Battlestar Galactica: The Plan (open spoilers)

Cafe Society
21

I bought it (on Blu-Ray no less) and watched it last night. I’m an unapologetic BSG fan, I loved the finale & I thought the Razor movie was great. Over the entire run, while there were plenty of flawed episodes, I’ve only hated 3 episodes. Now it’s four.

This ranks just above “The Woman King” for me. One of the worst entries of the series. The story, apart from being pointless, missed so many great things that could have & should have been included.

Wouldn’t you have loved to see Cavil and Tigh spar a bit? How about the scene Anders described about Cavil locking the final five in a room & suffocating them? Give me a glimpse of the five before they were wiped. Give me something regarding the Olympic Carrier. What happened to Hooker Six? If Sleeper Boomer had an evil Cylon personality (revealed while holding an elephant?) why didn’t it come out after she came back in “Downloaded?” You really couldn’t get Lucy Lawless for few scenes? We needed Simon to reflect with a sex scene? This thing was a mess.

So, today I search for any silver lining in what turns out to be the last installment of my favorite TV series. So I liked…

The Anders/C-Bucs story was somewhat interesting. Cavil’s curiosity about and continued probing of Sam had a nice flow to it. Seperate from the rest of the movie and cleaned up a bit, this could have been a cool episode.

The CGI in of the opening attacks. Awesome. It was stunning on Blu-Ray. Just watching those Basestars float in and shift into planetary bombardment mode was chilling. Listening to the Hybrid simply state just what is now in flames was pretty neat too. “The colonies of man lie trampled at our feet.” Good stuff.

Dean Stockwell. He was given a lot of clunky script here, and he just delivers. The other actors (Especially poor Rick Worthy) couldn’t deliver on most of the drivel in the script, but I bought Stockwell’s scenes. I just wish we saw a little more.

So, my list of worst BSG episodes come in at…
#1 Black Market
#2 Deadlock
#3 The Woman King
#4 The Plan

I wasn’t expecting the best thing ever, but I wasn’t expecting crap. Dammit.

Bring on Caprica, and don’t let it suck.

22

Yeah, I forgot about the hybrid - she had the best lines of the whole thing. “The forests of Virgon are burning. The beaches of Aquarion are burning…” Including some lines from Yeats - I guess “The Second Coming” is another “timeless” bit of culture like “All Along the Watchtower”

23

I liked it (small voice). Maybe I just missed BSG so much I was grateful to get anything new.

Oh, and I was smugly convinced that only I had figured out that the boy was a figment of Cavil’s imagination, his own psyche reaching out for a parent’s love like he wanted the Five to love him best, that I practically had to bite my lip to stop from blurting it out to Mr. Boozilu.

And then, I was wrong. Rats.

24

Next time make sure the stopper is in place.:wink:

25

Got the DVD for Christmas. (Thanks, Oakbro).

As a narrative, the first half is very weak. Lots of disjointed, confusing footage, but it does get stronger in the second half. Did like the use of the Cavil execution scene as a wrapper for what story there was.

Lots of Cylon angst, which I suppose was to be expected. Ron Moore must have a fetish for shades of grey or something. Loveable monsters. :rolleyes:

The nudity and the sex scene didn’t really add anything, but Hooker 6 was nice eye candy. Starbuck does Anders off camera, but apparently the boy got game.

This thing would be completely worthless for anyone that tried to watch it without already knowing what happened, and who the players are/turn out to be.

The only bonus scene I liked was the betrayal of Anders’ Army, but that was marred by the “insert FX here” caption, indicating the Centurian presence. Would it really break the budget to give us 20 seconds of cgi-toaster so we could see a finished product?

Considering I paid nothing for it, and watched it instead of the second half of a yet another SEC Dominated Sugar Bowl beatdown, it was…ok. I was entertained, but not thrilled. Wish it had been longer running, and had covered more than just the first two seasons. I guess the door is open for another one that covers the next two seasons, including Ellen’s Great Escape, and triggering the other Four. I’ll give it a C-, but I think the broadcast version, trimmed to 88 minutes or so, is gonna blow goats.
ETA: I think it is ok to post to a zombie thread in CS. If not, mea culpa.

