nBSG ep 4.15: "No Exit" Talkback (SPOILERS)

[Ubiquitous]

Incidentally, while I appreciated the information delivered, I honestly found this a very boring episode. It was just 'exposition, exposition, exposition, unconvincing betrayal by Boomer'. Compared to what had in the past couple of episodes, it was a significant disappointment. It was exactly bad, but it was quite dull. There were moments that I really enjoyed, such as Cavil's monologue and Adama and the Chief talking about Galactica, but Blanders delivering half an hour of dialogue isn't great television, no matter how you cut it.

Same here. I was also disappointed that the mutiny was not talked about more. Sure, the leaders were executed - but what happened to the rest of them? And how had the fleet responded to it all? I found myself baffled by the info-overload. This screamed of being a rush-job, and I am shocked that so many people have rated this episode a '5'.

[Jade Owl]

I am also a bit sad that the show is boiling down to james bond supervillian riff Cavil as being the answer to just about everything.

Not everything. There’s still the matter of these entities that seem to be interfering with events behind the scenes.

The Final Five were warned about the imminent Apocalypse on Earth, 2000 years ago by mysterious “angels” only they could see, and who apparently displayed the exact same characteristics as Chip-Six and Chip-Baltar.

Then there is that “Lower Demon” who helped the people of Kobol according to the Sacred Scrolls, during the Great Exodus of the Twelve Tribes or sometime right before, when whatever it was that forced them to leave Kobol occurred. Which coincidently enough, also happened around 2000 years ago. At the time “Home, part I” aired I didn’t give the Lower Demon much thought, considering that it was just a way for the Sacred Scrolls to back Athena up. I never stopped to consider that the original Lower Demon of text could be relevant. In light of what we know now, I’m not so sure. A supernatural entity appearing to provide guidance to the humans on Kobol who survive the Exodus, while thousands of light years away, at roughly the same time, the Final Five are being warned about the upcoming Holocaust by "angels"?

And then 2000 years later, these apparitions pop up just after the Cylon Holocaust? One in the Fleet and another among the Cylons? Both whispering in the ears of people who end up wielding considerable influence in the events to come?

I strongly suspect that this Spirit Guides or whatever have an agenda of their own, and we don’t know what it is.

[CaptJodan]

Same here. I was also disappointed that the mutiny was not talked about more. Sure, the leaders were executed - but what happened to the rest of them? And how had the fleet responded to it all? I found myself baffled by the info-overload. This screamed of being a rush-job, and I am shocked that so many people have rated this episode a '5'.

If there was an overall criticism about this episode, it would be the fact that they crammed so much info into it. However, I didn't think the explanation would be as decent as it turned out to be, given the shit that Moore has been pulling. It doesn't still explain everything, but it finally fleshes out things to a decent understanding, and that for me makes it a 5. It took a lot of work for Moore and his team to clean up all the shit that he left laying everywhere, and he's got a good start with this episode.

According to the podcast, this episode was pretty much about what it turned out to be. Moore knew it was a hell of a lot of info to dump on the audience, but did it anyway. The other option was to do most of Ellen's part during the mutiny, but those two episodes were still fairly packed in. I think he was right in suggesting that Ellen's tale really wasn't B story material, which is what it would have been within the context of the mutiny. And I enjoyed being able to concentrate on the performances from the actors (especially Dean Stockwell) rather than being distracted by Gaeta and his ilk. Ellen's story might have worked best in the lead up to the mutiny, i.e. the Tillium ship incident, but we'll never know.

As to the results of the mutiny itself, we at least saw how many wounded there are piling up in sickbay. We see Anders' results, we saw the Quarom question dealt with, but I'm willing to give it a pass for now. I expect we'll see at least comments made to or about Racetrack and probably Seelix at some point.

[Prometheus Unbound]

We really need a transcript of Cavil's 'I want to smell x-rays' monologue, because that was some top-notch villainy right there.

In all your travels, have you ever seen a star supernova?

No?

Well I have. I saw a star explode and send out the building-blocks of the universe. Other stars, other planets; and eventually... other life; a Super Nova; Creation itself. I was there, I wanted to see it and be part of the moment. And do you know how I perceived one of the most glorious events in the Universe? With these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull. With eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum. With ears designed only to to hear vibrations in the air.

