(airdated - April 4, 2008)
Spoilers aplenty
I think my time as a fan of Battlestar Galactica is up. What once was a taut, intelligent, captivating series has turned into something self-indulgent, repetitive and tedious. The show has been a flexible one from the beginning, dealing heavily in politics, religion, war, and matters both philosophical and psychological. A central theme surrounds what it means to be human, what it is to have free will, and that theme started to overwhelm all others midway through the previous season, culminating in the big reveal of four of the five remaining humanoid Cylon models. The first episode of this season, in part, finds those characters, now aware of their hideous true nature, struggling to come to terms with it... just like Boomer had to do three seasons ago. We've been there, we've done that, why are we rehashing it again?
The religious element of the show, the faith and spirituality of President Roslin which has been guiding the wagon train, much to the suspicious eye of Commander Adama, was bolstered in the third season by prophecies and visions. It was fine that Roslin was a solitary member on cast on the good book crusade, but once Baltar and the Cylons started getting in on the game it became a larger part of the show and genuinely less interesting. As soon as Starbuck started having visions it seemed just an overwhelming and unpalatable addition to her character. The focus on faith has let the writers have any number of deus ex machinas for getting the characters out of jams or to move them forward to more convenient story positions, and maybe it's my agnostic mind as a viewer but it's not a welcome replacement for the social/political/ethical dialogue that the show had proved so capable of exploring.
The third season ended with the tedious Trial of Dr. Baltar, proving that not every sub-genre of dramatic storytelling can translate well into the show, and now that Baltar is, effectively, Jesus to the few who have become loyal to his devious teachings, his character is in a dramatic, and unfavourable transition. This season's first episode presents Baltar as conflicted between his usual ways (derision of others, superiority complex, self-preservation) and a sense of spirituality, which by the end he truly seems to embrace, and not as a self-serving poseur. For his steadfastness as the show's irredeemable character, this is by far the most illogical of all of the shows progressions (and to my vague memories, in least fitting with the conclusion of the third series).
It seems that now even the show is running out of time that it is not in a race to get to the end. They seem to be meandering through their storylines (the preview for the second episode looks chock full of utter predictability), and the shows writers have lost the capability of handling their characters, in large part because they've already done so much to them that doing anything more seems completely over the top -- when Tigh shoots Adama early in the episode, it's a complete snore, knowing that Adama's already been shot by a Cylon masquerading as a crew member. There's really nothing left that you can do to this shrinking band of characters that has much believability to it (as believable as you can get for a science-fiction show anyways). Surviving blown up shuttles, or crash landings on planets, or cancer, or getting shot, or imprisonment, or stripped of rank and on and on really means nothing since it's all happened already. Adding more characters to the show would be a really cheap way of keeping it fresh, so the show just needs to step ahead in its chronology and get to a point where we can believe that whatever is happening affects almost everyone and not just the few.
I'm giving the show another two episodes to try and hook me before I call it quits and just wait for the DVDs, so I can fast forward through all the triteness and get to the meat that the producers seem to be avoiding.
Spoilers aplenty
I think my time as a fan of Battlestar Galactica is up. What once was a taut, intelligent, captivating series has turned into something self-indulgent, repetitive and tedious. The show has been a flexible one from the beginning, dealing heavily in politics, religion, war, and matters both philosophical and psychological. A central theme surrounds what it means to be human, what it is to have free will, and that theme started to overwhelm all others midway through the previous season, culminating in the big reveal of four of the five remaining humanoid Cylon models. The first episode of this season, in part, finds those characters, now aware of their hideous true nature, struggling to come to terms with it... just like Boomer had to do three seasons ago. We've been there, we've done that, why are we rehashing it again?
The religious element of the show, the faith and spirituality of President Roslin which has been guiding the wagon train, much to the suspicious eye of Commander Adama, was bolstered in the third season by prophecies and visions. It was fine that Roslin was a solitary member on cast on the good book crusade, but once Baltar and the Cylons started getting in on the game it became a larger part of the show and genuinely less interesting. As soon as Starbuck started having visions it seemed just an overwhelming and unpalatable addition to her character. The focus on faith has let the writers have any number of deus ex machinas for getting the characters out of jams or to move them forward to more convenient story positions, and maybe it's my agnostic mind as a viewer but it's not a welcome replacement for the social/political/ethical dialogue that the show had proved so capable of exploring.
The third season ended with the tedious Trial of Dr. Baltar, proving that not every sub-genre of dramatic storytelling can translate well into the show, and now that Baltar is, effectively, Jesus to the few who have become loyal to his devious teachings, his character is in a dramatic, and unfavourable transition. This season's first episode presents Baltar as conflicted between his usual ways (derision of others, superiority complex, self-preservation) and a sense of spirituality, which by the end he truly seems to embrace, and not as a self-serving poseur. For his steadfastness as the show's irredeemable character, this is by far the most illogical of all of the shows progressions (and to my vague memories, in least fitting with the conclusion of the third series).
It seems that now even the show is running out of time that it is not in a race to get to the end. They seem to be meandering through their storylines (the preview for the second episode looks chock full of utter predictability), and the shows writers have lost the capability of handling their characters, in large part because they've already done so much to them that doing anything more seems completely over the top -- when Tigh shoots Adama early in the episode, it's a complete snore, knowing that Adama's already been shot by a Cylon masquerading as a crew member. There's really nothing left that you can do to this shrinking band of characters that has much believability to it (as believable as you can get for a science-fiction show anyways). Surviving blown up shuttles, or crash landings on planets, or cancer, or getting shot, or imprisonment, or stripped of rank and on and on really means nothing since it's all happened already. Adding more characters to the show would be a really cheap way of keeping it fresh, so the show just needs to step ahead in its chronology and get to a point where we can believe that whatever is happening affects almost everyone and not just the few.
I'm giving the show another two episodes to try and hook me before I call it quits and just wait for the DVDs, so I can fast forward through all the triteness and get to the meat that the producers seem to be avoiding.