That didn't really answer any of my questions

[trinityvixen]

BSG. Last night. What the frak?

I fully confess I was a flagon past tipsy watching it, which was great because Ms. Beans and fiance were there with me. (Probably less fun for the always more responsible feiran.) But not so great for understanding the story, akshully. I can has rewatch?

No, you know what bothered me? Is that it was an exposition dump. It was 60% exposition dump. That may even be a conservative estimate. And the sort of things they got into didn't have to be told that way, which is annoying plus infinity. They just left it too late. That's my entire beef with this season--why are we only getting into this now? Stupid third season was a waste of space, and now the stuff that's interesting gets two minutes (if we're lucky) to come out in the most tell-y way imaginable? Frak.

What I especially don't get are the exact non-answer to questions we've had since we found out who the majority of the Final Five were. Once they established that the Four, if not all Five, had no memories of being robots, and no instincts about what Cavil (alone, apparently, and so much for Cylon democracy while we're at it) was about to do...we're back at the frakkin there's-no-way-they-should-have-survived-the-nuking-of-the-colonies. Except Ellen gives them all a pass and says Cavil did program them somehow to avoid what he was doing. Which only leads to more running around in circles trying to figure out why he a) would bother if he hates them so much and wouldn't just keep them on ice; b) couldn't just recall them before the holocaust and have them locked up with Ellen since nobody ever poked their nose into his quarters, apparently (which would have the added benefit of keeping them from meddling and saving the human race like all the frakking time); and c) didn't just dissect their brains a long time ago, when he, you know, was already elbow-deep in gray matter programing them to be blanks.

I also call bullshit on how the Five were inserted into human life. Saul and Ellen, fine, they can pop in after the first Cylon war and just go right on living. Anders, Tory, and Tyrol wouldn't have been born at that time to be the "ages" they are now. So they were dropped in five years ago? And nobody found that suspicious after what happened to frakking Boomer? Anders was a frakking sports star; his background was probably raked over thirty ways from Sunday. Tyrol has memories of growing up, specific ones, unlike Boomer. Boomer sort of just stopped at the five-year mark as far as thinking about her memories was concerned and kept a picture of her "parents." I guess Tyrol could be the same way, but it just takes all the poetry out of his reminiscing about how he smoked, drank, and looked at porn in the temple because he hated his stupid religious parents that much. Stupid being a Cylon

(You'll note that Tory? Has no back story that would get in the way of her being a Cylon. Because why would this show spend that much time giving her any character other than heartless bitch? Oh, and we're just forgetting about that airlocking Cally thing forever, right?)

More bitching to come, for sure, when (if?) I watch again. John Hodgman though? Terribly cute, don't get me wrong. (He's why those stupid Mac ads fail because the PC is just too freakin' adorable and the Mac guy is a smarmy asshole.) Just...jarring to see here. He's just not that great an actor, and his crazy enthusiasm, while character-appropriate, was just out of place.

Comments

[negativeq.livejournal.com]

Here is what I don't get:

1. Last week, there was a mutiny. Longtime friends became enemies. Many lives were lost. This mutiny started because enough of the Galactica population were sick of the Roslin/Adama dictatorship, and did not want Cylon tech in their ships. Where the hell is the aftermath? What happened to the insurgents? How are they going to react when the Galactica is infused with organic growth matter?

2. If the Final Five (or as I always suspected, FIRST Five) helped the Centurions create Humlons, why didn't they install a failsafe? Some way to shut the Humlons down if they are behaving out of spec?

3. Why couldn't Cavil transfer his consciousness into a superior Centurion body. I supposed he could not, but he could have admitted he tried. His well-acted rant makes him look like a petulant child.

4. Why would the Centurions want Humlons anyway? If the Centurions want to be human, flesh bodies THEY can't or don't download into doesn't seem useful. I assume Cylon strength and networking are enhancements?

5. Why the exodus from Kobol? I assume the Final Five were subjugated by Cavil when they made a pitstop there?

6. And we STILL know jack about the Chip!Six! I heard Anders blather about seeing angels, could that be part of it?

7. An extra Humlon. I suspect artsy Daniel is Mr. Thrace. If so then Kara is the first Cybrid, so little Hera is not so speshul anymore - AGAIN.

8. Why waste two episodes on mutiny when it will all be washed away for a massive expository bowel movement?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Saying you don't get stuff about this show is par for the course if you're fan. Welcome to the club, in other words.

1. They were probably mostly forgiven. Sucks, but it had to happen. You shoot Zarek and Gaeta and maybe a couple of other guys, but you can't shoot them all or you destroy the Fleet. They're probably back to work as usual. Some recognition of the things you mention ("Oh, um, hi Chief! We LOVE having a Cylon back in charge of us!") would have been nice, but they had other things to focus on. Because they couldn't waste Anders being shot for no reason.

