I Told You Not To Trust Those Fuckers.

I did, indeed. I told you not to trust those fuckers behind Battlestar Galactica. I said so here and here and here.

But no, people had to go and get the DVD for "The Plan" anyway. And there are regrets being expressed.

Fools, all of them. The series finale was the biggest ass-fucking ever given to a loyal viewing audience since the "it was only a dream" fuck-over of "Dallas".

I reserve the right to (a) dump heavy amounts of snark and scorn on anyone who is gullible enough to watch either "The Plan" or "Caprica"; or (b) sell them a timeshare on Kobol.

Scab Peeling

Every so often, I check the stats thingamajigger and see what search engine keywords led people to my blog.

A recent one was "battlestar galactica motto", which lead to this article, which was printed after the airing of the third show of the final ten. The article had these paragraphs (which I have edited down somewhat):

Yes, there are other dramas that turn their spotlight on humanity in all its flawed glory: the bleak and bittersweet The Wire, the ambiguous The Shield, the darkness that lurks at the core of The Sopranos or Deadwood. Yet great though all these shows are, none of them have BSG's relentless refusal to temper or lighten the load. ...

Not BSG. Three episodes in and, in addition to suicides, breakdowns and a pervasive feeling of general despair, we now have mutiny, destruction and Saul and General Adama facing their own private Alamo. "Trust no one" is Battlestar Galactica's motto. Well, either that or "No one here gets out alive".

And that is the most interesting thing about this show. Not since the sadly cancelled prison drama Buried or Peter Kominsky and Leigh Jackson's brutal, brilliant war drama Warriors has a show been so determined to look at humanity's flaws without flinching. Yes, the end result is depressing and harrowing and seemingly determined to show us humanity at its venal, self-serving worst but the key to BSG's brilliance is that it remains true to that vision, no matter how grim. And that's ultimately why America's most depressing show is also among its very best.

That is why the last hour of the last episode sucked so badly. It betrayed the entire run of the show. And yes, that is why I'm not going to watch "Caprica".

Battlestar Galactica- "Daybreak, Pt. 2" -- 1 month later

No, I didn't go back and watch it again. I'm not going to. I'll stick with my original reaction.

I see that the DVD for the opening of the next series "Caprica" has been released. Frak that shit. I'm not going to trust those putzim again.

Battlestar Galactica- "Daybreak, Pt. 2"

Let me say this: I had planned to buy the box set of the series sometime down the road (or at least amass the DVDs).

Not now. The ending left a bad taste in my mouth, for reasons I described here. It was almost as sour as the ending of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, where Capt. Sisco flies into the wormhole and tells the entities who live there "you hold yourselves out as gods to the Bajorans, well, step up to the plate and act like gods"; they do and they wipe out the 2,500 ships invading through the wormhole.

Are the writers that lazy? Do they have to keep writing themselves into a hole where they have to resort to having an omnipotent Sky-Fucker step in and save the day?

A friend of mine noted that Star Trek: The Next Generation kept going to plots that hinged on the actions of a godlike creature, Q, and that the end of the Shadow War in Babylon 5 depended in no small measure on The First Sentient Being What Ever Lived stepping in to rally the ancient civilizations. Why is it that science-fiction shows keep feeling a need to have a supernatural entity ride to the rescue?

I contrast that with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a fantasy show that was steeped in the mystic and supernatural. The conclusion for the show did not depend on a god stepping in (in fact, Buffy defeated a god at the end of the fifth season). Neither, for that matter, did its spin-off series, Angel, depend on a deity rescuing them at the end- the show ended with hordes of demons attacking the good guys and the sense of it was that the good guys were all going to be killed.

So why is it that two of the most memorable fantasy shows of the last decade didn't have to go to the Flying Spaghetti Monster Saves the Day, yet most of the so-called hard science fiction shows had to resort to that crutch?

I think I'll pass when Caprica starts to air on the Sci-Fi channel. I'm tired of being disappointed.

Battlestar Galactica- "Daybreak, Pt. 2"

My thoughts on this are here. If you haven't seen the series finale yet, and if you intend to, then do not click on the link.

Ah, Nope.

No much today.  I did watch my tape of the finale of Battlestar Galactica.  

Thoughts later, maybe.

For now, I'm going to take the clean sheets out of the dryer, make the bed, take a shower, and go to bed.  

Battlestar Galactica- the Finale

If you, like me, have to manually set a VCR or DVR to catch the shows, remember that tomorrow's finale is two hours long. If you routinely set your machine to catch a 1hr episode, you will be frakked.

Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Pt.1"- another thought

Thoughts here.

Or what passes for thoughts.

Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Pt.1"

Since it is a two-parter, I'm not commenting until the conclusion.

If you have to manually set your VCR/DVR, please note that the conclusion of the series is two-hours long.

Battlestar Galactica- "Islanded in a Stream of Stars"

At the end of last week's episode (passing over the latest in the "Skin-Job Soap Opera"), Admiral Adama has told his XO that he will order a halt to the repairs to the Galactica and abandon the ship.

Which leads to the inevitable question of what will happen to the ship. I cannot imagine them stripping the Galactica down to an ignominious hulk and abandoning her.

I have two ideas how this is going to end. Either way, the Colonials are going to get intel on where the new Cylon main base is. Then the Galactica will either go all "wild bunch" on them or the Galactica will come in as a diversion, allowing the Colonials and their rebel Cylon allies to break the back of Cavil's Cylons.

Two episodes left to wrap this story up.

Battle Star Galactica- Meh.

After watching the two episodes since the end of Tom Zarek and Felix Gatea's attempted coup (two episodes probably better titled "a Brief History of Biological Cylons, Parts I and II"), I have found myself wondering if the show would have been better if it had been Adama and Roslin sitting at the business end of a firing squad, rather than Zarek and Gaeta.

Four episodes left to air and I have a disquieting feeling that they squandered quite a bit of time with the last two.

We shall see, I guess. I won't, not tonight, I'll be asleep by then.

Battlestar Galactica- "No Exit"

There was very little contemporaneous about this episode, most of it was filling in back story and explaining the significance of the Final Five, why there are no "Number 7s" and the sheer sadism of the Number 1 (John Cavil) model.

Necessary data, but...meh.

Other than the revelation of who is the best brain surgeon of the Colonial Fleet.

Battlestar Galactica- "Blood on the Scales"

Very short discussion here, but don't go there if you haven't seen it and you intend to.

Battlestar Galactica- "The Oath"

If you haven't seen this most recent episode, you might want to skip my take on it over in the appendix.

So, Was That Earth?

Patrick (the Science of BSG) doesn't think so.

His idea is interesting, but I think he is well off-base. Not because of the science, but because of the overall direction that the show has taken since the mini-series in 2003.

This version of Battlestar Galactica does not do cheery. I'd look for something more along the lines of Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, with Galactica going into battle against an overwhelming number of Basestars with much the same result.

UPDATE: From a blog on the Chicago Tribune, which has an interview with Ron Moore, the executive producer of the show:

That planet is Earth? We’re not going to find out, “Oh, there’s this other Earth over here...” This is the only Earth we’ll see?

They have found Earth. This is the Earth that the 13th Colony discovered, they christened it Earth. They found Earth.

Think that settles that.

The Nuked-Over Earth

When Battlestar Galactica ended season 4.0, we saw that they had arrived at Earth, only to find it was an uninhabited planet.

So what we learned was this: (continued in the comments)

It Is About Fraking Time!

Battlestar Galactica returns tonight at 10PM ET on the SciFi Channel.

BSG is back, Chimpy is going away. Life is good!

(I sure hope these final 10 episodes are not a disappointment, but given how well the series has been written so far, I'd say hopes can be high.)

I won't see it until Sunday at the earliest, so please, STFU about what happens. And to "make it so," I am shutting off comments for this post. So there.

Battlestar Galactica: The Auction

Indeedy, you can buy everything from Caprica six's red dress to a full-scale mockup of a Colonial Viper.

Meanwhile, the SciFi Channel is having a bit of angst over the question of "now, what?"

This is an excellent article about BSG, which contains this line, comparing the current version of Battlestar Galactica to the original 1970s series:

The modern show is to the original as "Lost" is to "Gilligan's Island."

Very true. I almost didn't watch the show because I had bright memories of how cheesy the original was, but I am some glad I took the time to watch the miniseries when it was aired five years ago.

Battlestar Galactica- "Revelations"

Hole.

Lee.

SHIT!

I did not see that coming.

But we're going to have to wait until 2009 for the final episodes, apparently.

That is a real motherfraker.

UPDATE: The Science of BSG has some thoughts about why what seems to be on the show may not be that in fact. But if you are a BSG fan and you didn't see last Friday's episode yet, do not click on that link! Or, for that matter, don't read the comments to this post.

UPDATE II: What I said about "not clicking on this link if you haven't seen the show" goes fraking double for this excellent analysis of the episode. It seems I'm by far not the only one who wants to make time fly until `09, and not because we don't want to have to live through this fraking preznitdenshul campaign.

Resurrection and Battlestar Galactica

If you are behind in your viewing of BSG, you may want to skip this post.

In the episode "the Hub," which aired in the US on Friday, June 6, 2008, the rebel Cylons and the Colonials nuked the Resurrection Hub ship. By destroying the Hub, the Cylons supposedly have lost the ability to download their consciousness to a new body when they die. It seems that in order to be reborn, a dying Cylon had to be in range of a resurrection ship, which was basically a dumb terminal that was somehow linked to the Hub. Maybe they can rebuild the Hub, as someone or something had to build the first Hub. The implication is that they cannot.

The societal implications for the Cylons are staggering. Because they could just download into adult bodies, the Cylons had no need to breed or to have child care or any sort of educational system.

In short, the survival of the Cylons, both the "skin jobs" and the raiders that have biological intelligence, is now linked to either building a new hub or intertwining with the only other sentient species which has the knowledge base to raise and train their young: The human Colonials.

But given that the Cylons had effectively wiped out the Twelve Colonies and reduced the human population from tens of billions to 39,000, the odds of such an alliance may be poor. The biological and cyber-Cylons may have signed their own death warrants, leaving only the "toasters" to survive. Which sets the Cylons back about 40 years or so to where they were at the end of the first Colonial-Cylon War.