One New York Life

I’m not sure why I let this sit in my queue for so long. I actually watched it and took notes on it two weeks before writing the Caprica post a month back. Anyway… this movie was supposed to reveal the motivations behind the Cylons’ decision to destroy humanity. It’s told primarily from the point of view of two Ones: the version who acted as a priest on Galactica and another who acted as a priest to the Caprican survivors. These two were discovered when the Caprican survivors are brought aboard Galactica. Chief Tyrol recognized the Cavil from Caprica and realized he was an exact replica of the priest who counseled him following the brutal attack on Cally.

Strangely, though, the whole thing is pretty much answered in the first few minutes. The Ones wanted to teach the Final Five lessons about the evils of humanity, so they were banished to the planet to live amongst the humans. Then, once the Final Five learned how evil humans were, the Ones would eradicate all of them, and the Final Five would resurrect and apologize to the Ones for ever questioning them. In their moments of panic, a few of them realize that this has all happened before as the bombs start exploding. Considering we saw the burnt husk of their previous planet, I suppose that’s true.

The Good

• I did like seeing the machinations that went on behind the scenes in Galactica. I liked finding out that Boomer knew what she was nine days after the destruction of the fleet, which retcons many of her original actions. It also really makes Chief Tyrol seem like a lovestruck fool for protecting her following the bombing of the water tank. The Eights are a strange breed, moving from fantastically devoted to the cause to totally outside of it.
• I liked that this movie fleshed out the seven Cylon personalities a little more. I like that the Twos (Leobhan) are wildly religious and quickly moved toward Kara Thrace being sent to them as an angel. The Twos were one of the only models to resist the idea of the Holocaust and some even lived in the colonies with human wives. The Eights have a strange inner conflict between whether or not they want to be human. The Sixes are oversensitive and dislike the dying/resurrection process, which likely indicates they have some inner sense that their worship of God while cheating death is wrong. I like how it they revealed the Cylons were constantly able to track the humans not because the Cylons were just on board the ships, but because of their resurrections. The subtle dig at the humans’ system of brutal justice (killing Cylon prisoners) was what kept them in constant danger. There were very few Cylons who got a fully-explored personality, because we never were quite sure if it actually was a personality or a program.

The Bad

• Something I was hoping they’d finally address here was the fact that a Five specifically requested Adama’s son be off the planet during the Holocaust. It’s a very strange, very particular plot point that they went out of their way to mention during the show’s run, but then never paid off. I guess it’s their Russian in the Forest.
• Nitpick, but the combination of stock footage and fresh material make for a funny combination of people who fluctuate age and weight within the same day.
• I know they didn’t really play much of a role in the series as a whole, but why even have the models other than the Cavils, Boomers, and Sixes if they’re just going to remain as useless and background as the other people who crashed on the island on LOST? The movie would have been exactly the same if they never appeared. It’s not like they ever said anything to Cavil and it changed his mind. The point in the show was simply so they’d be more likely to blend and they could introduce us to new models when required. Here, in a movie that could have been called “Cavil Is Oedipus And Talks To Himself” they were just, well, there.

The Rest

There was some good stuff here, but largely I didn’t get the point. The movie takes us from 12 hours before the Holocaust to when the Cavils were airlocked by order of President Roslin, but I didn’t come away with much additional information. The Ones are pretty much child-killing dicks with a weird Oedipal thing with Ellen Tighe, the Eights were wishy-washy and didn’t know what they wanted, and the Sixes are pains.

Largely, I feel this movie didn’t really add anything to the Battlestar mythology. It was a cool little two hours to watch, but, ultimately, if I never saw it my understanding of the series would not be affected or changed. Other than to think Chief Tyrol was made the fool by Boomer.

Following Ronald Moore’s relatively big success with Battlestar Galactica’s re-imagining on the Sci-Fi Network, the newly rebranded SyFy Network gave him the greenlight to create a prequel. As for myself, I’ve expressed love for BSG many times and, as Moore’s the guy who wrote the best series finale of all time, I’ll obviously give the new show a look. According the opening scene, Caprica is set “58 Years Before The Fall”. If I have my timeline correct, that places it 18 years before the First Cylon War and, as mentioned, 58 years before the events of the previous series. That’s really all I know since I don’t really watch SyFy (even, sadly, for ECW) so I haven’t seen previews. From what I understand, the show prequels the Cylon war — where the Cylons came from, where the skinjobs came from, and, apparently, where Bill Adama came from.

As an aside, this is the first thing I’ve watched on my spankin’ new HDTV and full surround set-up. Glorious. Thanks, Panasonic!

