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Culturegasm: [Closed] Battlestar Galactica: Frak Earth
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- CommentAuthorJames Puckett
- CommentTimeMar 14th 2009
Yeah, I was kinda wondering the point of those flashbacks.
The Apollo/Starbuck flashback didn’t add anything to the episode or the characters. I found the Roslyn flashback interesting, but I think it would have been far more appropriate in an episode that’s actually about her. -
- CommentAuthorTechnocratJT
- CommentTimeMar 14th 2009
Jacob's BSG recaps, at TWOP, have been great for years now, but first time linking one, as it covers the flashbacks better then I could. -
Can someone please screencap the 'Roslin in the fountain' bit and stick it in teh Godzilla Bukakke thread? Cheers.
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I've been leaning pretty heavily toward Kara's resurrection being because she's a hybrid, but the flashbacks, to me, seem to point really strongly in the direction of "everyone comes back to life". Why would they make a point to suddenly introduce not only Zack Adama, but Roslin's sisters and Baltar's father, all at once, all at the very end of the series? They're Chekhov's gun, and like someone else said - this is act one. Act three - everybody wakes up...wherever...and the entire race has been reborn somehow. As hybrids? Possibly.
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CommentAuthorRichard Pace
- CommentTimeMar 14th 2009
@Oddcult -- thought the same thing. We are, all of us, damned.
Everyone waking up would make everything that happened before rather pointless, render all that crying pointless.
~Richard -
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Well, I'm not a huge fan of the notion at face value, but there's a difference between rebirth and respawning. They might none of them have any memory of what's happened.
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- CommentAuthorTechnocratJT
- CommentTimeMar 14th 2009 edited
Well, I'm not a huge fan of the notion at face value
I can say I am not a fan of this idea either. But I do not think it will be this. Some early commentary on this last season said the final focus needed to be on the characters more than the plot, and I think this was much more a reminder of who they were and what they are now. I do not think it is a set up for the return on everyone who died, much less those who died before the story really began.
This is why I linked the excellent TWOP mini-recap, Roslin's flashbacks are a final piece of who she is, why she was able to be the person she was after the end. The world ended for her years before it ended, and she preserved. It of course ended again for her right before the attack (the cancer) and she preserved. Baltar has never not had an angle, has never not been a hysteric self centered martyr. Lee was screwed up about Thrace from the second he met her (hey look Brid symbolism for a person, note the shot of the raptor as he enters his place before we see Kara...I mean the bird).
I expect death next week. But I don't expect everyone to die. Not gonna BS a dead pool, though I think Admiral Adama and Madam President are at the top (only beaten out by Boomer and obviously John Cavil) and the Agathons are at the bottom. Random death or mass death would undermine the narative as much as mass resurrection would I fear. Cheap death, that which does not support or rise from the narative is poor writing and always will be. Never been one to support the "all fall down" thing anymore then I support cheap saves where the clear end of the narative is the character's demise. For a fairly bloody show it has rarely thrown characters away without due narative cause. -
@JTraub
I see your point on needless death--but, to be fair, this next episode will be these characters in a war zone, where random death does tend to happen. -
- CommentAuthorTechnocratJT
- CommentTimeMar 14th 2009
I see your point on needless death--but, to be fair, this next episode will be these characters in a war zone, where random death does tend to happen.
Said not as a cliche: truth remains stranger than fiction. Realism of a war zone has no bearing unless your narative has always been about realism of war. BSG skirted that a long time ago, but the narative has been about the characters for a very long time. I am not a stranger in judging it for realism issues (the end of season 3 court room crap drives me nuts) but I realize that what drives BSG must be the characters and I think the writers have stood on that notion even when I personally dislike where it lead them. -
I've been leaning pretty heavily toward Kara's resurrection being because she's a hybrid, but the flashbacks, to me, seem to point really strongly in the direction of "everyone comes back to life". Why would they make a point to suddenly introduce not only Zack Adama, but Roslin's sisters and Baltar's father, all at once, all at the very end of the series?
The flashbacks were there to remind us where the characters came from and how much they'd lost (or gained). We also get to see Caprica again as a vibrant, living world and grieve anew at the stupid, wasted loss of human civilization. -
Or that. I'm more on the fence after reading the TWOP recap, but I dunno...I'm not ruling anything out. I hope you're right.
