BSG is losing hull integrity
Mar. 1st, 2009 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalkerSoooo... there's only three episodes left, and I do not see how they can possibly wrap this up satisfactorily. Especially if we spend 30% of the time watching Adama wander around drunk staring at the cracks in the ceiling. Or watching Kara listen to some guy play the piano.
Speaking of which, where did they get a piano? Was it just taking up valuable space which could house an entire family until someone said, "Hey, let's donate it to the bar!" or what? Why did they not throw it out the airlock ages ago?
And of course we still don't know where they're getting all the booze. They've finally mentioned that they synthesize coffee out of algae (and are they growing algae now or did they scoop up a year's supply of the stuff?), but we don't know about the alcohol. Just that they never run out. Ever. Or even run low.
During the last episode, my dad asked, "So, when they're at the bar, what do they use to pay?" I told him we have no frakking idea. Zarek mentioned that the economy makes no sense all the way back in Colonial Day, yet they go right on using paper money at least to Black Market and probably still.
Honestly, that bar is more trouble than it's worth.
I also still want to know where Lee is getting all these nicely-tailored suits. Add Roslin's athletic wear to the list, too.
Mutiny arc: Gaeta had many good points, okay? The Cylons killed 40-50 billion people and express no remorse for that. It is not unreasonable to not want them or their technology imposed on the fleet. Even if they are sorry and just trying to help... well, remember Boomer? She loved the fleet and Adama. That didn't stop her hidden programming from taking over and shooting Adama. They might need this alliance, but it is in NO WAY unreasonable to want to reject it anyway. I told my dad that the way the series is going, probably they'll get all the Cylon jump drives installed, and then all the human ships will explode. The end.
And Gaeta's also right that Adama lets favoritism bias him. Gaeta has had ample examples of this, since at least Season 1, when Adama was ready to risk all of humanity to save Kara. Now both Adama and Roslin have really stopped giving a frak about anything but themselves and the few people they care about, and they use their power to benefit those people, rest of the fleet be damned. They've shown dictatorial tendencies before - again, even in Season 1 Adama shut down a tribunal that questioned his friends too closely, and in Season 2 Roslin outlawed abortion and tried to steal an election - but they've stopped reigning in that tendency. If they had any sense left, they'd probably resign for the good of the fleet. (Except I don't think poor Lee could handle both of their jobs, and who else could do both? Helo? We've killed too many capable people.) Overthrowing them is only treason if you lose. If the mutiny had succeeded, Gaeta would have been the hero who saved humanity from tyranny.
I would have been fine with Adama/Roslin winning if the show had more of a sense that this wasn't necessarily the best outcome. Last we heard, the tylium refinery workers were little more than slaves. Despite some words about training more people in that one episode, we have never seen Adama or Roslin spare a thought since for the people who keep the fleet running. They just got mad when the tylium ship sided with Gaeta and Zarek. Gee, I wonder why? If we had had more indication that there just plain isn't anything more Adama and Roslin could do, it would help the established order look less to blame, but we haven't.
I also think the show took a lot of cheap shots to make the mutineers look in the wrong. Again, I think they had an interesting idea with Gaeta trying to legitimately remove bad leaders and save the fleet while slowly realizing that Zarek is just plain vicious, and trying to figure out what to do with his partner-in-mutiny. And an initially clean and small mutiny setting off a larger violent uprising is good too. But was it really necessary to shoot scenes so that it looks like Gaeta is grumpy and murderous because his amputated leg hurts? (Never mind that he lost his leg because a Cylon shot it because Gaeta wouldn't disobey orders, and that same Cylon never got punished for it. Because Adama plays favorites.) And would the usually cunning Zarek really believe the fleet would back him after he openly massacred the Quorum? I'd expect him to have them die in "accidents" one by one, myself. Or at least make it look like a rogue Marine did it on his own.
I thought the show used to be better about having two opposing sides both be right and tearing you apart because you wanted them both to win. But in this case... not so much. I felt like one side had 85% of the good arguments but got stuck with a few evil people to make them look bad, while the other side had pretty much the one argument about upholding law and order (oh, okay, and not mutinying with someone you had no way of knowing was psycho) but we were expected to see them as mostly right.
