The Onion: still funny

Obama Depressed, Distant Since 'Battlestar Galactica' Series Finale

Since the end of the series, Obama has reportedly brushed off key budgetary decisions, ignored his wife and children, and neglected his daily workouts, claiming that he no longer cares if he lets himself go "just like Lee did before the rescue on New Caprica."

BSG finale: wrap-up

I am disappointed that they didn't explain Thrace. Like, maybe the writers came up with half an hour of flashbacks to explain her. And then they thought, "Oh no! This finale is three hours long and we only have two hours of airtime! Let's cut this, we don't need it." So Thrace magically vanishes.

The fact that angels are real -- witness the 6 and Balthar angels, visible to Balthar and 6; also witness Thrace, apparently an angel and visible to everyone -- makes a strong case for the fact that the writers are in favor of monotheism, despite the pervasive polytheism throughout BSG.

Overall, I am satisfied. BSG was really excellent for the first ~2 years, and the last 4-5 episodes. The middle part was bad in the way that Lost is bad: lots of unexplained and badly-written stuff. How can the cylons be intelligent enough to engineer artificial biological life, but stupid enough to think that a virus can be transmitted via radio waves and the uploading/reincarnation process? I liked the internal consistency of the show, and of course I like robots. And Diplomacy-like tension, backstabbing, etc. The premise was excellent, and the execution was very good.

I would recommend this to others. Goodnight, sweet internet, goodnight.

BSG finale: commercial break 10

Many weird flashbacks. Were these really necessary to tie up the loose ends? Sure, Balthar's dad was a farmer, but... ok. Fine. Very poetic. Nicely overdubbed music.

Of course Hera is mitochondrial Eve. All of this has happened before.

I am glad that Aibo conducting an orchestra got to be the last robot word. Also that weirdly anthropomorphic female robot.

BSG finale: commercial break 9

Thrace is still unexplained. Where did she go?

After five years of dying, at last Laura is dead. Well, no one can say they didn't see it coming.

BSG finale: commercial break 8

The old man did get to fly the last viper off of Galactica. How satisfying.

So back when Kara was aimlessly jumping following her "gut" and painting all over her bunk, she could've been only minutes away from jumping straight to real Earth. Too bad they didn't trust her enough then. But somehow they did now, after much more crazy behavior.

The first thing they're going to teach the natives to make? R. thinks, booze. So that in thousands of years, we can all be alcoholics.

BSG finale: commercial break 7

"How is that possible? Human beings naturally evolved on a planet billions of light years away. The odds against that are astronomical." Yes they are. Listen to that gut feeling. This is not entirely satisfactory writing.

"Our brains have always outraced our hearts. Our science charges ahead. Our souls lag behind." Too rhetorical. I can't believe that. (Plus, it sounds like some theories I've heard of jetlag: waiting for your soul to catch up.)

Setting the centurions free? BAD IDEA. Sometime in my 30s our planet will be overrun with centurion descendants!

Why fly the ships into the sun? Now if the other group of cylons comes back, they have to defend themselves with sticks! Just leave them in orbit! For crying out loud! I guess it's ok because they're ending the program; otherwise, that would be the first episode of the next season.

BSG finale: commercial break 6

Data flow in the water? Sounds like electrocution. Before, 8 had to manually insert a cable into her arm to do data transfer! And of course the chief is angry about his wife's murder which was previously cast as a suicide. Of course. Why didn't they try to defuse that before mind-melding! A dramatic way to find out.

The chief gets the short end of every romantic stick. Sucks to be him. Cuckholded, betrayed by robots and humans alike. I feel bad for him. He honestly tries to do good.

Where are humans going to end up? Answer: present-day Earth. They already went to the UN earlier this week!

BSG finale: commercial break 5

Can the cylons control when they stop projecting? It seems like always being in the operahouse would be bad in the middle of a battle. Like, you can't see the bullets, because they aren't in the operahouse... but they can still kill you.

Also, man, it is dangerous to be a toddler in the middle of a gunfight.

