Battlestar Galactica is now away until January, but it went out tonight with a major bang, lifting the Pegasus-and-Cain plotline from the original series and re-inventing the story in a way all its own. I was truly astounded by the writing and acting in this episode.
The horror expressed by Baltar's Six upon encountering her battered, tortured counterpart was truly palpable. Fun as it is to watch "Six Kitten" tease Baltar every week, I long to see Tricia Helfer get other material to work with. Here, she was given really intense work, and she delivered in spades. I'm hopeful that the conclusion of this story arc will involved "Tortured Six" being rescued and brought aboard Galactica, as that would enable her to interact with someone-not-Baltar on a regular basis, and really open some doors for the character.
Baltar's monologue near the end of the episode was no less powerful than the earlier scene in the prison cell. James Callis has ably shown his comedic skills, week in and week out. This week he demonstrated the other side of the spectrum.
But the strongest and most truly disturbing scene of all was the near-rape of Boomer. After an entire year of watching "due to graphic content..." warnings preceding 24 -- warnings for no worthwhile reason -- I gave my requisite cheer when I saw the announcement preceding the third act of tonight's Galactica. Had I remotely suspected what was coming, though... well, let's just say I was completely floored. Incredibly chilling.
There's definitely going to be a gaping hole on Friday nights now, waiting for Galactica to return and fill it.
7 comments:
Agreed on all counts, except that the warning for only one segment of a TV series seems questionable at best. Assuming I wanted to use these warnings to screen things for my children, I would have had to hustle them out of the room in the middle of the program.
what a great show. the military style command without a civilian balance has turned Cain into a dictator. and it's interesting to see how the dictator effect has trickled down to crew. the cocky, yet paranoid discipline of the troops. shooting her XO? you could tell their civillian deck chief was glad to be outta that ship of lunatics.
my horror at what went on with Boomer (and Six copy) was made worse by my logic circuits not comprehending why it was allowed to happen (dictaor style agian.)they kinda already played that shock-value card on the prisoner ship with Cally, but an officer doing it is waaayy more shocking. I'm glad they edited that scene in a way that let our heroes arrive "just in time" rather than "just afterwards" or "during" ...and that guy did not suffer enough before he died. for some reason I got chills during the graphic-conent warning, I kinda figured they would want to "interrogate" Boomer eventually. and when I saw them warning me it was going to be disturbing, it kinda pre-shocked me.
another thing learned quite horribly from the episode is the fact that the Six model cylon did not get pregnant even after sooo much abuse. I'm wondering if Baltar had told anybody what happened to the pegasus's captive. surely he would have put more security around Boomer, though he was notably completely distracted by his own emotions.
I'm just suprised that the tribunal sentence was not carried out immediately, tyrant-style. I guess she was planning on making a big display so everybody would understand she was in charge.
this is like watching the first dozen episodes of 24 and then having to wait until January for more!
-the mole
As for Six not becoming pregnant, I believe this is consistent with the subtext that's been present all throughout the Boomer-Helo storyline: The one missing element that was required for the Cylons to reproduce was love. I know this sounds rather fantastical, but that's what it comes down when you look at it.
The Cylons had tried all manner of experimentation to reproduce, and in the end contrived this elaborate scenario to place Boomer in close quarters with Helo over a period of weeks, all so they could fall in love and possibly conceive. And it worked.
I'm not sure if I'd ever want to try to see a scientific technobabbly explanation for how all this works and why -- I think it's probably better to just leave it undefined like it is.
yeah, I agree. sometimes when they (writers in general) try to explain things, it messes it all up. midiclorians? the matrix? um, highlander 2? I enjoy a good smidge of fantasy in my sci-fi (sci-fa?)
-the mole
What I loved about this is that like "33" before it, "Pegasus" puts a sci-fi cliche in a more realistic context. The former episode presents us the time loop that wasn't a time loop and the latter depicts a parallel universe.
I'll be damned if I can't remember the Pegasus in the original series, but I haven't watched much of it in the last decade. All I can ever remember is the ice planet, the western planet, and the crystal ship that makes everyone's clothes white.
GiromiDe... you're definitely remembering the highlights of the original series. About the only episode you didn't mention that people recall often is "RedEye" the Cylon Cowboy.
Except I'm really surprised you don't remember the two part Pegasus episode, starring Lloyd Bridges as Cain -- roughly two years before he "picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue" in Airplane!
I'm still drawing a blank. I vaguely recall Lloyd Bridges being on the original BSG. Perhaps I've picked the wrong week to start sniffing glue.
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