The Good

• The pilot makes the series look as though it’s covering a lot of the same ground just covered on Dollhouse. Zoe (Alessandra Torresani) figures out a way to download herself on to their version of the Internet. She hides her avatar at the V-Club, a teenager-filled sex club where teens can live out every experience possible and one new girl who’s constantly there will make no difference. Zoe also codes in a locked room only accessible by her, her copy, and her two friends where the avatar can hide out. It’s not really clear how the V-Club is governed. Her father, Dr. Graystone (Eric Stoltz), says it was hacked together by kids. Whether that’s legal or not, I have no idea. The V-Club Avatar contains all her knowledge: “the human brain holds about 100 terabytes of data. It’s almost nothing.” It is, in essence, her identical digital copy. Following the real-world Zoe’s death, the digital copy gives her “father” a speech about how the human brain — and this may sound familiar — is just a database full of information. But when that’s coupled with all the information stored about a person throughout the world (which, in Moore’s way, leads to a 60-second recitation of a creepy laundry list of how much personal information about us is stored elsewhere and available to the world — shopping habits, clothes purchases, medical records, food habits, police records, surveillance footage, etc) an exact copy of someone, who thinks they ARE someone, could be created.
• Even with Zoe’s effective speech, her father takes the next obvious step of downloading it in to a cybernetic body. According to him, the human brain is just “storage and access. Zoe already figured out how to copy the storage.” Dr. Graystone is the creator of the Holoband; BSG’s version of the Holodeck. It’s the even better version of the Holodeck as the user can realistically experience anything without leaving his couch. While he’s describing his resurrection plan to Joseph Adama (Esai Morales, Bill Adama’s father) he says that if a person looks like who they’re supposed to be and thinks they’re who they’re supposed to be, who exactly are we to tell them they’re not who they’re supposed to be? In the marketing of the Holobands, they say “if there doesn’t look to be a difference, then it’s a difference that doesn’t matter, so there is no difference.” Later, in his philosophical debate with Adama, who believes this is unnatural in wrong, Graystone says: “You mean only the gods have power over life and death. I reject that notion.” And, really, that’s everything that’s going on here. The gods (or circumstance) took his daughter away and he’s going to bring her back. Is it unnatural to use technology to create a carbon copy that thinks, looks, and acts like a loved one? Add another chapter to the Star Trek: The Next Generation debate of whether or not Data constitutes life and robot rights.

The Bad

• I think my biggest issue with the series in general is that we 1) know how Battlestar ended and 2) know which religious group is right. We know Dr. Graystone is going to be successful in creating Cylons and we already, after the pilot, know why they’re going to end up programmed with the belief in the one true God. I’m already not really sure what’s left to cover in the series. Thus the problem with prequels.
• Extended from that: we already know the monotheistic terrorists are correct in the BSG universe as evidenced by Balthar and Six walking around Times Square at the end of the series. So, who are the bad guys? The Disciples Of The One really ARE following the right path… and that path leads to blowing up a train full of innocent people? Who are leading to society’s downfall because they’re using the Holobands for a technologically advanced form of masturbation and video games? I found this confusing.
• So, let me get this straight — Joe Adama delivers a threatening message to the Caprican Minister Of Defense in the morning. And that night his brother breaks in to the Minister’s house and kills him with daggers. And that’s just it? No questioning of Adama? I’m supposed to believe that the Minister of Defense, who made passing reference to Joe Adama that he knew what kind of slimy operators the Taurons run, either did not take any steps to defend himself or Sam Adama is SO good at what he does he broke in to the “Secretary Of Defense”’s house and killed him undetected by anyone? I had a bit of trouble with belief suspension there. I understand the Taurons are supposed to be the Twelve Colonies’ version of mobsters but really?

The Rest

I get what Moore is trying to communicate in the world created by the Holoband. He has respect enough for his audience to not employ the Sledgehammer of Plot ™. He does state the obvious. The obvious line from Dr. Graystone: “those were for adults.” And the obvious response from his daughter’s program: “you people can justify it however you want. You can’t see the world is falling down around you because you’re too busy and too arrogant.” I even get the V-Club’s ties to the the whole “anything goes” aspect to the fall of Rome and, yes, the path we are on in the United States. Adults created the Holoband, the porn companies made it profitable, kids cracked it for their own use, and it’s leading to the corruption of youth. Sound like any (or every) other entertainment medium?

