BSG 2.13.09 – “No Exit”
- Yes, it’s a political website, but over at NRO’s The Corner, Jonah Goldberg is the resident sci-fi geek, and he’s a BSG fan. He has two interesting posts that almost perfectly summarize my feelings about this half of the season so far (Except for the parts about Zarek). Here’s the first one. Here’s the second.
- It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who finds Zarek’s actions out of character. (ht:Â Goldberg above)
- Mark Verheiden, one of the writers of BSG, admits they really had no long term plan and that they really have been making it all up as they go, and if you think that’s hurt the show, you’re bizarre. While I agree with his main point that you have to leave room for creativity and course corrections, he’s attacking a straw man. No one is saying they should have planned every beat out in advance. We’re just concerned because it’s clear that what’s happened these last two seasons has almost no connection with what happened the first two seasons. A lot of the early promise vanished when it became clear they radically changed the game plan halfway through. It’s like we started off playing football (soccer) and ended playing football (of the American variety), and the referees are pretending it was the same game the whole time because it has the same name.
Spoilers below the fold and all that.
* I’m a PC! And I can fix Cylons! Take that, you stupid Macintosh!
* This was the exposition episode. I’m betting there aren’t many more answers to be had at this point, even if there were as many questions created as answered. Moore & Co. likely want to finish out character arcs at this point, rather than mythology arcs. Although the next time preview indicates we may get a few more answers next week.
* Well, at least they explained the tears in the engine room wall. That explanation made sense. The other explanations – well, they were explanations, even if they had a rambling, let’s answer all the questions in a mad rush and hope the sheer flood of information covers the fact some of them don’t quite make sense. However, they did answer nearly all the questions I had, even small ones like the gaps in Cylon numbering.
* Let’s see – so, it was Cavil all along (I guess). Making him the evil mastermind behind it all seems like a late addition, but it works; I can go with it. It’s a little unclear how he would have been able to take control of the whole shebang like that, but at least he was given a good “why” for his motivation.
* Okay, so the 13th tribe were Cylons, and downloaded to reproduce. But once they got to Earth, they learned to procreate, and so stopped the downloading. But when Ellen and the others recreated downloading, they didn’t create new bodies that could procreate. Did they deliberately make Cylons that couldn’t procreate, or is there something about downloading that makes Cylons sterile? And wouldn’t the records from Kobol have left some hint the 13th tribe were artifical life forms.
* I’d expect the Council of 12 room to be a lot more trashed. Shouldn’t the chairs have bullet holes in them, with blood stains everywhere? Instead, it just looks like they forgot to clean up after a wild party.
* “We had to warn the other colonies to treat their Cylons well because we knew they would create them.” Or something. How did they know? Did the Cylons on Earth create other artificial life forms?
* These final five don’t seem like the type of people who would put their glowing images in a temple and give visions to President Roslin. Perhaps the writers are leaving room for god after all. Ellen’s comments seem to indicate that possibility, though I wonder if Moore & Co. will actually follow up on it, or just let “God did it” be the answer to most of the other mysteries.
* My wife’s review: “A very talky, cheeseball episode. The ‘give me a hug, I’m your mommy’ moments didn’t work for me. Overall, too much exposition and chitter-chatter. That nurse was rude, too. Also, Dr. I’maPC was too perky and didn’t mesh with the other characters – he seemed out of place.”
* My review: I actually liked it, even if it was talky. They found a way to make the exposition fit within a dramatic context, so it wasn’t just people sitting around discussing the past for no real reason. Besides, this is what the fans have demanded since the reveal of the five anyway. I’m happy with what we got.
* Five more episodes to go!
Posted on February 13, 2009, in Television. Bookmark the permalink. 17 Comments.
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I liked Hodgman. That was about it.
I get the feeling that the split between the 12 colonies and the 13th might not have been amicable on the humans side. I can see them telling the humanoid cylons to get lost and then trying to wipe the existence of robot-people from their history books, hence the non-existence of records that the 13th tribe were cylons. All that survived was the myth of some long, lost 13 tribe. It’s also possible that the humans, upon leaving Kobol, planned to recreate the cylons NOT in human form once they reached their new home. (Maybe they thought the human form to be blasphemous or something like that.) That might explain how the humanoid cylons of Earth knew the humans of the 12 colonies would eventually create centurions.
My joke was that if he’s a PC he must be a Cylon.
I kind of dug this episode. I think they are on a roll. 3 Episodes in a row I thought were great. Plus I thought the backstory to Ellen made a lot of sense.
That said, the whole inconsistency about nukes is a big bother.
I think that the God character is coming and that a lot will be tied to it.
