BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: The Final 10 - Page 7

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True, and if that's all they do with it by the time March rolls around, i'll be inclined to agree with you, but for me, I don't see the show treating the revelation as an "earth-shattering" event. It's a big one, but not the big one. The reveal of the four was dwarfed by Kara's return and the sight of earth. Even in the show they dropped it in, it wasn't the big reveal.

Just to be clear, that was to be read in Dr. Zoidberg's voice.

It was dropped afterward, is the issue. They built it up with an entire season of the Cylons pondering and going to war over the identities of the Five, and even swapped "looking for a home...called Earth" for "four live in secret...one will be revealed" in the opening credits. It seems clear now that they wanted a shocker finale for the 3rd season and subsequently backed off from its full implications. What are the tangible results of them being cylons 11 episodes later? They indirectly led the fleet to Earth through some vaguely mystical mumbo-jumbo, but Roslin, Kara and Baltar have made it clear that being human doesn't disqualify you from receiving vaguely mystical mumbo-jumbo on this show, so it isn't like it was really necessary to get them there.

I still have hopes for the final episodes, because there's no motivation to hold anything back anymore, but it seems obvious to me that they introduced the Five without much of an idea of what it would mean, and opted for a rather lame, noncomittal approach for the next 10 episodes. Which wouldn't be such a big deal to me if they hadn't tarnished some of my favorite characters by doing it.

This show is tarded.

But, there are lots of tarded shows out there living kickass lives.

A lot of tarded shows could be pilots.

This thread is tarded. Nine episodes left and some of you folks are talking like you know how everything fits and what everything means. There are more hours left of BSG than there are in entire cinematic trilogies. Is it really that difficult to trust this amazing show which has succeeded far, far more than it's ever failed?

I've been trying to refrain from pissing on this piss-on-GALACTICA parade but this thread has revealed to me a secret colony of wusses.

Hugs.

seconded

You could have made that exact same argument during season 7 of the X-Files.

Look, the successes are largely in the distant past (relatively speaking), and the failures are fresh. And Moore has all but admitted that they had no plan for the Cylons, even when times were good. It can't be that surprising that a lot of people are worried about the show's ability to come to a satisfying end, can it?

Bingo.

This argument only works in terms of the plot, though, not character. The writers could have a brilliant conclusion that challenges how we think about artificial intelligence, religion, politics, and the universe, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm currently finding it hard to give a shit about these people (and Cylons) who used to be so complex and real in their aspirations and flaws.

What I'm complaining about is that they've wasted more time than they have left failing to develop the main storyline of the show in a satisfying way. The failures are fresh, and ongoing.

There are still successes going on, but the more the focus switches to the Five, the more underwhelmed I am by where they've taken it.

I'm done bitching about the issue for awhile, though.

How so?

He didn't know she was a Cylon. Even if he did, he's still beating himself up over his decision to kill her on NC, and he was in the right to do so. Also, they are both Cylons: if they had known this before hand, he obviously wouldn't have killed her.

If anything it makes Tigh's decision more devastating.

Ah. It really didn't read like a joke at all, for what its worth.

It makes it a (cruel) joke on the Tighs, rather than a shattering tragedy. Also, she's going to come back to life, which renders it rather moot.

About the cruel joke part: you think so? I find it pretty devastating personally. Makes her death seems that much more sad: whoever Ellen was, she went through all the trouble to make sure that she and the XO would come back together, only for her to be killed by him. Seems pretty tragic to me, but to each his own.

How do you know she's coming back to life?

Oddly the things I thought people would be complaining about plot-wise, no one has touched on.

Like how in the hell could Ellen have 5 people be reincarnated 2,000 years into the future, on Caprica, which is really, really far away from Earth. Born physically from humans. Also, after having Ellen and Tigh as Cylons, and seeing that it was done intentionally, I kinda don't care about the other 3. Going to take some good writing to explain why as a viewer I should.

Also, the explanation behind Kara's own apparent "resurrection" has the potential to be quite goofy.

So I'm in the opposing camp. I think the Cylon thing is being handled very well, its everything around that that's bothering me.

Since Tigh has always been my most favorite character, I'm satisfied, because he's still understandable, and empathetic.

Seriously?

First, I think the X-Files analogy is a bit strong. This thread essentially turned from constant praise to universal disappointment during the last the second Ellen was revealed as the fifth. I agree there have been failures along the way, but in my opinion they are few and far between. Most plot thread are still in process, so pronouncing them as mistakes or failures is premature. And no one here has any real idea of where they're going with Ellen or the rest of the season.

The characters are openly wondering about that stuff, so it will be addressed. I'm talking about the way things they've already done that can't really be undone.

And of fucking course Ellen is coming back. It would be even more retarded if they left her dead.

Exactly. Cylon killed on New Caprica, well within range of the resurrection ship. The only question is where she is right now.

