Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Battlestar Galactica Season 2 US Thread (SPOILERS)

Page: 1 2 3 4 5(6)7 8 9 10

16:54 / 29.01.06

While on the whole this was a little shaky I was glad to see a little bit more of the fleet, even if it was all hookers and crims.

Guy from Predator was good as the "baddy" though.

What is going on with Baltar though.
You'd think by now that he'd be able to ignore Six and appear somewhat normal when having coversations with the goddanmn President especially as he knows she already suspect him of something.
For such a supposedly clever character he never seems to have any plan with how to deal with things and flits from one crisis to the next.

I'm actually hoping that he'll either ditch the vice-presidency and run away with Gina or else segue into a super confident pro-active vp and develops a proper agenda.

I'd much prefer if they went with the latter option obviously.
Keep him around to put a bug up Roslins ass.

16:54 / 29.01.06

The upshot of the Yesterday's Enterprise story is the revelation that the foundation of the next gen universe as we know it is reliant on the sacrifices of some of the crew of an enterprise from a paralel timeline that needed to nullify itself to get us back to where we started. It was this (as well as some of the Yar stuff) that I personally was thinking about as being contrived, continuity heavy and unsatisfying... I guess its all about how much you buy into Yar's sacrifice...

But I'm probably guilty in drawing us too far away from bsg...

18:37 / 29.01.06

Me too dude. Back to BSG.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

19:06 / 29.01.06

Mmmm, I love Doom. Oh, you said BSG...

Mister Disco Wasting all that time on Apollo last week (and until now I don't think anyone was aware that people could eject from Vipers, much less that anyone had done so and survived)

Um, Starbuck ejected out of her viper when she landed on that little moon and found the Cylon ship in Season One, remember?

Um, nope. I thought she just crashed her viper. Still, it was a while ago and I only saw the episode once, so am happy to be wrong, no probs.

e-n What is going on with Baltar though.
You'd think by now that he'd be able to ignore Six and appear somewhat normal when having coversations with the goddanmn President especially as he knows she already suspect him of something.

I really hope this is a plot thread that is actually going to be pulled together sometime soon, as it's getting ridiculous. Last week Baltar has a fight with imaginary Six in a corridor full of people where she pulls him around by his tie and no-one in authority gets to hear about this? His patented Cylon detector didn't work for shit and now he's given real Six a nuclear device, which takes him beyond doing evil things in a moment of cowardice to save himself to doing evil things which almost certainly would put him in danger at a future point.

Disco is My Class War

22:09 / 29.01.06

I just watched Season One again, and yes, Starbuck definitely ejects from her Viper. It then explodes. And then -- very unbelievably -- Starbuck lands on the surface of the moon with just her suit for protection.

22:31 / 29.01.06

And then even more unbelievably she manages to hotwire and repair some semi organic tech and seemingly make it spaceworthy again...

I'll stop now...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

00:46 / 30.01.06

This was the first episode I've actually thought was shit.

The more I think about it, the more I think "does the human race actually DESERVE survival"?

Think about how they act. Think about what they do to each other, even when they, as a species, are threatened.

Yes, they can be heroic. Yes, they can do wonderful things to save each other, and can be self-sacrificial, and FUCKING EVERYTHING...

but WHY are the humans better than the Cylons?

HOW are the humans better than the Cylons?

I'm pretty sure this isn't the way the series is going, but I reckon it would rock if it did.

10:57 / 30.01.06

Stoatie, a few thoughts, yours first:

The more I think about it, the more I think "does the human race actually DESERVE survival"?
&
but WHY are the humans better than the Cylons?
HOW are the humans better than the Cylons?
& finally:
I'm pretty sure this isn't the way the series is going, but I reckon it would rock if it did.

I thought this WAS the was way the series was going, albeit in a slow fashion.
Didn't Adama and galactica-boomer have that chat where she said "Why does the human race actually DESERVE survival" , while he was planning on assasinating Cain, and beuae of it didn't.
(Just noticed YOUR quotes, were you quoting that espisode?)

