Speaking of series that blur the line between science fiction and “real” stories: this week’s episode of “Battlestar Galactica” hit me like a ton of space-bricks. It’s called “Faith” and the rest is spoilers and you’re gonna have to give me a second because I think there’s something in my eye…

I was already annoyed with the episode even before the opening credits started, because its episodic television underwear was showing. Characters were doing stuff not because it made sense, but because the writers needed them to go from here to there and squeeze a cliffhanger in the middle. So there’s a big standoff with everybody yelling at each other and pointing guns and I was hoping that somebody would just shoot already. And then they did, and it wasn’t as cool as I’d been hoping for.

But then it all started to kick in, and they tapped right into the section of my brain that can have me bawling at a TV show. I can make a list of all the parts that made me gasp and/or tear up and/or were intensely creepy:

• Showing an FTL jump from the cockpit
• Jumping right into the middle of the semi-organic Basestar wreckage
• Starbuck finally seeing the gas giant and “comet” from her vision
• Six’s violent attack, and the crew member trying to talk and take a few steps before falling down dead
• Roslin’s description of her mother’s (or her own) fear of death
• The hybrid’s long sustained scream as she was about to be unplugged
• Emily Cancerpatient running to her family on the shore
• Adama telling Roslin that she’s the one who gave him faith in finding Earth

This is the only episode of “Battlestar Galactica” that’s really moved me like this — going from genuinely scary (that scene with the hybrid really creeped me out, reminding me of the scene in Miller’s Crossing where the Dane gets attacked), to genuinely moving without being maudlin. It’s the potential of the whole series that’s always been hinted at, but in my opinion was never quite achieved.

“The X-Files” tried to hit on the same themes of death and purpose and faith and belief, struggling to be more than just genre television, but ultimately imploding from the mass of its gimmicks. It almost never worked; Scully’s cancer was more tedious than moving, and many of the episodes managed to be good but not all that deep or meaningful.

A lot of “Battlestar” has the same problem, actually: whenever they try to be relevant, it seems like ham-fisted allegory or a clumsy attempt to shoehorn “meaning” into a sci-fi/action show plot. (Worse is when they try to shove “shades of gray” into a situation that hasn’t earned it.) The characters and stories are strong enough that it’s usually good television, but I always feel like I’m giving them credit for being intelligent enough to make an effort, not that it’s made me genuinely feel like they want me to feel.

All of the scenes with Roslin and Emily Cancerpatient totally worked for me, though, even though their version of the afterlife wasn’t all that original. (And they were especially moving performances when compared to Gaeta’s “don’t let them take my leg” stuff, which just struck me as fake drama coming out of nowhere). And what was genius was finding a way to have it not be just a standalone episode, but fit in with all the themes of the series — the search for Earth, the Cylons’ questioning their existence, and all the characters trying to figure out their purpose, their individuality, and their identity.

Plus, apparently there’s going to be a Cylon Basestar in the Colonial fleet now. That’s kind of cool, right? And Lucy Lawless is coming back!

And if anybody was wondering like I was, but didn’t feel like looking back through the end credits: the other cancer patient was played by Nana Visitor from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”

The fourth season of “Battlestar Galactica” starts this Friday, and I couldn’t be more excited even if I were the guy from Anthrax.

The SciFi.com home page is currently overtaken by a bunch of video clips intended to drum up anticipation and make you buy a Walkman phone. The “Phenomenon” clip has a bunch of people from other shows talking about how much they love “Battlestar,” ostensibly outing themselves as nerds but really just coming across as a bunch of people who know how to talk on camera when surrounded by studio lights. (Not that they’re insincere, just that I’ve seen what it’s like when real nerds effuse about their favorite television show, and it tends not to get you hyped up about anything other than eugenics). My opinion of Brad Paisley went up 1000%; my assessment of the guys from “Robot Chicken” remains unchanged.

Entertainment Weekly ran the picture at the top of this post (which you can get as a download for your desktop background), with the cast arranged like The Last Supper, a few months ago, and at that point I realized I’ve crossed into giddy fan territory with the show. I had flashbacks to when I’d dig through my brother’s copies of Starlog to find any trace of Star Wars, and I’d buy any magazine that had even a mention of Star Wars on the cover. None of that stuff had any real info, or even a fraction of the “insider” promotional stuff you can find on the internet these days, but you got into it just to keep reminding yourself “I’m still a really big fan of this!” I was getting afraid I’d become too jaded to get that excited about anything like this anymore.

