12.15.06
Posted in Reviews at 6:53 pm by Administrator
Written by Mark Verheiden
Directed by Michael Rymer
Discussing the first half of a two-part story is always difficult. On the one hand, setting up a complicated, massive set of cliffhangers is a difficult but satisfying writing challenge. As many writers would attest, it’s sometimes an exercise of setting up all the pieces without necessarily knowing how it will all work out in the end. It’s also a lot easier to generate tension during the swift escalation of various situations, if the story is handled correctly.
On the other hand, seasoned viewers can become immune to the more obvious attempts at building up a story, and there are a number of pitfalls to be avoided. More time needs to be spent on introduction of the various scenarios to ensure that the escalation and complication of the story makes sense. The greater the scale, the greater the set-up requirements.
In this case, there are so many elements that the pacing is forced into overdrive. Much like “Pegasus”, this feels like an episode that was cut down to size from a much longer version. Of course, that’s always been true of the series: nearly every episode feels like a highlight reel, and you end up wondering what else never made it into the run time.
The result, however, is that some of the plot elements feel rushed, especially at the beginning. Tyrol’s discovery of the Temple of Five is a little too convenient, as is the sudden appearance of another text that explicitly references an object that points to the “road to Earth”. As I’ve said before, in light of “Torn”, I’m surprised that a greater effort hasn’t been made (by the priesthood, for instance) to compile all the references to such things. As it stands, they need to slip in a religious connection for Tyrol (including a hilarious story from his past) to make the leaps logical.
While I still don’t think that the connection between Baltar and D’Anna has been established very well, leaving the personal dynamics of the threesome in this episode a bit remote to the viewer, this opens up a lot of interesting ground for a spiritual connection between Humans and Cylons. Why would the Five, spiritual figures from more than 4000 years into humanity’s past, have a connection to the five unseen Cylon models, who would have emerged less than 40 years before the Genocide?
The Eye of Jupiter as a relic is interesting, but I wonder if the camera kept panning to the star with the nebula surrounding it because that, in fact, is the object in question. Of course, it could be that the star is getting ready to explode, which helps to place a critical timetable on the situation. This seems somewhat contrived, but so do a number of the plot elements. All of them are used to explore and complicate the interpersonal relationships, which is the key to the episode’s success.
Baltar comes face to face with Roslin and Adama, and the results are well worth the wait. Sharon finds out the truth about Hera, and when Roslin reveals her deception to Adama, it drives a wedge between them. The edge that seemed to return to Adama after “Unfinished Business” is evident here, as he plays a bluff that would result in some major deaths if his hand is forced. All of this drives the cliffhanger ending, as one would expect, and the real trick is figuring out how the situation will resolve without killing half the cast. (If the star’s instability plays a part, expect a lot of annoyed fans.)
Another major element of the episode is the relationship between Lee and Kara. Proving once again that “Unfinished Business” was an important episode and not filler, things have changed between them. Kara is taking a great deal of pleasure in fooling around with Lee, who wants them both to divorce their respective spouses to make it official. Kara, surprisingly, takes exception to breaking the “sacrament of marriage”, even though she has little problem tossing Anders to the curb on a regular basis. The scene is a bit ludicrous, but taken in tandem with her out-of-character speech in “The Passage”, it could all be a sign of increasing instability on her part. It wouldn’t be the first time that the writers played out a subtle character shift with forethought (Adama, for example).
The point is that Lee needs Anders to follow orders, and Anders is less than inclined. The two of them are two Alpha males clashing for control and dominance, and the results are not pretty. Even when the dialogue dips into pedestrian territory, the actors sell the conflict with their body language.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the episode is that it’s unexpectedly focused on character. That’s always the case with this show, but sometimes the bigger episodes with a rushed pace come down to the effects sequences. In this case, all the fireworks were reserved for interpersonal conflicts. In essence, despite the wider scope and escalation in scale, this episode has more in common with “Unfinished Business” than it does with “Exodus: Part II”. The trick will be making the resolution of the cliffhanger equally engaging.