Also, is it really such a good idea to make the only gay amputee of color in the universe a traitor who gets executed?
Right. Moving on.
You are Caprica Six, recently released from the Cylon prison box. You are pregnant with the only fully Cylon baby in two thousand years. You know that most humans would happily gut you like a fish for facilitating the genocide of most of their species. So why the HELL would you walk through Dogsville, home of some of the most desperate, miserable humans we've seen in the fleet? For kicks? IITS.
I cannot believe that the show is asking me to accept Leoben as a sympathetic character who deserves forgiveness, trust, and citizenship. Leoben. The guy whose idea of romance is locking a woman up for four months and forcing her to play house. The humans aren't all paragons, but if you had a choice, would you let Leoben join you? He has never, ever let on that he believes ever did anything wrong. I could just about buy the fleet accepting the Eights, since they know one who has been trustworthy. But the Twos? I don't think so. The Sixes are a stretch too.
Tyrol loves the ship so much that he takes his old job back, yet just an episode later wants to abandon humanity altogether... to join the robots who killed most of the people he's ever known and still don't see anything wrong with that. Just because he found out that he is one of an entirely different line of nicer robots. Even though his only memories are of being human and fighting Cylons. Yeah. I buy that.
Tigh has been using Six as a stand-in for Ellen, yet now that Ellen's back, he suddenly loves Six. But not as much as Bill Adama, which causes the baby to miscarry. What a horrid system of reproduction - if Daddy doesn't love Mommy more than anyone else ever, Baby will die.
We still know nothing about how Athena's fellow officers have felt about and treated her all this time, nor if they distinguish between her and the other Eights who just joined up. Considering that the end of the show is shaping up to be all about Cylon/Human relations, this seems like quite an oversight.
Adama gave Baltar guns to arm his cult. Roslin agreed. Roslin (and thus Adama, probably) now knows for certain that Baltar helped Caprica Six and co. destroy the human race. Uh-huh.
The way Cavil is portrayed lately really pisses me off. Yet another TV atheist who is angry and immoral and trying to destroy his creator plus a bunch of other people, because stereotypes are good writing tools! And the analogy doesn't even work, because Cavil's creators are not distant supernatural beings he can't be sure exist - they're people and they're right there and they built him in a lab. He has every right to complain about design flaws. Why can he have only free will or the ability to see gamma rays, exactly? Why couldn't they at least leave him the operating manual to remake himself if he wasn't happy, since they value choice so much? Was it a condition of their agreement with the chromejob Cylons who believed human form was God's will? Because if that's it, they might mention that they limited Cavil's design to prevent two species from destroying each other.
So, after hearing nothing about Kara's dad since she was on Caprica with Helo and picked up his jacket, suddenly he's important. (Bets on him being Daniel, aka #7?) This would go down more smoothly if you mentioned him, like, ever. They should have had that piano for the whole season, and had Kara listen to her dad's album occasionally ever since she brought it back. I thought she'd end up being half-Cylon, but I also thought her mom would be the Cylon parent, seeing as she's the one who knew Kara had a destiny and had actually shown up on screen before. Introducing a new important character now is just ridiculous. Spending half of one of the final episodes infodumping about him, and Kara's unknown-before-now musical talent, is also ridiculous.
Oh, and speaking of parentage, why did Nicky's suddenly get retconned? Does it matter that he's not half-Cylon after all?
Things still to be resolved: Sam's coma, Hera's specialness and abduction, the meaning of the opera house visions, Baltar's cult, Roslin's cancer, Adama's sudden pill-popping, Kara's destiny if she still has one, Kara's identity/death/resurrection, how the hell she got to Earth and back in the first place, fixing the ship, finding a new home planet, Cavil and the Fours and Fives, Boomer, Cylon-human relations, possibly D'Anna (what has she been doing, anyway?), the fallout from Caprica Six's miscarriage, what happened to the other mutineers, why the Earth Cylons nuked themselves... I know I'm missing a few things.