I’ve mentioned it before, but the thing I like best about all the promotional stuff for BSG is that the cast comes across as people who just know they’re making something cool. There’s no sense that they think they’re better than the material, and little sense that they think they’re too cool for the fans. They’re attractive TV people who are even more comfortable around dorky fans than I’d ever be, and I’m a dorky fan and not an attractive TV person.

You’ll always hear it stressed that BSG works because it’s not science fiction, but drama set in a science fiction environment — but that doesn’t come across as defensive. And it’s not until you see or read an interview with the people involved that it’s clear the show has actually lived up to that premise. You’ll see Tricia Helfer or Grace Park or Mary McDonnell going on about Cylons and Vipers and hybrid babies and light-speed jumps, all as they pertain to their characters, and you realize that possibly for the first time, somebody’s made something with spaceships and robots that isn’t intended just for some geek fringe.

I got back from Thanksgiving to find the “Battlestar Galactica: Razor” movie waiting for me. On a scale of 1 to 10 I’d rate it radical. (For comparison, the episode where they get off of New Caprica rates a holy crap that was wicked awesome, and the one where Starbuck gets kidnapped on a farm rates a 3).

Really, it only earns a “radical” for showing the old-school Cylon Centurions, and for dropping a few bombs as to the overall storyline, with Starbuck’s “destiny” and the Cylons’ plot. But the rest of the movie suffered, because it did the stuff the series doesn’t usually do — show big set pieces and the details of “side” stories. There’s a sequence where a bunch of Cylons attack the Pegasus at a shipyard, and it is pretty impressive, but it mostly serves of a reminder of how well the series conveys an epic space battle without actually showing the space battle.

And it’s the same for the story. We already knew that Admiral Cain was a bitch, from when she was on the series. The movie just revealed that wait, no really, she was a total bitch. There’s a half-assed attempt by Adama at the end of Razor to say that “I’m not sure I would’ve done differently in her situation,” but that just seemed like a feeble attempt to add depth and moral ambiguity to a character that had neither. And in the end, it made the whole Pegasus story seem smaller and less interesting. The more they show of the spacefights, the more you realize how small and forgettable they are; the more they show of the characters, the more you realize how two-dimensional and unlikeable most of them are, and how all the plot threads are a little convoluted and flimsy.

I mentioned that when I first saw seasons 1 and 2, I saw most of the episodes out of order, and missed a couple. As a result, I had the sense that everything was much larger and deeper than it really is. The show excels at suggesting more depth and scope than is really there; when you watch everything in order, it starts to stretch the plausibility.

For instance, I know that there are only 12 Cylon models, so it makes sense to keep seeing the same ones over and over again. But how come there are over 40,000 humans, but there are still only 4 or 5 people in the military? We keep seeing and hearing other ones, but it still comes back to Apollo and Starbuck being called in as not just the best pilots in the fleet, but the only ones capable of acting as bouncers for a summit meeting, hostage negotiators, mining facility inspectors, secret raids on Cylon Base Stars, etc.

There was a scene in Razor where they assembled the entire good guy cast into one place to stare at a spaceship on green screen, and it was kind of comical. You could almost hear the actors’ cars in the parking lot, their engines still running. This set up a cool plot element for the final season, and it tied into the “web episodes” pretty well, but it still suffered from the syndrome of having about 4 people in the entire galaxy to which everything of any significance happens.

But it ultimately doesn’t matter, of course. I’m still going through the episodes on DVD in order, and I’m still enjoying the hell out of them. I’d feel a little better if we didn’t have to wait until March for the final season to start, but at the rate I’m going, it’ll probably take me that long to get caught up.

Speaking of set detail and “Battlestar Galactica,” I think I may have uncovered more shocking evidence that the colonists have connections to Earth. This has all happened before, and it will all happen again:


Like all of the Battlestars, the Galactica relies on NEC’s Multisync Series for the brightest, sharpest LCD displays in the entire galaxy. So see we all.

Has anybody on the internets made a parody video showing a Cylon waking up in the resurrection chamber and hearing the “Intel Inside” start-up sound? If not, pretend I made one and posted it here, because that is high comedy.

That same episode has what might be my favorite shot in the entire “Battlestar Galactica” series to date:

“I suspect this disc might be a fake, Commander. My first clue that it wasn’t an actual Colonial Defense Ministry disc is that we don’t have any devices that will play it because it’s not round.”

One of the comments from Ron Moore’s podcast about the series is that they never bothered to explain how the fleet got its infinite supply of cigarettes. I think the best explanation is that they form them out of all the excess paper they obsessively cut the corners off of.

I was just watching a few minutes of the original “Battlestar Galactica” series, and because I’m a nerd, I noticed that the displays and panels in the Vipers were full of English text. Because I’m a really big nerd, I started to wonder what that means in the context of the series as a whole.

There was a big deal made about the season 3 finale’s choice of music — it’s supposed to be some momentous sign that the colonists haven’t just been following a myth, and they really do have some kind of connection to Earth.

But modern English is all over the place in “Battlestar Galactica.” Some of it you have to have for dramatic impact:

So you can say that they’re just auto-translating whatever language the colonists speak into a version of English that exists thousands of years later. Which is fine, but they’ve also got it in places where it doesn’t matter — in badges and logos, books, and plastered on the side of the ship. The only real attempts at indicating they’re a truly alien group of people is that they’re still polytheistic (very cool), and that they cut the corners off all their paper (I still don’t get that).

The only reason I would’ve noticed any of this at all, is because another franchise already tackled the “problem.” I can still vividly remember seeing The Empire Strikes Back for the first time (Phipps Plaza in Atlanta, represent!) and every little detail just blowing my nine-year-old mind. When Luke is arguing with R2-D2 about flying to Dagobah, all of R2’s speech is translated onto a screen in the cockpit:

There’ve been dozens of documentaries and making-of promotions about the Star Wars movies and how they put insane amounts of effort into production details. But it still impresses me that they thought to invent a language not just for the aliens, but for the main characters. All as a reminder that the story is taking place you know where and you know when.

But I also remembered something from the first movie — I’m not sure how, because I was only six years old at the time. But this has still stood out in my mind just as clearly as any of the other memorable images:

That’s from when Ben Kenobi disables the tractor beam, and apart from the numbers on various displays, it’s the only bit of English text in the whole movie. (There are letters and numbers that flash on Darth Vader’s screen during the final battle, but they’re fuzzy, hard to make out, and aren’t there long enough to read).

The reason I’m only embarrassed to recognize this kind of thing, instead of being completely ashamed, is because I know I’m not alone. The special edition of the movie, in addition to the Greedo nonsense, wacky Jabba, and that damn shockwave, added this:

The same text, now in Basic. (Yes, the common language in Star Wars is called Basic, sometimes called Galactic Standard. You think after all this I’m going to pretend I’m not enough of a nerd to know that?)

I’m not sure if it was changed for the 1978 theatrical release, or if it was just put in for the “special” edition. But still, somebody involved in the production cared enough about creating an alien universe that they put in that detail. And they were thinking of this kind of thing as far back as 1979. Obviously, world-building alone can’t save a movie — the Star Wars prequels had insanely detailed concept art and production design — but I think it’s part of what makes the movies classic.

In case it sounds like I’m faulting the new “Battlestar Galactica” for not doing this, I’m not. They had more hours of content in their first half-season than all of the Star Wars movies combined, and having to constantly translate everything would’ve just been nerd-wankery that would’ve gotten in the way of the story. Their sets are just as detailed, like with Tigh’s fighter squadron logo hanging on the wall, or the minor but ingenious touch of writing “NO STEP” on the Viper bodies just like on a real aircraft. Especially when you compare it to the original series, which pretty clearly all took place on sparse sets somewhere in a Los Angeles studio. The reason the new series has so much resonance is mostly because of the writing, but also because at every step in the production, they’ve treated it as part of a real story that’s really taking place in a real world. Right down to the sparse sets on the Cylon basestars, which seem so alien because they look like they were filmed somewhere in a Los Angeles studio.

