Islanded in a Stream of Stars (and oddly familiar planets)
I think the scene that was, to me, a really obvious indicator of where the Colonial Fleet is going to end its journey happened at about the start of the first act of this, the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica. Or, at least, I think it was the start of the first act. At any rate, it’s the scene where Boomer jumps her Raptor into a planetary system, between a rocky moon and a large gas giant that has a rather strongly Jupiter-esque appearance. Granted, this might not be Jupiter proper — Michael Hall’s site is offline as of the time I’m writing this, but he had discussed in one article how the alignment of the stars was not *quite* correct to support the hypothesis that we were, in fact, looking at Jupiter.
Which I suppose can be ascribed to an effects gaffe, because the hint seems, otherwise, to be a pretty blatant one.
Be that as it may; this was a fairly straightforward episode that really began to tie up loose ends. It was also kind of a bridge episode, as well, a half-step between the intensity of the past couple weeks and the revelations contained in those episodes, and the intensity that is yet to come in what we are promised will be an explosive finalé indeed.
So, on to specifics of “Islanded in a Stream of Stars.”
Broken ship
The damage to the Galactica is now too severe, and the ship fractures around the repair crews that are busily trying to patch her back up, killing dozens of humans and Cylons alike, venting many into space. The damage to the ship can only be delayed from having its inevitable effect; it cannot be repaired. At least, not with what the Colonials have on hand.
And there are several interesting results that come out of that. We see foreshadowed the time when the battlestar will be cannibalized for parts (more on that in a bit), and we see William Adama follow a predictable character arc as the episode progresses, moving from intransigence to acceptance. He viciously refuses to acknowledge that the ship is doomed when Helo confronts him in the hallway, but by the end has already begun to draw up orders for the progressive evacuation of people and equipment from the ship; the episode ends with him toasting the ship’s life of service with Saul Tigh.
So that’s it, then: the Galactica is going to be sent off “in style.” Which may involve “doing a Pegasus” and ramming into some Cylon targets…but more on that in a bit.
The Cylon resin, it turns out, cannot bond with the Galactica’s metallic skeleton to any effective degree.
Not that it is completely without effect, mind you.
Sam the Hybrid
Samuel Anders, as predicted last week has become the Galactica’s hybrid. Plugged in to its power supply, he has used the “ad hoc” circuit pathways that are a secondary property of the Cylon resin to effectively take control of the ship’s systems…including its jump drive (obvious ominous foreshadowing).
I note that I kind of predicted this plot point as well, though I got the result wrong — I had thought that perhaps the resin needed the influence of a Hybrid to stabilize it, but it turns out that the resin is what enables the Hybrid’s total, effectively neurological relationship with the ship proper. Which means that from here going forward, it’s Sam who is ultimately in charge of the Galactica and her fate. And it may even be, given the aforementioned ominous foreshadowing, that Sam seals the ship’s fate in advance; we hear in an early scene that the ship has, at most, five jumps left before she snaps in half.
And we’ve seen already that Hybrids have a way of jumping ships spontaneously, potentially against the will of their operators.
Brad Templeton notes something interesting, which kind of touches on both Sam’s fate and the Galactica’s fate all at once:
I now think Sam’s fate is tied not to Kara or the Five, but to Galactica. Hera projected a scene of her playing with models in the CIC, crashing Galactica into a few base ships. But who will be at the helm? I suspect Sam, not Adama. Adama has said goodbye to the ship, is ready to give it a sendoff, using it as a weapon. All this Cylon organic goop plot has to end somewhere, and this is where, I suspect.
I don’t disagree; Katee Sackhoff dropped a fairly big spoiler regarding Anders’ ultimate fate, noting that by the end of the series, her necklace — “necklace o’ death” in her exact words — will contain not only a ring and a dogtag, but also a bullet.