26

It was OK. Gratuitous nudity was odd but welcome. Kind of stopped before New Caprica. Would have preferred seeing the Final 5 origin story and cylon #7…

27

I think RDM’s saving that for another TV movie if he get’s the chance. A miniseries detailing the “Final” Five’s origin, the First Cylon War, them meeting the Colonial Cylons, and the genesis of the humanoid Cylon program would be very cool, but we probally won’t see that for some time (if ever). If Caprica turns out to be a success we might not see it until that series concludes.

28

I’d love to see the F5 origin as a movie but there seems to already be a comic book about it. I don’t think cylon #7 has been covered though.

29

Just watched. It was fine, if you really miss BSG and just want to wander around the old stomping grounds a bit. Mostly unimportant fluff though.

I’d still like to know about the age difference among the final 5. Tigh fought in the first Cylon War, right? And Anders is a pup. When and how did these guys get inserted into Colonial society?

30

Tigh didn’t actually fight in the First Cylon War, that was part of his cover. The Five didn’t reach the Colonies until the later days of the war. They then got the mechanical Cylons to declare a ceasfire in exchange for helping them devolope humanoid Cylons. Tigh didn’t meet Adama until about 20 years later in the Colonial Merchant Marine. You’re right about Tigh must have; been inserted into Colonial society much earlier than the others, and it must have been a younger version of himself. Which means Cavil can grow bodies at different ages. Which just raises even more questions.

31

It struck us as a collection of deleted scenes. I generally like deleted scenes, but don’t typically watch a whole DVD’s worth of them. It didn’t quite insult the franchise, but it seemed blatant milking of a fanbase, not a creative work.
Shower scene seemed oddly reminiscent of Starship Troopers.

32

I also got the feeling I was watching a collection of deleted scenes and webisodes.

Was the married Simon’s child his biological child?

33

No, I remember wondering the same thing, and noticed they specifically put in a line about Simon being Giana’s second husband, and how good he was as a stepfather.

34

Thanks!

I’d like to know more about Leoben and some of the psychic/prophetic stuff going on between him and Starbuck & Roz. It looked like he was getting brainloads full of info on Starbuck, especially. Was that all coming from Doesn’t Like to be Called God?

It was nice that the Simon actor got to show off a bit. Seems like a pretty good actor with a great TV voice.

I’m not sure where he was going with Doral. It was kind of funny when the Doral thought he was doing a good job of differentiating himself from the other Dorals because they wore different colored suits. “This one is teal!” His character still seems pretty undeveloped, though.

35

Complete and utter crap.

It took all the horrid things about the series and magnified them, and added a penis and some sex scenes. Ugh, that’s a couple hours of my life I want back.

I was really turned off by the holes I saw in the series, and to see, not only no resolution, but even more questions raised in this dreck was just too much.

Bah. It almost has the Star Wars power of being so incredibly bad that it transcends the time/space continuum and makes earlier parts of the series suck too.

36

I guess I need to hunt down the DVD version, because the broadcast version didn’t even have the penis and sex.

What say you, Dopers? Was the broadcast version unmitigated crap?

37

Not unmitigated — it had its moments, even in the broadcast version — but crap. It may have been intended to fill in some minor plot holes (in addition to its primary role of milking a cash cow), and it did that in a couple of places; but it managed to rip great gaping gashes in the story arc in the process.

38

The original five from Earth I negotiated a truce between the colonies and the Mark II Cylons. The deal was that the original five would share resurrection technology and meat-type cylons with the mark II cylons. The first Mark II Cylon was Cavil. The original Cavil helped design the other models. At some point, Cavil staged a coup, killing and boxing the original five, sending recoded copies into the colonies. Cavil also boxed one of the models of the mark II cylons, as well as recoding the other models to fit his plans.

39

Cavil didn’t box Daniel/#7, he poisoned the amniotic fluid and corrupted the model’s genetics – there were no other Daniel copies, nor could there ever be. Presumably, Cavil also killed the original model at some point.