Beetween that, the in-fighting that's beginning to happen in the fleet and staff, Apollo not wanting to come "back" (to life, to a fleet where officers plan to kill each other and the blackmarket ruins little kids lives), I think that this is the theme that they are trying to set up for the next season (they usually spend the latter half of a season setting up threads for the next.. right?)

I feel that the in the last two episodes the lead characters have been switching from basic survival from cylon attack, to beginning to look at the details of that survival and life.

I think we're going to see a lot more in-fighting and the nastier side of colonial/fleet life in the run up to the end of season, perhaps before the mythology comes back into play and answers some of the questions about WHY they should live.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

16:39 / 30.01.06

But are they doing this with lil' Adama because they felt they fluffed doing it with Starbuck last season?

20:32 / 30.01.06

Our lady what exactly do you mean, fluffed it with Starbuck?

In episode two this year (in her apartment on caprica) didn't we learn that starbuck is essentially fucked up from the start, with her fighting bcase she doesn't know how to do anything else?

She's always been wild reckless and a little screwy in the head.

Adama (Jr.) is stil going through the process of getting screwed up.

...uh..right?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

14:51 / 31.01.06

I was thinking of the episode after Starbuck made it back to Galactica in the stolen Cylon ship, she's moping in the informary with the broken leg, Tigh tries to get her up and doing by being rude to her, it doesn't work but she's soon back in action anyway. That was a rather ploppy plotline and the PTSD I see as completely seperate to the presumed child abuse issues that we're slowly learning about. Lee seems to be mirroring the PTSD arc but presumably this time won't just pull himself together quite so fast.

23:25 / 31.01.06

Regarding 9/11 and its influence on BSG, see the following Rolling Stones article:

Civilization is under attack by religious fanatics -- and the fanatics are winning. There are suicide bombers, a clueless president and prisoners who get tortured by the good guys. No, this isn't a particularly grim night on CNN: It's Battlestar Galactica, the smartest and toughest show on TV. In its second season, this remake of the 1978 camp classic has become -- no joke -- TV's most vivid depiction of the post-9/11 world and what happens to a society at war....

"I realized if you redo this today, people are going to bring with them memories and feelings about 9/11," Moore says. "And if you chose to embrace it, it was a chance to do an interesting science-fiction show that was also very relevant to our time."

"We don't sit around saying, 'Let's do an Abu Ghraib episode,'" says Eick. "But we're informed members of society and we watch the news -- these things seep in." Many people have drawn parallels between the Cylons and Al Qaeda, but Moore warns that they're not intended to be directly allegorical: "They have aspects of Al Qaeda, and they have aspects of the Catholic Church, and they have aspects of America."

Phex: Dorset Doom

01:19 / 01.02.06

Stoatie: I didn't think this was a bad episode, just misplaced at the end of the season. They could have done it a lot earlier, before the Pegasus arrived, and it'd be better for it. Right now there's too many important things happening (the integration of the Pegasus, Gina with a nuke) to go off on a tangeant.
That's not to say this is a bad episode. I dug the way they changed what is normally 'The War on Terror- In space!' into 'a noir detective story- in space!'. In that way it was effective. I liked how Apollo allowed the black market to operate, almost as a fuck-you to Roslyn's mismanagement of the fleet's 'economy'. I liked how everybody (Tigh, Baltar, Zarek, pretty much any Galactican with some dirt under their nails) was in on it and tacitly supported it, drawing paralells with everything from prohibition to downloading (which is how I get my episodes).

Btw. the next episode 'Scar', has the Viper squadron facing off against a Cylon 'ace'. Does anybody remember an episode of that show 'Space: Above and Beyond' where a similar thing happened? In fact, doesn't S:AaB kind of remind everybody of BSG?

02:12 / 01.02.06

I do: Chiggy von Richthofen.

There are elements of similarity with S:AB, but BSG benefits a lot from a much broader and more dynamic core concept, which has allowed it to avoid most of the hamfisting that S:AB went through in order to try to be historically reflective and thoughtful. To be fair though, BSG hasn't been hampered by budget and network politics the way S:AB was.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

17:26 / 03.02.06

"I'll be a son of a bitch if I go to your funeral, Ty."
"Yes, you will, sir... but we'll talk about your mother when I get back!"
Ross and McQueen, "The Angriest Angel."