I'm just imagining her sitting in a room some where Wizard of Oz style pulling little levers and making new plot points.

Well, somebody needs to be, since the other 11 models don't seem to know their taints from a radioactive hole in the ground.

No one's addressed the fact that Tigh and Ellen seem to have dropped a few dozen IQ points in the resurrection process.

In that flashback they both actually seem to be rocket scientists. Then they resurrect into a bitter drunk and a drunken shrew, and neither one seems smart enough to change the oil in a Viper much less create the tech needed to reincarnate.

Well, drinking does kill brain cells.

Oh shit you're right they probably built the nukes that ended Cylon civilization on Earth! That's how Ellen knew it was coming! Dun, dun, duh!

Seriously though, you could (if you wanted) take it as some kind of comment on nature vs. nurture. They never got the proper nurture. Although really they weren't thinking about it way back then when they first wrote the characters.

Yes he could have made the exact same argument and at the time he would still be right. Two pages ago the concensus was that Adama was the last Cylon and we've been proven wrong. Now all of a sudden everyone knows where the series is going to go for the next nine episodes.

THE X FILES is an apt comparison, as it's another case of a creator making up an ongoing story as he goes, with frustrating results.

It's baffling to me how anyone smart enough to write -anything- could be so dense as to not realize what a monumentally stupid decision that is. Hubris, I guess.

There's certainly enough time left for the show to improve its final grade, but it can't fix the mistakes that have already been made. It certainly seems like they've written themselves into a corner where no possible resolution is going to be satisfying, though.

Well, I strongly disagree with that assessment.

All the plot point you have named that you worry about are on the forefront right now. With the reveal out of the way the people of the fleet and the final fife have already hinted at these implications. Furthermore it seems that the "Kara Thrace is the Harbinger of death" will take center stage in the final episodes.

There is plenty of time in the final 9 episodes to come up with satisfactory answers. Though the writers might have written themselves into a corner but there is still enough time and room in the story for redemption. But the cylon reveal has been butchered and written lazy for reason long discussed in this thread. I just hope that not everything that happened before will happen again.

But another thing that is really hurting the show for me is the fact that it is shown opposed to the penultimate season of Lost. Which is firing on all cylinders and an awesome example of pre-determined story lines that follow a masterplan as opposed to the obvious on the fly created mythology of BSG. I know it is not fair to compare these but it is hard to see BSG a few days after coming off the obsession with Lost. But that is just a very subjective point of view.

The problem isn't the last episode or even the real of Ellen Tigh as the all mighty fifth cylon. The problem is that the show has been going downhill since they hit the reset button at the beginning of season four. DaveB hit the nail on the head that we could put up with some sloppy narrative if the characters were still compelling, but at this point there is nobody to root for, root against, empathize with, sympathize with or in any other way relate to.

Ellen Tigh was just the tip of the iceberg for lazy writing that doesn't make sense when held up to what has been revealed before. I was impressed with the episode for the most part (even Olmos' drunken "acting"), but the ending of the episode. just kind of turned the lights on in the bar after some drunken flirting to discover, "oh yeah, the old girl's losing her looks".

But none of us have completely dismissed the next nine episodes, but there isn't a lot of substance there to make us believe that it can achieve the greatness of character that we saw in seasons 1-3.

I just hope they stay away from more final five "previous life" flashback shenanigans. No more Chief buying fruits, no more Tigh at 9/11 and no Anders playing the guitar etc...
But my fears are they will use those till the bitter end, until we e.g. know - as has been suggested - that Tigh was a rocket scientist working on the nukes.

There is lot's of potential to make the final five unsympathetic to the main characters again, but that would be the boring route to add tension again. Hope they don't take it.
Sadly the BSG universe feels smaller and smaller. The whole "out there alone in the vast empty space" feeling is sadly gone when everyone in a leading position is a rockstar cylon who lived on Earth some thousand years ago and the Galactica is exactly headed for it due to a prophecy.

Wait a minute--the BSG universe was ALWAYS ridiculously small. Most of the shit episodes come when they expand it for no reason to introduce characters like Bulldog or Senator Kelly instead of using existing characters. The show STARTS with maybe 50,000 people left in the entire universe. FIVE of them are fundamentally different cylons. Who, of course, would have survived the apocalypse because they've been alive for thousands of years.

I don't get this, either. Last time it was brought up it was in regards to Baltar, specifically, but really, what characters have lost their way in the writers room? What arcs have petered out into blah-blah-blah? Where the characters are now seems to have fit, to me.

If anything, I think the ridiculous waits between seasons has made people apathetic. But that's not the shows fault, nor is it the writers fault. I don't see how season 4 is a re-set at all, especially when the majority of the complaints about season 4 is that shit is so different you can't relate to it anymore.

I remember people saying Season 3 was a re-set after the year in Baltar's hair. Pretty obviously wasn't.

