SciFi had this big thing that this was going to be Galactica's final season, and I was rather looking forward to the show being over. The snails pace at which the plot moved was agonizing, but that's probably mainly because I cared so little for the human drama that unfolded each week, and even more for most of the characters in the show. Sure, I wanted humanity to survive, but frankly most of the humans on the show were pretty pathetic, you secretly ended up rooting for the Cylons.
Anyway, big press about 2008 being the final season, nothing exciting about the commercials for coming episodes, nothing at all about a countdown to the final epidodes, then suddenly, they've found earth, they have an alliance with the Cylons, and everyone's pissed because the planet they found is a wasteland. Laughed my ass off.
As finale's go, this one was, I'm sure, a huge letdown for fans. Maybe they'll go do a DVD or something now, who knows. At least now they've got a prime spot for some new show, or maybe just run old Farscape episodes. But that would be too much to hope for...
]]>I found the original version of this flick to be quite entertaining, and laughed my ass off through most of the last half of the movie, but this 'sequel' just plain sucks.
]]>This still just drives me totally nuts... I really wish their parent company would stop pushing all this other crap onto SciFi, and just start up another network to deal with this fluff.
]]>I especially loved the musical interlude in the middle, something the show hadn't done before, it worked well, and I'd have liked to have seen something along those lines more often. It really helped stitch the clips together and give a real sense of time passing, the bonds between the team members, etc. The lack of dialog, just watching through the windows, worked quite well.
]]>I've always considered science fiction to be generally targeted at a more intelligent audience than other fare, though this tends to be more the case in printed works rather than what makes it into theaters or onto television. Wrestling, to me, has always seemed to be targeted at the opposite extreme, and how it has managed to find a home on the SciFi network continues to elude me.
]]> Lets ignore the fact for a moment that the main attraction of such a show is to watch two large men pummel each other into unconsciousness. While this could be considered Fiction of a sort, since both men are trained athletes and aren't inflicting nearly the amount of damage they would have the viewers believe, and you could also consider the anatomical knowledge required to inflict punishment without permanent injury or the physics required to propel a body off the ropes at an opponent to knock him out of the ring to be Science, neither of these rises to a level worthy enough to be considered science fiction.Now, if we could get the programming directors from the SciFi channel and stick them in the ring with a few of these guys, that just might be some quality entertainment that I could enjoy...
]]>At least they aren't showing ECW as much lately...
]]>I could write a lengthy diatribe for each epidode, but that would be giving the show more attention that it deserves. Instead, I'll pick several of my top nits, in no particular order.
]]> Human Cylons - Well, other than the fact that the enemy-non-human-bad-guy-that-looks-human has been done many times before, why the Cylons 'evolved' into this form has never been satisfactorily explained. Is it because Humanity created the original Cylons, and they want to be like their creators? It certainly can't be because the human form is the most efficient... And what model Cylons produced these models? We've seen the original Cylon Centurion model from the original 1970's Series mentioned in the current show, and have seen a new generation of Centurion, the Cylon Raider ships are actually a separate Cylon model, but we've seen no others. The Centurions are dumb as a post, and the Raiders don't seem to have a lot of creative ability, so how did these human models come to be?And why only 12 models? There are male and female, black, white, and asian, etc, you'd think they could figure out how to make a few more models. Worst flaw, these human Cylons just aren't that bright. They have a tremendous advantage with the sheer numbers of Cylons, their ships, presumed industrial capacity, etc, but when it comes down to it, they just aren't that smart and despite the fact that Humanity is on the run, they don't understand humans at all.
Religious Cylons - Yup, you read that right, the Cylons believe in God. Sure, they believe in a God that apparently told them to Kill All Humans (maybe they're actually related to Bender from Futurama?), but now they apparently feel that they misinterpreted God's wishes and need to care for these poor humans after all. Yawn. Exactly how along the production line did a religious chip come to be inserted here?
Horny Cylons - Yes, when they're not killing humans, they're busy getting them in the sack at every opportunity. If they really wanted to be out screwing humans, they shouldn't have killed off 99.99% of the race first, they'd have had a lot better chance at scoring. Again, stupid Cylons.
Now, let's shift over to the pathetic examples of Human that we have in the show.
Resident villan, Gaius Baltar - Originally portrayed as a horny genius, Dr. Baltar inadvertently allowed a Cylon access to planetary defenses, and pretty much became single handedly responsible for the downfall of humanity. What should have been a tragic figure, someone who would then try to attone for his mistakes, instead takes every opportunity to cover his tracks, and instead he causes opportunities at striking back at the Cylons to be missed, and leads humanity further and further down the path to ruin. What a guy. You almost end up cheering for the Cylons when they abuse him, making him their puppet. Very sad business when you're rooting for the bad guys more than a member of your own team.
Laura Roslin - President of the 'Colonies'. Despite the fact that the Colonies are no more, humans cling to the political structure that evolved to command 12 planets. Such a government was designed for governing on a large scale, with unimaginable bureaucracy behind it, yet the folks her think that this will still work just fine for a group of about 40 odd ships fleeing a vastly superior enemy force. Obviously President Roslin's prior position as Secretary of Education provides a key skill here, as the players involved behave like children more often than not.
Commander Adama - Now Admiral Adama, has the unenviable job of fighting off enemy attacks, while simultaneously having to babysit the remaining dregs of humanity he's towing along behind him. Rather than put the entire fleet under military command and commandeering the remaining spaceworthy vessles, he lets an archaic political system never designed for the current situation dictate his actions. He does well with the cards he's been dealt, but he needs to grow more of a backbone.
Colonel Tigh - Drunk bastard, incompetent officer. Should have been spaced years ago.
Starbuck - Gutsy pilot, great strategist, should have been promoted into Tigh's place at the earliest opportunity, while still retaining pilot status, as apparently she's one of the few pilots that can kill a reasonable number of cylons during any given attack.
So, where did things all go wrong? Basically, Humanity was doomed from the start, and the Cylons have simply been playing with the fleet ever since. It's hardly even sporting when you look back on what's happened so far, and each week it just keeps getting worse. Humanity seems to win a little ground here and there, but the Cylons always have the upper hand. And as the fleet presumably has a few Cylons left undiscovered (there are several human models that have not yet been revealed), there is no chance that the fleet will have any opportunity to rebuild itself or stage any sort of meaningful counter attack on the Cylon worlds.
Each week we see pitiful characters fighting against insurmountable odds, and usually failing. Any signifigant victory is quickly undone. This is not a hopeful series, it does not make the viewer feel good at the end of an episode, or supply some meaningful lesson for our lives. It instead celebrates the hopelessness of existance, revels in the flaws that make us human, and the utter meaninglessness of all that we will ever acheive in the grand scale of cosmic history.
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