Monday, March 26, 2007

Battlestar What-the-Heck-tica

At the end of the second season of Battlestar Galactica, the writers of the show decided to leave us with a bad taste in our mouths by jumping "one year later" and robbing us of much plot and character development. Not a mistake those same writers would let go quietly, they decided to one-up themselves and leave us with a bad taste in our mouths by concocting a ridiculous, forced, and plot-narrowing ending to season three. Way to go.

For those of you who haven't seen the Season Three Finale yet, I don't care, I'm filling this blog with spoilers anyway.

To be quite honest, the episode itself was a good one. It continued Gaius Baltar's trial, ended it well, and, as far as all things Baltar are concerned, set up his character for season four nicely. But then, the season four lead-in... holy crap, Batman, that was a bunch of holy crap.

All season long, the writers have been setting us up for the reveal of the "Final Five Cylons." I need not mention that this aspect of the subplot concerning the 12 "human" models of Cylon was, in and of itself, a lazy way out of trying to sneak five new models into the surviving human fleet. Here's how the writer's meeting must have gone: "Let's see... we've got seven; we've done a good job of sneaking those seven into the show; there's five more; up until this point, there's been no implication that these last five were anything special; we're out of ideas... oh, I got it, let's cook up some really stupid backstory so we can claim the 'final five' are actually unique, unreplicated models, and then reveal those models (four of them anyway) to be some of our favorite human characters." Response: "Which, oh by the way, gashes open several plot holes the size of Battlestar Galactica herself; contradicts much of the character and plot development that we've already established; reveals once again how lazy we are as writers; adds another nail into the coffin of a waning television show."

Two things are going to happen from here: 1) Tigh, Tyrol, Anders, and Tory (lot of T's, there) will eventually be revealed as not Cylons, but more Human prophets, similar to what Roslin is, or 2) Tigh, Tyrol, Anders, and Tory will be Cylons, opening the floodgates for nitpicky fans such as myself to point out the hows and whys such a phenomenon is pragmatically impossible, even for a fictional show.

Let me just point out one right now... Tyrol and Cally's baby would have shown up as "odd" after blood tests, sort of like how Helo and Athena's baby shows up as "odd." Oops.

I'm pissed. I love this show. But it's totally pulling a George Lucas Star Wars Prequels, and it's irritating the crap out of me.

The writers were hoping we'd all be asking who the fifth and final Cylon is, but instead we're asking for a new batch of writers.

Given the way it's going, don't hold your breath.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let's start with the fact that the new season won't air until 2008? What? Why so long?

Next, Starbuck is your fifth and final Cylon.

Third, it was My belief that the Human looking Cylons were a recent creation. How in the name of Me, did Tigh who has got to be at least 60 years old get to be one of those machines?

That simple "plot twist" defies logic. You are telling Me they have had this amazing super secret technology to infiltrate humanity at its deepest for 6 decades and they choose now to "flip the switch?" No way. i can buy a lot of BS but that is just ridiculous.

i don't think i can watch this train wreck anymore, but i will.

Posted by God on March 26, 2007 - Monday - 10:47 AM

Anonymous said...

I gotta give it up to 'god' on this one. (someone write that down, it probably never happened before and most likely won't happen again).

I'm certainly no writer, but I thought it was pretty lame as well.

Posted by Cowan on March 27, 2007 - Tuesday - 3:12 AM

Anonymous said...

A couple of reasons, actually. The first was that, until last week or so, the show hadn't been picked up for a full season, only a partial. Given that, the producers probably wanted to wait as long as possible for the extra episodes, otherwise it would have been likely our inconsistent show would have come to an end following Season 4.

Also, they're apparently filming a made-for-TV BSG movie, which is due out in August or so.

Posted by JeffScape on March 28, 2007 - Wednesday - 2:07 PM

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