Wow…I did not realize there was more than the limited time thing they do after most episodes. I actually saw two additional previews I hadn’t seen yet. Interesting. I get a very strong impression that we will have plenty of stuff to talk about while waiting for the second half of the season…
For the first part, well, who knows what would happen? I could see Baltar getting desperate enough to try it at some point, but who knows what that interface actually is? Maybe it’s high voltage!
As for the other part…I think you’re wrong and it proves nothing. If Baltar is a Cylon, Xenabot could very well not know it, so it doesn’t influence her decision one way or another. Only thing it really tells us is that Baltar isn’t as good in bed as he thinks he is.
-Joe
It’s the only way to be sure.
The end-of-episode preview has usually been different from the preview commercials that Sci-Fi starts running halfway through the week. And, from time to time, they’ve included snippets that apparently ended up as cut scenes. Just like some of the "previously on"s were never previously on. Frankly, the whole thing makes me think they’re editing right up to the last minute on this show.
Last night I was browsing Battlestarwiki, and ran across some comments from the woman that wrote this episode. She says there were several cut scenes, but overall she was pleased with the episode. Are the cut scenes available on the DVD sets?
Also, something I noticed but haven’t commented on yet. In the web preview for this episode, Starbuck makes a sarcastic remark that got censored by SciFi–when Cat has no food to share, Starbuck says something like “Yeah, right, and I just gave Cottle head”. Not sure why that would be censored on a cable show that regularly features sex scenes…
He isn’t credited on IMDB. Maybe they were clips from Pegasus or Resurrection Ship?
Given the loosey-goosey verite style in which the episodes are shot, and looking at the volume of deleted scenes on the DVDs, I think that’s probably a safe assumption.
Thought I should mention, I watched this episode a second time last night. It’s marginally better on a repeat viewing than it was the first time through, because it doesn’t feel like you’re being bombarded with plot so much. Since you know what’s going to happen, you can look past it and focus more on the character and relationship stuff. And there’s definitely some good, rich material in the show: Adama’s chilling “yes it is,” as I noted above, and the desperate “paper shortage” laugh.
(Just for comparison, whereas “The Passage” improves from, say, a D to a C on a repeat perusal, the Crap Standard of Bad Galactica, “Black Market,” gets worse and worse on each viewing. The first time through, you’re just trying to keep track of what the hell’s going on; subsequent viewings, where you can observe the plot machinery from the beginning, are incredibly frustrating. It becomes very clear what they were attempting to achieve, but the episode is such a colossal mess, scene after scene, that you can see just how short they fall from their goal. Even so, that episode contains two very good moments: Apollo confronting Tigh over Ellen’s bartering for luxuries, and Baltar snapping back at Roslin’s attempt to get him to resign. So even that bad hour isn’t a total loss. But I digress. The point is, it’s interesting that there’s enough good material in “The Passage” that a second viewing would be more enjoyable than the first.)
However, the guy I watched it with, who unlike me was seeing it for the first time, had many of the same problems that I detailed in my previous post after my own first viewing. In fact, he thought the B plot stuff between Baltar and D’Anna on the basestar was significantly more interesting than the A plot with the star cluster. Not a good sign.
And yet, I think it’s worth pointing out that one of the reasons the show feels like it’s tottering a bit is that it’s taking risks. Last night we watched “Unfinished Business” (the preceding boxing show) and “The Passage” back to back, and the juxtaposition made it impossible to ignore just how different the two installments are from one another. The first has almost no extraneous story, i.e. an imposed Maguffin or external threat to which the characters are forced to respond; it’s just the cast in a room hashing out their personal issues. The second is almost entirely Maguffin: the food shortage is a Maguffin driving them through the star cluster, the star cluster is a Maguffin designed to force Kat to a difficult choice, and so on. Neither of these episodes, in detail or in structure, is exactly like any previous show. BSG doesn’t rest in a comfort zone; it’s always trying new things, expanding its borders, pushing the narrative into new territory to see what they can get out of it. Obviously, it doesn’t always work, and sometimes the show just plain falls on its ass. Then the fans react strongly, telling the showrunners, directly or indirectly, that whatever it was they were trying was unsuccessful, either because it was a good idea but executed poorly (back to “Black Market” — putting Apollo, the frequently-disappointed idealist, into a bleakly no-win situation to see how he responds, in order to further define his character, is a smart choice), or because it was a dumb idea to begin with (in the same episode, the child slavery is way over the top).
