begin to think you are right, and the entertainment universe really does have it in for you.) I didn't mind this turn in Ellen's character, even though last week was so refreshingly different, because I think this Ellen really *does* believe in the Cylon family, see herself as the mother and benefactress of all the other Cylons, and desire a procreative future for Cylons and humans. Only she wants it on her own terms, and she will not share Saul - not for real. Not with any person who has any real chance of supplanting Ellen in his affections, and even if Six is not that person, Liam could have been. Saul's speech to Six when Liam was dying made that so clear, as did his break-down in Adama's office. So sad, when he said 'It's not like Zak.' But it is. And a bitter little irony to think back on the time when Tigh thanked the gods he'd never have children.
-Why did Tyrol vote to jump away in the Basestar? Did he think it would mean getting Boomer back? And would it? Presumably Boomer is in the brig because she is the only one of these Cylons supposed to be directly responsible for acts of sabotage on the Colonials and an attack on Adama. But that hardly seems fair when she was a programmed sleeper agent - and the rest of the Cylons were responsible for that programming. Boomer probably had less to do with the attack than any of the others - and they're not even going to stick up for her? (Or is she in the brig because she helped the Cavils?) Anyway, I still don't understand why Tyrol wanted to go. He has more ties to the fleet, more reason to stay, than any of the other Five except Tigh. It's not that he hasn't suffered or that he has no reason to want to get away, so much as I don't think he'd have enough waiting for him with the Cylons to make the move worthwhile. He doesn't seem especially bonded to them. Oh well.
-If Anders is just going to wake up again As Soon As It's Convenient, that is stupid. That is just we-don't-want-to-tell-you-ALL-our-secrets-in-one-episode-so-we'll-contrive-an-excuse-not-to stupid.
-Why on earth would the three sanest people the frakking Fleet has to offer agree to give Baltar's Harem GIANT GUNS? Whut? Dude, unstable human beings are at least as capable of mayhem, destruction and killing as Cylons are! Why not take the giant guns *away* from the whatsahoosits of Ares? And Baltar? Galactica was never a human ship. It was a ship made of... ship.
-Did drunken Tigh say his granddaddy was a belt sander? Or a jigsaw... or something? That is one thing about this episode that I *am* going to want to remember forever.
It's been a while since I've seen the first half of season 4, but it bothered me even then that so much happened, so fast, during the first two or three episodes. It seemed to me that there needed to be about half a season for the Final Four reveal, the Cylon Civil War, Starbuck's return and the whole poop ship debacle. It all seemed rushed.
This half of the season may be moving at a more reasonable pace, but there's so much *plot*, and I'm beating my little wings against the Fourth Wall, because this is my last chance to see some of my favorite characters - LAST CHANCE - and here we are, more than halfway through the remaining ten episodes, and with the exception of certain very fortunate main characters who have been well-served by the present movement (Adama, to a lesser extent Laura Roslin and Chief Tyrol, and especially Saul Tigh), it's just been... crumbs. I don't mean to be unappreciative, because the more good drama happens for characters like Ellen and Saul and Anders and Tyrol, the more I take them into my heart; I do care. But this series could turn out to have the slambanginest conclusion a series has ever seen, and I still think I'll be heartsore about it. Twenty episodes, then ten, then four? We used to have time for Characters Who Aren't Cylons. I don't think we do anymore.
He's got his hands on his hips. *pan away* He's got his chin in his hand!
*facepalm*
Some Interesting Stuff from Tonight:
-I'm still feeling the Daniel-is-Starbuck's-father theory, especially given the piano thing. Piano in the bar, which Starbuck makes a point of noticing, and a blonde child - baby-Starbuck, in all probability - playing a piano in the ad for next week. Piano music is virtually the only pre-existing detail we associate with Starbuck's father (as far as I can remember). Starbuck's comment about watching Tigh and Ellen go at it was also funny, but if it was meant as some eleventh hour foreshadowing, it was also pretty heavy-handed.
-So the Cylons-need-love-to-conceive idea turns out to be more literal than I ever thought. I had assumed Caprica Six was able to get pregnant because there was something about the Tighlons that differed from other male Cylon models. But it would seem as though Six's pregnancy depended so directly on her psychological security that Ellen's vitriol was enough to cause her to lose the baby. Do you think the potential for Cylons to become pregnant relates to or depends on their capacity for projection? It's as if there is a fragile illusion that is focused and supported by love; the illusion permits the pregnancy, and if the illusion is disrupted, the pregnancy is also. (Poor tinuviellen; I begin to think you are right, and the entertainment universe really does have it in for you.) I didn't mind this turn in Ellen's character, even though last week was so refreshingly different, because I think this Ellen really *does* believe in the Cylon family, see herself as the mother and benefactress of all the other Cylons, and desire a procreative future for Cylons and humans. Only she wants it on her own terms, and she will not share Saul - not for real. Not with any person who has any real chance of supplanting Ellen in his affections, and even if Six is not that person, Liam could have been. Saul's speech to Six when Liam was dying made that so clear, as did his break-down in Adama's office. So sad, when he said 'It's not like Zak.' But it is. And a bitter little irony to think back on the time when Tigh thanked the gods he'd never have children.
-Why did Tyrol vote to jump away in the Basestar? Did he think it would mean getting Boomer back? And would it? Presumably Boomer is in the brig because she is the only one of these Cylons supposed to be directly responsible for acts of sabotage on the Colonials and an attack on Adama. But that hardly seems fair when she was a programmed sleeper agent - and the rest of the Cylons were responsible for that programming. Boomer probably had less to do with the attack than any of the others - and they're not even going to stick up for her? (Or is she in the brig because she helped the Cavils?) Anyway, I still don't understand why Tyrol wanted to go. He has more ties to the fleet, more reason to stay, than any of the other Five except Tigh. It's not that he hasn't suffered or that he has no reason to want to get away, so much as I don't think he'd have enough waiting for him with the Cylons to make the move worthwhile. He doesn't seem especially bonded to them. Oh well.
-If Anders is just going to wake up again As Soon As It's Convenient, that is stupid. That is just we-don't-want-to-tell-you-ALL-our-secrets-in-one-episode-so-we'll-contrive-an-excuse-not-to stupid.
-Why on earth would the three sanest people the frakking Fleet has to offer agree to give Baltar's Harem GIANT GUNS? Whut? Dude, unstable human beings are at least as capable of mayhem, destruction and killing as Cylons are! Why not take the giant guns *away* from the whatsahoosits of Ares? And Baltar? Galactica was never a human ship. It was a ship made of... ship.
-Did drunken Tigh say his granddaddy was a belt sander? Or a jigsaw... or something? That is one thing about this episode that I *am* going to want to remember forever.