Blue Eyes Designs

Any of you who know me, well, at all really. Have probably heard me ramble at some point or another about my favorite show, Battlestar Galatica. I owe RB the dubious honor of introducing me to the sci-fi crack that is the remake of the campy 70’s series. I pledge my allegiance to BSG because it, unlike much of the widely distributed sci-fi that’s out there these days, resides in the realm of the grey, the hazy, foggy regions where a character is not immediately identifiable as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and your opinion of them might change completely from one minute to the next. It’s the type of show where you can’t arm-chair quarterback, because honestly, you’re not sure what you would have done either. It’s the kind of show that appeals to my need for intellectual content wrapped in a narrative with characters that I don’t feel embarrassed to care about.

And it’s coming under fire.

I usually try not to respond to fan-blather about media that I find particularly tasteful, however this article denouncing Battlestar Galatica was in a higher profile place than a backwater fan-board and has raised my ire.

Tread not lightly into the extended entry. It’s about 1300 words. I kinda got long winded, but I think that’s OK. As E pointed out, it’s something that I’m passionate about and I don’t think I would mind one bit if BSG talk became a regular feature of LineNoise, as long as it keeps the fan-freakiness to a dull roar.

So I’ll be the first to admit that last week’s episode was definitely non-conventional. For those who didn’t watch, but for some reason care about this rant anyway, it took place within the framework of “The Dance” a night of open boxing among the crew of the last human starship to vent frustrations and quell restlessness. Throughout the episode, as the characters fight, the viewers are presented with flashbacks that flesh out and explain actions and relationships that were more or less jumped over in the year that’s skipped between seasons two and three. To be completely honest, this sort of show NEEDED to happen. You can’t just skip a year when several relationships obviously change and rearrange without some sort of explanation. How can you justify your characters motives when noone knows where the hell they’re coming from?

Well, apparently people just don’t like it and are hailing it as sign that BSG is doomed. Do I agree? Of course not. Do I agree with some of the things on his list? Yes. Here-in I’ll disassemble this “top ten”.

10. I was intrigued to learn about a possible prequel series. I’m sure to any of the diehards that might be reading this (RB) that this isn’t news, but to me, it’s novel and so I’m going to talk about it. The author of the above mentioned article does bring up a good point – how much time can one expect to be devoted to the here and now when the driving forces behind the show are thinking about future prospects? I can’t help but draw comparisons to shows with other similarly visionary-driven processes such as The West Wing. They hang on a bit for a while, but eventually become something completely different or stay the exact same thing without innovation within the established world.

9. One of the charms of this series, and its style is its long-arc format. Things don’t necessarily tie up in a neat bow every couple of weeks and that’s one of the things that makes it so compelling. Not to mention that if you have to solve every problem you create either your problems are going to get less and less interesting or solutions the solutions will be more and more predictable and/or difficult to believe (magic technobabble, anyone?). Our world is full of unknowns and unsolved dramas. I don’t believe its too unrealistic to ask us to believe that their world has them too.

8. Oh for crying out loud – where the hell were you for the arc of Starbuck-and-the-baby? This is just wrong. And besides – when people go through significant chages in their lives, they might just chance some of the way that they present themselves, too. Hair for example: how many people cut their hair when they graduate college to prep for the “real world” and how many soldiers let their hair grow when not on active duty?

7. *sigh* Wrong again. How about the subtle development of the relationship between Adama and the President? Or the arc of his relationship with Apollo in the miniseries to where it is now?

6. Wha? Did I miss something? Oh right, that DREAM SEQUENCE. Not part of Baltar’s fucked up character AT ALL. While we’re on the subject of cylons, however, I would like to add a “Where the hell are the other 6 models of hybrid?” I’m getting kinda tired of pussy-footing around the subject (and honestly, getting kinda tired of the “is this Caprica Six or Nasty Six? Good Sharon or Bad Sharon?” game. I wouldn’t mind a little “fleshing out” per-se of the Cylon ranks.

5. Yeah, kinda. But less “campy” than, ok, well maybe it is campy. The whole sterility of it fits with the Cylon half, but not the human half. Certainly they go through an awkward “run into the walls and scratch things” phase too. Oh, and the “I’m going to put my hands in this weird gel and mind-meld with the computer thing”? Kinda lame. But really, we can’t have them plugging themselves in every other episode or that would get gross. The ship-human hybrid? Incredibly fascinating and ripe for the picking.

4. No matter how good it gets, you can’t forget that it’s issue-driven sci-fi and every now and then they’re going to hit you over the head with the fact. Get used to it and get over it. But you know what, it’s never “this guy gets screwed because they did a bad thing” it’s “crap, we don’t know what to do hear because it’s such a grey area”. So you have a bug up your ass about the “this virus kills Cylons” arc. Well, you know what? It’s plausible and good story-fodder. And, you know, food for thought.

3. Wha? This may be a sign that the writers have written themselves into a corner and now they have shit or get off the pot, or it could be a way of, as I said earlier, covering the freaking year that they skipped. Just a thought. Personally, making characters richer and filling in those history gaps is OK by my. But only as long as it comes within the framework of advancing the current point in the plot , not just “let’s sit around drinking and talking about the past.” The thing I liked about last week’s episode is that it advanced the relationship between Starbuck and Apollo (if only by making things worse) and changed the attitudes of some of the main characters (the Chief and Adama, particularly.)

2. Ah, but you see, it wasn’t his fault. Yeah, but if it was “that guy who’s dead now,” would we really care? Yet another gray area wherein we don’t know if that’s the case, but it makes for some good storytelling. Haven’t you ever had something less-than-positive happen in your life and wind up blaming yourself for it? From a construction standpoint, it provides continued material for developing Adama’s character as well as introducing some much-needed fresh (and human, none-the-less) blood to the small, small fleet.

1. I’m sure there are shippers out there that cream themselves over the thought of Apollo and Starbuck duking it out. Honestly, I don’t care. Anytime ANY main characters get together in ANY show there’s a contingent that cries “SHIPPERS” and swears it off as “crap.” Unlike The X-Files, they’re hardly catering to that sector. And here again I come back to my “it’s part of life” argument. Granted, the sheer amount of coupling that’s gone one lately has even my head spinning, but when you keep in mind circumstances (and the goddamned year for heaven’s sakes!) it makes more sense. Do I care for the focus some of the relationship nonsense has taken lately? Not particularly. I would prefer a more “this is the way they are now, we’ll explain as we go along” approach, but understanding the demands of television production, logistically, as well as the demands that it places on the actors, I can’t blame them for episodes that focus on lower-impact sections of the plot and help the actors, as well as the audience, realize their characters.