Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica, Part II

/ Shane / 8 Comments

Well, we finally finished up watching Battlestar Galactica (you can see the first half review, here). Major spoilers to follow, so if you haven’t seen it and you think you might want to some day, I wouldn’t read any farther.

What a great show. I’m not saying every episode set the world on fire, but, top to bottom, one of the most consistently interesting and exciting shows I’ve ever had the privilege of watching.

The gimmick of not revealing the “final five” Cylons (the bad guys – robots who want to destroy the human race, but can be indistinguishable from people) until the end was great. Not only did it really keep us guessing, it also gave us endless hours of conversation ala LOST.

I thought they did a really good job with the Cylons. They seemed realistic to me. It was like they didn’t quite get it or understand what it was to be human. Close, but not quite, the way you you could mimic something and have all the appearance of getting it, but not actually getting it. I liked how they didn’t quite understand what love was, or the way they’d be so cruel but then if a human did one bad thing the’d be like, “You see! You see how awful and brutal you are!” I don’t know, it just seemed believable to me, like that’s the way super intelligent killer robots would act.

There were so many great characters. Boomer/Athena was (were) a great character(s). (Side note, as an actor you totally want to be a Cylon. You can’t die (a new copy of the robot comes online with all of your memories) and you can be in multiple places at the same time (more than one copy of the robot can be active at once). Never ending paycheck!) The “Eights” were sort of the most human, and were therefore the most caught between the two worlds and thus had the most interesting storylines. The three gentlemen I talked about last time (Admiral Adama, Colonel Tigh, and Brother Cavil) were all fantastic characters who were fantastically acted, right up until the end. Even some of the side characters got to have a story line or two.

You know who didn’t get to have a story line or two? The black Cylon! Seriously! Early on in the show, they introduced one non-Caucasian Cylon, and the he just disappeared. Every single other Cylon model had a major role to play in the series, but not the black one. No sir. He never even appeared in the background of the ship. I guess it was the back of the starship for that one.

I thought the end was pretty decent. It is comforting to know that, no matter how many times the cycle of humanity repeats itself, our crowning achievement is always “All Along the Watchtower”. I thought Roslin’s death was handled pretty well, which was probably tough, given that it had been building up basically since season 1.

However, I was deeply disappointed that Starbuck 2.0, as well as Baltar and Caprica 6’s hallucinations, turned out to be angels. I don’t know why this upset me so much, but I thought that part was really stupid. I also never really liked the character of Gaius Baltar. I felt like he could have been cool, a genius who unwittingly nearly destroyed the human race, but he never really made it for me. At the beginning he was too goofy to seem like a genius, and at the end, the whole sex-cult leader thing didn’t do it for me. We never once saw any evidence of the fact that he was a genius; whenever he did something smart it was completely by accident. He was also apparently irresistible to women, though I couldn’t give you a single reason why.

Anyway, as good as everybody predicted, and now we have to find something else to do with our time. Any suggestions?

Battlestar Galactica

/ Shane / 7 Comments

One day, Sara expressed the tiniest hint of an interest in watching Battlestar Galactica. I was on it like white on rice.

I realize that I am the last one to the geek party that is Battlestar Galactica. I was in serious danger of losing my nerd cred. We’re a little over half way through the series, and I have to say, it’s absolutely as good as anybody ever made it out to be. It is absolutely amazing that this was made for SyFy channel. The production value is as high as anything on a network; good acting, great plots, good special effects. I guess I have to stop thinking of SyFy as the channel that gave us such gems as Sharktopus.

We’ve been watching multiple episodes per night, every night, though we haven’t quite sunken to the level of that clip from Portlandia. I don’t know that I have that much to say about it, other than you should see it if you haven’t. But then again, you have, since I am the last person on earth to see it.

The show has the absolute lamest theme song of all time. It’s like a guy repeatedly playing one key on a piano. It’s not so much a theme song as a pianist with a nervous twitch. Also? Total old guy power. All the old guys steal the show. Edward James Olmos is the man as Admiral Adama. He has more talent in his facial crags alone than most actors have in their whole bodies. I also love Michael Hogan as Col. Tigh, who is deeply flawed, but deeply bad ass. And then here comes Dean Stockwell, clearly the awesomest Cylon. It took me awhile to stop waiting for him to say, “Saam! Ziggy says if we don’t jump now, a Cylon Basestar is going to blow us all to smithereens!” But after I got past that, he ripped it up.

So there you go. We’re watching it, and loving it (even Sara!). It just goes to show you that a good show is a good show, even if it’s science fiction. Watching this just makes me feel sad about all of the awful science fiction t.v. has tried to shove down our collective throats over the years.