But still, I understand why Dr. Graystone created the Holoband world… and I even understand why he is using what his daughter did to try and re-create her. What I don’t understand is why Zoe decided to create a copy of herself within the confines of the Internet to grow and learn and be unaffected by the murder of people and why, exactly, if her boyfriend was in on this plan why he end her work. She was clearly more important to their movement then the guy who recruited her (her boyfriend, who eventually led her to the Soldiers Of The One) and it made no sense that he would put her on the train and kill her. I understand the writers needed her dead for plot reasons but it felt wrong to me somehow. I don’t know if they’ll ever revisit this or if it’s just loosely-written on-ramp to the real plot: her father creating Cylons with her brain somewhere in the matrix of their stolen technology.

Definitely good enough to replace my Dollhouse recording on Friday nights. I expect a few angry comparisons from Whedon fans about liberal lifting on concepts but, ultimately, Moore made the better move by sticking with SyFy. Dollhouse should have been a CW show from its inception. It would still be on if that was the case.

On Friday night, I was out with the Big Show to watch the Siena game. A text message came in at 11:17pm:

Last BSG was great. It was happy, sad, and hopeful(?) all in one. Not since All Good Things am I sad a series ended. I want that quoted in your blog.
– Dapper D

Most people who’ve read this space for any amount of time know that I consider All Good Things… probably the best series finale of all-time. I’ve been known to express drunken mobile love for it. Putting it up on that pedestal, for me, is high praise. I had a chance last night, finally, to set aside two hours and watch it.

Masterpiece.

It hit all the points it had to as a finale. One final battle between the humans and the Cylons for control of the future. A last siege against the enemy. One final mystery to solve. And finally the resolution of the prophecies we’ve been being fed since season one. Galactica herself was the dying leader that heralded humanity to its new home and died of a wasting disease before making it to Earth. Kara Thrace did lead humanity to its end. Humanity, as they knew it, died out on Earth. Hera’s descendants, the Colonial and Cylon mix, are the ones who went on. It’s a very specific message. Survival depended on both races coming together and compromising. The result of that compromise, Hera’s bloodline, is what survived. For a series that seemed to pride itself on being morbid, the finale delivered hope. I don’t think the episode’s name is a mistake. After years of death and doom and darkness, a new day — a new beginning — finally broke.

The final episode was filled with iconic moments that I’ll remember. Adama sitting on the hillside with Roslin’s tomb describing the cabin he was going to build. Lee and Starbuck having a final conversation before she moved on. Sam bringing Galactica into its funeral pyre. Cavil finally deciding the jig was up and ending it. Boomer’s redemption and final words. Roslin and Cottle’s good-bye. An absurdly-teary, happy moment when Helo made it — a nod to the one guy who unquestionably followed his principles and judged people on their character instead of their species. The completely and totally believable evolution of Gaius Balthar — a scientist who aggressively didn’t believe in God at the beginning of the show, earnestly and honestly delivering a speech about angels to the Cylons attacking Galactica. He couldn’t have delivered that speech at any other point in the series with it not seeming totally out-of-character.

I knew there would be plenty of places for negative opinion. This is the Internet, after all. The complaints fell in to two major categories: 1) The writers copped out and went with a deus ex machina this was all magic closing. 2) The finale took the the series out of science fiction and brought it in to religious fiction.

To the first — I don’t think you can complain about the magical Hand Of God guiding the ending when you’ve been invested in a show that’s flat-out referred to the magical Hand Of God as a major plot point. Inner Six told Baltar in Season One (I think) that she was an Angel sent from Heaven to guide him. Just because we assumed, at the time, that she was being less than honest doesn’t mean we can pretend she never said it. While I’ve certainly complained about the religious sub-plots and overtones of the show I can’t honestly say the resolution came out of nowhere. Even worse, I’ve read a few folks comparing the “all this has happened before — this will happen again” cycle to the ending of the Dark Tower’s ending. It’s very rare one can prove they totally missed two points at the same time, but this is one of them. The Dark Tower was a work of meta-fiction that ended how it had to. Galactica was not. It’s not even in the same ballpark.

Ironically, I just mentioned The Hand Of God as a horrific cop-out in relation to The Stand. It’s not the same thing here. In The Stand, the only character who believed God was involved was Mother Abigail. God took no side and everything else was easily explained by biology. In the last 50 pages, God decides to nuke Vegas so the good guys win. It was a cop-out. Galactica, on the other hand, has been telegraphing this ending for most of the series. The people complaining about deus ex machina are ignoring the fact deus ex machina has been a running theory on the show for the entire run. Inner Six and Inner Baltar WERE deux ex machina made characters. The idea that God was guiding the humans and Cylons has always been there. Starbuck’s body was on Earth One and she was still on the show. Anyone who didn’t want to see the Hand Of God were just actively ignoring it.