My word, but humanity is corrupt
It is amazing just how quickly the humans in BSG are quick to indulge in all manner of petty, jealous bickering, even when their very survival is hanging in the balance, and how quick they are to trade in long-term survival prospects for their own short-term self-interested desires. This was nowhere more evident than in the scene in which Lee Adama attempts to maintain control over the squabbling Quorum of Ships’ Captains.
Zounds…this lot makes the original Quorum look dignified and lordly by comparison. They’ve barely convened and already some of the captains are haggling over who gets which spare parts from the Galactica prior to her ultimate demise. Once again, only the Cylons — personified by their representative Number Six, Sonja — seem to have in mind the preservation of the Fleet; Sonja wonders when and how Adama will transfer his flag to the basestar.
Brad Templeton notes that the prophecy of the First Hybrid will really shape the things that are yet to come, and what will happen in the final episode’s two parts. That prophecy ends with the observation that “their sins will consume them,” ostensibly in reference to the Significant Seven Cylons. But I wonder if perhaps, as evidenced by this and other scenes in which the corruptness of humanity has been so manifestly displayed as being flat-out wrong, there will not be a similar fate awaiting much of the Fleet, with all of its petty squabbles and jealousies.
A disappointing end for Helo?
Karl Agathon was, as regular readers will know, my favoured character for the Final Cylon, and he has been a perennial favourite of mine in the show. He has always, to me, been the sole genuine voice for good, the one shining example of why humanity might just be worth saving after all. But now it appears that things are crumbling down around and within him — in this episode, he has just one scene, and spends most of it begging to be given a Raptor that he can take on what would essentially be a suicidal mission to find his daughter.
That, and his marriage to Sharon Agathon (Athena) seems to be on the rocks. Which is to be expected, given how he was duped by Boomer, and given how the Number Eight models tend to be emotionally fickle. Athena is also grieving over the loss, again, of Hera Agathon, which certainly contributes to problems.
But why Helo thinks he can make it right by begging, essentially, for the opportunity to throw his life away is beyond my immediate ability to understand. Is this what has become of BSG’s sole “voice in the wilderness?”
Speaking of Hera…
…I was genuinely impressed by Iliana Gomez-Martinez, the actress who plays Hera, in this episode. She’s just exceptional! Her responses to Boomer and her emotional outpourings are of a quality one might expect of an adult actress, and she’s cute as a button as well (which makes the scenes of her sorrow that much more heartbreaking).
Hera is, of course, one of the pivotal characters in this episode. At the beginning, she actually betrays a talent for projection, although this is not fully explained until a later scene. That opening scene, however, contains the most ominous foreshadowing of what is to come, as the little girl playfully rams a tactical model of the Galactica into a group of basestar models.
Initially, she’s afraid and crying for her mother, which makes her abductor — Boomer — fly into a rage. But Boomer can’t bring herself to even sedate the child, and is soon attempting to feed and genuinely take care of Hera. Something inside of Boomer — her love for Galen Tyrol (whom, we learn from Bear McCreary, is cooling his heals in the brig for his role in the abduction), and her now-almost-certainly-unrealizable desire to have started a family with him — flips somewhere along the line, in response to nothing more than Hera’s despair; she realizes the magnitude of what she has done.
And she reaches out to Hera, or Hera inspires her to reach out…the latter, I think, would be more fitting with Hera’s role as the “way forward,” the “shape of things to come” who will define the path to unity and peace. She projects that same house that she projected for the Chief, and Hera joins her in the projection (cutely munching on what looks to be a muffin in the process!). This is an amazing and important child.
Now, the question of what will become of Hera looms large, as Boomer hands Hera over to Cavil — who has voyaged to “the Colony” (which we learn is a huge space station, or perhaps a converted asteroid) — for purposes unknown. Cavil didn’t treat Hera with the disdain and sadism I expected him to; his air was almost grandfatherly, or at least cautious both to Hera’s physical fragility and her emotional state. Not that his reassurances to her that she will soon be joined by playmates in the near future do much to calm her; she wails for Boomer as that scene closes.
