The good points;
we get some Viper time, nice to see Kara and Lee having fun in the Vipers for a change (flying inverted, enjoying the “sky”)
we get some Dogfighting (even though the Heavy Raider was likely a figment of Kara’s imagination)
Paint Sex Scene
no Blanders
no Kasey
the bad points;
a good amount of navel-gazing and whimpering from Kara, yes, yes, we know your childhood sucked, we know you were seriously mind-frelled by Leoben on New Caprica, guess what, you’re not the only one who’se life sucks, buck up Soldier!
allowing an obviously mentally unstable pilot seat-time in a Viper is a Bad Thing, Kara should have been grounded until she got a clean psych evaluation, navel-gazing aside, she put Lee at risk and ended up destroying a rather difficult-to-replace Viper, they can’t exactly call Utopia Planitia Shipyards to build them a new one (maybe if they had Voyager’s Shuttlecraft Replicator though… )
to be perfectly honest, this episode got a “meh” out of me this week, i just couldn’t bring myself to care about Kara’s problems, maybe because TPTB had done such a good job of making her a jerk in the last few episodes
i’m not exactly sure we won’t see Katee again, who knows, the next ep could open with Kara in a Tub O’ Snot™ gasping for air as she awakes from her first download
or maybe Blanders will get a “HeadBuck”, seems a popular theme with TPTB…
overall, far better than the “Soap Opera IN SPACE!” we’ve had to deal with with the last few eps, but not up to the previous high standards set by S1 and early S2
i think the last true Jaw-Dropper episode was Exodus Part 2…
The bonus scene thing has got to stop!!! That scene would have been perfectly fine in the show. Do they not understand that we stay tuned until the preview for next week?
Since I’ve never been the biggest fan of Starbuck, I wasn’t really looking forward to this ep, and I was a bit underwhelmed with the whole “destiny thing”. If her destiny was to fly into a hurricane or whatever that was, well what was the big deal? It all seemed kind of senseless.
But there were a few scenes I did like:
Kara and Lee talking like friends, Lee admitting things are going well with Dee, Kara accepting it.
The “dream” Leoben talking to Kara about how she is ready now to see what is on the other side…that exchange was oddly compelling and touching. Well done by the actors.
EJO ripped out my heart when he tore up his beloved sailing ship. He always loved Kara like a daughter and that scene was beyond powerful.
The special effects in this show are top notch!!
Dorothy Lyman! I knew I recognized that name from somewhere…Opal was one of my favorite characters on All My Children back in the day. That whole plot contrivance should have been scrapped, though. Awwww, Starbuck’s mommy was mean to her and she was mean back…gimme a break.
I won’t really miss Starbuck, although I will be interested to see how she will come back to the show because we all know it will happen somehow.
Yeah, some of the vipers-in-clouds shots were startlingly realistic. Nice job.
Not so good: Col Tigh’s Treknobabble about the planet’s “radiation” messing up DRADIS. Just because Geordi or Data wouldn’t refer to an anomaly “kicking our ass” doesn’t mean it isn’t Treknobabble.
I think the atmospheric interference was shielding them from Cylon detection while they are vulnerable (ships hooked up to tankers for hours, everyone else just sitting about and waiting).
Yeah, they were refueling near the planet because it’s radiation was shielding them from being picked up by Cylon DRADIS. I assumed the planet was some kind of sub-Jovian, what with the big cyclonic storms, radiation, and crushing pressure and higher gravity than the Vipers could handle.
What is not terribly clear is why the Vipers had to fly patrol in the atmosphere. None of the rag-tag fleet ships were in the atmosphere; you’d think they’d be flying patrols in deep space, looking for Cylons jumping insystem.
I guess we’re meant to assume that Adama’s so paranoid that he just plans as if the Cylons have a base on every single planet in the galaxy. Which, apparently, they do.
Meh. So big bad Starbuck is screwed up because Mommy Dearest abused her? These people have had their whole civilization destroyed by evil cyborgs. You’d think that would be their overriding mental trauma – not “mommy slammed my hand in a door when I was 10”. Hated the whole deathbed scene. If someone is an ass in life, there’s no reason to have a reconciliation. It’s a cheap cliche.
Hated the whole “flashback while dying in a Viper” scene as well. Wasn’t there an earlier episode in the first season where Starbuck had an extended flashback in a Viper during a dog fight? When milliseconds count, it seems like a bad time for a mystic revelation.
The whole “destiny” thing irritates me. Either it’s mystic fantasy (in which case the mysterious prophecy is a total cliche) or it’s science fiction time travel which is vaguely better but opens up a lot of opportunity for bad plotting.