As for the argument that the finale brought it over to religious fantasy. So? I understand that the The Cult Of New And Stylish Internet Atheists And Agnostics have to trash everything that remotely comes close to suggesting there COULD be a God out there. Sorry you spent five years watching a show beating you over the head about the existence of God and gods and then, surprise, turns out to be about an entity not of the Earth. It has never NOT been partially religious fantasy. Whether you chose to notice is on you.

All that said, I could have done without the final scene with Gauis and Six walking around New York City talking about the universe. I understand the point was to communicate that the world is descended from Hera, but the whole thing seemed goofy. A better ending, for me, would have been Adama at Roslin’s grave. Regardless, calling this finish a cop-out when The Sopranos redefined the cop-out not five years ago is absurd.

I’ve only watched it once. I saved it along with the penultimate episode (Islanded in a Stream of Stars) so I can watch it all in one three-hour block. I lived and died with TNG for many very important years. One of the first television cliffhangers I ever called someone to talk about was The Best Of Both Worlds. I was twelve years old. My inner nerd circle wasn’t very large in 1990 but had I been of the age to blog about it (and blogs existed) I probably would have written about it. I spent the next five years religiously watching TNG and trying to convince my father it was the far-superior show (he agrees now). TNG’s finale was the first television show after which it felt like my life had changed. Not in some philosophical sense, but the idea that the show was out of my life. It made me sad. I didn’t have that experience with BSG because I turbo-watched the series over the last six months. I’m not ever going to have that idea of looking forward to next season. All of that said, if pressed, I couldn’t tell you which finale was more satisfying. That’s a huge admission for me. All Good Things… has held up tremendously well for 15 years. Daybreak might but we won’t know for a few years. A mark of good sci-fi/fantasy is that it’s timeless. BSG and its finale has that feel.

If I do have a complaint, it’s with the decision to include a longer, uncut version of the finale on DVD. I don’t mind alternate endings with movies. But when you create a finale this well done, this should be what you go off in to the sunset with. I don’t want their to be a second, longer “director’s cut” of the finale. I don’t care about it. I want the series to be put to bed with what you decided was right for television.

Amazing job. Great series. Thanks, Doug.

Battlestar’s final season was cut short because of the writer’s strike, hence (I assume) the rushed ending of the mid-season finale. The (probably) series’s final batch of 10 webisodes takes place about a week after the fleet finds Earth.

Before getting to the content, a quick complaint about SciFi.com. Their webisode viewer is terrible. First, it doesn’t work if you have AdBlock+ enabled in Firefox. Second, between each 4 minute webisode, I had to watch the same stupid KFC crunchy hot wing commercial. That alone might have even been forgivable. But, after the 15-second commercial, the user has to sit there and look at a Battlestar Galactica flash game that they may or may not want to play for another 19 seconds before the program resumes. “It’s a crunchy hot wing with no sauce!” Note to KFC — this is not making me want KFC. In fact, after being forced to sit through the commercial 10 times in 40 minutes, I promise you I will never purchase a sauceless hot wing. I might not ever buy a product that uses these actors in a commercial.

While the first two sets of webisodes were pretty great, I found this set to be pretty much “meh.” From the pretty weak set-up (Tigh forces Felix to go on R&R), followed by a REALLY weak adventure hook (the fleet had to jump away following hostile Cylon contact — even though so far as we know the Cylons and Humans found Earth together), to the tenuous reason for being “stranded” (we jumped over the red-line and now the FTL drive is offline), to the relative insanity of the people on the lost Raptor. The ship contains the two pilots, Felix, a mechanic, and two eights. What ensues over the webisodes is a brief episode of Ten Little… uh… hm… And Then There Were Nones. One of the Eights, we’ll call her Evil Eight, waits until two people are dead to remind Felix that she can interact with the ship’s computer to get them home. But she’s afraid the pilots won’t let her do it… so she tells Felix to wait until they’re sleeping… even though they’re stranded in space with like 20 hours of air so you’d think sleeping would be the last thing on their mind. It doesn’t make sense. With two Eights on the ship, I’d think the first point of order would be asking one of them do their fancy LAN trick to fix the computer. I know I would.

Regardless, I appreciate what the webisode was trying to do. It tried to mash down plot points that were probably supposed to take place over a few episodes in to 40 minutes. Felix’s out of nowhere gay relationship with Hoshi, their break-up, the revelation of what Felix and the Eight were doing on New Caprica, the fact that Felix and the Eight had a romantic relationship on New Caprica, and the fact she was using that relationship to draw “important” names out of him in the guise of working to rescue while killing most of them and releasing just enough to convince Felix she was freeing all of them. All of these things the audience had never heard before were smushed down and packed together in the interest of efficiency. On top of that, they finally tell us why Felix tried to kill Baltar in prison — he knew what was going on between Felix and the Eight.