And Boomer’s reaction is interesting; what hatred she had previously shown for Hera is all but gone, replaced instead with a kind of determination. I suspect that Boomer may be harshly and critically re-thinking her involvement with Cavil at this point, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see her flip allegiances.
Not that doing so will save her life, mind you.
Update: I missed this connection, but fortunately someone else pointed it out. I noted, above, that Hera was seen nibbling on a muffin, but I didn’t really answer the question of where Boomer would have gotten — on a Raptor — a muffin to give to her.
Boomer tries to get Hera to eat a ration bar, but she refuses. Boomer then starts to project herself into the house on Picon that she was going to build with Galen. She’s surprised to learn that Hera can project, too, and appears beside her. Being the smart, little girl she is, Hera then begins to eat because she’s projected the ration bar to look like a cupcake. My kind of kid.
That explains things.
Husbands and Wives, Parents and Lovers
While Helo and Athena seem headed for a dismal end, Kara Thrace has morphed into something very different; her love for Anders is an exemplary moment in this otherwise very dark tale. Admittedly, it takes on a very ugly start, as she draws her pistol on Anders — hooked up in a makeshift Hybrid tank in a spare room on board the Galactica — and prepares to fire on him. But by the end, she has fully embraced not only that he has changed, but that she has as well, and commits not only to stand by him, but to accept her need for him.
It’s really quite a moving transition, actually. And it’s an interesting completion to Starbuck’s character arc, a keen and well-executed reversal of her previous hard-drinking, hard-frakking self. Frankly, it’s nice to see.
Saul and Ellen Tigh, meanwhile, bicker a bit in this episode (although I note that Ellen has, largely, reverted to her “wise/motherly” character), but mostly attempt to cope with what could be considered one large paternity issue. Saul is obviously still hurting over the loss of his and Caprica Six’s son, while Ellen is trying to get him to come to grips with the fact that he has — in the Significant Seven Cylons — literally millions of children.
This comes to a head in a scene in which Saul agrees to comfort a dying Number Eight, who is just happy to meet her “father” once before she dies.
Meanwhile, Adama and Laura Roslin share a joint and some fond memories of New Caprica, and the night they spent stargazing and talking. Roslin has been dreaming of the cabin she wanted to build on that planet…could this be foreshadowing as well? Possibly…more on that in a bit.
Watchtower
One interesting link between Saul/Ellen and Kara/Sam comes in the form of “All Along the Watchtower,” it should be noted. The dying Eight’s last words are “[t]here’s too much confusion” (a line from the song), while Kara at the end tells Sam that she will sit with him until they have made sense of the notes that Hera drew in last week’s episode.
There’s a lot of connections whirling around this song now. Not only does it connect the Final Five with “Earth” (or the cinder planet known as Earth), but it connects them with Kara Thrace, ostensibly the harbinger of humanity’s end, but also possibly the angel on whose wings all will be gathered and ultimately saved (per, again, the First Hybrid’s prophecy). It also connects Hera to both groups…and now also connects them all with death itself (and, through Kara, rebirth to new life).
I haven’t the foggiest clue where Ron Moore is taking this, but it’s certainly a fascinating set of connections that I do hope the final episode explores adequately.
The Colony
Ron Moore has finally shown us the Cylon “homeworld,” and it’s…well…interesting. Certainly, it manages to avoid the trappings he had previously worried about with regard to depicting said “homeworld:”
…My instinct is kind of not to go there. I feel like I don’t have a great clear vision of it; at this point if we tried to do something there it would look very familiar and not as interesting as it is in your imagination.”
This is a massive facility, that looks like it has been built into the side of an asteroid. I don’t know how the Fleet could ever hope to take it out; certainly, it would appear to be beyond the ability of a single battlestar and a single basestar to destroy. Granted, other Fleet ships are also armed, but these would be nearly useless in a stand-up fight.