I started watching BSG because I fucking LOVED S:AB. Of course, once I bought the series on bootleg dvds I realized that it was really only 5 or 6 episodes I loved, but thats how it is.

Also, the space scenes in BSG remind me of the "free floating camera" Whedon used in Firefly.

As far as the black market goes, I liked the idea of Apollo running the new, slightly cleaner, black market from Galactica. The scene at the end, with the old Apollo walking through the crowd, was that supposed to show that HE was indeed running things, and not Lee?

A good, self contained story, but as was said above, I really wanted more plot at this point, the filler would have been better earlier on.

18:34 / 03.02.06

A good, self contained story, but as was said above, I really wanted more plot at this point, the filler would have been better earlier on.

Indeed, I think the split-season thing that Sci-Fi did is to blame here. Pegasus had to occur where it did because of the season split, but that left almost no room for one-offs in the first half because of the six episodes they spent on the Kobol arc (which were well-spent, as those were great episodes). So now we get our snapshot episodes backloaded when what we really want at this point is a more contiguous arc for the Pegasus storyline, rather than the little dribbles we are getting that create a sense that nothing is actually happening on Pegasus despite its larger size and more numerous crew.

05:12 / 04.02.06

Also, the space scenes in BSG remind me of the "free floating camera" Whedon used in Firefly.

As I understand it, a lot of the CG team who worked on Firefly moved over to BSG when Firefly was cancelled.

07:14 / 04.02.06

There's an interview with Ron Moore excerpted on the Great Link site's News section that explicitly states that he watched Firefly and decided that's the style that he wanted. Seems he's happy to own to it.

01:17 / 05.02.06

Well that was much, much better. The flashback structure wasn't nearly as grating this time around, as there was some weight to reintroducing scenes from earlier in the season rather than the lame way in which the last episode gave Apollo two retconned relationships.

Apollo and Starbuck's relationship bumpiness was really sweetly handled, with the two of them almost instantly showing how they could overcome what earlier in the show's run might have turned into a whole episode of angst over crossing the friendship line. There was none of the forced fallout that you might expect to accompany the near-miss comfort sex... nice to see them dealing as adults, flawed adults though they may be.

I also loved the conversation between Boomer and Starbuck. Although there are some major plot points that haven't been picked up, it was good to see that there's still some things that the writers want to address from earlier episodes.

Besides that the main rivalry plot was pretty meat and potatoes, and it's pretty clear how the effects budget could only stretch to showing us one of the dogfights. But otherwise this was a lot better than previous weeks.

Phex: Dorset Doom

20:21 / 05.02.06

Anybody notice the 2001: a Frakkin' Space Oddyssey reference when Starbuck was playing chicken with Scar? I almost expected the lyrics to 'No Surprises' to scroll up the screen while her helmet filled with water.
Otherwise a pretty solid episode. It was good to see some of that Firefly-inspired space combat after the Ressurection ship cop-out (three gigantic capitol ships piss missiles at each other and we get to see it from a hundred miles away as Apollo floats around moping like Space-Morrisey.)
They'd better get around to the season's end cliffhanger episode soon, these recent episodes have felt a lot like mid-season character work than the build up to a climactic battle.

20:32 / 05.02.06

Besides that the main rivalry plot was pretty meat and potatoes, and it's pretty clear how the effects budget could only stretch to showing us one of the dogfights. But otherwise this was a lot better than previous weeks.

But since last week's episode wasn't very good, this isn't exactly high praise...

But yeah, i get your point... lots of good things about this episode... but there are still a lot of plot points that needed to have been delt with a couple of episodes ago that are still just hanging there...

19:11 / 06.02.06

Weeks plural dude. To my mind this was the strongest episode since Resurrection Ship I.

19:25 / 06.02.06

Surely not 'weeks' plural, since last week was just one week ago. And surely also possessive since it is the episode belonging to last week... or am I wrong?