The webisode plot and set-up was weak, but what it added to the overall story was very good. I’m presuming Felix’s sudden total mistrust of Cylons (evidenced by his change in attitude toward Tigh between webisode 1 and 10) and his now staunch anti-alliance stance will be important as season 4.5 proper begins.

And now — to the DVR!!

Before season four, Sci-Fi Channel released a Battlestar Galactica TV movie. Battlestar Galactica: Razor exists wholly as a tease to season four. It doesn’t advance any ongoing plot, but goes back to fill in the gaps surrounding Battlestar Pegasus. As you might recall, the fleet found Pegasus in season two and the crew dropped occasional hints about its checkered past between the time the world ended and when it rejoined the fleet. To briefly recap the commanders of its cursed existence: Admiral Cain was killed by a Six, her successor Fisk was later killed by the black market, his successor Gardner was killed in the engine room, and his successor Lee Adama got fat and blew up the ship. It’s broken up in to flashbacks to Lee’s first mission as commander of the Pegasus, then flashes further back through the eyes of an officer, Lt. Kendra Shaw (played by Stephanie Jacobs who, apparently, wants to throw her hat in the ring against Summer Glau and Kristin Bell for nerd fantasy girl du jour. Having now appeared in Farscape, Galactica, and Sarah Connor Chronicles while being Asian — she’s taking no prisoners) who survived the ordeal.

In the first few minutes, they fool you in to thinking they’re going to try and retcon Michelle Forbes’s Admiral Cain. The Pegasus as parked at a space station for repairs and she’s pretty non-chalantly having some treadmill time while her XO enters the room and goofs on her for being overstressed. She seems fine with all this and later we even see her having poker and wine time with senior staff.

They quickly toss that away. We first find out she was having a lesbian relationship with a Six working as a network administrator. Then, she shoots her XO (the guy who was just having a happy conversation with her on the treadmill) in the face for (rightly) refusing to follow an order that puts the ship and the entire crew in ridiculous danger. In another great scene, Cain discovers the truth about her lesbian Six. On the ship’s bridge, the Six grabs a weapon from one of the officers and shoots him. She turns the gun on Cain but can’t pull the trigger. Great nod to Cain’s actual death scene in which the Six actually does pull the trigger. It adds another layer to that scene. Initially Cain’s tears could have just been tears of fear just before dying. Now, it was all the emotional betrayal at the Six’s hands finally catching up with her.

The movie was good and I enjoyed it, but I didn’t quite get the point. It made more sense when I thought they were going to explain Cain’s insane actions. Instead, they gave you a “this is war, she did what she had to do for her crew” vibe. But she didn’t. Her XO tries to talk her out of a suicide attack mission and gets shot for his trouble. They are quick to note that the mission she ordered killed 800 people, wounded twice that, destroyed 32 vipers, and damaged most of the rest of them beyond repair. She finds a fleet of civilians and really does strip them down and leave the civilians to float adrift in space. She also orders the execution of wives and children of people who don’t want to be impressed in to the military. How was this not the first thing the guys who did get impressed tell the president upon rejoining the fleet? Like, doesn’t this massacre make everything that happened after the two Battlestars join up seem completely and totally ridiculous? Shouldn’t it have been guys who were real pissed off about their families being executed going to the president and saying “uh… dude?” followed by Cain’s imprisonment and Adama’s promotion to Admiral? For all she knows when she finds this fleet, this is the remains of humanity and she just leaves them drift?

Again, we get Battlestar’s running theme of “even at the brink of absolute extinction — left to their own devices, humans will just end up killing each other.” Not only should Cain have been tried for murder, treason, and anything else President Roslin could think of — she certainly shouldn’t have been in the position to order the execution of Galactica’s crew and CERTAINLY shouldn’t have had her finger on the trigger of a bunch of nukes. Not even Adama’s closing-scene admission that “tactically she did nothing wrong” was a stretch. I feel like someone watched the movie and was like “uh, she still seems insane. Let’s have Adama say she wasn’t.”

Then, we see what Cain’s influence did to Shaw. At the beginning, she was an officer worried about her career. Within weeks of the Cylon armageddon, she was shooting unarmed women in the face at Cain’s orders. Then lecturing Lee Adama on doing what needed to be done. Her sociopathic justifications for her actions make her even extra crazy. In her head, she didn’t do anything wrong. She’s really just another cursed, insane product of the Pegasus. She gets her redemption in the end by saving Starbuck who, as we discover in the one moment of plot progression in this entire movie, is the harbinger of humanity’s demise.

This was a fun little movie, even if I really didn’t understand the point.