That said, who knows what a battlestar at full speed would do to the place if it…say…happened to smash into it?
What I really liked seeing was the original model raiders in the interior of “the Colony.” An ancient spoiler promised us a last glimpse at original-model Cylon Centurions; it looks like we’ll get that.
Which could be interesting, in turn; the issue of Cavil’s enslavement of the Centurions has yet to be fully resolved. Given Boomer’s reaction to Hera’s being taken, one wonders if perhaps there isn’t one last Centurion uprising — by both the old and new models thereof — against Cavil and his allied humanoid models?
Adama the Atheist
I can’t resist remarking on this, because Adama’s atheism has apparently re-asserted itself. He dismisses prophecy, destiny, gods, and God with a gruff scoff and a sip of his booze…but I can’t help but think he’ll end up being proven wrong for his hard-bitten realism yet again.
And I still hold out hope that he won’t finish the series as a non-believer.
It’s a personal thing.
Baltar’s Revelations
A lot of people are killed in this episode, which sets up the necessary preconditions for a massive funeral service. I love this sequence, which intercuts four separate funeral reflections into the span of about a minute — Adama gives a secular address, someone (can’t remember who) gives an address from the Colonial religion, one of the Cylons prays, and Gaius Baltar speaks as well.
But Baltar also goes one further.
In an earlier scene, Starbuck confronts him over something he said on the wireless (which will be discussed below), and when he challenges her, she throws him the dogtag she pulled off of her body back on “Earth.” He does some analysis and realizes — somehow, not sure how — both that the tissue thereupon is from a dead body (that’s the part I don’t get) and that it is a 100% DNA match for Starbuck (this is more conventional, and believable).
And he turns this discovery into an announcement and a teaching about eternal life (which is where, incidentally, I derive the connection between death and eternal life in the “Watchtower” section from), using Starbuck as his example.
Her response is significantly restrained; she slaps him, but immediately goes on to accept that it’s the truth of who she is. And it changes everything for her. I speculated previously that Starbuck always needs to overcome her demons before she goes on to do something significant, and so again she does exactly that — having conquered the demon that was her relationship with her father, she has now also triumphed over the demon that was her relationship with herself, and her confusion thereabout (she even puts her own picture up on the memorial wall).
And she has also embarked upon the way forward, in sitting down with her husband to work out the mysteries of “Watchtower.” Baltar serves as the catalyst for this, vis a vis a teaching that builds off of what might just be his more important message in this episode.
Antecedent to the funeral, Baltar says something that may point to the nature of the various “virtual/Head” characters we’ve been seeing in the show to date. He speaks at length about angels, and about how angels (in his view) take on the form of those we each hold close; he admits to seeing angels often (and of course, the camera always pans to Head Six when he makes these admissions).
And yet, despite the visual cue, I couldn’t help but think of the image of Leoben Conoy that Kara saw just before her Viper exploded. And of Head Baltar, who appeared both to Caprica Six and Gaius himself.
The supernatural is very much alive and well in BSG. That’s nice to see.
Now, the Final Hybrid’s prophecy mentions that after the division and strife that is to come, all will come to the promised land gathered on the wings of an angel. Many have speculated — especially given her wing-like tattoos — that Kara Thrace is this angel, and I find it hard to disagree. And actually, in a way, it kind of makes sense that she would simultaneously be the harbinger of death and the salvific angel, since in the eschaton the two concepts — death and salvation — become intermixed, almost as one.
And given the mention, in the trailer for this week’s episode, of the “end times,” I remain steadfast in my conviction that BSG is, ultimately, an eschatological myth for our times.
Possibilities for a final home
This is something I just want to discuss in brief, because I think there are three possibilities that need to be considered thus far as to how the series will resolve itself in regard to where the Fleet will finally end up.