Lee and Kara spring immediately to mind. Both of their actions seem more driven by the need to have prominent characters driving the latest plot machinations (Lee as Lawyer, Kara as Ahab) than as natural outgrowths of the people we came to know in the first two seasons.

Lee I disagree with. They set that up pretty well in season 2, and followed through in season 3, what with the daddy issues constantly on display since the miniseries. Lee growing up and choosing his own course stopped him from being the whiny shit he was and made him a more rounded character, less one dimensional. They were playing at this back in Season 1 when he helped Roslin defect and when he was negotiating with Zarek, even. Lee becoming a Lawyer was probably the most natural of the character progressions in the show. My problem with Lee is that it took too long, what with that Dee love-affair thing he got stuck in--and even that paid off with Unfinished Business and now, Sometimes A Great Notion.

Kara, I agree, has changed, but honestly, I attribute that more to the acting than anything. It honestly felt like in the break between Season 3 and Season 4, Sackhoff forgot how to portray Starbuck. Maybe that's because for a time she was bouncing between Bionic Woman and Battlestar, but the Starbuck she's playing sometimes comes off more as a caricature than a character.

But the writing of her change makes sense. She resurrected and went sorta nutballs.

I can sorta see the argument about "needing to have prominent characters driving the plot" but that's kind of a rule, isn't it? Prominent characters SHOULD be driving the plot, and again, it's a show about a fleet of less than 40,000 people now. The show, for me, falters more when it invents new characters out of whole cloth to advance the plot, only to discard them once the episode is over.

Yeah, Lee's arc has felt pretty organic to me. He was always about being just and fair and seemed dissatisfied with the military as his life, overall.

Kara. That's what I call her now, and not Starbuck. I'm not sure if I agree that it's Katee's portrayal of her that's off. I really think she's DIFFERENT, a little off from the original Starbuck, ever since Maelstrom, and that's supposed to show. There's this weird calm in her center now, even when she was freaking out about Earth, which will hopefully be explained in the upcoming reveal of who she truly is.

My bets are on "she who will not be named", the one that the Temple of Five was built around. But that's just a pet theory, right now.

Of all the characters, I'd say Baltar is the one who has been mashed around the most to fit what they need of him, and I haven't been as invested in him since they started the whole cult of Baltar.

I'm still excited to see where this goes. I want to know how it ends. I want to know how the cycle is broken, if it is. Also, I really wish the hiatus hadn't been so long, I really do think it hurt this season.

Other than Baltar, and to a lesser extent, Kara, I don't really think they dropped the ball that much in characterization.

Wha?

Just listeined to the Podcast for this episode

Turns out in the BSG universe All Along the Watchtower was not written by Bob Dylan, but was actually composed by Anders the Boi Toy.

Jesus

They established that Dylan didn't do the song within the show's universe at the end of season 3.

The advertising campaign for the next eight episodes: WHO IS NICKY TYROL'S FATHER?

There aren't enough episodes left in the series for them to be boring me with paternity suits and Roslin jogging around Galactica.

Well looks like Tyrol's "hot dog" just wasn't cutting it. She was "roasting somebody else's weenie" on the side.

There's probably a joke about her buns in there too but you get the idea.

Agreed.

Awww...look at the happy couple- Adaslin, anyone?

Fuckin' Zarek and Gaeta with their mutiny. Hope they get blown away hardcore by the tag team of Adama and Tigh.

I guess this episode was fine- last week's was great, IMO. Even though a lot of posters here will disagree with me on that bit, but next week's episode looks AWESOME.

By the way, I felt that Ellen was the Final Cylon ever since I saw the first preview of the last 10 episodes, and you could hear the reverence and awe in Tight's voice when he said, "You're the fifth." His wife was the only viable option for the Fifth that made sense to me.

Slow episode. It looks like next week will be the opposite.

Can we just subtitle this last season Reckoning and get it over with?

Blah what a non-episode. That felt like multiple webisodes strung together. Hopefully this is a 'calm before the storm' type thing.

Tangent: who the fuck is watching the rest of the shit SciFi puts out? MacGyver doesn't even show up on this stargate show, so you know it's bad. Or maybe i'm crazy and there are millions of Duke Fleed's out there driving the ratings for Megaconstrictor vs. Terrordactyl

See, this is the kind of episode I find interesting. I think when the show gets bogged down in the mythology, it suffers. I think BSG is going to be remembered for being a military-political show rather than what wacky shit happened to Starbuck.

I guess it's just because I know we're so close to the end that slower episodes feel extra extra slow.

And I take back my bashing of this Stargate TV show. It's "star" is Beau Bridges. Case closed.

I actually quite liked the episode. It seemed like the characters were acting more like themselves. Maybe it's just because I love it when Adama actually does clever things but it just felt a lot like 'old BSG' to me.