Brattlestreet Garlictoaster

[prog]

This has been a pretty strong and satisfying season. After last night's mid-season closer, I thought that they'd ended on the wrong foot; classicaljunkie and I looked at each other going "huh?" as the crew had a celebratory freak-out before performing any sort of scan on the planet they'd just found. It felt like a set-up for a fall, all right. During the final scene, I said to the people in the TV, "Well what did you expect, exactly?"

After some thought, though, I decided I liked it better than that, precisely because the colonists in fact weren't expecting anything. Their reasons for chasing Earth were basically the same as they'd been from the first episode of the miniseries; it gave them something to strive for, since everything else they knew was blow'd up. But practically, it existed only as a conceptual goal; nobody was claiming that Earth had any strategic value or resources or even people to welcome them. So when they actually do find it, and it turns out that it's just another goddamn ruin, like Kobol and all the other way-points they'd left behind in their search? Yeah, that will dampen anyone's spirits. (The fact they'd just arranged an alliance with the genocides of humanity to get there didn't help, either.)

Comments

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

Just before the last jump, I paused the show, looked at the ceiling, and then put down: 60% on nuclear-scarred wasteland, 35% on mechanical cylon-hive, 4% on prehistoric savannah (with Megatheriums!).

The last 1% was that they'd jump in, and Captain Picard would say "Welcome to the Federation." Long odds, but it would have been awesome.

The "CIC bursts into cheers" thing, I thought, was more playing off the fact that they did it in season 1. Way too often. ("I got mustard on my sandwich!" ) (I forget who I stole that joke from.) So, on the one hand, the characters have legitimately been ground down from that level of enthusiasm, and it makes sense that they would return to it without a lot of rational thought. On the other hand, the show didn't get *us* to lay aside our skepticism, and that weakened the script.

On the third hand, that last scene with no music and the humans and cylons equally numb-struck and the burnt daylight just like on Caprica -- that made up for a lot.

I note that we haven't seen Saturn, Jupiter, the Moon, any familiar continental outlines, or Bob Dylan. So the writers haven't committed to it *really* being *Earth*.

PS: "Cattlestar Elasti-bra".

[prog.livejournal.com]

Oh that last is a good point. The "It could be terraformed Mars" not the elasti-bra. I'd be chuffed if it took that.

On the Battlestar Wiki, Olmos is quoted as saying that he thought it'd be hilarious if the whole fleet got nuked as soon as it arrived, and we cut to the oval office, where a Cylon aide is saying to a smirking GWB "Nice shot, sir!"

[dougo.livejournal.com]

What I still don't understand is why the Cylons want to go to Earth. I thought they were just going to Earth because that's where the humans were going and they wanted to exterminate them. But now that they're allies, umm, what's their motivation? Are they expecting to find God?

[prog.livejournal.com]

Probably, and in all seriousness. I was sold on the basic fuck-upedness of Cylon motivation long ago so I don't worry about it too much. (So long as the show doesn't become too much about them, because they are kind of impossible to relate to.)

[prog.livejournal.com]

Also, there's explicitly been factions within the Cylons arguing for finding a way to live with the humans since season 2 (and specifically since "Downloaded"), I believe. The sixes and eights especially have felt this way, and the Leobens (too lazy to look up their number) have their own pervy fascination with humans. I believe this is the reasoning for why the Cylons decided to occupy New Caprica with the colonists still intact, at the end of S2.

Now, though, since the war broke out, the non-allied half of the cylons probably would smush out the surviving humans without hesitation at this point, if they came across them.

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

yeah, I was kinda pissed at the celebratory freak out myself -- um, wanna take a look before you jump up and down, mmmkay.


The scene with Adama and his handful of dirt turning to checking it for radioactivity and such a grim face. Very nicely done.

Now what?

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

Possible visual evidence:

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/913/bsgbrooklynbridgeyx0.jpg