BSG 3.20: "Crossroads, Part II"

[annathepiper]

Daaaaaaaaaamn, that was something now, wasn't it? And we have to wait till 2008 for more?! AIGH!


Running commentary throughout the episode!

Intriguing little bit there with Anders at the beginning--not only the evidence that he's been seeking solace in multiple arms, but also that he and the Chief have been plagued by that music that's going around. And similarly, what the heck is up with that thing with Athena and the President and Caprica!Six and Hera having a little group hallucination, hey?

Wow. That little speech Lee gave in the court is the best thing I've seen him done all season. Holy crap, that was good. Well done there, Apollo.

OMG. Adama voted for the acquittal. BITCHIN'. THANK YOU BILL. But OMG, the look on Roslin's face when she realized it. EXCELLENT.

And how about that creeptastic Tigh with his ear pressed up to the hull, hey? Way to play the crazy one-eyed old codger there, Saul.

Eeee, Six's dream, eeee, Final Five in the balcony! Ooooooooo, very cool.

And the gathering of Tigh and Anders and Tyrol and Tory, OMG, are they really four of the Final Five?! Aigh! Any bets on whether they are all in fact unique, i.e., no other copies of their models? And I guess if they're going to throw the Final Five at us, it's pretty frakking cool to do it all at once like that.

AIGH! KARA! KARA! WHAT! THE! FRAK! Well, we all knew she wasn't dead anyway, now didn't we? HOLY! FRAK! And Starbuck has got to be the last of the Five. Gotta be... maybe. Though what I'm really hoping is that she is not in fact the last of the Five, but is instead an agent of whatever third party is causing the Ethereal versions of characters to appear to certain parties.

In fact, I'm half wondering if Baltar is in fact the last of the Five, on the grounds that so far, the Ethereal versions we've seen of characters to date include two confirmed Cylons--Ethereal!Six and Ethereal!Leoben--and Ethereal!Baltar. Which would indicate that if this is a Cylon phenomenon, Baltar must be a Cylon.

But we don't know that yet, now do we? ;) Much food for thought here!

And did I mention, AIGH 2008 AIGH!

Comments

[annathepiper]

*comes back from editing the post* See what I just added about Starbuck... I'm actually hoping she's not the last of the Final Five, but instead is an agent of whatever entity is causing the Ethereal versions of characters to show up.

[annathepiper]

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. :)

[annathepiper]

There's many ways it could go--but it only just occurred to me tonight that the Head entities could arguably all have 'Cylon' in common. ;) Maybe!

Also: I love, love, LOVE it that Tigh is one of the Five. OH THE IRONY. And it totally makes Three's little apology remark in her vision of the Five make sense--if she was apologizing for their having tortured him and taken his eye.

[kieri.livejournal.com]

I find myself strangely disappointed by this episode. Maybe it's being aware that the writers are actually making so much of this stuff up as they go along -- it takes away from the trust that this story is laid out and planned, and makes it more like "they'll do whatever they think will shock us the most".

It raises questions, like "What about Tyrol's kid? Is that half-Cylon just like Hera? Or was Cally screwing around on him?" It raises questions like what was the point of having Anders, a character who leads the resistance and fights and fights and loves Kara, suddenly screwing Tory and whoever else is around and then turning into a Cylon? What's the point? Where's the great heroic struggle for survival against the odds, the rag tag fleet, hope against despair?

I don't know. It seems like they're half torn wanting to do this psychological/metaphysical storyline and having to please the network and ratings with "shockers" that grab people's attentions and make them want to come back for more. I really hate knowing that my chain is being jerked -- part of what I want in a drama/show is to have that curtain be opaque. I want the story. I don't want to know it's just story for the sake of ratings.

Anyway, I'm sleepy and grumpy, so maybe I'm not making complete sense. Bah.

[wrog]

I'm coming to the realization that all TV series are like this, or at least, all of the ones that last more than about 12 episodes. Even if one has a plan, the necessities of television production, e.g., being able to get particular actors on a particular schedule, having to get the scripts written as you go, and so on, it's very hard to follow it.

I look at what happened with Babylon 5 where JMS supposedly planned everything out five years in advance, and then look what actually happened. It's clear that he valiantly tried to stick to the plan, but kept getting blown out of the water by random things.

Count the number of different "independent explorer girlfriend/spouse" characters that blow through in the pilot and the first two seasons. He wanted somebody to get sucked off to Z'ha'dum and cause maximum anguish. Took him 4 tries, but he finally managed it, even if he had to make her Sheridan's wife rather than Sinclair's (and in the process drop all sorts of stuff from the first season straight onto the floor). And even then he couldn't actually get Beth Toussaint back when he needed her to show up again at the end of the 3rd season.

Same story here. Big plans for Billy, then BLAM. How many different "chosen ones" have we had now?

It's all a big mixmaster. TV sucks and always has.

And of course, I'm hooked, so...

[wrog]

mHarlan Ellison had a pre-planned arc for (shudder) The Starlost back in 1973. Hell, the original BSG evidently had a plan of sorts. Not well-executed in either case, I'll grant. Depending on how loosely one wants to define "arc", one could even go back to Lost in Space or The Invaders from the '60s.

To be sure, I'll give JMS points on execution, but he did not invent the concept, not even if we restrict ourselves US-SF. To some extent Babylon 5 and X-Files (which premiered a year before B5 -- we won't talk about DS9) were the culmination of a decades long battle between the SF TV writers and the syndication marketers (who set the original model insisting that every episode should stand alone and be showable out of order). One might be able to argue that JMS's marketing of B5 made life easier for Chris Carter, but the chains of cause & effect in Hollywood tend to be very difficult to pin down.

Not that I don't want to downplay JMS's achievement -- one can consider the rather extreme steps (forming his own production company and remaining in the executive producer chair) he had to go to in order to ensure that he'd keep control of things as a measure of how difficult this sort of thing is.

[wrog]

Not that I don't want to downplay JMS's achievement

Buh. Stupid double negatives; cross out a not.

Well okay, I guess it annoys me when he continues to maintain things were planned that clearly could not have been (cf. everything having to do with shifting the focus away from Sinclair at the end of season one)

[annathepiper]

Excellent points all around, Roger, thank you!

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I think Lost is managing to (barely) hang on to consistency and stick to its original plan. Well, their original plan was for 3 years, and the network asked them to extend it to 5 years, so there's been a lot of filler lately. But the producers always say they've known from the start how things will end. That might well be bullshit, but so far there haven't been any egregious "we have no idea where this is going, let's break everything" moments.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, that's kind of why we're hanging in there with Lost in our household, too.

[annathepiper]

Maybe it's being aware that the writers are actually making so much of this stuff up as they go along...

And this is different from the vast majority of TV how, exactly? ;) *shrug* It doesn't bother me. I mean, hell, even in my so-far-limited experience writing stories, I know that even things that I plan out ahead of time will frequently change as I'm actually doing the writing. And with me, it's just me. With a TV show, you've got so many more people involved that I can only begin to imagine the curveballs that the plotline must get thrown on a regular basis.

I don't think Cally was screwing around on the Chief, no, and I see no reason to believe that their child is not also half-human, half-Cylon. As I mentioned in the comment on my other post, Ron Moore certainly seems to have confirmed that the Chief is a full Cylon and that his and Cally's kid is a Cylon/human baby. Though again, I grant that he didn't outright say that, just that they're going to deal with this whole plot angle... but that's the read I put on that, anyway.

What was the point of having Anders, a character who leads the resistance and fights and fights and loves Kara, suddenly screwing Tory...

Even if Anders hadn't been a Cylon, his going after Tory would be believable to me and here's why: it's one form of dealing with the grief of losing his wife. Which, even aside from his sudden new life direction, he's still dealing with as far as he knows. That he is one of the Five doesn't suddenly change that or change the man he's been. Tigh's reaction to the revelation shores that up for me--he was clearly more interested in maintaining his being Saul Tigh and doing his job rather than suddenly up and turning against everybody in the Fleet.

What's the point? Where's the great heroic struggle for survival against the odds, the rag tag fleet, hope against despair?

I can think of all kinds of things off the top of my head that will set off reasons to look for hope amidst despair, now that these things are being revealed. Those four people were clearly absolutely flattened about what they've realized about themselves--and now, even above and beyond the same transition that Boomer!Sharon had to go through when she realized that she was a Cylon, these will be people who are not only Cylons, but the Final Five. Which, or so we're clearly beginning to have set up for us, mean something different than the Cylons we've seen so far. The possibilities here are ripe for how the four of them will handle this, whether they will ultimately choose to keep working with the Fleet, or turn against the Fleet as the Cylons at large catch up with them... we've only just begun to see this new aspect of the story.

It seems like they're half torn wanting to do this psychological/metaphysical storyline and having to please the network and ratings with "shockers" that grab people's attentions and make them want to come back for more. I really hate knowing that my chain is being jerked -- part of what I want in a drama/show is to have that curtain be opaque. I want the story. I don't want to know it's just story for the sake of ratings.

I sympathize with this; all I can say though is that at least for me, I feel like I'm getting the story. Or at least a certainly new and potentially very interesting angle to the story. I don't mind the "shocker" aspect of it. It was a season closer, after all, and it wasn't nearly so much of a shocker to me as Babylon 5's biggest shocker that left me gibbering incoherently for ten minutes straight and which I still fondly remember to this day. ;) Just because you're handing out the shocks doesn't necessarily mean the story is starting to suck.

