I’m trying to puzzle out some things regarding Battlestar Galactica. It was one of my all time favorite shows…ever. It started out quite well, with the episode 33, and proceeded to move on from there up to the middle part of the second season addressing many of the issues I thought made compelling television.
But now it’s gotten to be like a book you’ve read and enjoyed, and then about three quarters of the way through, stopped making sense. But you’re committed to finishing it even though you have…what a hundred pages to go? Then as you finish a few pages you check again…crap, 90 pages to go. Will this ever end?
Somewhere it went wrong. Maybe not WRONG, but it started to fall into the whole “Kara Thrace has a destiny,” and the Cylons seem very attuned to the “otherworldliness” of the universe, which quite frankly seems to me…kinda stupid.
What I’m really tired of is that the show itself, doesn’t follow it’s own logical progression. At times it wants to be a political allegory for the world after 9/11, and other times, it wants to be a good sci-fi show. The problem is, neither tends to work well together.
To wit:
Why would you use suicide bombers to kill an enemy that can’t be killed?
Colonel Tigh said once, “I’ve sent men on suicide missions in two wars…” Okay, that makes sense, but in the first war, the Cylons were “mortal.” You could maybe win through attitrition. The “second war,” when you send men to their deaths it’s to protect the precious cargo you’ve been entrusted with. You know, what’s left of humanity.
When you’re stuck on a planet, and you’re occupied, you don’t take some of your best people (I’m thinking “Duck” was probably a good pilot) and then toss them on the pyre to make a statement. Sure, as an allegory it works…you get to put the “good guys” in the position of our current real world bad guys, all to say basically that “everyone has their own grudges, and those grudges might be justified.”
Very liberal. Thank you, I didn’t realize that. Oh and by the way, it makes no sense to throw good people at an enemy that CAN’T BE KILLED!
Take the most recent silliness. In this first half of the 4th season, the single best (if not the only) episode was The Hub. The Hub had a great space battle, and with the possible pending death/murder of Gaius Baltar, it carried with it an emotional center that made me think, “Cool, he’s going to die. Things are going to change.” But he didn’t. More’s the pity.
But here’s what I think is dumb. Why would a race of robots, built on redundancy after redundancy, centralize the most important of all their machines: Their resurrection hub? “Destroy it, and all Cylons become mortal.” That’s what they said. For one minute, I thought, “Cool!” then it hit me. “So what?”
Cylons are machines. If the Hub is destroyed, then what do you think the Cavel’s do? They sit back and say, “They destroyed our hub, we can’t resurrect. Let’s back off, rebuild the technology, and then we can resurrect again.” The Cavel’s apparently are the engineers of the group, to them it’s all a matter of engineering. During the standoff on the algae planet Cavel stated, “So what! Let’s blow them out of the sky, then we can look for the Eye of Jupiter forever and a day. We’re machines. It doesn’t matter if we get to Earth in five years of five hundred years.”
And so, I see that happening as well with regards to the hub.
“The hub’s been destroyed.”
“Okay, let’s find an asteroid belt, set up, rebuild, then move on.”
“What about the humans? What if they come after us?”
“Fuck ‘em. They won’t. They’ll think they’ve won some great victory, but we’ll find them eventually, and we’ll take care of them then. We’ll finish them off, like we should have back during the initial attack. All this procreation, and believing in God and destiny is actually beneath us. Fuck ‘em.”
After all, the Cylons looking for Earth was dumb enough. Didn’t they have their own planet? I mean, they had to come from somewhere? Why give up a home planet of some sort, destroy the colonies, and then take off. I don’t think there has ever been an actual explanation. “The Cylon’s have a plan,” we’re told, and so far, the only plan I’ve seen is to impregnate women. When I saw that I thought, Mars Needs Women, and laughed. It’s all very sad.
The 4th season to me seems to be a mish mash. They’re trying to tie up all the loose threads before the end, but for me personally, I’ve almost given up. Kara Thrace and her destiny, was never, and I mean never, something that interested me. Cylons attuned to the voice of god, (or even believing in a god)…never cared much for that either. The final five…I hated that from the very first time they brought it up and Six said, “We don’t talk about them.” They found Earth, and it’s destruction was the best part of season. I only hope that it isn’t a parallel planet and that they finally find Earth and live happily ever after with their now mortal Cylon buddies.
I think in the end, the writers (Ron Moore specifically) started to believe too much of the hype. Once it goes from a good show to “The best show on television,” and there are articles written about it in the mainstream media talking about how topical it is, the creative staff has a choice to either, keep writing a show and making it as good as can be, or become topical and “cutting edge,” and “allegorical.” Somewhere in it all, they swallowed their own cool aid, and quite frankly, we’re all suffering for it.
10 episodes.
8 hours or so.
Then it’s over.
Thank the gods.
Sigh.
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