I also think the Cylon plan makes a lot of sense: replace the humans, learn to reproduce, become more like machines.
Well, I can’t really reconcile how “learn to reproduce” fits with “become more like machines” – it seems those are two contradictory goals.
In the first two seasons, it seemed that Cylons actually wanted to be more human, not less. But perhaps there were two camps or something.
Still, this half of the season has almost (almost) been a return to form. The writing has improved and the story is starting to make sense again.
Also, I just had a thought, one reasons why (while I can go with it and it works), the reveal of Cavil as the big bad still doesn’t sit right and feels more like a stopgap retcon -
it lacked any and all foreshadowing. It isn’t so much a surprise as something out of left field. Imagine if it was suddenly revealed in Return of the King that Wormtounge was the real villain, and that Sauron wasn’t that big of a threat – or that one imperial officer who was promoted in Empire Strikes Back turns out to be the puppet master behind the throne in Return of the Jedi.
But, I half wonder why I complain at all. I enjoyed the show, after all.
Ivan, I think they want the characteristics of humans they (well Cavil) want but get rid of the characteristics they don’t. I think Ellen’s point of argument is that this is a mistake and they don’t see as valuable what is valuable.
There were several camps on what was or wasn’t good about humans.
I kind of thought they were playing Cavil up as the big bad several seasons ago.
So I don’t see this as out of left field. And while they were making a lot up along the way, parts were solidified several seasons ago. (Which makes the last 2 seasons that much more inexplicable)
enjoyed it a great deal. daniel will be interesting. Also, the galactica is gonna turn into a base ship!
In my opinion, this was a fairly sloppy gush of exposition, and I didn’t even find myself comprehending most of it, or what’s worse, even caring that I didn’t comprehend it.
It’s preposterous for Ellen to argue to Cavil and Boomer that she gave Cylons free will. What about when Boomer shot Adama? That wasn’t free will. That was programming.
I need some semblance of internal consistency. To me Cavil and Gaeta (R.I.P.) are the only people making any real sense anymore because they’re the only characters acting consistently with everything that’s occurred in the past.
And this whole Daniel thing coming up out of nowhere?! With the final cylon revealed it seems like such an obvious ploy to sustain audience interest.
Brian, having free will doesn’t mean you can’t be programmed. Even in humans. (Think hypnotism – although that’s weaker in humans) To be free is not necessarily to always be free. (Think heroin addiction) I actually thought they’d play up that fact, which they never did.
What about Daniel do you think is problematic?
I think Daniel is a clever way for them to cover the fact the late decision to create “the final five” (and it was a late decision, as interviews have shown) left a gap in the Cylon numbering.
Not that it won’t wind up creating something interesting in an episode or three, but at the moment it’s just a way to clear up another problem.
I agree with you, Clark in terms of the real world, but in terms of the world of BSG, in early seasons we were led to believe that Cylon programming could kick in at any time and they’d be powerless to resist shooting dear friends. For example, Boomer shot Adama, among other acts of sabotage if I’m not mistaken. This made the Cylon threat very real and insidious. It made the early seasons great. Now we’re expected to believe that the five designed the eight to have free will. I’m just confused.
The Daniel storyline will probably prove interesting but to me it seems like a last-minute patch to hold audience interest. They’re introducing an eleventh hour question because they’ve already answered, albeit unsatisfactorially in my opinion, nearly every other major question.
Given Cavil’s tampering with the other cylon models, the seeming ‘programming’ is fairly easily explained, I think.
I suppose we can blame a lot of the character inconsistency and the writers’ shortsightedness on Cavil now. That’s what I find annoying.
It seems to me that Cylons can program other Cylons for deep cover. Indeed Cavil did this to the “final five” as a form of punishment – giving them a false memory just as they did with Boomer. Given that we already know they can do this (with their deep sleeper agents) I don’t see how that is “character inconsistency and shortsightedness.” Rather it seems a feature of the show since day 1.
The Cylons have free will but can also be programmed to act in specific ways. Nothing was ever implied otherwise. Indeed Sharon’s choice to join Galactica and reject the Cylons is an example of this free will / programming duality from the first two seasons. Admittedly it was handled very well in the first two seasons whereas now we just got exposition.
Alright I finally saw the episode. Somebody help me out:
1. Tye was a young man when Bill met him. What’s the deal with the aging??
2. So the cylons lived on earth? Were there any humans there or was it all cylons there? What was the deal with that?
3. Who lived on Kobol again? Was it cylons only or really humans?
I must be missing stuff here.
Aging hasn’t been explained but presumably when they are processed with new memories they can craft whatever body they want. (Which makes one wonder why Cavil keeps an old one)
probably because Dean Stockwell ain’t getting younger…