All of the operahouse visions are coming true! This is so cool. Also, everyone, human and cylon and halvsies alike, can project into the operahouse. So maybe they are all cylons, as R. expects. The parallelism of the visions with reality is awesome. Very satisfyingly literary.

"Everyone in this room has experienced things they can't explain or fathom." Yes. The product of terrible writers. 13-year-old girls strike again! Bwa ha ha. Actually, this speech by Balthar in the CIC is a good justification for all his various roles and speechifying for the past five years.

This truce seems exactly like the last truce, where they got resurrection and human bodies in return for the cylons not eradicating humanity. But... this has all happened before. This will all happen again!

BSG finale: commercial break 3

"I suppose the more important question is, 'what am I doing here? what was I thinking?'" Maybe you should have thought of that before you signed up for a suicide mission, Balthar!

The cylon theme for hybrid-to-Sam connection. Mmmmm.

Oooh! Cool tactic! Jump from inside the ship to the other side of the colony. Neat-o. I do not think that Galactica is going to make it back from this... these space-tactics remind me of the first time I read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. Three-dimensional strategy is so complicated. I feel like my long life of playing board games hasn't prepared me adequately for when I jump into the future and have to help protect the human race from invading aliens. (Or robots we create ourselves.)

It is as I foretold: they are using Galactica as a ram. Nice. you'd think that they could have moved those poor guys who got skewered, but I guess not.

Boomer is crazy. Let's hope she stays reasonably sane and can keep Hera alive.

BSG finale: commercial break 2

Sam's getting plugged into Galactica's dreydus, etc. To interface with the other hybrids. And slow down their defensive response. This is the way that the cylons first attacked the colonies! Nice parallelism.

Why does scrolling red text have to be projected on the walls above Sam's tank? He can't see it. What's the point? (Also, cool rotating bed-in-a-tub. It's like a robot hamster wheel.)

Why is Balthar staying? R. suggests, "Maybe vanquishing the cylons, and the very survival of the human race, will depend on having sex with as many cylons as possible. Then he can be useful."

So far everything is in-line with my prophesy.

BSG finale: commercial break 1

Whoa. Drunk old guys. Drunk and vomiting old guys.

Nothing is revealed yet. In fact, nothing has happened.

I wait.

BSG finale: what I expect

There are a number of questions that require resolution in the next two hours. And some gaping plot holes that will take everything the newly-revived writers have to fix.

How were there two Thraces? (R. thinks that the twist ending will be that everyone is a cylon.)

What's with the cylon homeworld? It never came up before. Where did it come from? Why was it never mentioned? Why can't we all go live there?

Where do the humans go? They have to go somewhere, after all.

Hera had better serve as an important plot point for something more than her stem cells. (Relatedly: why can't we just cure cancer now? Why is it still even an issue? And on the subject of scientific questions that Balthar has already solved, why did they abandon the fully functional and accurate cylon test from season one?)

Sam is going to... wake up? It's pretty obvious that, since he's already wired into Galactica and all the plot points are set up, he is going to jump Galactica to the cylon fleet (or homeworld). And then I think that the "grand goodbye" the admiral has planned is that he's going to drive Galactica into the other fleet and crash it into their ships. This was foreseen in some recent episode, in shots of Hera playing with the tiny strategic ships they have in the CIC, and... driving Galactica into the other fleet and crashing it into their ships. This might be how Hera is important. She can see the future. Or something.

Boomer has to be explained? ... or it could just be left that she's a crazy flip-flopper.

More to come at commercial breaks. (Note: they're having the actors reflect on BSG as a life-changing experience. Best comment: everyone else is talking about love, friendships, and work experiences... Sam says, "It's great to be on BSG. Because chicks dig cylons.")

A Blast From The Past

As Lila was checking her RSS feeds tonight after dinner, she said, "A ha! Geekologie blogged that video that we blogged first!"

"But Lila, did we actually blog that?" I astutely questioned. "I think we just put it in our gchat statuses."