Now we all know Starbuck didn’t die (unless her contract negotiations fell through). So we just have to hope that whatever deus ex machina the writers pull off isn’t too lame.
What’s with the stupid poll? " Should Starbuck be allowed to fly or not – phone in for only 99 cents." Who do they think their audience is? Apparently they want to get a feeling for the viewer demographic AND have the audience pay for it. How utterly lame. If I wanted to piss away 99 cents, I’d order a song from iTunes.
I think the idea behind these patrols are that it would be easy to hide cylon radiers in the atmosphere. If you believe Kara actually saw the heavy raider, then they’d be right.
If nothing else, the vipers flying through clouds, storms and stuff looked great. The CGI for this ep was top notch.
I liked the deathbed scene. It wasn’t so much what the Mother deserved, but what Starbuck wished. It was in her head, after all. In reality, it’s safe to say that Kara’s mother didn’t keep any of that stuff, and simply died bitter and alone.
Has it been 5 weeks since (Rapture) we’ve seen a real, tangible, cylon threat?
Possible continuity glitch–haven’t rewatched this ep to confirm, and prolly not gonna…but towards the end, I think we were told 9 seconds to hard deck…then we get touching dialogue between Apollo/Starbuck, then we cut back to the bridge and we suddenly have 60 seconds left.
Major command decision fuckup by Lee. Got the impression Adama wanted him to ground Starbuck, but would not order him to do it.
Irony meter pegged—Starbuck had previously revealed that she caused the death of someone, possibly Lee’s brother, by allowing her personal feelings to override her judgment and not failing him in flight training. Starbuck then dies because Lee allows his personal feelings to override his judgment–not only does he not ground her, he talks her out of grounding herself–and she dies as a result.
Why have her commit suicide? All the hype about destiny blah blah blah, and then she flips out and flies into a planet that doesn’t even have a name. No glory, no honor…just a random meaningless death by her own hand…and at the expense of a viper. Lots of ways to off a character that mean something. This was not one of them.
Overall, not one of my favorite episodes. Then again none of the episodes since they left New Caprica have been very good IMO.
Destiny, rough childhood, Starbuck feeling sorry for herself. Then she goes out in a blaze of boring.
Look I understand that they want these characters to have flaws to make them interesting, but Starbuck has been nothing but her flaws as of late, nothing to make her even vaguely likable. So this felt like putting her out of her (and our) misery.
Yes, I also belive that she will be brought back somehow, but I am begining to wonder if I will be watching then.
Too bad, I really liked this show at the begining.
I kept fastforwarding my dvr, that’s how much it sucked. First time I saw the eye of the storm, I knew she’d fly into it, even though it wasn’t a proper maelstrom. The only interesting thing was if she was gonna die, get transported through a wormhole to meet James Spader in ancient Egypt or wake up in a tub of goo.
I actually wonder if TPTB are dumbing down the show to “broaden it’s appeal”, when BSG first aired on Scifi, the audience was, lets be honest here, Sci-Fi geeks, used to spaceships, killer robots and zero-gee maneuvers
as the show’s popularity has steadily increased, it’s begun to appeal to the more “mundane” induhvidual, so they needed to make the plotlines smaller and easier to understand to not risk driving off potential viewers…
to the average viewer I say “FRAK OFF!”, go back to your reality programs, game shows and American Idols, leave the intelligent shows with good writing, deeply flawed characters, killer Cyborgs of Doom, and lots of space combat and ‘stuff gettin’ blowed up reeeal good to us sci-fi geeks
enough with the Soap Opera In Space, lets get back to bustin’ Toasters! (and the Busty Toasters as well)
The Leoben paint sex was hot, but waking up and finding Hotdog watching Starbuck have a wet dream is beyond icky and gross.
The acting was good, and stayed nicely within the bounds of the show, and the characters.
Helo, Apollo and Starbuck, Adama and Leoben all gave some very good face.
Tigh killed my buzz with his “synchrotron radiation” comment though, I suppose something like that was necessary for the ghost Raider setup. Someone needs to get Tigh a pet parrot for his shoulder, and his character will be complete.
The aerial shots of Apollo in a new Viper next to Starbuck in an old Viper were cool.
Towards the end when Apollo was following Starbuck, we did see another ship from Apollo’s vantage point, didn’t we? Plus there was a weird sound effect in Starbuck’s cockpit right before she blew up. Then there was all the talk from Leoben about Starbuck discovering what lies in the space between life and death, which is a known dimension in this show.
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