First off, impressions - the series is highly overrated, but in the same way that the new Batman movie is overrated. Which is to say, it's not The Second Coming. Also suffering from the same flaw of underlining in every second of the show that it is Serious Business.
However, it's still a very good series, and clearly run by some passionate folks. Not to mention a terrific collection of actors.
Some more impressive points, as I see them:
- Starbuck. Not so much her initial character which was basically Action Sue plus what I understand are a few characteristics from her original namesake. Her angsty personality in season 1 was also nothing really refreshing. No, what I admire is the direction her character took in season 2. Once the writers realized they'd created an Action Sue with a No Consequences Ever licence, what did they do?
They deconstructed her. Completely. Over the course of season 2, I saw Starbuck change into a wreck of her former self, professionally and emotionally. Instead of ignoring her overwanked badassery, the writers asked "What this badassery is all she really has?" and followed it up with "What would happen if she ever lost it?". And so, in the course of two masterful episodes, she did. She lost her edge, she lost her focus, she lost her wank.
And in the process, created an unforgettable character. Bravo, says I. Although she looked to be climbing back on her feet by the end of her year on New Caprica.
- The "Lay Down Your Burdens" season finale. Holy shit, SOMEBODY doesn't give a crap about playing it safe. They could've easily gotten two more seasons out of the 'flying around' status quo of the first two seasons. Certainly there were enough plot threads to do so. Instead they chose to stage this plot. Where humanity is, for the most part, already downtrodden and lost, with only a small core fleet remaining.
This reminds me somewhat of reading the later books in the Ender's Game series. Like the weird philosophy they preach or not, the author is clearly trying to say something, something new. Same thing here. I'm not really sure I like this whole 'jump a year forward into a junkie apocalyptic future' bit, but it's clearly a creative choice on the writer's part. I can't imagine a network exec choosing to break the formula in such a fashion. And the writers have been pretty good thus far. So I am intrigued.
- "Downloaded"(the Cylon POV ep) may count as the best POV switch episode... ever. Hilarious(every time head-Baltar was on the screen, I giggled maniacally) and deep at the same time, you get a genuinely intriguing look at how the Cylons tick. The fact that it managed to genuinely de-sympathize the human freedom fighters was quite shocking, at least for me. It's things like that which truly make a POV switch.
- The character-driven nature of the show is a joy. OK, so some ideas pan out and some don't(not since Heroes S1's "sword quest" have I seen such a meandering mess as the "strike team on Kobol" episodes), but the point is, the writers know that PEOPLE drive this show, not space battles. From the unsettling ruthlessness of Laura Roslin to the bumbling XO Tigh, the cast of characters is fairly well-realized and feel fairly real(well, Tigh and Lee Adama seem to have lost out on the developement lottery lately, but they're still fairly good).
Of special note is Gaius Baltar, who is so utterly the opposite of anything I would have expected of such a character template. Finally, a mad scientist who actually veers more to the side of "mad" without being one-dimensional about it! And of course, his illusionary girlfriend. A measure of how cool his character is is the fact that 90% of the plots involving him eventually fizzled out(especially the whole Pegasus-Six thing)... and I didn't care. The character was so fun to watch on screen that I didn't give a crap that the laws of continuity swirled around him going "Wheeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!"(re: Pegasus-Six, Cylon detection, Laura Roslin's suspicions.....).
Although to a larger extent, the show seems to be prone to stretching continuity whenever any of the main characters is in danger. Got cancer? Can't ignore it? It's OK, Cylons totally have magic healing blood, lol.
Did your main character get shot at point-blank range by a killer robot? She totally missed, and a few untrained nurses can keep him alive for WEEKS until a doctor comes in to fix it! And I suppose I needn't mention Starbuck, who for a while was a walking attractant for last-second saves.
It should matter, really, it should. But in this show, it doesn't. Because you want so very much to continue seeing the characters that you will swallow it. Or at least I did.
- Outside those instances, however, the show DOES have fairly tight continuity. Very few episodes seem to be "plot-of-the-week" format, and outside of Gaius Baltar, very few plot threads are ever left hanging. The first half of season 1, in particular, seemed to be almost a continuous sequence.
As I said, overall a strong show, well-plotted and passionately made. This is someone's baby.
All that said, I actually have a few continuity questions that I hoped the wise residents of SDN could clear up:
- A season 1 plot involved Starbuck tearfully coming clean that she'd as good as murdered Bill Adama's other son, Zak, by certifying him "fit to fly" when he wasn't. She was sleeping with him on the side, and let that cloud her judgement.
Well and good, until one of Adama's flashback reveals the following - that not only did he KNOW that his son was screwing his flight instructor, but that apparantly he didn't care. Given Adama's straight-arrow approach to military regulations(not to mention the fact that Zak was openly about such matters), I am forced to conclude that there is no military regulation forbidding such a liasion. Read that again.
THERE IS APPARANTLY NO REGULATION AGAINST A TEACHER SLEEPING WITH A STUDENT. WTF? Any training or educational organization has such rules in place, PRECISELY for such occurences. What kind of crappy outfit was the Colonial Fleet running before the war? Am I missing something here?
- Skin-Cylon physical strength. Is it just me, or does this vary quite a lot? My initial impression is that human-looking Cylons might be able to fool detectors, but that they were actually very much augmented. This is supported by Caprica-Six shielding Gaius with her body in the pilot, which apparantly is sufficient to protect him from some very powerful airstrikes. Not to mention Helo-Sharon's seeming tirelessness while pretending to flee Cylon pursuit on Caprica. And Caprica-Six tossing Starbuck around like a ragdoll in the S1 finale.
But then we get to season 2 which is... odd. Suddenly, Sharon can be subdued and choked to death by an angry Bill Adama. She can be raped by one middle-aged Lieutenant in "Pegasus". She is held by restraints that a Cylon agent in Season 1 expected to be able to rip open with ease. A friend of mine suggested that perhaps, as the entire Three series was designed to be weaker than, say, a Six, for infiltration missions(witness a Six calling Sharon "little sister" when she wakes up in Downloaded) that Sharon was given a female reproductive system especially for her mission, and that that system came at the cost of many of the augmentations Cylon-humans usually have.
Is this even remotely the case?
- A short question this time - what the FUCK was up with Pegasus-Six? She and Baltar clearly had a plotline at the end of the Pegasus arc... then it went nowhere. Baltar went back to hanging out with head-Six and Pegasus-Six got a grand total of maybe 15 minutes of screen-time overall, none of which made much sense. Until she blew herself up, which I also didn't get.
Ummmm.... right. I hope this post has enough substance to belong here instead of in testing. And that these issues have not been debated into the ground already....