Plus, the production designers for “Galactica” realize how to make the civilization non-Earth-like exactly where it counts. A big part of that is the music, which they’ve chosen from the beginning to be foreign and vaguely mystical-sounding. Just like Star Wars wouldn’t have worked as well without the classical space-opera soundtrack, BSG has a constant subtle reminder that you’re watching an alien civilization with an alien religion. So the reason the song from the season finale worked so well at “breaking the fourth wall” and throwing everything off balance isn’t because it’s the only connection to Earth that we’ve ever seen, but because it’s the only pop song we’ve ever seen.

And because I’ve been taking so many screenshots, here’s one from “Battlestar Galactica” where you can totally see Starbuck’s nipple:

The season 3 finale of “Battlestar Galactica” aired tonight. According to the SciFi channel, season 4 doesn’t start until 2008. Word on the street is that there’ll be a two-hour movie “bridging” the season, not continuing from the finale, but introducing things that’ll be resolved in season 4.

In my whole history of watching things, I can’t remember when or if I’ve ever had such a hard time deciding if I liked something. My gut reaction throughout was “oh hell yeah.” But there was just as much “what the hell is going on here?” I really can’t say whether I thought it was unbelievably, unacceptably cheesy; or was one of the coolest things I’ve seen on a TV series. Which means, I guess, that it was the latter.

It goes without saying that big stuff follows, so don’t read the rest unless you want to have the finale (and maybe the whole season) ruined for you…

Read the rest of this entry »

TVSquad forwarded along a New York Post story, which is pretty much completely unsubstantiated speculation quoting from an anonymous “tipster,” that the producers of “Battlestar Galactica” want to end the series after the fourth (next) season. This is similar to the claims the “Lost” guys have made that they’ve got an ending in sight and are figuring out how to bring the series to a close after “one or two” more seasons.

It’s a good idea in both cases, and I’m not saying that just because I really really want to see “Galactica 2009.” I can’t think of any series that maintained its quality after four seasons, and with high concept series with a definite premise (finding Earth, getting off the island), it just makes it all the more clear that you have to have an end in sight.

By all rights, the most recent “Lost” episode, “The Man From Tallahassee,” should have had me jumping up and down making awkward grunting sounds. It was exactly the kind of stuff I’ve been wanting to see in the series. Real answers to questions, including one that’s been around since episode 1. A flashback that mattered, and had a really shocking scene in it. Hints at something larger, with a mysterious power about the island. Strong performances all around. A big explosion.

And a sign that they knew what they were doing, and Locke’s actions a few episodes ago weren’t just unmotivated idiocy. He had a plan, and we’re only seeing now what his real motives were.

I read a review of the episode that complained this development just made it clearer that the writers are making it up as they go along, and now they’d written themselves and excuse to pull any plot development they wanted out of their asses. (Or their magic boxes, as the case may be).

I had the opposite reaction. I thought this was the first in a long while that really showed steps towards tying things together. Jack’s dad, Kate’s horse, Eko’s brother Yemi, and now Locke’s discovery — they’re all connected, and Ben has seen this kind of thing happening on the island and is trying to explain it. Not only were the characters brought back to focus with this episode, but the events were as well.

Still, it ended with my feeling pretty unimpressed. I’ve been saying for a while that the “feel” of the show is more important than the answers. That anything the writers could possibly come up with to explain everything is going to feel like a let-down, because the hints at greater mysteries are by definition more interesting than the explanations. Now I’m having to back up that claim, and it’s tough. Myst-like hatches full of antiquated video monitors and mail slots that lead to nowhere, and underground bunkers with secret UV messages and record collections and secret serums, are always going to be more interesting than bright yellow compounds with swingsets and pool rooms.

And they’re already getting a diminished return on investment with their shocking revelations. I can guarantee you that had Locke’s flashback shown in seasons one or two, it would’ve been horrifying and exciting. But last night, it was just a brief flash of interest, like any other instantly forgettable TV stunt. After another season of this, they’re going to have to bring out the big guns to be satisfyingly shocking and relevatory.

