As always, I’m padding the thread with a content-free OP so mouseover preview doesn’t improperly reveal the horror of Cally being held hostage on the C.S.S. Yan Can Cook.
Spoiler policy: If it’s been aired, or if it’s purely speculative, no need to box it. If it’s from a future episode as from blogs or interviews, or it’s speculation based on same, box it. And label all spoiler boxes so we know, generally, what is being hidden so we can decide for ourselves whether or not to highlight it.
“Spoilons”!!! OK, that’s funny.
Yay! Got the episode number right this time. grumble grumble
So, where are we at:
Not a lot of plot movement over the last couple of episodes. On reflection, this is actually part and parcel for the show so far, and it goes to one of the basic truisms of storytelling: Endings are hard, but middles are harder.
Consider the first half of season two, which after a very strong opening saw us frakkin’ around with the crash survivors on Kobol for a frustrating couple of episodes. Or even season one, which dragged out the Boomer/Helo-on-Caprica plot through the middle section, until they finally revealed where they were going.
The primary challenge in long-form narrative is not to wrap up the story in a satisfying fashion; the challenge is to get all your balls into the air and then juggle them successfully while the plot develops. If you do that, the ending writes itself. Screenwriters say to one another, “the second act is always the hardest,” and it’s true. And if you look at the type of storytelling BSG is trying to pull off, it’s basically a big, long movie, broken into chunks, which is in marked contrast to the standard TV model of telling standalone 41-minute stories that reset at the end.
The trick in longform narrative is, after establishing the main plot, to then advance it at just the right pace. Not too fast, or the ending’s an anticlimax; and not too slow, or tension is lost and the ending is rushed. If you find yourself struggling in the middle, the temptation will be to pad the story with one-off episodes that go off into cul-de-sacs and accomplish not much more than burning off time.
The thing about BSG, though, is that they’ve got the focus squarely on the characters, rather than the technical details of the plot, so they can treat these cul-de-sacs as rich opportunities to explore personality and relationship, instead of just a waste of an hour. From that point of view, I enjoy episodes like “Scar” and “Sacrifices,” even though they don’t relate much to the main story, because I like getting to know these people. And it’s where an episode like “Black Market” really falls flat, because the character stuff is inconsistent and poorly handled and it doesn’t advance the plot.
The point of all this? I’m still enjoying the show, and look forward to it more than anything else on TV, but the last few installments, I haven’t been rabid about the way I was with “Kobol’s Last Gleaming” or “Pegasus,” the arc closers, or “33” or “Scattered,” the arc openers. If Ron Moore is going to sustain this show over several seasons, he’s going to have to figure out how to solve the middle-of-the-arc problem that is clearly developing.
And on the upside, after tonight, we’ve got just three episodes left this season [:eek:], so if history is any sort of guide, we should be in for a socko finish, and it’s time to get excited again.
Thoughts?
I’m not getting too excited about tonight’s episode, but I heard the spoilers about episode 18. I plan on getting excited about that, and whatever happens towards the end of the season. I’m remaining cautiously optimistic that Ron Moore isn’t going to disappoint us.
Baltar has been conspicuously absent for the past couple shows, and I suspect he’ll be the pivot around which the season’s climax revolves. I’d love to see him betray the fleet and join the Cylons. You’d get twice the show and give the audience a chance to see the conflict through Cylon eyes, which could be especially compelling if Galactica and Pegasus were to go on the offensive against the Cylon home system(s).
My WAG is something along those lines. (So who gets first viewing on the next season, the US or UK? I lost track.)
With that said, I agree with your observation about this show being a movie chopped into little chunks, and I think it works very well that way, with more “episody” shows feeling out-of-place and contrived. In the rare event that I turn on one of the Stargates or Trek shows, I always think “it has that same crappy sci fi show look to it.” I can’t describe what it is, but it’s there. BSG seems to use different camera angles, or different film or different something to create the look of a movie as opposed to a tv show, and it’s a big part of why I tune in very week.
I predict…someone will say “Frak” during this episode.
[Adm. Ackbar]It’s a TRAP![/Adm. Ackbar]
It’s a frakin’ trap!
Apparently the Colonials have access to Shakespearean literature too! ;j
Let Tigh take over Pegasus…he may drink, but he will not fuck up as bad as Home Alone Dad did…i
???
It’s a frakin’ trap! Unloose the dogs of war!
To frak, or not to frak. That is the question.
Methinks the lady doth frak too much.
Romeo, Romeo, where the frak are you, Romeo?
It was nice to get some more space combat in this episode, seeing the Pegasus make a head on run towards a Basestar was nice, kudos for the continuity of inverted combat landings, only problem is this ep telegraphed every plot twist well before it was resolved…
Pegasus CO and Apollo have a falling out…i’ll bet Apollo will be CO of Pegasus soon…
Raptor crews dissapear one after the other, obvious trap strategy
pregnant woman?, she’ll A; get an abortion and B; Rosalyn will outlaw abortion to shore up Colonial numbers
Peg jumps away with Apollo and Starbuck aboard, safe bet the Peg. won’t be destroyed then…
it was obvious the Peg’s CO was going to die saving the ship…
things that surprised me;
Dee and Lee’s relationship back on track, Dee seems to have put Billy out of her mind, Dee’s turning into quite the little tralk here…
Balty backstabbing Roslyn and announcing his candidacy
with two Adamas in command, it’s safe to say the Pegasus will stay around for a gew more episodes
nice to see there’s still conflict and animosity between the two crews, they’re not all happy-happy-joy-joy freinds now
Toaster battle strategy appears to have gone back to the “overwhelming force” strategy of throwing thousands of Raiders and heavy use of nukes again, maybe they’ve restored their backup Ressurection ship?, they do have backups, right?
next week’s Cylon/Boomer focused ep seems interesting, looks like the Toasters may have brought in a backup Resurrection ship, as Sharon appears to wake up in a “Matrix-esque” pod with Six telling her she’s been reborn… (or could that be a flashback sequence…)
overall, this week’s episode was okay, a little too self-contained, predictable, and “star-trekky”, i think the pool’s been filled, the shark is swimming around, and they’re fueling up the motorcycle…
all the space combat scenes in the world won’t make up for weak storytelling…
Stupid frakkin’ fingers, it’s all the Universal Translator’s fault, if they hadn’t depolarized the subtransdermal Positron relays with a decoupled focused stream of antipositron compounds, that typo would have coalesced out of the space/time continuim…
GOOD = More Space Combat, the Cylons are back in town!
BAD = They came straight from Cliche City, bearing gifts for the writers.
I swear, guest stars are gonna ruin this show. The minute I saw him I knew he was a dead man.
+2 for the space battle, +1 for a frakked basestar, -1 for the completely unnecessary guest star who had to die, and -1 for the Wrath of Khan rip-off death. 8/10, a solid if predictable episode.
Mama Boomer all next Ep??? omfg Schwing!
will it be Mama Boomer or did the toasters somehow snag an update from her and resurect those memories?
whateva, good ep.
Adama promotes his son to command of Pegasus instead of his XO. Doesn’t seem like all that great of a move.
Granted it looks like nepotism, but the Pegasus’ three senior officers are now dead and Tigh has demonstrated that he neither wants, nor is really up to, a senior command. He’s a solid #2 in tactical situations and that’s all he’ll ever be. I wouldn’t be surprised if they included a throwaway scene in the next few episodes, where he indicates to Apollo that Adama offered him the command first and he turned it down. If nothing else can be said about him is that he knows his limitations.
Starbuck is obviously not worth considering - at the very least she’s incapable of consistently maintaining an even keel under pressure. Frankly she has issues up the wazoo and is probably even a mediocre choice for CAG.
That leaves as the next logical choices among surviving senior officers we’ve seen, Captain Kelly, the LSO and #3 on Galactica and if he is still alive the former CAG of Pegasus ( “Stinger”, I forget if he bought it or not ). If given the choice between those three, Apollo is the best candidate, if for no other reason than he has already demonstrated a level head under fire and brought the Pegasus through the fight.
My (more charitable than I) husband said, “Hey, at least he gave his life to save the ship.” I responded, “Well, those are the rules. If you’re not pure evil, yet make a monumental dumb mistake costing lives, you must redeem yourself by dying to save everyone.”
The best part of this episode (other than the opening scene - yum, and something for everyone!) was Baltar’s machinations. I didn’t think about it at the time, but do you suppose he just made up the population projection to set up Roslin? Yeah, that was probably the point of him doing something mysterious and unrelated to population estimates on the computer while talking to her.
As for next week, I thought it was pretty clear that we flash back to when Galactica Boomer was resurrected, and then follow her adventures in Cylonland for a while.
Am I just slow on the uptake in noticing now that all the female Cylons are hot, while the males are more, eh? Maybe the fleet should act on this, only allowing superfine men and ugly women into key security positions.
This show continues to irritate me. I thought the Galactica’s crew was dysfunctional, but it’s amazing that the Pegasus ever got out of drydock without exploding. The captain’s death was ripped off from just about every submarine movie ever made, and it was utterly pointless. This is a combat spaceship. They’d have emergency airpacks up the wazoo. The repair crew wouldn’t be a bunch of bemused yahoos who need the captain to do the job for them. And they wouldn’t just stand around while a crew member was dying from lack of oxygen – all they had to do was crack the door and let in more air from the rest of the ship. (Of course, there would be a pressure differential which would make the door impossible to open, but that would be too realistic a scenario for the writers.)
Still, at least they did have a rather decent space combat scene, which is increasingly the only reason to watch the show (aside from the blonde Cylon in the red dress and pumps).