Unlike The Resistance Webisodes, the Razor Webisodes don’t bridge any seasonal gaps. The are more a teaser prologue for the Battlestar Galactica: Razor movie that preceded season four and fill in some background on Admiral “Husker” Adama. They cast the young Adama amazingly well as he looks JUST like the actor who plays Lee Adama. Most of these scenes appear in the Razor movie itself. Some of them are deleted scenes. They’re all tied together to tease the movie.

If we find out anything in this batch of webisodes, we find out that the Admiral is a bad-ass of epic proportions. He watches the Battlestar Columbia get destroyed, has to eject as an early model Cylon raider chases him to the surface, gets in a fistfight with the early model Centurion during free-fall, parachutes to the surface, and beats the Centurion to death with a metal rod. Some have called this sequence “a stretch”. I call it “salty as f*ck”.

Two interesting notes from the final webisode: Adama discovers a Cylon experiment in which they were taking humans and “experimenting” on them. I’m assuming they were trying to figure out how to build the hybrids or the skinjobs. Whatever Adama was about to find was important enough that the Cylons called off the war and evacuated to wherever they decided to hide for 40 years.

The second interesting note: the day before the holocaust, the Five we knew as Doral comes to speak with then Commander Adama in Galactica’s museum. Doral tells Adama that his son Lee will be leading the “fly-by” during Galactica’s decommissioning ceremony. Doral also says that he personally requested for Lee to take the mission. This is interesting — we presume Doral knew about the coming armageddon and specifically saved Lee from it by having him in the sky when the bombs come. It also puts Doral’s insistence on Lee becoming the president over Roslin in a whole new light. They saved Lee. Specfically. Considering how much Lee is given over the course of the series, this could be important.

Not as great as the first set of webisodes, but gives us a couple things to chew over — which is better than nothing at all.

The third season divides into three major storylines. First is the Cylon occupation of New Caprica, the insurgency, and the rescue. The second is the search for the next clue to Earth which kicks off the seeds of the Human/Cylon alliance. The third is the trial of Gaius Baltar for crimes of treason during his presidency (like signing an execution order for 100 people and being compliant in the occupation).

By quick point:

There is a noticeable jump in the quality of the special effects from season 2 to season 3. Apparently the budget for the episodes must have increased dramatically. The wide shots of the space ships have been replaced by beautiful, colorful shots of the ships, planets, and nebulas. I’m sure this budget vs. the number of viewers SciFi network pulls on a Friday night isn’t a beneficial equation.

The occupation. The insurgency was set up in the webisodes. I’m not sure really what they were going for here. I guess the writers wanted the viewers to look at terrorists from the other side of the glass? In one case, the man whose wife was killed by the Cylons signed up for the new Cylon-backed police force. Tigh convinced him to suicide bomb the initiation ceremony to take kill all the traitorous humans and hopefully to take out the president. Tigh’s character takes a distinct turn in this season. He’s a different person on New Caprica fighting against the Cylons. He’s not distracted by his wife or alcohol — he’s single-mindedly focused on the insurgency and freeing the people from the Cylon occupation.

Poor Callie has the worst luck of anyone on the show. She gets beat up, nearly raped twice, and then taken away to be executed by Cylons. Later in the season, she’s almost executed again when Tyrol strikes to demand rights for the working class in an excellent episode about how the survivors have ended up in a caste system where they’re stuck in their jobs with no hope of moving. Tyrol’s point, and it’s a good one, was it isn’t right to have a system in which you’re tied to a job, and where your child will be tied to that job by birth. Adama considers this a mutiny and threatens to execute Callie if Tyrol doesn’t call it off.

The human/Cylon interaction when they realize they’re both on their way to Earth is quite good. They both find the next “roadsign” and the cosmic coincidence of both of them finding it at the same time, and then the Cylons figuring out the next step, is good. You start to get the sense that the writers are guiding us toward a fate vs. free will thing. The heavy-handed introduction of this — “All this has happened before, and will happen again” — gets to be a little much but it’s forgivable. The cosmic road-sign also finally introduces the final five Cylon models. They were mentioned in passing early in the series but they finally start exploring them now. The Cylons are not allowed to talk about them and the humans don’t know who they are. Once we discover who they are, a lot more of this episode starts to make sense.

Baltar is finally put on trial for war crimes by the fleet instead of by Tom Zarek’s tribunal. Of course, making a secret tribunal with the leaders of the insurgency as judges probably wasn’t the height of impartial. The execution of the guy form the webisodes was actually quite effective. He entered the human police force on New Caprica to keep the Cylons from abjectly killing anyone who resisted. He joined for the right reasons — but was executed as a traitor. Another of their really good examples of how, left to their own devices, humans will just destroy themselves without help.

