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Battlestar Galactica: Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part 1

Sharon: "I'm afraid I'm going to hurt someone. I feel like I have to be stopped."

Secular logic, versus religion and myth. Or not.

That long, opening montage set to classical music was just stunning: Lee and Adama sparring, Starbuck having sex with Gaius (and calling him Lee, interestingly enough), Helo shooting Sharon Two, and Sharon One trying to kill herself. It's scenes like this that have made me such a fan of this show.

Laura decided to risk it all, defy Adama, and break apart the structure of the fleet, all for a "drug-induced vision of prophecy." If this were the real world, it would be different -- but "the scriptures" on BSG appear to be more than just holy books. Which means she may be right about that stupid arrow, and Adama may be wrong.

Gaius got lucky with Starbuck, but he was still jealous of Lee. I don't think it was just Starbuck saying Lee's name at the moment of truth. I think Gaius may be jealous of Lee's upright, forthright personality and lack of ambiguity. And what was with Lee and Starbuck hitting each other? Why don't they just hit the sheets and get it over with?

There were so many good scenes. I think the strongest, after that opening montage, were Gaius talking Sharon into killing herself (why? Is he loyal to humanity after all?) and that subtle scene where Starbuck questioned Adama about Earth.

Bits and pieces:

— Laura's whiteboard survivor number: 47,897. That was before ten people died on Raptor 3.

— Those arms. I finally noticed a resemblance between Edward James Olmos and Jamie Bamber. :) (Yes, they both have dark hair and regular features, and they're the same height, but they don't look much like father and son.)

— More confirmation that Number Six has a physical presence: she actually injured Gaius. I think. Did we actually see the injury, or just the band-aid on his forehead?

— The thirteen tribes left Kobol two thousand years ago? I thought it was 3,600 years ago. Inconsistency? Did I miss something?

Quotes:

Six on Sharon: "Her model is weak. Always has been. But in the end, she'll carry out her mission."
Maybe that's why Sharon shot herself in the mouth, but somehow missed her own brain.

Gaius: "I'm not your plaything!"
Laura and Six, simultaneously: "Plaything?"

Lee, on the Cylon raider: "You ever wonder why everyone calls it a she, but to you, it's a he?"
Starbuck: "It's fascinating, Lee. You should write a paper."

Four out of four stars,

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

5 comments:

  1. Wonderfull opening sequence. Mesmerizing. I kept thinking that Helo will kill Caprica!Boomer and her conciousness will jump to Galactica!Boomer just in time to stop her suicide attempt. The show suprised me and that's another point in favour of BSG.

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  2. It took me almost the entire 1st season to decide that I cared enough to continue watching - and the opening montage in this episode is what did it. Funny, huh? I don't know what it was about it, but I was glued to my seat for those few moments, and it was then I decided that I cared enough about these people to keep hitting "play next episode".

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  3. Good first half to the two parter, not sure I would be quick to trust Roslin and a drug induced vision and risk my life to go get a McGuffin from an occupied planet. I'm not what you'd call religious though, so maybe that's why.

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  4. At this point in the season, BSG seems to have required almost all of its characters to make a Kierkegaardian "leap of faith". In an earlier episode, we had Baltar randomly pointing at the correct location to target, Lee flying through a space tunnel with no idea where it would lead, now we have Kira trusting the president and literally leaping back to Caprica on the strength of her vision.

    I'm not a religious person either, but frankly, the President wasn't presented as a particularly religious person--which is part of why she's convincing. This isn't somebody who's spent a lifetime searching for signs of the final days like some people on earth--it's been thrust upon her. At what point do coincidences become less likely than that an ancient prophecy is actually true? And really, when Adama basically admits to Starbuck that he has no idea where earth is or if it even exists, Kira realizes that they need a miracle to survive. Is it really more plausible to expect that randomly wandering through the galaxy will find you a habitable planet where the cylons won't find you than to trust in an ancient prophecy? They have better tech and far more ships.

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  5. >>"And what was with Lee and Starbuck hitting each other?"
    That made much, much more sense to me than Starbuck saying Lee's name in the middle of sex. I love Lee, I love him more than most viewers I reckon, but I just don't buy the reciprocity in that relationship. Lee can get hung up on her but not vice-versa.

    The Baltar-Boomer suicide coaxing was an amazing scene. Just haunting in how genuinely seductive it is to be told to do 'right' by yourself and never mind the rest. And it works as a botched suicide for me. I feel like maybe a human would be able to go through with it but a Cylon's programming will overcome it. Wait actually that's just nonsense and prejudice. Botched suicides happen with humans all the time too and not because they messed something up in the method. So I don't know... but it was really captivating.

    @Baz: "not sure I would be quick to trust Roslin and a drug induced vision and risk my life to go get a McGuffin from an occupied planet."
    I like that it feels like a natural extension of Adama's lie about the path to Earth. And it's on more solid footing since they do have the... lore to direct them. We're going from a pragmatic lie to faith, which I find easier to get behind regardless of the faith I'd have in it. Sometimes you gotta roll the hard six and risk those shots in the dark. @magritte already voiced my muddled feelings on that much more clearly.

    And it's just emotionally/dramatically satisfying to see Starbuck 'punish' Adama for it and reverse his shutdown. Excellent episode... might be my favourite of the season since I vaguely remember being meh on the next episode. We'll see though, there's a lot of things I'm second-guessing about my impressions.

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