Obviously, given the massive number of visual clues — especially the constellations visible in the background, but also the Jovian gas giant we keep seeing — the base assumption is that the Galactica (or, at least, the Fleet) finds Earth…our Earth, this Earth. Given this potential spoiler concerning what the final scene might just be, there’s a strong argument to be made that the Fleet will indeed find Earth.
But then, there are also other possibilities.
The trailer for the next episode shows a momentary scene of Racetrack and Skulls, back in a Raptor, soaring through what appears to be an asteroid field. Racetrack says something along the lines of “You’re not going to believe this,” with a look of shock.
I wonder if perhaps Earth — our Earth — hasn’t somehow been reduced to rubble? Of course, how that fate came about, I’d have no idea; it takes an awful lot of energy to actually crack a planet, more than would be realistically feasible in a story that has, thus far, depicted the two warring sides flinging fairly conventional weaponry at each other.
I mean, this is supposed to be naturalistic sci-fi we’re talking about here. Destroying a planet is fine if you have a superlaser…
Death Star blast (roughly 20 billion trillion megatons, ie- the number “two” followed by 22 zeroes). Planet blown apart at 5% of the speed of light. Even if we assume the shot was time-lapse photography (not that there’s any reason to), the absolute lower limit is roughly 50 quadrillion megatons. Note that even if you scale this monster down by a factor of 10 million (to the volume of a Star Destroyer), you’d still have 5 billion megatons. More than a match for poor Enterprise.
…but we’ve seen nothing to indicate that anything in BSG carries significantly more firepower than the current nuclear arsenal of e.g. the United States, and certainly nothing to suggest the existence of weapons with power outputs several orders of magnitude higher than the energetic output of the Sun over the span of a week!
But let’s assume, for the moment, that Earth — our Earth, which we know exists as an object within the BSGverse — has since been left to ruin by some means. Where then would the Fleet go?
I suppose they could settle on “the Colony,” although that would be a dismal life. Then again, perhaps — per Roslin’s daydreaming — they would opt to re-trace their steps and settle again on New Caprica. There did seem to be some hint-dropping in that scene, at least.
The only other place they might strike out for would be Kobol, I guess. Which would be an interesting way to bookend the stories of these two eternally warring factions. Heck, it might even be somehow fitting to end the cycle of endless man/machine violence on the world in which that violence was (apparently) first made manifest.
But I guess we’ll have to wait until Friday to see.
Powered by ScribeFire.
.jpg){kind=link}
But why Helo thinks he can make it right by begging, essentially, for the opportunity to throw his life away is beyond my immediate ability to understand. Is this what has become of BSG’s sole “voice in the wilderness?”
I think Helo just wants to do something, to have an active role in finding his daughter rather than simply sitting on his hands waiting for others to do it for him. This seems in character for him, but I think it’s also consistent with the stages of grief. From their perspective Hera may indeed be already dead, but he’s not ready to accept that.
That opening scene, however, contains the most ominous foreshadowing of what is to come, as the little girl playfully rams a tactical model of the Galactica into a group of basestar models.
Did you notice that this is Hera’s projection of a ruined CIC?
avil didn’t treat Hera with the disdain and sadism I expected him to; his air was almost grandfatherly, or at least cautious both to Hera’s physical fragility and her emotional state.
I’m glad for this, but really think Cavil is acting out of character. Hera is not the future for him as she’s tied to all the corporeal things he hates in himself.
I missed this connection, but fortunately someone else pointed it out. I noted, above, that Hera was seen nibbling on a muffin, but I didn’t really answer the question of where Boomer would have gotten — on a Raptor — a muffin to give to her.
I thought it was some kind of ice cream, actually. :) Boomer seems surprised that Hera can project, but it seems logical that Hera would have inherited this from her mother. We know that Baltar can share a projection as he did with Six in her happy forest place in the episode “Torn,” so maybe the surprise here is that Hera can not just passively partake of a Cylon’s projection, but can actively change it as she did with the food. If this is the difference though, it means that humans can experience projections and not even realize that’s what is happening. This would explain a lot and would also imply that Baltar is just regular ol’ Colonial human.
although I note that Ellen has, largely, reverted to her “wise/motherly” character)
While I agree that her characterization has been inconsistent, I also think that because her memories and the personality she exhibited from her last incarnation aren’t erased that they do have to be blended with her base personality and previous memories. I think the writers are capable of handling the display of this better though.