The finale was great, revealing four of the final five Cylon models. It also was accompanied by a great cover of “All Along The Watchtower” that I really need to find. The revelation of four of the final five was a great tool to force people to re-analyze a bunch of moments in the series. Like — literally making me want to go back through the series and re-watching it with that knowledge. Fantastic twist that didn’t feel forced at all.

Season three didn’t have the depth of season two, but I give it a huge number of points for the awesome finale. The main problem is they spent a lot of time in the middle of the season trying to develop romantic relationships on a show that just doesn’t do relationships well. The only one that’s been good is Adama/Roslin, and that’s because it’s been quiet, understated, and not forced in the least. It just happened. It was still a well done season, though, and I’m still actively engaged.

Between season two and three of Battlestar Galactica, SciFi.com put out 10 two-minuteish webisodes to fill in some of the gaps between the end of season two and the beginning of season three.

When season three kicks off, we’re already about six months in to the Cylon occupation with a fully formed resistance, complete with suicide bombers and a masked police force. The webisodes take about 30 minutes to set it up. The only pre-existing characters who appear on the webisodes on Colonel Tigh (the fatally flawed XO), Chief Tyrol (the head mechanic), and his new wife Callie (the extremely unlucky mechanic). They also introduce two new characters who become major players in season three.

It’s an interesting little play that encapsulates many of the series’s messages into a quick little half-hour play. The humans don’t know what to make of the Cylons. The Cylons manipulate some of the weaker humans to get what they want. The people begin resisting. The Cylons start exterminating people who disagree with them. If you ever wondered if the series was worth the time investment — watch these ten webisodes. If you like them, you’d like the entire series.

As an aside — I’m a huge fan of the whole webisode thing. I liked it when Lost did it and I like it here. I like that it allows writers to skip huge gaps of time between seasons and still keep everyone up to date on what happened. It lets them cleanly wrap a season and completely set up a new one without wasting time in the season premiere. The season premiere can hit the ground running instead of spending a half-hour on flashbacks and awkward conversations between characters rehashing things that happened months ago.

Minor complaint on the Season 3 DVD. As one who watches TV series via Netflix, I was really annoyed that they decided to put the webisodes on disc six of the set. It really doesn’t help to get them at the end of the season. If they had taken them down on scifi.com, I would have had to send disc four back to get disc six first.

As was mentioned in the first half of season two, Sci-Fi Network split the season up in to two halves for airing and DVD purposes, hence the split reviews for this and Season 2.0. As was also mentioned, I liked season 2.0 way better than season 1. The second half of season two just got better. I’m not sure if the writers initially intended the season to be split because the “premiere” of season 2.5 starts in full swing.

At some point between the two Battlestars getting ready to fire on each other and the premiere of this season, someone apparently reminded the two leaders that there was an actual enemy out there to fight. The season starts with the excellent two-part Resurrection episode. It’s an incredibly constructed dichotomy as both Adama and Cain put plans in motion to assassinate the other. Probably the best episode to this point, it was riveting and didn’t tip its hand until the last possible second. Incredibly done and neatly tied up the military power struggle for a bit.

Something the show’s writers should get tremendous credit for is their ability to make engaging “down-time” episodes. Following the super-intense military stand off in the premiere, they’re able to step back and take a few episodes to address the political implications of running this society — such as staunchly pro-choice President Roslin criminalizing abortion for the good of the species, the press demanding access to Galactica, and annoying war protesters. I appreciate the effort here because it would be very easy to ignore these details in favor of BLOWING MORE STUFF UP. These down episodes are fantastic buffers between the exciting up-times. In this case, they bridge the gap between the absurdly awesome Pegasus and Resurrection block and the equally absurdly awesome Captain’s Hand and Downloaded block. When the LOST writers spin their wheels to extend plot, it feels forced. It doesn’t in Battlestar and that’s almost as important as the plot itself.

The end of this season also does a lot to finally flesh out some of the Cylons’ motivation. We get more insight in to what happens when Cylons who die are downloaded in to new bodies. Downloaded finally addresses the downloading of consciousness and combines it with the birth of Helo and Sharon’s baby and it turns in to the second of two excellent and fascinating episodes of the season. They give the viewers more revealing personality stuff in this one episode then they did in the previous season and a half. Not only do we get a ton of the Cylon motivation, but we find out President Roslin has the ability to make some seriously morally-questionable decisions to do what she thinks is best to protect the fleet. Decisions that will certainly come back to haunt them someday.

