Friday, April 04, 2008
Season 4: He That Believeth in Me
PRE-EPISODE THOUGHTS
Final season starting soon! I am hopeful that this season won't suck like the last season. It has been so long since the end of last season, I even forgot why I was so pissed at Helo. I'm willing to give the writers a chance to redeem themselves. I suspect they will borrow some plot elements from the Ship of Lights two-part episode from the original series--I'm looking forward to seeing how that works out.
LIVE-BLOGGING THE EPISODE
10:09
Show starts off with a good dogfight sequence. The four Cylons go about their business protecting the fleet. Tigh imagines himself shooting Adama, but he's just nervous about being a Cylon.
Everyone is suspicious of "Starbuck." They think her mysterious return is a Cylon trick. I don't think so, I'm almost certain the 12th Cylon is someone other than Starbuck.
It looked like the humans were in big trouble, but then Sam Anders did some Cylon mind trick, causing the Cylons to withdraw.
10:25
Baltar comes out of every bad situation smelling like a rose. At the end of last season, he was about to be executed for treason. But now, he's the leader of a new religious movement, most of the followers whom are beautiful young women. That's a job I wish that I had.
It's interesting that Starbuck's Viper is now a brand new Viper. That's sort of what happened when the Vipers disappeared in the Ship of Lights episode from the original series. They came back, but they were all white colored.
Clearly, Starbuck has been helped by the Angels.
10:36
The four Cylons are loyal to humanity. Apparently I was wrong abut Anders pulling a Cylon mind trick. Anders says that the Cylon "scanned" him and then they turned back.
The Number Six in the brig told Roslin that the final five are near. Roslin thinks that Starbuck is one of them. Oh how wrong Roslin is.
The Angels have put the "feeling" of Earth into Starbuck's brain. Adama is too stubborn to believe her. But I believe her.
10:47
Gaius prays to the One True God that He spare the sick child of one of his beautiful young female followers, and take him instead.
Then Gaius goes into the bathroom, and one of his followers helps him shave off his beard. And then, an angry man [it was Connor, from the pre-Season 3 webisodes] who blames Gaius for the death of his son on New Caprica attacks him in the bathroom. And then there's a commercial break. It looks like Gaius might get his death wish. Except I doubt they'd kill off Gaius in such a cheap manner.
10:56
Gaius' hot female followers know how to beat people up too! She saves his life, and then they get back to their worship-den, and the boy is cured. Did the One True God hear Gaius' prayers, or is it just a coincidence?
Starbuck tells Anders that if she found out he was a Cylon, she'd put a bullet through his head. Anders looked scared.
Then the fleet jumps, and Starbuck feels herself losing the way to Earth. Starbuck goes psycho, takes out some guards, grabs a gun, enters Roslin's room, and points the gun at her. End of episode.
The writers are setting us up to believe that Starbuck is one of the final five Cylons and that she's going to kill Roslin, much in the way that "Boomer" tried to kill Commander Adama.
I never liked Roslin much anyway. I'm still pretty sure that Starbuck isn't a Cylon.
CONCLUSION
A good episode, way better than the first episode of Season 3. In fact, better than any episode from Season 3.
That episode was better than all of last season put together! Lets hope that the rest of the season is just like it. And I also feel that Kara is not the final Cylon, but mostly because that would be fraking stupid. From what I've read, the reason S3 was so bad is because the writers were under pressure from execs to make the show more appealing to a mass market. If so, the good news is that totaly back-fired. I get the feeling that twenty and thirty-something people have more tolerance for extended story lines than our baby-boomer parents, which is probably the generation that the execs belong to.
I'm looking forward to more arguments folks, and I hope that some of you will read and comment on my blog. (Yeah I know, that was a shameless plug but I'd really like input from total strangers. Feel free to heckle, I only filter out stuff from my friends that reveal my personal information.)
: 4/05/2008 5:51 AMI'm still skeptical after the lame season 3, but at least the opener last night sucked me back in. Somewhat. I think the Ship of Lights is probably the only explanation for Starbuck's situation (at least at this point). It would indeed be cool if this was the case.
Can't agree about season 3 though, seems it was mainly whining Yank Conservatives who most vociferously had a problem with it which made it all the better.
: 4/05/2008 10:22 AMI don't think Starbuck is the final Cylon. I think Roslin is. There are some weird things that have happened to her which may point in that direction.
: 4/05/2008 11:03 PM- Why did the Raider know to scan Anders? Were these attacking Cylons possibly led by the Final Five (or Four) instead of the original seven?
- Will Caprica-Six or Athena ever "recognize" any of Anders, Foster, Tyrol, or Tigh in the way the raider did?
- If Starbuck needs to go back the nebula for guidance, why don't they just send her back in a Raptor with a ton of armed guards? They could do that without going off-track or returning to the "dangerous" nebula.
- This idea of Baltar having a momentary pang of selflessness and surrendering everything to the Cylon God, and getting rewarded for it, was established early on and is very interesting. In the earlier episodes it was left a little ambiguous about whether the "magic divine intervention" was actually effected by Cylon plants somehow.
For example, take the destruction of Olympic Carrier: Baltar needed it gone, and it was destroyed after it failed to transmit any evidence that it hadn't been tampered with. I thought at the time that maybe the Cylon God had engineered the Olympic Carrier's destruction through some Cylon plant (e.g. Dualla perhaps), as a response to Baltar's pleas.
But here the boy is saved as a direct result of Baltar's request, and I can't see how any Cylon agent could have arranged that. So it looks like perhaps the Cylon God can act directly upon the world, not merely through his agents.
- Wouldn't blowing up half that giant rotating ship, as the Cylons did, cause its center of mass to shift and make the whole thing terribly unstable? How is anyone surviving on that thing?
: 4/06/2008 12:20 AMGood episode to get us started off, although like all first episodes following a cliffhanger, it just calms us down a bit and whets the appetite for more.
Great contrast with high energy battle scenes and the slower and powerful scenes with Tigh/Adama, and Anders/Cylon Eye. Post battle, I found the Baltar plotline more interesting than the Starbuck one. I always find Baltar fascinating, but the Starbuck emotional reaction to being - quite logically - doubted after her disappearance seemed a little contrived.
Overall though, very good, and am on tenterhooks for episode 2.
My review
Anyway, that's my take. The sleeper has awoken.
I blame Michael Taylor, that guy fucked up Star Trek in DS9, and basically invented the jerk-off session that Voyager was. RDM, invited him to write in early Season 3, and made him head writer guy for Season 4.
: 4/19/2008 9:08 AM