This is a massive facility, that looks like it has been built into the side of an asteroid. I don’t know how the Fleet could ever hope to take it out; certainly, it would appear to be beyond the ability of a single battlestar and a single basestar to destroy.
I don’t think they’re going to take out the Colony. Rather, I think that’s where they’ll end up settling after they use the Galactica to take out Cavil’s basestar. You’re probably right that the Centurions will rebel against Cavil as well. The series might end with the search for Earth continuing with the Colony as the new blended Colonial/Cylon base. We know Lee survives and since he will be the new president, I can see the every end being a shot of Earth like we saw in Crossroads with a Lee voice-over that says “Life here began out there.”
I wonder if perhaps Earth — our Earth — hasn’t somehow been reduced to rubble?
I wouldn’t put it past them to do this, but it might also be the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. This seems to be consistent with that view of possibly Jupiter. There’s speculation that the moon in the foreground is Ganymede or Callisto and the small planet off to the right is Mars.
True. I guess I just expected him to be a bit less…simpering. It just seems out of character for him, especially given that he’s already dealt with this kind of loss once before.
I didn’t at first, but yes, the CIC does look rather…banged up. More foreshadowing?
I agree — in fact, I think we discussed this previously. Cavil’s reaction was a pleasant surprise, in one sense, but not much in character.
Then again, his promise that she would be joined by “playmates” could mean anything, including several sadistic things. The problem we have, in looking at Cavil, is that if he is a consummate sadist, everything he does is geared toward his maximal enjoyment of the fear and pain that others feel; it might be exactly in character for him to treat Hera consolingly initially, before sending in the Model 005s to “play” with her.
Sorry…that was a darker observation than I expected it to be.
I think “cupcake” is probably the most accurate descriptor, and seems most in line with Hera’s overall cuteness. That said, I guess the point is that she makes the food into something which, to her, has great appeal.
It does…but at the same time, one can understand if perhaps Boomer (and, by extension, many other Cylons) would have had their questions about the matter. Hera is only half-Cylon, after all; they can’t have known for sure whether she would inherit the ability, given that she is also half-human.
I mean, let’s face it: inheritance is a bit of a crap-shoot. Even the wisest parents can never truly know which features their daughter will inherent from which parent.
Heck, if I use my own daughter as an example, I should probably expand that observation to note that even given both parents, there’s no way of knowing whether or not the combination of genes that a child carries will even lend itself to the expression of recognizable traits. Ella’s features aren’t really easily tied to either her mother or to me; we can see little hints of each other in her, but a lot of her features seem to be very much her own.
I think that’s the case.
I’m pretty sure that’s all he is.
That’s fair. I just can’t shake the fact that the Ellen from “Deadlock” is an almost totally different character than we see in either “No Exit” or in the episodes that have followed “Deadlock.”
That would be an interesting end. Dismal, in a sense, but interesting all the same. It would be fitting if, for all their hatreds and squabbles on planet after planet, humanity and Cylonity ended up being deprived of a planet to even call home.
I’m not convinced that we won’t find Earth; despite Brad Templeton’s noted objections, I do in fact think that the Fleet is in or very near to our star system, and that we will see a re-appearance of the planet that closed out the third season.
Okay, that would be kind of cool.
That would be the more logical explanation — I was just trying to make heads or tails out of Racetrack’s exclamation. From the asteroid belt, they would probably be too far out to detect Earth proper, and I can’t see her getting excited about Mars.