(As a sidenote: I also have a podcast associated with my various reviews called “Dispatches from Tuzenor”. Current episodes cover “Battlestar: Galactica”, so it might be something of interest. Go to http://entil2001.libsyn.com if you want to listen!)
Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4
Final Rating: 8/10
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12.13.06
Posted in Reviews at 12:15 am by Administrator
So check this out…I’ll be going to a free screening of the BSG mid-season finale, “The Eye of Jupiter”, on Thursday night! The cool thing is that the screening will be in an actual movie theatre.
BSG on the big screen!
Frak, yeah!
(And yes, this means the review will be up sometime on Friday, since that’s part of the deal…)
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12.11.06
Posted in Reviews at 11:38 pm by Administrator
Written by Jane Espenson
Directed by Michael Nankin
Late in the second season, the writers ran into trouble when they chose to generate a seedy past for one of the main characters out of whole cloth. The result was “Black Market”, an episode that suffered from the dual sins of poor characterization (Lee Adama’s sudden sordid lifestyle and checkered past) and an over-the-top plot (human trafficking in what amounts to a small town). Even Ron Moore expressed his dissatisfaction with the episode, vowing to do everything possible to avoid the same mistakes.
Unfortunately, “The Passage” is what happens when history repeats itself. In this case, the whys and wherefores are even harder to fathom. For one thing, the main writer was Jane Espenson, well-regarding from her time with Joss Whedon’s Buffyverse, which seldom relied on cheap dramatics or retroactive character changes. Even if the writer’s room had dropped the ball, couldn’t Espenson have gotten things back on track?
The victim in this case is “Kat”, Starbuck’s longtime nemesis. Kat has gone through hell to gain the respect of her fellow pilots, but much of that is undermined in this episode. Suddenly Kat is a troubled young woman with a checkered past, possibly responsible for the infiltration of Cylons into the twelve colonies. Interesting parallels with “Hero” aside, making her an ex-drug runner seems extraneous and unnecessarily damaging.
All of it has a point, of course. The audience is meant to realize that it’s possible to become a hero, even when you’ve started at the absolute bottom, that it doesn’t matter who you are, but what you are. At the same time, Kat is driven by her self-loathing and guilt into a long and painful death. There was no reason for her to choose that particular path, especially after so much time has passed, and so any “lessons to be learned” are buried under a mess of confusing and contradictory messages. By the time Kara lectures her about responsibility, it’s clear that some of the characterizations are way off.
Beyond the inexplicable characterization, there’s an unnecessary degree of technobabble, something that Espenson herself has praised the series for avoiding. As if to facilitate the decision to kill off Kat, the writers came up with a ridiculous premise that would allow for self-sacrifice and maximum peril for the Colonial Fleet. The problem is that the logic of the situation doesn’t hold water.
The audience is asked to believe that the fleet must go through the center of a deadly star cluster to reach a planet with enough food to stave off sudden starvation. To eliminate the most obvious of alternate solutions, the characters just dismiss the idea of going around the star cluster by saying it would take too long. Apparently it never occurred to anyone to send just the ships necessary for food processing through the cluster and send the rest around cluster on a safer route. Once the food is ready, ships can jump the shorter distance to where the bulk of the fleet is. That’s just one solution; many others come to mind with a little consideration.
This episode also provides the basis for another clash between Humans and Cylons, as Baltar gets some oracular advice from the Basestar hybrid. By linking the hybrid’s information with D’Anna’s dreams, Baltar manages to point the Cylons towards a possible marker for Earth. There’s also an apparent connection to the five unidentified Cylon models. While this leads Baltar down an interesting (and familiar) direction, it’s also incredibly contrived.
If D’Anna’s explorations of the space between life and death, guided in some twisted way by Baltar, had led them to some shared understanding, it might have worked better. That was already implied by her decision to engage Baltar and Caprica-Six in their unusual sleeping arrangements. Instead, the writers chose to dump some exposition into Baltar’s lap. Unless the writers manage to make better sense of that plot element, this contrivance could undermine confidence in the writing staff.
The episode wasn’t a complete loss, of course. The score was excellent as always, often lending more to a scene than the emotional context deserved. It’s been a while since we’ve seen the memorial wall, so I thought that was a nice touch. I had been expecting a return to that idea since the exodus from New Caprica, if only because there should be a lot of new content after the losses there. Even so, it’s a good example of what the audience was probably doing as a whole: searching for the seasoning that would make this episode easier to digest.
(As a sidenote: I also have a podcast associated with my various reviews called “Dispatches from Tuzenor”. Current episodes cover “Battlestar: Galactica”, so it might be something of interest. Go to http://entil2001.libsyn.com if you want to listen!)
Writing: 0/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 0/4
Final Rating: 4/10
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12.04.06
Posted in Reviews at 10:37 pm by Administrator
Written by Michael Taylor
Directed by Robert Young
Ever since the second season finale, fans have been wondering what happened to the characters in the year or so between the decision to colonize New Caprica and the Cylon Occupation. In particular, there were some obvious character shifts that needed to be explained. Adama was far too soft and unfocused, there was some tension between Lee and Kara, and Kara married Anders. So what brought about those changes, and what does it mean for the characters now?
Adama has been at the center of controversy, because many felt that the writers had destroyed the character or lost touch with who he was supposed to be. In some cases, that was an example of fans distrusting the writing staff, assuming that it was a mistake instead of a calculated story decision. In this case, it appears that Adama’s character shift was completely intentional.
The question is: does Adama’s decision to relax his military posture and adopt a softer policy make sense? It depends on whether or not it’s logical to assume that Baltar’s presidency broke his spirit. Before he came to respect Roslin, Adama felt that he was the only one capable of holding it all together, and that the fleet expected it of him. Once he allied with Roslin, that attitude was reinforced. So with Baltar’s ascension, did he come to the conclusion that it wasn’t his responsibility anymore? Did he feel as though his moral authority had been undermined or removed?
Roslin’s own decision to step out of the politics and find a new life might have played into that psychological shift. In this episode, we see their relationship more clearly. If the promise of New Caprica had been fulfilled, would Adama and Roslin have settled together, once and for all? This would explain why Adama was so out of character, even during and after the rescue. And it also confirms that some of his anger towards Lee was, in fact, transference of his own self-loathing.
Lee’s weight gain and general dissatisfaction with himself can now be linked to his decision to leave Dee and pursue a relationship with Kara, only to have it all fall apart. Dee is far from stupid, and she had to have known about the tryst to some degree. Lee wasn’t particularly good at hiding his emotions, and apparently by the time of the Occupation, he was treating Kara and Anders poorly.
Kara shoulders quite a bit of the blame. It turns out that her ambivalence with Anders never really disappeared, despite how it might seemed in the second season finale. She thought that rescuing Anders would exorcise her demons, but that never really happened. Kara is still dealing with some serious self-sabotaging issues, and she continues to lash out at the people who love her.
What makes this episode fun is the structure. A lot of information is covered in flashbacks as the characters beat the hell out of each other in a semi-regulated boxing match. What starts in the teaser as a means of blowing off steam quickly becomes deeply personal, despite what Adama might say, and by the final act, it’s hard to watch. Some of the characters seem to find themselves again, but the process is brutal. It’s a distinctly male/military way of resolving emotional interpersonal issues, akin to bitter enemies fighting in the schoolyard, only to become best friends. Time will tell if the physical scars will really help to strip away the emotional ones.
(As a sidenote: I also have a podcast associated with my various reviews called “Dispatches from Tuzenor”. Current episodes cover “Battlestar: Galactica”, so it might be something of interest. Go to http://entil2001.libsyn.com if you want to listen!)
Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4
Final Rating: 8/10
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