On BSG, Season 1

[yendi]

So, after playing the absolutely incredibly board game about seven times between Arisia and Vericon (thanks, ckd), I finally decided to check out (or, to use the technical term, "download from the bittorrents") the miniseries and season 1 of the new Battlestar Galactica.

Quick, pre-spoiler review: I like it, but I don't love it to the extent of wanting to form a cult around the show. It's got some nifty, nifty ideas, a ludicrous underlying premise, and some well-written characters.

I'd managed to avoid most spoilers (other than the big revelation at the end of the miniseries), so the show was pretty much a closed book for me going in. A few random, disorganized thoughts follow. By all means feel free to respond with, "they'll explain that in another season," but please don't actually tell me how, if they do address some of these issues.

Oh, and getting a good download of Season 2 is taking a while, so it'll likely be a week or two before I see it (other than the first ep, which I did nab).



By far the most fascinating aspect of the show, to me, is Baltar and his relationship with Six. There are multiple ways I could see them explaining this -- from the already-mentioned implanted chip, to post-hypnotic suggestions, to his being a Cylon, to this all being a massive psychotic break (although given the information "Six" has provided, this would also rely on her having told him a hell of a lot back on Caprica). He's basically masturbating in public half the time while attempting to be a scientist and a politician, something that could be played only for cheap laughs, but manages to be genuinely interesting most of the time.

I do have to admit, I'm surprised that he didn't expose Boomer; yes, telling her at the moment she took the test would likely have cost him his life, but it's not like he couldn't have let her walk away, then called Tigh. We're never really given any justification here (although his later comment that it's easier to make all tests negative implies something here).

Speaking of Tigh, if Ellen Tigh isn't the most ludicrously obvious Cylon, they've been dropping some awful hints (and have probably set themselves up for a Captain Atom/Monarch bad writing clusterfuck). I might buy that she's a sympathizer, at best.

Also, "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down" is the best episode title ever.

Here's the thing I don't get about the Cylons as a whole. They claim to have only twelve models (and wasn't that info only given by the "implanted" Six?). Why? I mean, if they've got a fake Boomer on Galactica, they presumably have people on all ships. But what happens if the Boomer on Ship A gets transferred to Ship B, where another Boomer works? It just seems like something that could easily be avoided by creating dozens or hundreds of looks (even if they're otherwise the same "model"). And we've seen that variations of the same model can have different personalities (at least, the Boomer on Caprica seems to have split from the other Boomers we've seen), so they surely could also wear different faces.

Speaking of Boomer, why, exactly, did Tigh and everyone assume she was a Cylon? I mean, we've already seen that there are other factions (alligned with Zarek) who are not above violence. And Adama had just pulled a HUGE FUCKING ILL-ADVISED COUP against the President for, as his son noted, making a bad decision. And said son already mutinied over it. What's to say another pilot wouldn't, as well?

The card game, incidentally, needs to have a "naked Boomer swarm" Crisis card, per the end of Season 1. Just because.

Also, the use of "Frak" as a supposedly offensive word annoys me. Everyone uses it, all the time. Not just Starbuck and Apollo (who you'd expect it from), but pretty much everyone short of the priestess utters it; at this point, I'd like to see a curse word that actually seems to have some impact on the characters. "Frak" seems to be about as meaningful in BSG as it is in our day and age.

As an atheist, I tend to find the religious beliefs of both sides silly, but I find the humans sillier. How, exactly, did they evolve from the current state of general monotheism into a pantheistic state of worshipping Greek gods that have literally no current worshippers left? Yes, the Cylon war left the human colonies cut off for a while, but it still seems to be a strange and inexplicable evolution. And doesn't that make the use of "Apollo" as a call sign something bordering on blasphemy?

Also, are there no monotheists amongst the humans? Given the way in which Roslin is set up as an obvious Moses figure, this strikes me as weird.

Come to think of it, are there no atheists in either race? Baltar's the only one to ever express utter disbelief, and he's converted by the end of season 1.

Yes, I'm generally willing to let the treat the events leading to man's (and Cylon's) current religious state as the ludicrous premise that I should just accept for the sake of setting up and watching the show, but it does rankle. I tend to find prophecy-driven stories to be silly and inherently driven by deus ex plotting. B5 is a rare exception, since the major prophecies were explained by time travel. I don't see that happening here.

As far as characters go, as I've already said, Baltar's the most intriguing. I also like Tigh (the Londo of this show, in many ways, although without the extravagant sense of humor). That said, there are few folks I don't enjoy following, including the Cylons (three of the four models shown so far -- Six, