BSG (Baltars Spirit Guide…?)
The third season of BSG (Battlestar Galactica for the uninitiated) resumed at the weekend in it’s new sunday slot on SciFi and so being the idiot I am I managed to not get it until wednesday morning when I discovered the the sound was out of sync on my download. My luck was in though as Ian had it and we had a spare forty minutes so I managed to get to see the latest episode, Ian has a good post about this so I won’t reiterate what he’s said as again he’s proved that I sound like a five year old child in comparison.
* (Kind of Minor) Spoiler Warning *
I will say though that after having some time to consider what the episode means for BSG I’m,
a) Disappointed,
b) Concerned, and
c) A tiny bit turned off.
Now I’m disappointed as BSG can be great and has had some great cliffhangers over the three series, I mean what about the end to season two for starters. I was so excited about the pure number of story arcs they had leading into this one episode, but they just tied everything up. We have now have everyone back on the Galactica and the next episode can just be mid season filler really. The only thing that I really want to know about is the other Cylons, but I’m not that bothered. I’m not sure how they are going to tie them in if they are meant to be people on the Galactica as the other Cylons don’t know who they are and so where do they come from? Without a major revision of the Cylon backstory then there’s not really anyway that I can see for them to be integrated into the story, I’m sure that the writers will prove me wrong but I hope they don’t resort to some weird - only just feasible - answer. This brings me to my second point, where the series is going.
One of the main things that I love about this series is the realism that they have brought to this quite frankly unbelievable universe, short of adding super heros or the Starship enterprise it’s pure Sci Fi. But the writer, directors and actors have managed to humanise this show in a way that most others haven’t done. I really feel that we’re starting to lose that now and that we’re getting into Startrek territory. As Ian said to me yesterday, it’s a bit of a leap to say that the Super Nova must be linked to one that happened 4000 years ago and that it must be the pointer to where they are going - I may still be wrong here as this is yet to be confirmed that it is the right way. Then there’s Starbuck drawing, please don’t go down the spritual route, please, please, please! I hate it when stories do that. Now when that’s the universe that the story is set in and we know that from the start it’s fine, but don’t switch to it half way through. Just my pennys worth.
My last point is just the fallout from a & b really. There’s not much going on to keep me in apart from James Callis who is still awesome in it and I’m worried that we’re going in a direction that I’m not going to like, I suppose that time will tell. All of this said I still really like the show and I’m going to watch it until the end! Plus we already have two and a half seasons of great tv!
Good Hunting
Apologies for bad spelling btw.
I think that there’s stil a difference between what is the beliefs of the characters and actually making things into peoples destinys etc… Up until now they have kept the two things seperate with ’scientific’ reasons behind the occurances - which of course they may still do with Starbuck.
I was just suprised that they concluded so many of the little story-ets in that one episode, perhaps it means that they’ve got so much to fit into the rest of the season!
To be fair we’ve been going down the spiritual route since the begining what with Baltar’s 6 giving him answers from ‘God’ (an intresting monotheistic God making them closer to our Chrisitanity than the fleet’s polytheisitic ideals) and Roslin’s messianic role as leader.
Remember the scolls state that ‘As this has happened before and all shall happen again’. They’ve always maintained that there was a kind of cyclic predestination element to the series the difference being that it was thrown in as sporadic footnotes as opposed to being as prominent as it currently is.
I don’t mind the idea of a force compelling them forward as long as the drama and relationships between the characters remains intact. I always try to not point this out to people but it is still a show about a space fleet fighting robots essencially so they’re not doing too bad in my opinion.
Just remember - there was a lot of padding before Pegasus / Ressurection Ship. I’m not worried yet.