Sunday, March 25, 2007
Short TV Post
The final episode of Rome was OK--good, lean depiction of the battle of Actium-- but the series ended in a sort of whimper, I thought. There is another 350 years of interesting history to compress and gloss over, but it's tough, I guess, to get the excellent production values for a moderate cost, and the lowish number of viewers weren't making the figures work. I'll miss the completely made up story of Pullo and Vorenus, however, a great deal. The actors who played them, McKidd and Stevenson (and Purefoy as Mark Anthony) were really great, particularly Stevenson.
I have to reveal the roots of my utter geekitude to discuss what just went wrong with Battlestar Galactica (sorry, Les). I liked the original Star Trek episode with Ricardo Montalban and it was great that they brought him back for a role in the second movie, one of the few good ones. However, the storyline was bunk. He was in his 30s, at least, when he was involved in mid 1990s war on Earth, started by genetically enhanced leaders of which Montalban was one, the best of them, in fact, Khan Noonian Singh. So that meant he had to have been genetically altered in the early 60s and even as we watched Star Trek then, we knew that we didn't have the means of genetically manipulating (into eventual superior beings) babies or zygotes, or whatever, back then. We don't have it now. It was more than a mistake about the speed of our scientific advances in the future, it was a plot miscalculation and a stupid one at that. Not as bad as the Frank Gorshin horribleness, but bad.
Tonight they revealed four of the five final Cylon models (I guess we're supposed to guess until October at least who is the 5th. I go with Baltar for reasons I'll explain later). One of them is old Col. Tigh. Uh ho. Now I have always imagined that the Cylons that look like humans are manufactured in that goo bath and come out fully formed. Then they show up among us for spying and sabotage but they're only weeks old even though they look in their 30s to 60s and either have a false memory of a past or lie about their past. So Tigh could look 60 and still be a Cylon--no problem. But he can't have had a 40 year career among humans who know and remember him (he and Admiral Adama reminisce in the very first show) since before the first war because there is no way the Cylons were making human like Cylons before they rebelled in the first place. It's just stupid to make him a Cylon. It's the same sort of forgetting about the time he has been among the humans as an ultimate sleeper agent as happened with the childhood etc. of Khan.
Here is why I believe the 5th is Baltar. Cylons apparently like to sleep with other Cylons. They certainly can get on the same wavelength (the President's ability is a bit of a mystery there) as tonight's episode showed; so this 'psychic' connection must be sexual stimulating, or something. I know that one model seemed to have fallen in love with Starbuck who's probably not a Cylon (but I saw no evidence of sex between them--they were just playing house, kind of a murderous form of house). But think of who has paired up--all Cylons: The Chief and Boomer (I know she had a child with Helo but they made her do that); Sam and the President's aide; and, Baltar and 6. Ergo, Baltar must be a Cylon.
I know Lee and Starbuck got it on too, but there's only one spot left so it can't be both of them. Also Starbuck can't be both savior and Cylon, can she? Oh and the Chief has a wife probably not a Cylon, oh, and Ellen slept with everyone including a Cylon--maybe they'll bring her back from the dead too.
Finally, having the uniting or 'turning on' song be Dylan's All Along the Watchtower was another stupid idea. And hinting it in verses--which we recognize as they are being said-- was pretty silly too. Happy Birthday would have been a better choice, but any song we recognize is the wrong choice even though we have to recognize it for the 'scary' foreshadowing to work. Face it, any uniting song was kinda silly.
I fear the writers have run out of good ideas and are slapping together things that only sounded good at the time.
I have to reveal the roots of my utter geekitude to discuss what just went wrong with Battlestar Galactica (sorry, Les). I liked the original Star Trek episode with Ricardo Montalban and it was great that they brought him back for a role in the second movie, one of the few good ones. However, the storyline was bunk. He was in his 30s, at least, when he was involved in mid 1990s war on Earth, started by genetically enhanced leaders of which Montalban was one, the best of them, in fact, Khan Noonian Singh. So that meant he had to have been genetically altered in the early 60s and even as we watched Star Trek then, we knew that we didn't have the means of genetically manipulating (into eventual superior beings) babies or zygotes, or whatever, back then. We don't have it now. It was more than a mistake about the speed of our scientific advances in the future, it was a plot miscalculation and a stupid one at that. Not as bad as the Frank Gorshin horribleness, but bad.
Tonight they revealed four of the five final Cylon models (I guess we're supposed to guess until October at least who is the 5th. I go with Baltar for reasons I'll explain later). One of them is old Col. Tigh. Uh ho. Now I have always imagined that the Cylons that look like humans are manufactured in that goo bath and come out fully formed. Then they show up among us for spying and sabotage but they're only weeks old even though they look in their 30s to 60s and either have a false memory of a past or lie about their past. So Tigh could look 60 and still be a Cylon--no problem. But he can't have had a 40 year career among humans who know and remember him (he and Admiral Adama reminisce in the very first show) since before the first war because there is no way the Cylons were making human like Cylons before they rebelled in the first place. It's just stupid to make him a Cylon. It's the same sort of forgetting about the time he has been among the humans as an ultimate sleeper agent as happened with the childhood etc. of Khan.
Here is why I believe the 5th is Baltar. Cylons apparently like to sleep with other Cylons. They certainly can get on the same wavelength (the President's ability is a bit of a mystery there) as tonight's episode showed; so this 'psychic' connection must be sexual stimulating, or something. I know that one model seemed to have fallen in love with Starbuck who's probably not a Cylon (but I saw no evidence of sex between them--they were just playing house, kind of a murderous form of house). But think of who has paired up--all Cylons: The Chief and Boomer (I know she had a child with Helo but they made her do that); Sam and the President's aide; and, Baltar and 6. Ergo, Baltar must be a Cylon.
I know Lee and Starbuck got it on too, but there's only one spot left so it can't be both of them. Also Starbuck can't be both savior and Cylon, can she? Oh and the Chief has a wife probably not a Cylon, oh, and Ellen slept with everyone including a Cylon--maybe they'll bring her back from the dead too.
Finally, having the uniting or 'turning on' song be Dylan's All Along the Watchtower was another stupid idea. And hinting it in verses--which we recognize as they are being said-- was pretty silly too. Happy Birthday would have been a better choice, but any song we recognize is the wrong choice even though we have to recognize it for the 'scary' foreshadowing to work. Face it, any uniting song was kinda silly.
I fear the writers have run out of good ideas and are slapping together things that only sounded good at the time.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 9:21 PM 