2. The Five and the Centurions were interested in creating humlon models that were as human (had as much free will) as possible given their pedigrees. Negating that with a failsafe is the sort of thing a Cavil would do. (You want to be that it was he who programmed Boomer's memory in the first place?) The Five shaped their consciousnesses to the best of their ability, but parents aren't perfect. We also don't know if the Centurions maybe wanted their humlon models to be slightly more robot. Which would explain why Cavil is so I WANT TO BE A ROBOT IF I'M GOING TO BE A ROBOT all over the place.

3+4. The Centurions seemed to have been contacted by the Five in order to get them to stop the war and they were probably curious and god-crazy and thought that the Five represented an evolutionary step that they needed to take. They were birthing the next generation, but their own programming was too limited to make the transition and the new programming too complex to go back. Downloading is also MEGA useful, as we learned in "Scar." (Presumably, the fleshy-inside Raiders didn't exist until the Five helped along the process.) I don't think we've seen any evidence that Centurions can resurrect--their advantage in the first Cylon War was that they were hard to destroy and could be rebuilt more easily (and built faster) that human soldiers. For the humlons, the trade-off for a fleshy, weaker body is one that is a) a crack means of spying on the enemy, as we've seen; and b) one that learn over and over and over well on into eternity (had the Hub not been destroyed, that is).

5. Who the frak knows?

6. I don't remember that line, but I was drunk so ignore me. I'll rewatch. I still don't think the Chip!Six means anything except to Baltar. We'll see.

7. I thought Cavil killed all the Daniels? I mean, I'm not even sure that there was more than one, maybe, that got off the assembly line before Cavil went Cain on his Abel ass. (It's a shame they wasted the name "Cain" on someone who is not Cavil, but we know they didn't think this part out back when they introduced Admiral Cain.) Regardless, I'm not sure they're making the argument that Daniel escaped into the population, and given the torturous twisting they did to unmake Nicky a hybrid, I doubt they'd let anyone else challenge Hera.

Which? Is stupid. This is exactly why I'm like "Cavil controlled the Five? You're joking, right?" Because he had no way of knowing the Five wouldn't breed while on the Colonies. Suppose the Chief and Boomer just moved a weeee bit faster on their family plans? (Until they retconned, he'd gone ahead and had a baby with Cally!) It's sheer luck (OR IS IT PROGRAMMING) that none of the Five ever had any kids to ruin this stupid plot device.

8. Mutiny? What mutiny?

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

7: I think the theory here goes that the cylons didn't break off the war until project humlon was well on it's way, and they inserted 7+5 pretty promptly thereafter. Cavil then poisons the well-of-7's, ensuring no resurrection for him, and arranges the death of Mr. Thrace, ARTISTE.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

This Starbuck's-Daddy-Were-A-Robot meme is everywhere. I don't get it. I mean, sure, you could point to his artistic talent = he is the arty Cylon, and Starbuck is crazy special ergo part Cylon. But I keep coming back to Nicky. They wanted Hera to be the specialist special special Cylon-human hybrid. The ONLY one, in fact. That really goes the frak out the window if Starbuck's been there, done that, some thirty years now and she hasn't, dunno, actually changed jack or shit for most of it.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Starbuck is a Daniel that had crazy gender reassignment surgery. This explains her massive testicles. The end!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Your explanation already makes more sense than any of the reveals about the Final Five since ever.

[negativeq.livejournal.com]

Oh and the Cally airlocking thing? Considering that she is now a nasty cheat, I doubt Tyrol cares. Hell, he shared a chuckle with a guy holding a gun to his head over how she is trouble!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

That's not really what the point of that scene was--in fact, it proved the opposite, i.e. that Cally was important to the Chief. Because the other guy said, "Hate to say I told you so, but I totally would have told you about all that." And Tyrol goes, "It wouldn't have mattered," implying that he would have stayed with her anyway. At that point in his life, he was so screwed up that she was the only thing on an even keel in his life. Regardless of how much she sucked, Cally was good for him at that time and he needed the stability they had together and the new direction that having a family (off of Galactica) could provide. It didn't work out so great when New Caprica circled the crapper, but for a while they were good together.

So, after that scene, I thought they were trying to say that the Chief has not only not forgotten his wife, but that he does care that she's gone and would probably be VERY interested to learn what really happened to her. This is now especially complex since Anders just told him and he and Tory were an item back on Earth. Did that buried romance (they were apparently very heavily together, even though Tyrol is like "Pshaw") motivate Tory to kill Cally, even more than protecting the secret of the Final Five? Even if it didn't the question has been raised, thus further debasing Tory's character into just another bitch (who didn't kill to protect the baby Cally was considering airlocking, or to protect her friends, but just out of long-lost jealousy). It's gross.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

I don't buy it for a second. The minute he found that out he DUMPED HIS FUCKING BABY on what may as well be a stranger. He never took Nicky back, right?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

He's still supposedly involved with the baby, but regardless, that is the way they seemed to play that line: Kelly goes "I could have told you she was trouble;" the Chief says "It wouldn't have mattered." What else could that mean? He's saying that regardless of a warning, he would have married her and ended up the same way.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Point a gun to my head, and I'll laugh at any joke you choose to tell...