But, while I loved the first-half finale, the second-half finale felt rushed. In two hours you have the end of the campaign, discovery of a habitable planet, the planet turning the election, a fixed election, revelation of the fixed election, and settling on the planet. I also found myself somewhat put-off by the one-year jump. It seemed like the whole “camp” thing was weirdly tacked on. All 40,000 people decided to settle clustered together on this one chunk of land? None of them decided to move off and look for locations away from the group? And we’ve reached the point only a year later where the workers have unionized because they’ve been forced to work in terrible conditions? On top of all THAT, the people freeze and starve while the newly-elected president gets a warm spaceship surrounded with women and the best food? And none of the ex-military in the community have any problem with this? I feel like conditions could not be this bad after a year and, if they were, there would have already been serious consequences before the invasion.

As a whole, no complaints could counter-act the relative awesomeness of the season. Epic episodes with incredible characters and solid storylines across the board. A perfect balance between trying to explain Cylon motivation combined with a great look in to the politics of the last 50,000 people. I get now why Dapper D spent two years telling me I need to watch this show. Season two did it. The writers found what they wanted to do and went with it. Great stuff.

With Battlestar Galactica entering it’s final season, I decided to make a final push to get through everything on DVD so I could DVR the final season and watch it with everyone else. And… it’s tax season. Tax season is prime series catch-up time. Netflix had season two broken up in to two-separate halves, so that’s how I’ll do it here.

When last we left the remains of the human race, they were running across space away from the Cylons. When we return, their situation hasn’t improved much. The fleet is in disarray and Commander Adama is out of commission, leaving a flawed Colonel Tigh in control of the fleet. Tigh’s command does a very good job at contrasting Adama’s. Adama is secure in his leadership. Tigh is insecure and weak. The series does an excellent job at showing how the course of history can change, and exactly how many people can die, based on who’s making the decisions. Adama’s careful, objective running of the military leaves the people cautiously optimistic. Tigh (motivated by his wife) becomes power hungry. When someone questions his commands he declares martial law. The politics of command are a solid chunk of season 2.0 and done very well. In a few episodes, we get a new commander of the military, a coup, a mutiny, and a revolution. It’s all an excellent display of the struggle for power. It’s one of two major plot points covered in the first half of season two.

The second addresses whether or not any other humans survived the Cylon genocide. It turns out that a few did. The second major story arc reveals there is another active Battlestar. It carries a third military leader archetype — Michelle Forbes’s Admiral Cain. Now the audience gets to compare balanced and wise Adama, flawed and power-hungry Tigh, and bat-shit crazy warlord Cain. The wrinkle: she’s actually Adama’s superior and has say to take over the fleet. For argument’s sake, I’ll presume there is some reason that Roslin can’t create a cabinet position for Adama that gives him command.

Overall, I enjoyed this season much more than the first season. The characters came a bit less from the Shonda Rhimes “all men are stupid pigs and need flawless women to lead them” school of writing (and, in fact, Michelle Forbes was probably the most evil human character introduced to this point). The introduction of Cain to throw a wrench in the carefully laid Adama/Roslin machine was beautiful. To confirm her crazy insanity, we’re promptly informed she stripped her civilian fleet for parts, impressed any able bodies in to military service, left the stripped vessels to drift in space with the useless people on them, and executed the families of any newly-impressed (or veteran) military people who questioned this all might be a little messed up. In case any viewers weren’t quite sure, she takes two members of Adama’s crew prisoner and sentences them to death. This does not go over well with Adama and the season ends with the two Battlestars preparing to attack each other.

I only really had two complaints about the entire season. First, The Roslin/Starbuck Gods-Given quest to retrieve the Arrow of Athena was silly. The whole storyline with the gods seems to come and go when the writers think they need it and is otherwise relegated to the back burner. There is plenty of story in this show without them and it seems like they’re building toward some sort of weird “humans worship a pantheon and the Cylons worship One God” thing that I don’t know if I’m on board with. Second, when the Pegasus appears with human-looking Cylon aboard, the writers get a bit heavy-handed with trying to make us feel sorry for her. I mean, the Cylons DID just wipe out the human race. Now the audience is supposed to feel bad for torturing one for information? It’s not like grabbing a civilian off the streets of a warring nation and torturing him for government plans… it’s like grabbing a Borg and torturing him for information from the collective. I guess the writers wanted to make a statement against torture and using Tricia Helfer’s hot Cylon-6 model was the most useful way to do it? Of course, the statement would have been better made had it not turned out they probably should have killed her.

Season 2.0 was masterfully done. One great episode and a collection of pretty good ones. The whole thing is tied together with a fantastic cliffhanger that leads in to probably the best episode of the series thus far. Any of the negatives are far outweighed by the perfect and completely believable way the show displayed how humans, even after nearly being exterminated, are their own worst enemy.