I guess we should also give some much due credit to the visual effects team on this episode - cause the dogfights in asteroides look pretty damn good...

22:39 / 06.02.06

You're not wrong, we're just at cross-purposes. I'm saying that this is the best episode in weeks, meaning that it's my favourite since Resurrection Ship I which was weeks ago. I think you think I'm just comparing it to the last episode Apollo with two retconned girlfriends fest, and if I were then that is indeed damning it with faint praise. But I'm not.

09:20 / 07.02.06

right, got you now...

So, only five episodes left of season 2... the last 2 are apparently a two parter so that leaves the next three episodes to deal with a lot of dangling unadressed plot points...

14:28 / 07.02.06

...assuming they're looking to wrap everything up nice and tidily by the end of the season and not have a 3rd...

14:52 / 07.02.06

I'm not talking about wrapping up the whole thing - there are still pressing and immediate plot threads that really demand being followed up... mainly relating to the Pegasus and the climate on board there... and the civillian fleet... and this sudden charactature of an anti-war movement...

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

18:17 / 07.02.06

I think the nuke will be part of the last 2 parter of the season. I am curious if they will ever go back to Caprica. How much booze do you think they had on the Galactica at the beginning? Maybe there is a refinery ship in the fleet making whiskey.

I like the "The Pegasus and the rest of the fleet arent here, but here are two people from the Pegasus, neither of which mention ANYTHING happening on that ship"

A good episode, although Kat winning in the end bothered me, I understand it as part of Starbucks growth, but for the whole episode you are supposed to hate Kat, and then she gets to be a bitch some more.

Scar's death seemed REALLY bloddy compared to any other raiders exploding, was it just me?

Phex: Dorset Doom

18:47 / 07.02.06

I guess only a few bullets hit him, cracking open his 'hull' (read: skin) and sending him into an asteroid at hundreds of space-miles an hour. The other times we've seen Cylons explode it's probably from a hit to their fuel tanks.
I liked the characterisaton of Scar, as explained by Boomer. He's been killed so many times that he's massively pissed off at humans and doesn't mind dying for the last time as long as he takes a few with him. I didn't exactly feel sympathy- he's literally a psychotic killing machine- but I liked that he had a motivation to do what he did.

18:49 / 07.02.06

Are you supposed to hate Kat? after all, she is right - Starbuck IS fucking up spectacularly and playing a large part in getting other people killed. Moreover Starbuck is continually portrayed as almost supernaturally gifted (best pilot, best marksman, almost pro Triad player, artist, gambler the list seems to go on and on...) - if she didn't start fucking up some more people would be thinking she's a Cylon...

And yeah... The civilian fleet Pegasus left behind - it hasn't been referred to again since it was first mentioned... that isn't something that can be reasonably ignored...

Phex: Dorset Doom

18:49 / 07.02.06

(and, not wanting to engage in 'Would it be awesome'ism, but wouldn't it be awesome if Scar did ressurect, as a Sleeper agent in the fleet?)

19:20 / 07.02.06

From my understanding the Raiders are meant to be the missing link between metal cylons and human cylons... so, no, raiders don't reincarnate as human cylons...

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

14:43 / 08.02.06

I have always hated Kat, so I am biased.

I think the thing that bugged me was that we haven't really seen here since her drug freakout (i think?) so her character being a gung ho bad ass came from out of nowhere. If there had been scenes over the last bunch of episodes of her busting her ass trying to seek redemption from her peers for the stims incident, I think I would have been more comfortable with her in this episode.

22:50 / 11.02.06

SPOILERY QUESTION

Okay. I have to admit I'm a bit lost right now with this series, having only been able to lay eyeballs on the Season 2.0 DVD. I've read the episode summaries, which have updated me fair enough, but for some reason I don't understand the recent summary/preview for next week's episode, The Captain's Hand.

Who is that particular commander foreshadowed as "leading the Pegasus and its crew into peril"? Capt. Taylor?

23:09 / 11.02.06

I don't believe we have been introduced to the Pegasus's newest commanding officer... just another one of those details that has routinely been shoved to the side...

Page: 1 2 3 4 5(6)7 8 9 10