I still want to know how it turns out, but knowing that the writers are probably just shuffling index cards with random plot points spoils the fun.
Speaking of which, where did they get a piano? Was it just taking up valuable space which could house an entire family until someone said, "Hey, let's donate it to the bar!" or what? Why did they not throw it out the airlock ages ago?
And of course we still don't know where they're getting all the booze. They've finally mentioned that they synthesize coffee out of algae (and are they growing algae now or did they scoop up a year's supply of the stuff?), but we don't know about the alcohol. Just that they never run out. Ever. Or even run low.
During the last episode, my dad asked, "So, when they're at the bar, what do they use to pay?" I told him we have no frakking idea. Zarek mentioned that the economy makes no sense all the way back in Colonial Day, yet they go right on using paper money at least to Black Market and probably still.
Honestly, that bar is more trouble than it's worth.
I also still want to know where Lee is getting all these nicely-tailored suits. Add Roslin's athletic wear to the list, too.
Mutiny arc: Gaeta had many good points, okay? The Cylons killed 40-50 billion people and express no remorse for that. It is not unreasonable to not want them or their technology imposed on the fleet. Even if they are sorry and just trying to help... well, remember Boomer? She loved the fleet and Adama. That didn't stop her hidden programming from taking over and shooting Adama. They might need this alliance, but it is in NO WAY unreasonable to want to reject it anyway. I told my dad that the way the series is going, probably they'll get all the Cylon jump drives installed, and then all the human ships will explode. The end.
And Gaeta's also right that Adama lets favoritism bias him. Gaeta has had ample examples of this, since at least Season 1, when Adama was ready to risk all of humanity to save Kara. Now both Adama and Roslin have really stopped giving a frak about anything but themselves and the few people they care about, and they use their power to benefit those people, rest of the fleet be damned. They've shown dictatorial tendencies before - again, even in Season 1 Adama shut down a tribunal that questioned his friends too closely, and in Season 2 Roslin outlawed abortion and tried to steal an election - but they've stopped reigning in that tendency. If they had any sense left, they'd probably resign for the good of the fleet. (Except I don't think poor Lee could handle both of their jobs, and who else could do both? Helo? We've killed too many capable people.) Overthrowing them is only treason if you lose. If the mutiny had succeeded, Gaeta would have been the hero who saved humanity from tyranny.
I would have been fine with Adama/Roslin winning if the show had more of a sense that this wasn't necessarily the best outcome. Last we heard, the tylium refinery workers were little more than slaves. Despite some words about training more people in that one episode, we have never seen Adama or Roslin spare a thought since for the people who keep the fleet running. They just got mad when the tylium ship sided with Gaeta and Zarek. Gee, I wonder why? If we had had more indication that there just plain isn't anything more Adama and Roslin could do, it would help the established order look less to blame, but we haven't.
I also think the show took a lot of cheap shots to make the mutineers look in the wrong. Again, I think they had an interesting idea with Gaeta trying to legitimately remove bad leaders and save the fleet while slowly realizing that Zarek is just plain vicious, and trying to figure out what to do with his partner-in-mutiny. And an initially clean and small mutiny setting off a larger violent uprising is good too. But was it really necessary to shoot scenes so that it looks like Gaeta is grumpy and murderous because his amputated leg hurts? (Never mind that he lost his leg because a Cylon shot it because Gaeta wouldn't disobey orders, and that same Cylon never got punished for it. Because Adama plays favorites.) And would the usually cunning Zarek really believe the fleet would back him after he openly massacred the Quorum? I'd expect him to have them die in "accidents" one by one, myself. Or at least make it look like a rogue Marine did it on his own.
I thought the show used to be better about having two opposing sides both be right and tearing you apart because you wanted them both to win. But in this case... not so much. I felt like one side had 85% of the good arguments but got stuck with a few evil people to make them look bad, while the other side had pretty much the one argument about upholding law and order (oh, okay, and not mutinying with someone you had no way of knowing was psycho) but we were expected to see them as mostly right.
