XDA

At the risk of upsetting the lunch queen (with whom I hope to have lunch this week) I have to write about Battlestar Galactica again. The third season opened with some of the toughest TV in a long, long while. The Cylons are monotheistic machines, which the humans call toasters, (some of which--the 12 'skin job' models, of which 7 have been shown--are nearly indistinguishable from humans). The toasters have repented their thermonuclear slaughter of billions of humans and have tracked the 50,000 survivors to a nebula-hidden, rough planet (looks a lot like British Columbia) on which the survivors had hoped to settle in peace. The Cylons say that they are there to open a new chapter in human/Cylon relationship at the urging of two Cylons (President Baltar's squeeze, model #6, (look left) and the original Sharon, "Boomer") who have fallen in love with humans. Unfortunately, as history has shown us, we humans don't like an occupying force and we have fought against it with a lot of blood but little actual success. The Cylons have gotten rough in response. The two battlestars (Pegasus and Galactica) bugged out with the fleet 4 months before when the Cylon's first showed. President Baltar's line was: "On behalf of the 12 Colonies, I surrender." He must be a Democrat.

What was most disturbing was the political overlay to the show; where before the Cylons were like the Jihadists (they attacked without warning, based on old, obscure complaints, they cannot be bargained with and will not stop) now the roles are reversed and now the human resistance ultimately resorts to suicide bombing, which rings a not too distant bell. That, however, makes the Cylons just like the forces of the enlightened West in the here and now. Ouch. And the Vichy-like government (if that historical parallel isn't too much cognizant dissonance) for example, denies torture by the Cylons when we viewers have heard the screams and seen the damage. Another bell ringing and driving us nuts with the unjustness of the comparison. Just as the pretty #6 fell in love with the long haired Brit Baltar, a scruffy male model (the one Adama beat to death in the armory) has fallen in love with female pilot Starbuck and has kept her in his apartment hoping she will fall in love with him. Near the start of the show, she stabs him through the neck and heart before she returns to her seat to finish her steak. I told you it was rough. It's the 5th time, he reveals, she has murdered him. Cylons, since they are machines, merely download the consciousness and memory of a dead skin job to a different individual sitting in a goo bath somewhere and the dead one comes back, memory and body intact. Honey, I'm home!

Things were being portrayed so realistically (I know it's just science fiction, but gritty, good science fiction) that when the lovelorn Cylon brought Starbuck's cute little test tube baby/toddler girl into the prison apartment, I gave even odds that Starbuck would stab it too. She didn't--it was the two hour episode's softest moment. The collaborator police (who wear the ski mask so popular on the police in Gaza and Iraq just now) round up about 200 humans to massacre and some of them were leads in the show, and there was a feeling of this can't be happening, this ain't happening, man. I knew, however, that the Cylons were actually going to shoot them all and we're left with the impression that they did in waffen SS in Malmedy/end of The Great Escape fashion. Tune in next week.

The gun the nerdy Cylon used to kill #6 and force Baltar to sign the lengthy death warrant was a CZ 52 (they love Czech guns on this show). I have one of those--it is a powerful handgun and would have blown #6's head apart, but they wimped out and had a neat forehead hole instead. Still shocking. The Cylons are learning how to kill each other (that particular #6 started it). All of the women Cylon, to the left, are beautiful. Lucy Lawless, the former Xena, both left and below right, looks particularly great.

There is a troubling detail revealed last season that continues to bug me. There was first the original Sharon (the Asian above) who was fraking (to use the show's general cognate vernacular) the chief (flight deck mechanic); and then a different Sharon showed up, who was fraking fellow pilot Helo (and they had a mixed entity child). This on top of the original #6 shtuping Baltar constantly, even in their mutual daydream delusions. Who would have thought machines would have sex drives permanently in high gear? The original Boomer shoots Adama at the end of the first season and the chief's current love interest shoots and kills her in revenge. She comes back. The second, mother Sharon (who loves Helo) tells the chief she remembers their affair and she still has feelings for him. Hold on there, kitty cat. The various individuals of one model group share memories among themselves? That's Borg connection stuff and dangerous to the plot--as the mother Sharon has recently won the trust of Adama and now serves in the fleet and has returned to the refuge planet to help plan the rescue of the oppressed humans. If the varying individuals of the same models share memories, wouldn't they know what she's doing? And how could the other #6s disagree with the #6 in love with Baltar? Wouldn't they be of one mind? Like I say, it's bugging me. They should do a George Lucas and redo the earlier takes to take out that disturbing anomaly. Or just ignore it, as they seem to be doing. It's kind of a space soap opera with great special effects, fair to quite good acting and a good plot.

Good show.