I think we all hope that the showrunners learn from these failures, and keep making their show better, but at the same time, I don’t want them to be afraid of innovation and settle down into a comfortable rut. Because at the end of the day, I’ll tolerate a lot of middling-to-poor episodes like this one if it means I get an occasional dose of “Pegasus” or “Downloaded,” thank you very much.
This was in response to Lightray’s “editing up to the last minute” comment.
That’s not all that unusual. I remember reading stories from B5’s JMS on how they’d finish rendering the CGI a few hours before the show had to be transmitted for distribution…
-Joe
A noble defense, yet I still believe they are doing things because Ron Moore thinks, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…”
I, for one, hope he doesn’t stop that line of thinking. That seems to me a good way to make a cool show. Granted, I’d like a bit more internal consistency, but I’m willing to forgive a certain degree of inconsistency for the sake of a good story. Sometimes the creators are going to say “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” and my response will be “not really”. That’s ok. I just want them to keep trying things because a lot of the time, my response on this show has been “Yeah, that’s pretty cool.”
The best part of this show by far, though, is the acting. The “paper shortage” laugh was a great scene – we’ve all been there with the out-of-control stressed laughter, and the way the two of them delivered it felt real. And the writers have been giving the actors the opportunity to show off their stuff. At the start of the show, who knew Tigh would be so complex and interesting? I sure didn’t. That’s what keeps me watching week after week. As long as the characters keep developing in interesting ways, often with the help of a “Wouldn’t it be cool” context, I’m there.
No, they were definately from this episode. I’m just annoyed I forgot to check to see if it was his callsign as the other squad leader in the pilot’s org chart.
I believe they are doing the show only because Ron Moore thought “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” That attitude has been apparent in his podcasts from way back in Season 1; it’s nothing new.
In thinking about the complaint that Adama hadn’t learned his lesson from the boxing match speech (i.e., he’s too close to the people serving under him) when he just went and told Kat she was like his daughter (too), I realized that scene shows him having learned from the whole Bulldog incident in “Heroes”.
Adama had been ready to give up as Admiral, because of what he had done in his past – until Laura basically told him to stop being such a baby, and that all that mattered was what he had done since then.
When Adama goes to see Kat, she wants to tell him about her past, and mentions that Starbuck already knows about it. Adama tells her that it didn’t matter, and wouldn’t change his opinion of her. We know that the Adamas tend to be harder on themselves than they expect of anybody else, but that’s quite a turnaround in Adama’s thinking.
No they were definitely current episode shots. Probably imdb just isn’t up to date on it.
Yes, but like the Senate page who realizes…
OK. Never mind.
I agree with your friend. The B plot is more interesting to me. Unlike the algae & food shortage which are basically here today gone tomorrow story elements, the Hybrid isn’t going away. She’s fascinating and Baltar learning a bit more about her and actually interfacing with her is Sci-fi goodness.
On a second viewing, the A plot has some “wouldn’t it be cool if…” but it’s mostly just putting the fleet into position for next week, as well as tidying up Kat’s story line.
Right, and if they didn’t do that whole setup, and the danger getting there (which IMHO, is important to something) then we’d be wondering how they found that fracking planet.
One thing that occurs to me but I may be overthinking - but doesn’t Sharon have a way of finding important planets? Didn’t she find the ice/water planet they needed in the episode Water? She found Kobol didn’t she? Then later it was her jump calculations that led to a lost Raptor just happening to find the future New Caprica. Now she finds the algae planet. Hmm.
Thanks for reminding me of that. I had thought it was a little funny back when the lost Raptor found New Caprica. I can see three possibilities:
[ol]
[li]Boomer (or rather, Sharon) is just the One Who Finds Things, like Starbuck was the Best Everything in the Fleet. Plot device, and no more.[/li][li]Sharon actually has a lot of data lurking around in her subconscious that is a leftover artifact of her connection to the vast cylon information networks. This information gives her an edge in things navigational.[/li][li]Sharon is still working for the cylons in some capacity, helping to direct the course of the human fleet.[/li][/ol]
Personally, I’d put my bet on option 1. Option 2 is somewhat plausible, but seems a bit too subtle. The writers would have a hard time bringing that out into the open well. Option 3 is possible, but my gut tells me that if she is still working for the cylons, she doesn’t realize it.
of those 3, option 3 is the most likely… but not in an overt wayl… its just her programming and knowledge lends her to be the #1, and the cylons more./less know it and keep tabs.
Just saw the episode. Liked it, but agree with a lot of the criticism here.
Just a WAG - could the missing five Cylon models be the Lords of Kobol? That would require a major realignment of the spacetime continuum, but besides minor details like that, it makes a sort of sense.