(BSG 2.20) Well.

[solarbird]

...that certainly wasn't what I was expecting...

Comments

[firni.livejournal.com]

"HI THERE, I'D LIKE AN ORDER OF SUCK WITH SOME SUCK FRIES AND A LARGE SUCK, TO GO."

[solarbird]

Yeah, if this is the Whole New Direction for the show, my first reaction is to buy the DVD sets of season one and 2.0, and ignore 2.1, pretending that the show ended after they found the map to Earth.

However, if this is something they do for half a season because they have to do something before they find Earth and without coming up with something completely different the show is going to get really boring, then to some degree I can go "okay, let's see where it goes."

However, somebody seriously needs to cut off Baltar's Penis, Destroyer Of Worlds, before it does any more harm. Mind you, I don't think there's a whole hell of a lot more it can do.

I kind of wonder if they aren't going to start the next episode this fall set another six months or a year later, with a newly built Caprica City and massively improved living standards for everyone—but, of course, a rigid Cylon dictatorship and a Starbuck-led resistance. That could get really boring really quickly.

[wrog]

seems like the moral of this story is

Don't ever settle on a planet;
once you do, you're a sitting duck and that's that.

I mean, unless Earth Colony has some serious kick-ass tech, how are things going to be any different when they get there?

then to some degree I can go "okay, let's see where it goes."

as long as we don't end up at a Bobby Ewing Steps Out of the Shower scene...

[rmd.livejournal.com]

i was expecting one of those in this episode, but then it kept not happening so huh, what's that all about.

[solarbird]

I would be even more annoyed with that than I am with this episode.

(Having now slept on it, I am not any happier.)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

clauclauclaudia points out that if you've decided that you have an plot-important offspring, then either the story accelerates or the offspring growth accelerates.

which, okay, i can buy that. and while i'm glad that our characters have had some development during our interlude, i'm not sure i buy all the developments. like, why nobody put a bullet in baltar already.

i'll be very curious to see if the hallucinations/visions will continue/have continued.

[solarbird]

i'm not sure i buy all the developments. like, why nobody put a bullet in baltar already.

It's not like settling any planet would be easy, or fun, or, really, much less than miserable. I've read some books that talked about early settlers in the pacific northwest. "Fun" wasn't exactly part of the package.

[firni.livejournal.com]

I was sitting there wondering if a writer from "Dallas" had wandered onto the set.

[smeehrrr.livejournal.com]

I am Not Pleased.

[solarbird]

Having now slept on it, I'm Not Pleased Either.

[solarbird]

And the more I think about it, the more Not Pleased I am. Not just about where it went - which is arguably a matter of taste, really - but about how it got there. I've posted more in comments to this entry. My already-weakened trust in Ron Moore's ability to tell a story coherently is pretty much gone.

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

What the fuck??? Is the answer to what to do with the hole you've dug yourself to dig deeper and hoppe you come out the other end? That seems to be what is being attempted. I can't even wrap my brain around it.

My TiVo cut off as the blonde Cylon told Gaius she knew who he was. Did I miss anything after that?

[rmd.livejournal.com]

they made eyes at each other, and gaius surrendered.

[solarbird]

As, apparently, did the entire Cylon plan, and most of the writing staff.

[solarbird]

Apparently they've decided to splice in an "exile in cold, damp Egypt" plotline. They have officially lost my trust; I'm now very skeptical that, having lost the ability to mine the good parts out of the original series and refine them into something that roxx0rs, they are capable of making a good show on their own. I think now that they can't. Hopefully they will surprise me in the fall; they've got a lot of time to put something together.

That said, I feel seriously cheated by the storyteller. Oh, the Cylons had a plan, but said, "eh, fukkit." That's just crap. I WANT MY CYLON CIVIL WAR, DAMN YOU!

And Admiral Adama has to lose that fucking mustache. Seriously.

[firni.livejournal.com]

But they need the mustache to prove IT'S A YEAR LATER.

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

I hate that mustache. Seriously.

I think the Cylon plan is "We'll be lying, genocidal, manipulative scum". I mean they did send an emissary to announce an end to the hostilities, didn't they? I guess they meant an end until they could get enough ships into position...

[solarbird]

I hate that mustache. Seriously.
SO MUCH HATE.

I mean they did send an emissary to announce an end to the hostilities, didn't they?
ah... not so much. There had been an armistice for... 40 years, I think? And the Cylons had just kept not showing up at the annual Armistice Station meeting, and then at the beginning of the miniseries they did, but it was part of the attack, and they were there to blow it into atoms. (With several of their own onboard, but that's not such a big deal when you reincarnate, I suppose.)

Of course, by that point, they'd already finished undermining the Colonial military with their software vulnerabilities, so moving ships around wasn't as important as just showing up to do the job.

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

No no I mean the priest they sent with the rescued troops from Caprica. He said that the war had been a mistake and the Cylons were moving on. Then, a year later, they invaded.

[solarbird]

Ooooh.

Well, kinda. I mean, that sounded to me like an offer, which the Colonial government more or less rejected, tho' it was, needless to say, an informal rejection, in the form of throwing the priest out the airlock.

