Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Battlestar Galactica: Season 3

Amazing. The focus was so much on the drama, the actual battle came up so fast I hardly had time to notice.

The ending: I DID NOT see this coming!!! Hard to remember a time when someone on a show got shot between the eyes before a commercial break and it made me laugh my head off. Not for the violent act, but for the plot twist. From a dramatic point of view, I sensed it "had" to happen-- but the "how" caught me by surprise.

Bravo!

At this moment, halfway through the second season, this show is the greatest science-fiction series ever on TV. Period.

There were so many things right about tonight's episode that I don't know where to start.

Holy frak.

The episode last night was fantastic. I love this show.

Unfortunately, I figured out at the beginning of the episode that the Number 6 would kill Caine. It was the only way that 1) she would die and 2) none of the existing main characters would be fatally screwed.

I rarely have these kinds of insights, so I am hoping for a return to usual dullness so that I can enjoy the rest of the show.

What WAS cool was that Adama and Caine both decided not to off each other. I think they BOTH knew what that the other was planning. But they knew it was wrong and decided against it. Cool species learning moment. The kind that used to happen in the original Trek.

"Great twist with the resurrection ship. If they take that out, they no longer are quite as screwed."

This would seem to be the counterpart of the original show's point when Baltar was handed over to the Colonials-- and could therefore not follow them as easily. That happened a bit later in the run ("War of the Gods" rather than "The Living Legend") but so far most of the similar plot points have been shuffled around (like sneaking onboard a Cylon Base Ship to blow it up, which on the original show didn't happen until "The Hand Of God").

"What WAS cool was that Adama and Caine both decided not to off each other. I think they BOTH knew what that the other was planning. But they knew it was wrong and decided against it. Cool species learning moment. The kind that used to happen in the original Trek."

I agree. It WAS a good moment. From Adama, I was beginning to hope for such a thing... from Caine, NOT A BIT. Really got me thinking-- WHAT would have happened NEXT, with Caine growing as a person the way Adama already has begun to? But unlike Adama, Caine had gone TOO DAMN FAR and committed too many atrocities-- "necessary" or not. Though he may have gone completely the wrong way to do it, Baltar was RIGHT! "Justice" DID catch up with Caine.

Big difference there-- in this version of the story, everything Baltar did wrong (betraying the colonies) was NOT deliberate. But Caine KNEW what she was doing.


I was also amazed to see what I predicted 6 months ago actually came to pass-- not only about Caine getting killed, but about the new "Six" surviving to become a new regular. (Strange as it is, SHE's the current show's equivalant of "Sheba"!)

What was that whole thing with Kane telling Starbuck not to flinch? Why would she think Starbuck would flinch?

Anyway, yeah, this is a great show. It makes me feel like a kid again, watching the television in wonder at what's happening.

Assuming, of course, that the Cylons don't have like 80 million resurrection ships floating around the galaxy. There's really no way to estimate the scope of the Cylon fleet at this point.

Incidentally, part of me still thinks Roslin should have put Sharon out the air lock. Of course, given the high probability that Gaius is going to do some quick Cylon stem cell research and cure Laura's cancer in the next few episodes, that might have been a bad idea, huh...

Wonder who the 6 remaining Cylons are.

i dont know about the curing part, isnt the prophecy that she'll die and i thought it was sooner then later.

From Adama's logs and the blackbird mission, Caine knew Kara could be bold, rash and insubordinate... but effective, Caine would also regard Adama - and by extension all his officers - as 'soft' and potentially squeamish: they treat their Cylon POW civilly, they haven't scavenged their fleet, they allow a civilian presidency/administration, etc.

Meanwhile, she executes anyone as she pleases... remember what her XO told Tigh? Remember Chief and Helo? If she saw Kara as groomable to her ways, she needed her to be less squeamish about carrying out unsavory orders... maybe she wanted Kara to be somewhat prepared for her assassination of Adama as well. Who knows?

But ovbiously, Kara heard it in terms of Adama's orders... this gave a nice duality to the scene.

I am looking forward to the "new" Six. old ghost-six has lamost run her course; it is time to do something different with her. I'm sure Gaius has helped her find shelter within the fleet.

I'm not convinced Roslin won't die. Storywise, it will make sense to - at some point - end the dynamic Adama and Roslin have achieved.

Do Jolly, Boxey and other long-forgotten characters make a return so as to bridge the similarities between the old and the new series?

"But obviously, Kara heard it in terms of Adama's orders... this gave a nice duality to the scene."

Oh yeah, I really got that. Really complex show, complex characters. My biggest surprise is how virtually EVERY character on this show has started out as someone seriously flawed and unlikeable... and they've ALL grown as people. Even-- to my utter astonishment-- Caine! But too late for her... She went further than Adama ever did, and while that may have kept her crew alive, she paid for it in the end. The line about "Survival isn't enough" really said it for me.

DAMN, I'm loving this show lately!

"I'm not convinced Roslin won't die. Storywise, it will make sense to - at some point - end the dynamic Adama and Roslin have achieved."

The odd thing was, the character who was Roslin's counterpart on the old show didn't appear until near the end of the season-- Siress Tinya, in "Baltar's Escape". That's one of my favorite episodes, and her character, who starts out seeming like a stick-in-the-mud, surprises everyone by being smarter than anyone else on the High Council. It seems to me if the show had gone to a 2nd season, she should have become a recurring character, and maybe even a love interest for Adama.

"Oh no-- he wouldn't do this to me-- he WOULDN'T!" --Col. Tigh

I'll ditto your thought on Caine -- I never expected to like her, based on the first two parts! So it was a great irony that she became likeable just in time to die - and another bit of good storytelling on the show's part. Bravo!