In preparation for next week’s “Battlestar Galactica” finale, and the long hiatus until the next season, I’ve been going back through and watching the DVDs, starting with the miniseries. I came to the show late, so I always had the impression that the series was much larger than what I was aware of. That some of the events of the series had more impact to those who’ve been watching all along, seeing more than just the glimpses shown in the “previously on…” bits.

I’ve been surprised by two things: First, that I’ve seen more of the series than I remembered. I’d somehow seen the entire miniseries and first several episodes, apparently, and there are just four or five from the second half of the first season that I’d missed.

Second, that they covered so much in the first three hours of the miniseries. I’d thought that they’ve been building layer on layer of intrigue over the past couple of years, but 90% of what’s going on now (minus New Caprica and the Occupation) was established at the beginning. That’s both good and bad — good that they have had solid ideas of the characters and the central drama since the beginning, bad that they’ve kind of been coasting on that for so long.

I think BSG would do well to have a clear ending in sight, explaining what really motivates the Cylons, what is this plan we hear about at the beginning of every episode, and perhaps most importantly, finally explaining exactly what the hell is going on with Baltar and his visions of Six. I don’t know if they could do all that in one season, but in the past they’ve shown they can. Whatever the case, a fifth season would most likely kill the show.

And I guess I’ve realized a third thing about “Battlestar”: the value of subtext. My memory of the series was that it was just overwhelmingly, unrelentingly dark and depressing. Watching the miniseries again now reminded me that it’s not, really; in retrospect, it’s even a little bit manipulative and melodramatic. Obviously, now I know what’s going to happen, so the surprise is gone.

But more than that, I’m watching to see specific plot developments instead of just the “feel” of the show. They communicate that feeling so well, without having to repeatedly state it directly. It makes the more recent episode seem all the more heavy-handed and deliberately obtuse by comparison. The best thing I can say about the series is that at least in the early days, it doesn’t overstate its message. During the miniseries, you’d get a line of dialogue like, “It’s the end of the world, Lee,” and that was enough. Lately, it’s been more “It’s the end of the world, and that is why we need to maintain strict demands on fuel production and remain anti-labor in spite of our push for democracy, and it is this kind of thing that shows what a gray moral area we now live in.”

I’ve been negligent in my “Battlestar Galactica”-watching duties for the past month, so I spent the last couple of days getting caught up on the last four episodes.

I’ve got to be vague, here, since there may yet be brothers of man, out there, among the blogosphere, who are waiting for the DVD release to watch the show. I’ll just say that it’s been troubling, and I’m getting really creeped-out by my TV series-destroying powers.

It’s not even the obvious plot events that are bugging me, as much as the general up-and-down nature of the show. People keep acting wildly inconsistently — they’ve got a basic character type that they mostly stay true to, but within that, they’re all over the map. What’s an unforgivable sin one episode becomes standard practice a few weeks later. A guy can commit treason and get a “no harm, no foul” from the Admiral in one episode; a short while later, Adama is threatening to shoot the Chief’s wife to get back at him (and just a couple of weeks before that, he was getting all emotional trying to save her).

One of the strengths of the series, as I understand it, is that it tries to put everything in a moral gray area, and it tries to add contemporary relevance to the events instead of just making it a sci-fi action series. That’s all fine, except that when you don’t have a stronger backbone for the story, and real consistency across episodes, it all comes across as self-contained Ripped From Today’s Headlines stories. I’m glad they have the conscience to tackle real issues, but there are some places where stories about racism and labor disputes and class warfare just don’t fit.

The most recent episode (the one about Baltar’s lawyer) shows signs they might be pulling out of the tailspin. I honestly couldn’t tell you if the writing was actually intelligent, or if it was just obtuse but meant to sound intelligent. Whatever the case, it worked for me. And it looks like they’re finally committed to building up to something big.

This is the only series I can think of where I’ve disliked the individual stand-along episodes so much. Usually I look forward to them; as the “series mythology” stuff is generally tedious, and smaller episodes give writers the chance to experiment and present a fully-fleshed out idea. On “Battlestar Galactica,” they just get in the way.

Update: I guess I should’ve waited until after tonight’s episode to start complaining. Because tonight’s was pretty damn cool. And I can’t remember when I’ve ever watched a TV series and had no clue what was going to happen. I can’t even speculate how things are going to turn out next week.