Also, is it really such a good idea to make the only gay amputee of color in the universe a traitor who gets executed?
Right. Moving on.
You are Caprica Six, recently released from the Cylon prison box. You are pregnant with the only fully Cylon baby in two thousand years. You know that most humans would happily gut you like a fish for facilitating the genocide of most of their species. So why the HELL would you walk through Dogsville, home of some of the most desperate, miserable humans we've seen in the fleet? For kicks? IITS.
I cannot believe that the show is asking me to accept Leoben as a sympathetic character who deserves forgiveness, trust, and citizenship. Leoben. The guy whose idea of romance is locking a woman up for four months and forcing her to play house. The humans aren't all paragons, but if you had a choice, would you let Leoben join you? He has never, ever let on that he believes ever did anything wrong. I could just about buy the fleet accepting the Eights, since they know one who has been trustworthy. But the Twos? I don't think so. The Sixes are a stretch too.
Tyrol loves the ship so much that he takes his old job back, yet just an episode later wants to abandon humanity altogether... to join the robots who killed most of the people he's ever known and still don't see anything wrong with that. Just because he found out that he is one of an entirely different line of nicer robots. Even though his only memories are of being human and fighting Cylons. Yeah. I buy that.
Tigh has been using Six as a stand-in for Ellen, yet now that Ellen's back, he suddenly loves Six. But not as much as Bill Adama, which causes the baby to miscarry. What a horrid system of reproduction - if Daddy doesn't love Mommy more than anyone else ever, Baby will die.
We still know nothing about how Athena's fellow officers have felt about and treated her all this time, nor if they distinguish between her and the other Eights who just joined up. Considering that the end of the show is shaping up to be all about Cylon/Human relations, this seems like quite an oversight.
Adama gave Baltar guns to arm his cult. Roslin agreed. Roslin (and thus Adama, probably) now knows for certain that Baltar helped Caprica Six and co. destroy the human race. Uh-huh.
The way Cavil is portrayed lately really pisses me off. Yet another TV atheist who is angry and immoral and trying to destroy his creator plus a bunch of other people, because stereotypes are good writing tools! And the analogy doesn't even work, because Cavil's creators are not distant supernatural beings he can't be sure exist - they're people and they're right there and they built him in a lab. He has every right to complain about design flaws. Why can he have only free will or the ability to see gamma rays, exactly? Why couldn't they at least leave him the operating manual to remake himself if he wasn't happy, since they value choice so much? Was it a condition of their agreement with the chromejob Cylons who believed human form was God's will? Because if that's it, they might mention that they limited Cavil's design to prevent two species from destroying each other.
So, after hearing nothing about Kara's dad since she was on Caprica with Helo and picked up his jacket, suddenly he's important. (Bets on him being Daniel, aka #7?) This would go down more smoothly if you mentioned him, like, ever. They should have had that piano for the whole season, and had Kara listen to her dad's album occasionally ever since she brought it back. I thought she'd end up being half-Cylon, but I also thought her mom would be the Cylon parent, seeing as she's the one who knew Kara had a destiny and had actually shown up on screen before. Introducing a new important character now is just ridiculous. Spending half of one of the final episodes infodumping about him, and Kara's unknown-before-now musical talent, is also ridiculous.
Oh, and speaking of parentage, why did Nicky's suddenly get retconned? Does it matter that he's not half-Cylon after all?
Things still to be resolved: Sam's coma, Hera's specialness and abduction, the meaning of the opera house visions, Baltar's cult, Roslin's cancer, Adama's sudden pill-popping, Kara's destiny if she still has one, Kara's identity/death/resurrection, how the hell she got to Earth and back in the first place, fixing the ship, finding a new home planet, Cavil and the Fours and Fives, Boomer, Cylon-human relations, possibly D'Anna (what has she been doing, anyway?), the fallout from Caprica Six's miscarriage, what happened to the other mutineers, why the Earth Cylons nuked themselves... I know I'm missing a few things.
I still want to know how it turns out, but knowing that the writers are probably just shuffling index cards with random plot points spoils the fun.