"Blast!" Exclaimed Lila, without that joy in her heart that she was so known for.

So, here is the video that we found so amusing two days ago. Our critical eyes appreciate the contrast between the low-key, poorly-acted beginning and the action-packed, Cylon-reminiscent conclusion.

Another cute---yet inexplicable---video is here. No commentary is required.

Sci-Fi Post-Op

Battlestar Galactica : disappointing :: Doctor Who : damn fine.

If you haven't watched the last two episodes of Doctor Who, watch! 'Tis better to see than to tell. I'll just spoil the best Doctor Who line ever:

Exterminieren! Exterminieren!

Now I am eagerly awaiting the return of Stargate Atlantis---a show that has consistently gotten better and better with each passing season.

BSG update

Based on the latest episode, the 15-year-old girls are rabid.

The Oncoming Storm

Since Stargate Atlantis finished its fourth season at the beginning of March, I've been waiting for some excellent new science fiction to air. I chose my tense very carefully in that last sentence: progressive perfect. Even though Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica returned to airing two weekends ago, I have not yet seen anything worth the reputations previously earned by these shows.

As Lila noted, Doctor Who is back on the zombie bandwagon. Yes, the Vesuvius episode was filler. The litmus test for these is easy in Doctor Who: was it written by Russell T Davies? Yes equals a sweet show; no, a weak filler episode. The dilemmata of being a Time Lord are a constant theme in the show, but the Doctor doesn't normally have a problem with doing what has to get done. There is no pressing need to remind us of this every season, and even Donna said that she "knew all this" in the first episode. I haven't watched the third episode of the season yet, but I trust we will see improvement soon.

Back to zombies for a minute. Upon reflection, it strikes me that zombies are an extremely prevalent theme in science fiction. In the original sense, a zombie is a body that has been taken control of. Supposedly there were some sort of hallucinogenic drugs from Africa that were used to convert people to zombies. Who knows. Regardless, the brain-thirsty college kid in this picture is not the only embodiment of the zombie. Do note, though, that this zombie has torn his jacket in his madness, but hasn't untied his nicely-dimpled tie. There's a reason for that. His tie is serving the functional purpose of holding his head on. Think about it.

Almost every science fiction source I have recently been entertaining myself with is full of zombies. Hell, all the robots I can think of (save Marvin the Paranoid Android) are very much zombies. Mass Effect, for those who've played it, was all about zombies, from the robotic, hive-minded geth, to those enthralled by either Sovereign or the Thorian. Pretty repetitive game, once you realize that. Of course, what I am segueing to is Battlestar Galactica.

Think about it (think, think about it). The seven cylons that are publicly known all don't understand why they do what they must do. They were "programmed" by whomever created them to avoid thinking about the final five. Pretty silly, huh? They just act according to their programming (so it is argued) and as such are no more than zombies. The cylon centurians (until the second episode of this season) were mindless killing machines. And the human-form cylons exist by downloading into inactive spare bodies. For them, the mind–body debate is solved: the body exists only as a tool for the mind, and can be discarded at will.

The "sleeper agents" (although there can only be at most one remaining---and there is only one true god! Coincidence?) are the most zombie-like (zombiesque, zombimbic, zombic? Zombied and zombified, which the OED provides, just don't suit my need). They are certainly programmed and behave accordingly. They can be made to do things that they would not choose to do (shoot Adama, blow up the water supply, cf. season one for more examples) and have no control over it. A good question is, will the baby cylons be programmable (cry now!) or does that require a spare body? More generally, can the cylons actually reprogram each other?

Zombies, zombies every where,
And oh the plot did thick;
Zombies, zombies every where,
And many turns to trick.

Frakkin' compilation

Apparently, a popular fan obsession is making video compilations of every _____ (fill in the blank) in ______ (object of fan affection). Take, for example, every "frak" in BSG season 1:

Many other compilations can be found here. (Thanks, Woot!)