Really, President Roslyn was, you know, kinda big on the whole airlock thing. Definitively pro-airlocking.

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

She does seem to have an Air-Lock agenda going, doesn't she?

You know you are really freaking funny.

[solarbird]

Well, you know - it's either that, or spend all your time sobbing uncontrollably. Pick one!

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

???

[solarbird]

I kid, I kid! You need a sense of humour about the world or it crushes you with its pain. Hi, I'm emo solarbird!

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

Awww Poor crazy woman. ;)

[solarbird]

I have never needed an animated Daffy Duck icon more than this very moment.

Damn.

[solarbird]

<peers> MARCH 11^TH?! How did I just get this now?

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

LMAO I have no clue. Good work, LJ!!!

[solarbird]

Oh yeah, you got enforcers marching through the streets and the Chief asking Starbuck, "okay, Captain, what do we do now?" and her repeating the line she delivered on Caprica about fighting until you can't anymore zzzzzzzzzzz.

[wrog]

certainly wasn't what I was expecting

no, no, see,... I already said that, so you have to find something else... sorry.

How about these?

[solarbird]

Some of the things I'm unhappy about:

o All the rip-cording of plotline. Apparently, Ron Moore has said this is a "reset" episode. Well, fuck that. It's lazy, it's bullshit, there were ways out of where you were. I could see some of 'em, I'd damn well expect that they could too.

o Exile in Cold, Damp Egypt does not interest me. This new show is likely to be a show I don't care about whatsoever.

o That mustashe? It has to go.

o NO real debate over this settlement that we get to see. None. What. The. Fuck. There are damn good reasons not to settle on this rock. I know they're referenced, but what. the. fuck? Look, if you're going to effectively abandon industrial civilisation in favour of a frontier agrarian settlement, that needs to be talked about. Not skipped over.

o Even if you're going to go here, this isn't how. They needed to spend two or three episodes on it, at least. In fact, I'd suggest that this should have been an hour, followed by a two-part episode starting the third series. This wasn't an episode; this was a plot outline.

o I WANT MY CYLON CIVIL WAR!!!

o I WANT MY GODDAMN CYLON PLAN! Walking away from that is unforgivable. I no longer think Ron had one - at least one that, in the light of day, wasn't completely stupid.

o The whole episode is presumably supposed to be about giving up, about surrendering, but honestly, it felt more like the writers were giving up than the characters.

Re: How about these?

[firni.livejournal.com]

That whole business with Dean Stockwell was confusing, too.

Re: How about these?

[wrog]

NO real debate over this settlement that we get to see. None. What. The. Fuck. There are damn good reasons not to settle on this rock. I know they're referenced, but what. the. fuck? Look, if you're going to effectively abandon industrial civilisation in favour of a frontier agrarian settlement, that needs to be talked about. Not skipped over.

Baltar essentially made the election a referrendum on colonization. What debate there was took place in that context. We see bits and pieces of it (e.g., the showdown in Adama's wardroom), it's not hard to imagine how it goes. And Roslin lost decisively (a margin of several thousand out of 50k is landslide territory). And it's also clear that what pushed it over was the "We are fucking tired of living in space locked up in little tin boxes constantly on the run" (a.k.a. "I WANT MY GODDAMN SKY") factor, which was not something you could really rationally debate with once it took hold.

Maybe a few more scenes of mobs chanting would have helped, but maybe that would have looked fake and so Moore didn't attempt it.

I WANT MY GODDAMN CYLON PLAN! Walking away from that is unforgivable.

I'm not yet convinced that they've walked away. Taking what DeanModel says at face value is almost certainly a mistake; if the Cylons haven't changed their plan, he's got every reason to lie about that. It's been clear from the beginning that whatever the plan is/was, killing off the human race was not it. Look at how many basestars show up in that final scene. The Cylons could have blown up the fleet pretty much any time they wanted to (and we pretty much knew that already)

The big question mark here is where 2.18 really fits into this. My best guess at this point is that was not actually a Cylon point-of-view episode but rather a Tyrol!Sharon+Caprica!Six point-of-view episode. And actually it makes sense that the (very few) Cylon individuals who spend time in human populations will be "stunted" in certain ways (i.e., having larger egos, not having full access to what the collective is really about) and very carefully tracked.

I'm still trying to figure out how any Cylon civil war could last more than about 10 minutes. Moreover, the rest of the Cylons clearly have the resources to put on a good show for its more "humanized" individuals, i.e., present the illusion of a society in which Tyrol!Sharon and Caprica!Six are celebrities who wield huge influence ... which is not to say that they don't have huge influence, but maybe it's not what they think it is (e.g., DeanModel got his idea for what to say to Roslin from them, how to present this change of tactics so that it'd be plausible to the humans).

Re: How about these?

[solarbird]

I have several issues, but I also need to go to a meeting. BUT! At this point, if it's still part of All That One Plan, it's just too convoluted for me to accept. Not too complicated: too confoluted, with too much reliance on omnipotent control.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I thought the last half hour was too rushed, considering they completely changed the narrative landscape of the show. I thought the facial hair was a lazy shorthand for what had happened to the characters in the meantime.

But I actually like the new direction and overall, loved this episode. I guess that puts me in the minority.