Of course, if Moore wanted to do some kind of homage to the end of the original series, I could see him having Racetrack and Skulls pick up a telecast of some historical event. Something recent and recognizable to the viewer — the inauguration of Barack Obama, or the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Of course, in that case and under the assumption that they are in our asteroid belt, that would mean that Earth in the BSGverse is “present day” (or near enough), which would be problematic for the show’s professed naturalistic basis.
I guess we’ll see. The planet has obviously been made to look very much like Jupiter — that much is certain. We can allow for some artistic license in the depiction of the surrounding celestial bodies.
True. I guess I just expected him to be a bit less…simpering. It just seems out of character for him, especially given that he’s already dealt with this kind of loss once before.
That he’s been through this before I don’t think makes it any less painful. In light of the recent flurry of articles from Salon and IO9 about the nature of feminism in the BSG-verse, I actually found his tears quite compelling. In this universe it’s OK for me to cry — we’ve seen both Adama and Tigh cry — and I think that’s a good thing.
Then again, his [Cavil's] promise that she would be joined by “playmates” could mean anything, including several sadistic things.
Good observation.
I mean, let’s face it: inheritance is a bit of a crap-shoot.
True.
Of course, in that case and under the assumption that they are in our asteroid belt, that would mean that Earth in the BSGverse is “present day” (or near enough), which would be problematic for the show’s professed naturalistic basis.
If they picked up present day transmission, yes, that would be problematic for a naturalistic basis. I assume that asteroid belt is going to be around for a while though, so it doesn’t rule out a far-future BSGverse.I favor a far-future outcome because I want to see that Temple of Aurora that Starbuck promised Lee they would see someday. Since we’ve never had one in our history (unless you count Mater Matuta) then it would have to be in the future. I probably won’t get that though.
In this universe it’s OK for me to cry
Sure, it’s OK for me to cry, but I meant MEN. Sorry for my horrid typing.
…and…
:) No worries.
I’m not attempting to suggest that tears themselves/emotional displays are a bad thing; we’ve seen Helo express a large range of emotions in the past.
And I’m not exactly one of those “men don’t cry” types either. I used to be, it’s true…but I’m not averse to tears now.
It’s mostly a question of characterization; Helo was most in character, in his scene with Adama, when he got on Adama’s case about letting go; the rest seemed somewhat distant from the Helo — even the suffering Helo — that we knew from before. I guess I was just thinking that Helo’s overall response to this would be more in line with the man we saw in…”Rapture,” I believe, when he shot Sharon so she could resurrect and retrieve Hera. That Helo wanted to do everything he could to save Hera as well, and did as much; he wasn’t really anywhere on display this time around (I didn’t think).
True.
Possibly not. Of course, it could well have been that we did get to see the temple, or at least its ruins, on cinder-Earth.
So Say We All: The Battlestar Galactica Blog Carnival, Ed. 4.5.8 - TV Shows (March 10, 2009, 1:05 pm).
[...] Hynek presents Islanded in a Stream of Stars (and oddly familiar planets) posted at Kenneth Hynek. He looks at several issues here, including the somewhat disappointing [...]
Patriot Resource has some possible spoilers up about the finale. I kind of hope some of it is wrong.
Yeah, I saw that this morning (TPR’s BSG lists are among my essential daily reads). There’s some stuff there I like, and some stuff I don’t. I was actually planning to blog about it in a bit here.
To be fair, there’s some good stuff in the mix as well — the rescue mission, Helo and Athena’s involvement (looks like Bill has one last change of heart), massive battles, and Boomer’s redemptive turn. Also…GUARDIANS! And of course, the Centurions and Raiders being freed.
There’s also the bad stuff: Baltar/Starbuck going one up on Luke/Leia (eeeeew…but, to be fair, I can see the writers going there; they’ve covered pretty much everything else!), the Colonials landing on Earth and evidently founding human society there (naturalistic sci-fi, what?), Baltar/Starbuck (worth a second entry on this list), and Lee/Starbuck (gag!) at the end.
Guess we’ll see.