Torchwood, Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica

The second season of Torchwood just ended, and the fourth seasons of Doctor Who and BSG just began. A sci-fi TV rundown seems to be in order.

Torchwood satisfied my craving for Doctor Who-like TV during the dry spell between seasons of Doctor Who. As always, I am disappointed that Captain Jack Harkness is so much more serious and authoritative as a star than he is as a flippant companion. The last few episodes were rather disappointing -- I felt that the writers wasted a Gwen's wedding (a big life event!) on a rather predictable shape-shifting alien story. And then "From Out of the Rain" didn't even mention the Rift or aliens at all! I don't want just a weird, dark police show, I want science fiction! In the season finale, Jack lived through two thousand years of dying, buried alive -- and came out of it speaking fine, not deranged or troubled. By comparison, his yearlong series of deaths in the finale of Doctor Who season 3 -- which left him subdued and reflective -- is nothing! On the other hand, the series had many of those classic double-take Captain Jack lines. So I still like it.

Doctor Who - It is true that the Doctor is always fighting people who basically want to turn humans into zombies (so summarizeth Mur Lafferty). But just seeing him walk down the street in the season 4 opener was exciting! That crazy hair! That optimistic attitude! The awkwardness at the end of the episode (does he ever talk straight about romance?) was a nice finishing touch. And the sight of Rose! -- how is she back? How many narrative opportunities are opened! O glee!

BSG - The titles have changed! Here's how I picture that executive meeting:

Ex1: "We've been getting some flak recently from the ardent fans--"
Ex2: "They take issue with everything!"
Ex1: "-- also the not-so-ardent fans, the channel-surfers, and even people who have never seen the show."
Ex2: "Why?"
Ex1: "Well, at the beginning of every show we have this long opening sequence, building up to the fact that the cylons have a plan."
Ex2: "... ?"
Ex1: "They don't."
Ex2: "Really?"

The Kara-Thrace-trust issue was inevitable, and so predictable that I wonder why they bothered shooting it. Based on nearly identical situations in the past three seasons, we know that she'll (1) have a very strong conviction that (2) nobody else believes, to the points of (3) calling her a traitor/cylon. Then (4) someone with power will trust her and (5) give her the means to pursue her conviction, resulting in (6) a dramatic reveal that she was right, after all. Then (7) she will be restored to her usual place in the cockpit, after some muted congratulations/apologies.

Balthar, too, is back to his usual business of being thrown out of a position of power and elevated to a new one. With lots of loose women in the mix.

The only new element in this season's plot mix is that four new characters know (in secret) that they are cylons. This will be interesting, as we've never had that before...

The Last BSG Supper

Even though "Razor" sucked, I am still so thrilled by this image that I actually have goosebumps. When I grow up, I want to be a soldier in the colonial fleet and battle strangely psychologically-tinged interior battles against self-aware, human-envying robots! I also want to have amazing biceps like everyone on the show.

Thoughts on BSG Season 4

After the showing of "Razor" tonight, there was a very telling trailer for the upcoming season. Interestingly, it claims that four cylons were revealed in the last season and one more remains unknown. So, I guess that means that Kara isn't a cylon after all.

This revelation makes the "Razor" statement perhaps a little interesting: where was Kara during the last few episodes and who was she with? The trailer suggested that the fleet stops trusting Kara because she might be a cylon. We are faced with a dilemma in continuity: either Kara died and then was resurrected (and is therefore a cylon because they haven't yet resorted to that particular deus ex machina on BSG) or she was rescued/captured by cylons immediately before her ship exploded. It certainly makes the series less interesting if they make Kara a cylon (Oh, you thought she was a cylon? Well, she is!) so I suspect she isn't at all. Also, if she is a cylon then Kara, Anders, and Tory form a CYLON LOVE TRIANGLE?!?!? Preposterous!

Anyway, the writers are all crazy because no new characters were introduced. "Razor" did not redeem the second half of season 3, in my opinion. We'll have to wait for March. (Or, better yet, Doctor Who in January!)