I was SO blown away in the "black market" episode when Apollo did what he did... "There-- it's done." (Hey, nobody's posting-- maybe ya'll ain't seen it yet? heh heh) The guy in charge of the racket made Caine look like a SWEETHEART by comparison!

It also hit me... Richard Hatch really did a "good" thing. Now, maybe he DID have an ulterior motive... or maybe not. Hard to be sure at this point. But it's certain, if he'd kept out of the way, NOTHING would have happened.


This week, with the "Scar" Cylon fighter, kept giving me flashbacks to not one but TWO 1970's Marvel Comics. (Which is funny, considering the original BG seemed to me to be using storytelling techniques common in 1970's comics, but completely unheard of then on TV.) One was the Walt Simonson issue of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (#16?) about the advanced model of Cylon that was way ahead of any other when it came to strategic thinking in battle. The other was the MASTER OF KUNG FU episode, "The Clock Of Shattered Time" (Doug Moench / Paul Gulacy / Tom Sutton) where, as the story advanced, they kept inter-cutting it with "FLASH-FORWARDS", showing you clips of the big climactic fight, but before it started. By the time the fight DID start, you were at the end of the book, and the fight was over. VERY surreal and disorientating!


Meanwhile, I know next week's going to be a story focusing again on Sharon. I keep wondering if they're ever going to get to a point where they start trusting her? With so many devious, untrustworthy humans around, it would be a nice balance to have a human-Cylon who's REALLY not on the Cylon's side (as she certainly appears to be for all these weeks now).


By the way... did the scene a couple weeks back when Baltar had that ATOMIC BOMB delivered into the hands of his "new girlfriend"-- who's clearly on the side of the radical "peace" movement-- make anyone wanna just SCREAM?????

There are a lot of stories where the emotional climax of the story is taking the characters to that final battle rather than the battle itself. The fight becomes academic so a technique like that can place emphasis on that.

One thing that's becoming cliche in tv shows now is starting an episode right before the climax then jumping to the beginning of the story to see how we got there. The latest Battlestar didn't quite do that, but I'm just saying...

I liked this episode a lot and it dealt nicely with Kara's current state of mind with everything she's been through - her drinking, relationship with Apollo, the guy on Caprica, her injury and status as "top gun". And she even gets to grow a bit at the end. I thought the "Red Baron" device was a bit cliche (it reminded me of when they used it in "Space: Above and Beyond"), especially for this show since Cylon Raiders were never shown to have individual characteristics at all. Still it made sense and was an interesting nuance to Cylon culture.

This was a more successful character spotlight than last week's Apollo showcase (did it remind anyone else of the way "Lost" uses flashbacks - certainly not as extensive, but in terms of revealing a character and how it sheds light on the current action?). Maybe because Apollo has been defined mostly through his relationship with his father and none of that was here. Still, it added more to his character and what we think about him. And am I the only one surprised that Richard Hatch is actually not a bad little actor? (reminds me a bit of when Chekov showed up on B5 as a villain and totally rocked that role)

I was underwhelmed by the black-market story; I loved the 'Scar' story... I remmeber the BG comic you spoke of (even the cover blurb referring to the new Cylon model- "There is no comparison!")

"I remember the BG comic you spoke of (even the cover blurb referring to the new Cylon model- "There is no comparison!""


Just kinda made me wonder... if the new BG writers are taking inspiration from the original BG, I wonder if any of them also might do the same with the old BG comics?

If memory serves, nobody EVER mentioned faster-than-light drives on the original BG show-- but it was a BIG sub-plot in the last few issues of the BG comic as written by Walt Simonson. They painstakingly installed FTL drive in EVERY ship in the refugee fleet... and then LEFT the area of the Colonies behind (leaving some criminal scum behind in a non-FTL ship, just as the Cylons were catching up with where the fleet had been... what an ending!). Of course, FTL drives have been part of the new series since it started.

i dont know if this was mentioned yet, but when starbuck was saying the names at the gathering one of the names was JOLLY

Yowza! I had a "thing" for the dude. If Tony Swartz (original Jolly) isn't returning, maybe Paul Sorvino or some other bear-sized, bear-like actor might fit the bill

Pretty soon half the cast will be the human model cylon. Guess who will be joining the cast in the thrid season? Read it here. Can Gabrielle be far behind?

When I read that this weekend I didn't want to post it. Because if/when this series 'jumps the shark', I have a bad feeling it'll be at the point that person becomes a recurring character. I hope I'm wrong as I still feel that this BSG is the greatest sci-fi series in a very long time.

I assumed that she would be making a return when Xena was exposed as a Cylon in her original appearence. Maybe a LL/Six love affair? Beats the heck out of watching Baltar get wood from a figment.

Isn't this the second ep this season which features a flashback format?

I really like the fact that they're not going the obvious route with Starbuck and Apollo. I can do without a regular old relationship. I like Apollo getting dirrty with hookers.

I thought she was a good character. Also, I feel sort of relieved that they're actually going to give her character an arc, and not just string us along about what D'Anna's doing in the fleet for years and years. At least this way they can deal with her, be done with her, etc.

I'm getting really concerned.

Now that Laura Roslin's presumably going to be okay, I'm starting to fear for the rest of the cast as this season finishes up. I don't think we're going to make it to season 3 without some big death. All I gotta say is they better not mess with Helo or Chief. I love those two big lugs!

Though I am wondering if Helo's gonna be a single dad by the end of this season. Remember, this Sharon can't resurrect. If she dies, their relationship... dies.