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Cripes. You know a show is grim when the unveiling of a virtual suicide mission is an uplifting and positive thing.
Any chance that a glowing ship of light full of benevolent god-like people will show up to fix things? -
- CommentAuthorJames Puckett
- CommentTimeMar 14th 2009
Any chance that a glowing ship of light full of benevolent god-like people will show up to fix things?
Vorlons? -
- CommentAuthorTechnocratJT
- CommentTimeMar 14th 2009
Vorlons?
They never really fixed anything, I think he means the original BSG ...so, Mormons -
They never really fixed anything, I think he means the original BSG ...so, Mormons
Well, as I recall, the original Ship of Lights folks never really fixed anything either, although I guess they helped get rid of Patrick Macnee's character. -
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CommentAuthorRichard Pace
- CommentTimeMar 14th 2009
Didn't the glowie ship people bring Apollo and Starbuck back from the dead? Maybe I'm not remembering it that well.
A third, as yet unseen group/power must be revealed otherwise Kara's resurrection makes no sense. We know the five were unknown to all but Cavil, and he's the one who made it so. Unless Cavil is also responsible for Starbuck (extremely unlikely), there is an unseen hand. The sibling Cavil killed, Daniel, could be it. If "all this has happened before", perhaps a forerunner cylon or human group has continued to exist from the previous cycle(s) is awaiting a human/cylon group not to exterminate each other then open the door for all to become hybrids of some sort.
I expect deus ex machina, it's the only way to explain Hera, the music and all the fantasy elements in the SF.
Yes, I know it means god in the machine.
~R -
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- CommentAuthorJames Puckett
- CommentTimeMar 14th 2009
I expect deus ex machina…
I wonder if they’ll play the cricket sound effect they use for the doors when God finally does drop down from above. ***Chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp*** “Gaius, my son, you must stop shagging all these skanks and announce my arrival!”***Chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp***
god in the machine.
God from the machine. And if said god really is tied to ancient Cylons/Humans/Hybrids from the past I guess that it could makes sense on a very nerdy level. -
Realism of a war zone has no bearing unless your narative has always been about realism of war. BSG skirted that a long time ago,
You're probably right. I've just started watching, so I wouldn't know that.A third, as yet unseen group/power must be revealed otherwise Kara's resurrection makes no sense.
I'm thinking that too. My guess is a Singularity-type machine which became sentient and omnipresant. Could explain why they're using the flashbacks--it directing them to their future by showing their past, or something like that. -
Everyone is reborn:
I like the idea because I like the notion that the Cylons really did think that killing all the humans was the only way to save them, and that the Cylon attack was really about love and wanting the human race to finally be reconciled with them. Tough love, but love.
Or better - the notion that the Cylons were programmed to attack and wipe out humanity in order to activate the final resurrection technology - on Earth. But they fucked it up by repeating that programming at the Colonies, where where was no human resurrection technology waiting to save the humans. Ellen had been hung over and forgotten to turn it on before their relativistic journey to the Colonies. -
Catching up on the very important question of my opinions: the torturous silence in the Agathons' relationship works fine for me, though I still think it's a shame that we don't actually have much time to explore Athena's strange fallout from a very weird crime. That Karl has managed to both a) go into a panicky desperation and b) stay a good guy, intent on doing good, is terrific. I've always found it charmingly odd that the Agathons don't make a big deal out of their freaky, breakthrough, cyborg child's incredible implications. Hera's their daughter, foremost.
Anyway, one of the strengths of a show like BSG is that it exists not just in a universe but in circumstances so extreme that a literal line down the middle of the fleet works great on screen. That this whole episode was building up momentum after the (understandable?) wavering in the last couple of hours was good fun—lots of short stories, lots of simple narrative devices to enliven exposition, lots of moments between characters to help us recenter before the customary Sci-Fi Television Series End Battle. That the very mission is a ludicrous abandonment of those who don't embark on it... we'll skip for that now.
We got a shot of Roslin putting on her wig and finally, finally looking the kind of frail that gives her arc some bite, so you know I'm happy. I loves me the space-wig drama (and also space-bodice-rippers, but that's for later).
Am I alone in this, though: When Lee comes home drunk and chases that (metaphorical) pigeon around his flat, is he coming home from Zack's funeral? It fits the lost families theme of the flashbacks, but I guess Lee would be in military garb for that wouldn't he?