BSG Episodes 2.1-2.5
At the end of last season’s finale, I had the general gist of the next few episodes figured out. Adama was dead, but the other pieces should be easy to pick up: Starbuck will return with the arrow, this and Adama’s death will prompt the military-government feud to end, a rescue ship will get Gaius and company off of Kobol, and basically everything will be back to normal in the first twenty minutes, in time for them to counter whatever new thing the Cylons throw at ‘em.
The lesson here is that I’m terrible at predictions. Now, what actually happened:
Episode 2.1
Damn, are we getting our asses kicked. I didn’t really understand the problem with the jump coordinates—can they not just follow the old set? Or if that’s destroyed and, as I understand it, they use some sort of jump-detection to find out where the rest of the fleet went, why can’t the Cylons do the same thing?
My favorite part of this episode was Gaeta’s bathroom epiphany: wait, if I move these bars of soap closer to each other, they’re more effective together. What if I do the same thing to the computers? Of course! Networking! At least that’s what I assume he was thinking.
Anyway, cool fight scene that I imagine would have been cooler if I watched this on a TV. For the first time since the pilot, the Cylons remember that they have a ton of missiles. Things go okay despite this, but a mysterious new ship crashes into the Battlestar. If this were Star Fox 64, the good guys would be going to the less cool level next.
Episode 2.2
And sure enough, it’s a pretty lame episode, despite the reasonably exciting premise and threat of total annihilation. This might be because, again, low resolution made everything hard to see, especially since the lights were out most of the time. Apparently the only way to kill a toaster-style Cylon is when it’s distracted by someone else. Lots of setup for good-guy-accidentally-shoots-other-good-guy-who-surprised-him, but for once a cliché is subverted. Hooray!
On Kobol, people we don’t really know are dying left and right. It’s a little sad.
Episode 2.3
This was a pretty good episode. Lots of infighting amongst Team Kobol, and the plan works out basically as you’d expect after the last episode: nobody actually fights Cylons head-on, because they’re super tough. It’s interesting how much humanity is sticking to rank, when so much of the time it’s clear that the people in charge are too hotheaded to make good decisions. This is realistic, I guess. Anyway, there’s some good drama culminating in Crashdown (Wikipedia tells me his real name is Alex Quartararo) getting killed by Gaius, of whom No. 6 is super proud. Everyone is stunned, even though they all totally wanted it to happen.
Meanwhile, Col. John McCain goes into full-on dick mode, Ellen Tigh (I’ll always giggle at that) is clearly evil, and the President spills the beans on her illness and connection to the prophecy.
That last bit is kinda interesting. It’ll be neat to watch as more and more characters realize the obvious truth that, yes, the prophecy is real. For some reason there are always Jack-like characters that dispute that fate exists, even when preposterously unlikely things happen that were predicted by ancient scrolls. But by season 5 of Lost, basically everyone was in full-on fate mode, embracing what they knew was destiny. This worked out well for the show, since they just started running towards the action instead of trying to live in peace. How long till the BSG crew does the same?
Episode 2.4
I’m not sure why I didn’t find the main plot here interesting. Martial law is declared, military-citizen tensions escalate further, and Roslin escapes, but none of that really grabbed me.
Can we talk a bit about the Cylon models? I originally thought there were twelve total, and at the end of the pilot that basically there were three each of four different kinds (Blond, Asian, Foppish, and Grizzled). But with No. 8’s revelation that there are 8 Cylons aboard the fleet, are we to understand that there are twelve different-looking models, and multiple copies of each? If so: damn. (And the next episode seems to confirm this.) But at least it suggests what I hoped was true, that nobody can suck as much as Ellen while still being human.
Meanwhile on Caprica, Starbuck and Helo meet up with some professional Quidditch players, and we remember that, more than anything, this show will always be about love at first sight. Maybe Starbuck/Anders and Billy/Dee can have a joint wedding!
Episode 2.5
Captive in a hospital! Excellent. The Caprica subplot is for the first time pretty cool-slash-terrifying. I like how even after Starbuck figures out that her “doctor” is a Cylon, she still waits for him to slip up and call her by his call sign, which she never told him. Then she kills him, so that his final thought can be “Damn, I wish I watched more movies so I didn’t make such a rookie mistake.”
The ovary farm is pretty horrific so I won’t write about it. I do like the idea that two people can only conceive if they’re in love. Would that this were true! Amiright, guys?!
The rest of the episode sets us up for Starbuck reuniting with everyone else soon, which I’m totally okay with. Will everyone we care about finally be in one place?
Oh, and Adama’s alive. Wee!
I know this is already long, but I wanna end by talking about the overall goal of finding Earth. Um… why are they doing this? So far the fleet has been entirely unsuccessful at staying away from the Cylons for any length of time. Why lead them to the only known safe haven for humans? Here, I even made a payoff matrix to show why this is dumb:
