12.11.06
Episode 3.10: “The Passage”
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
autumnfire said,
December 12, 2006 at 1:40 am
I had much the same reaction to this episode. Some of things you wrote are almost exactly what I said to my husband at the end of the show. Some of the reaction I’ve read was very positive, so it is nice to read a review that matches how I felt about it.
It absolutely seemed like the writers decided they wanted to kill Kat, then came up with some whacky, contrived story to do it (bad, Jane, bad). The reveals about her past felt particularly unnecessary. And to me, they felt a bit inconsistent with what we already knew of her. I could have sworn we learned in Final Cut that Kat had family and friends in the fleet. Maybe it was just friends. And you could argue that perhaps they all knew her with her stolen name. But it all felt very forced and out of left field to me.
I did like some of the scenes and moments in the episode (I especially liked the continuity with Starbuck putting Kat’s photo on the memorial wall just below the photo of Riley’s girlfriend that Kat had put on the wall), but overall I was not impressed this week.
ForgetfulBob said,
December 12, 2006 at 4:16 pm
I love reading your reviews, but I think you missed the mark this week. Your rating is pretty harsh for a decent episode. Sure, it’s your opinion, but it doesn’t feel justified from the text written.
“Suddenly Kat is a troubled young woman with a checkered past”
Suddenly? Hasn’t Kat always been a troubled young woman? At least that’s how I’ve seen her. She certainly wasn’t ‘untroubled’ before this episode.
“There was no reason for her to choose that particular path”
I thought this was obvious: she felt she had been treated so well by Adama and the crew, especially after being CAG during the occupation, that she was compelled to return the favor by sacrificing herself for the greater good. Afterall, she wasn’t sure if she had aided in the initial Cylon attack and wished to possibly exonerate herself of her prior sins. I understand in “Black Market” your confusion over the awful characterization of Lee, but in this case, Kat is a minor character, one we haven’t really learned much of before. To be honest, her being a drug runner/dealer/whatever isn’t all that surprising to me. It’s not like there was evidence to the contrary. Just because you don’t like what the writers chose to do to a character doesn’t mean it is “extraneous and unnecessarily damaging.” It’s just the writer’s choice to give more background to a character the audience didn’t know much about before this episode.
I do, agree, however, about your comments concerning why the fleet had to make the dangerous passage. I am going to have to watch again to try to understand that. That part at least didn’t make sense.
However, I don’t understand what you are trying to get across talking about D’Anna and Baltar. I think that plot made this episode; it certainly has been building since the exodus from New Caprica and I don’t see any problems with it at this time.
Administrator said,
December 12, 2006 at 5:26 pm
Let me try to explain better. It may be a more subtle point than I realized.
The problem with Kat’s background as presented in this episode is not the substance. It’s the lack of any indication previous to this episode that she had this hidden past. Giving her a possible connection to the Genocide and an appropriated identity is designed specifically to make the sacrifice more heroic. Nothing really led her to this point or to the revelation. The timing of that information was, to put it lightly, contrived. From a writer’s point of view, it’s obvious manipulation. I actually feel as though Kat had earned the right to sacrifice herself based on her established struggles, without the need to insert a rather silly layer of deception on top of it.
Now, as for the Baltar/D’Anna issue. The information was necessary for the plot arc to move forward, and it has more or less been building over time. However, in this case, the hybrid is used as an information dump. Baltar and D’Anna need to learn about the planet and the connection to the Five at this point in the plot, so the hybrid miraculously says something meaningful at the right moment to the right people. In essence, the information is unearned, especially when Baltar makes the enormous leap from the hybrid’s cryptic message to exactly the right interpretations.
In the end, I thought the writing was spotty at best, and I really didn’t like the way a number of aspects were handled. I gave the cast and director all the credit possible for making the most out of this, but comparatively, it was the weakest episode in a while.