That said, I'll grant that this season certainly has been erratic and overall I liked it less than season 2 as a whole. But when I think about all my uncertainties with the season 2 closer--and gods knows there were plenty of "shockers" there--actually, this kind of played better for me in the end.

Re: Meh. Feh.

[annathepiper]

*laughs merrily*

That Tigh, Tyrol, Sam, and Tory were the only ones who heard the music didn't sit ill with me. We have already known that the Final Five are clearly not at all connected in with the main group consciousness of the usual Cylons--which is all the more underscored if the New Caprica Cylons in fact were torturing Tigh and had no idea that he was one of the Five. spazzkat had remarked that this actually really makes Three's little apology in her vision make a lot of sense--because she would have realized, holy crap, we actually tortured one of the Five!

So whatever's going on with the Storeroom Four, they are clearly their own little separate clique. It will be very, very interesting to see if they become their own little force of power and act in their own interests rather than those of the Cylons, which is hinted by Tigh pulling himself up and asserting that he is Saul Tigh and if he's about to die, that's the man he wants to be.

I do agree that it's all rather out of left field, yah... but overall it didn't play ill with me. I'm having too much fun trying to consider the possibilities.

And sure, yeah, Kara's reappearance was predictable... though at least for me that wasn't a bad thing. In fact, given how she was set up with a Huge Destiny, I would have been pissed if she hadn't come back. (As opposed to, say, how they got Roslin out of dying of cancer in Season Two. That copout still strikes me as, well, a copout. ;) )

Re: Meh. Feh.

[smeehrrr.livejournal.com]

I don't think the "new cylons" we saw in this last episode are really cylons the way they're defined on the show. I think all the humans on the show are the cylons from the previous iteration of the cycle, and that the four (five if you count Starbuck) that we learned about this week are newly actuated versions of the previous model. They just don't know that yet.

Because honestly, it makes no sense at all for Tigh to be a cylon unless there are two cylon factions, and the last five are like the cylon good guys or something, which would just be stupid.

Re: Meh. Feh.

[spazzkat.livejournal.com]

Actually it's a Dylan song (http://www.bobdylan.com/moderntimes/songs/watchtower.html).

Hendrix just covered it.

Re: Meh. Feh.

[spazzkat.livejournal.com]

Still Dylan's song though.

Re: Meh. Feh.

[smeehrrr.livejournal.com]

I twigged to those lyrics early on the episode, and thought they were just doing something cute, the way dialog in one movie (say "Kull the Conqueror") will occasionally steal dialog from another movie (say "Star Wars") as a subtle homage or in joke. When the song became integral to the story I sort of when "Buh". It does tie their continuity in with Earth's, though - we know for sure now that BSG is in Earth's future, or possibly present.

I thought the cover at the end was pretty interesting, and it was weird hearing background music with lyrics. Have they done that before on the show? I can't remember an instance.

Re: Meh. Feh.

[firni.livejournal.com]

Screw this, I'm going back to watching "Snatch" eight million times in a row.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I still think everyone's a cylon, pretty much, and that the Twelve are just those that have places in the mythic arc. Humans are just the offshoot of the last cycle that mostly don't know they're cylons, because their forefathers chose to keep their identity secret. The whole human-cylon conflict is a cylon civil war that has happened before and will happen again.

I wondered a bit about the final member of the Five, the last of the Twelve that we still don't know. It could be Starbuck. Gaeta has always seemed like a cylon to me, and like many of the four who were just revealed, he's in a crucial auxiliary/advisory role (Anders is the only one who's a leader in his own right.) There are other possibilities.

But ultimately, even though she didn't hear the music, I think it's Roslin. She's got the prophetic dreams, and I don't think it's the chemalla. As Kathryn points out (in case anyone else missed it), she's the crone of the triple goddess mother/maiden/crone with Athena and Six. The director even lined them up left-to-right in that exact order when they met. How can she be part of that group and NOT be as much as a cylon as they are?

But since everyone--and I mean everyone--is probably a cylon, then there's room for more than Twelve in the mythic arc, to go on to become human gods and cylon angels in the next cycle. Starbuck and Balthar, and who knows who else, fit into the picture somehow. I'm fairly convinced now that the Adamas, on the other hand, are humans, that is to say cylons but not gods or angels. We'll see.

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

The logic behind Lee's Speech was undeniable, and the actor did a good job with a difficult monologue (not often you'll hear me say something positive about Jamie Wotsit!) - as Adama said, the prosecution didn't make their case, and beyond that, everything else was moot.

The thing I find most annoying - the Hendrix song. It worked dramatically; it worked seriously well as pacing and audience realisation, but in using an Earth song as a trigger, the writers completely buggered their own continuity. The Cylons are looking for Earth - how would they know that track to implant it as a trigger? Or even a fake trigger if we don't have the final five, and it's a big hypnotic fake-out, the same applies. So I'm conflicted about that, but I come down on the side of A Bad Thing.