I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-Rays and I, I want to... I want to smell dark-matter. do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to, I have to conceptualise complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language. But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws and feel the winds of a supernova flowing over me.

I'm a machine. And I could know much more. I could experience so much more but I'm trapped in this absurd body. And WHY? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way.



That has to be one of the best monologues I have ever heard. I was going to add "in a TV show" but it goes beyond that.

I love nBSG. Sure there's been odd moments of lameness but the writing and the creative force behind it is like nothing else I've ever seen. It's passages like this that make it, and I use this word with it's proper meaning, epic. Stockwell should be nominated for an emmy for that piece, I think.

[Lonestar]

So, stupid question because i'm now wondering if I missed it...

...but has it actually been said who nuked the Earth-Cylons?

[Themightytom]

Since Cavil "reprogrammed" himself to no longer need sleep I wonder what else he changed. What changes did he make to the other human Cylons to make so many of them pliant to his wishes.

I am also a bit sad that the show is boiling down to james bond supervillian riff Cavil as being the answer to just about everything.

Not really, it has always centered around the theme of children vs parents, humanity's creations turning on them, this jsut brings it full circle.

[Ford Prefect]

No. That's still a mystery.

[Posner]

Regarding the FTL drive, I thought all 12 colonies were in the same system like in the original series. If so, it definitely wouldn't make sense to design a Battlestar capable of frequent jumps. The fact that it hasn't crapped out so far is impressive.

[Gil Hamilton]

You're assuming they made the whole two thousand year sub-light trip on humanoid form. I find it far more likely that they made the bulk of the trip with their consciousness boxed in cold storage, with their ship’s systems on automatic, and only being resurrected to make repairs, course corrections or upon reaching their destination. If they were on cold storage, and the organic raw material for their new bodies properly shielded, they could have made the trip thru that stellar crap and downloaded into new bodies as soon as they reached the Algae Planet. Then put their consciousness back in cold storage and resume the trip to Kobol.

Anders SAID they uploaded into bodies on a ship and traveled at relativistic speeds, so that time slowed down for them in transit but thousands of years had past, while in the process of inventing resurrection technology.

Secondly, ionizing radiation is extremely damaging to metal as well as flesh and it comes with the added problem that at the speed they must have been traveling at, that radiation would have been hitting them damn hard or enormously blueshifted, depending on if it was massive or not. Flying through that stellar nursery would have been severely bad juju for any ship.

Do we know that they made the whole of the trip at sub-light speed, though? They could have travelled sub-light all the way to the Algae Planet or Kobol, and found enough information there to put together a jump drive. After all we know that some of the ancient Kobolian technology was quite resilient. That holographic whatever in the Tomb of Athena worked perfectly after more than 2000 years of not being used, and the technology at the Temple of Five was twice as old and still worked. The Colonials didn’t have nearly enough time to properly survey Kobol. Who knows what other still usable stuff the may have found otherwise?

Yes they did make the entire trip at sublight, Anders said that they didn't have jump technology. Besides, there were only five of them and they were, apparently, biologists, not aerospace engineers. There is no way they could just find jump technology and build a jump drive for their ship. Hell, even if they were aerospace engineers, they wouldn't have had a facility to make one anyway, even if they understood the technology.

[LadyTevar]

What I think made this 'infodump' work was we saw it from Anders and Ellen both. The tension over Ander's wound, the cuts to the problems with Galatica, and the time-jumps with Ellen all made it a very great story overall.

But Bio-Tech in the Galatica?
Well... whatever it takes to save Our Girl.

[Posner]

But Bio-Tech in the Galatica?
Well... whatever it takes to save Our Girl.

Yeah, the biotech is annoying. How else would they fix the problem? I mean I have no idea, but there has to be a less Voyager solution.

[General Zod]

But Bio-Tech in the Galatica?
Well... whatever it takes to save Our Girl.

Yeah, the biotech is annoying. How else would they fix the problem? I mean I have no idea, but there has to be a less Voyager solution.

On the other hand, it doesn't sound like the "bio-tech" is going to be instantaneous or even remotely quick at all. IMO it really sounds like it's just some type of organic resin to fill in the cracks that happens to "grow" to meet the demand rather than anything ultra-wanky.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

I wouldn't say it's a "Voyager solution", since the resin is partly what the baseship is made of, so at least it has precedence.

Plus there's the whole thematic symbolism of Cylon technology used to save the Fleet and all that.

[Ypoknons]

Its not like the Basestars themselves are presented as particularly durable due to their bio-armor anyways. Hopefully Galatica doesn't start talking to use or something....

[TimothyC]

Regarding the stellar nursery, didn't they establish that they could go around it, but it would simply take too long?

[Posner]

But Bio-Tech in the Galatica?
Well... whatever it takes to save Our Girl.

Yeah, the biotech is annoying. How else would they fix the problem? I mean I have no idea, but there has to be a less Voyager solution.

On the other hand, it doesn't sound like the "bio-tech" is going to be instantaneous or even remotely quick at all. IMO it really sounds like it's just some type of organic resin to fill in the cracks that happens to "grow" to meet the demand rather than anything ultra-wanky.

Yeah, I guess I just had a knee jerk reaction. And not to be a pessimist, but I don't see the most important character surviving anyway.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

And not to be a pessimist, but I don't see the most important character surviving anyway.

I expect Galactica's destruction will be glorious.

[Anguirus]

Its not like the Basestars themselves are presented as particularly durable due to their bio-armor anyways. Hopefully Galatica doesn't start talking to use or something....

Well, it's not that they are particularly durable, but then they heal themselves. And they aren't talking about installing a Hybrid here.

I expect Galactica's destruction will be glorious.

In its present state it may not put up much of a fight...perhaps the resin makes it tough enough to go out in a blaze of glory.

[weemadando]

We got answers, but having act-of-plot-shot-in-the-head-now-remembers-everything-boy and monologuing-super-villain doing exposition for an hour felt a bit tedious and stupid. Really? Is that the best way that you could figure out to answer our questions? Just have two actors effectively break the fourth wall and detail your cliff notes on Cylon history?

Poor writing. But at least we got answers.

[JLTucker]

We got answers, but having act-of-plot-shot-in-the-head-now-remembers-everything-boy and monologuing-super-villain doing exposition for an hour felt a bit tedious and stupid. Really? Is that the best way that you could figure out to answer our questions? Just have two actors effectively break the fourth wall and detail your cliff notes on Cylon history?

Moore said as much on the episode commentary.

[General Zod]

We got answers, but having act-of-plot-shot-in-the-head-now-remembers-everything-boy and monologuing-super-villain doing exposition for an hour felt a bit tedious and stupid. Really? Is that the best way that you could figure out to answer our questions? Just have two actors effectively break the fourth wall and detail your cliff notes on Cylon history?

Poor writing. But at least we got answers.

Well, to be fair there's only a few more episodes til the finale, so it's not as if they had a whole season to spread out the answers to the questions and still get in everything else.

[weemadando]

We got answers, but having act-of-plot-shot-in-the-head-now-remembers-everything-boy and monologuing-super-villain doing exposition for an hour felt a bit tedious and stupid. Really? Is that the best way that you could figure out to answer our questions? Just have two actors effectively break the fourth wall and detail your cliff notes on Cylon history?

Poor writing. But at least we got answers.

Well, to be fair there's only a few more episodes til the finale, so it's not as if they had a whole season to spread out the answers to the questions and still get in everything else.

To be fair, it's also not like they couldn't have cut any number of sub-plots or shortened the on-air time of certain characters.

And it's not like they didn't fucking know that they had to wrap it up.

It's lazy writing. And that's bad writing.

[His Divine Shadow]

Yeah they've all of season 4 to get the story moving but filled alot of it up with boring filler crap.

[tim31]

Regarding the FTL drive, I thought all 12 colonies were in the same system like in the original series. If so, it definitely wouldn't make sense to design a Battlestar capable of frequent jumps. The fact that it hasn't crapped out so far is impressive.

It's never been shown in cannon, but the notion of twelve habitable planets in the on system is preposterous, although RDM stated in a blog that this was the case.

[Vympel]

That they spent an episode basically explaining everything by using Ellen and Samuel doesn't bother me in the slightest. I was happy for it. Off the top of my head (granted, I'm not a writer) the only other way things could be satisfactorily explained would be through the use of gratuitous amounts of flashbacks, and I'm not particularly interested in a shitload of flashbacks going all the way back to Earth before the holocaust. Much better to just give the exposition in ~40 minutes and Move The Fuck On.

And seriously, what filler did Season 4 have? It's just not plausible to think that cutting out some scenes in more than ten episodes could come up with some other form of necessary exposition.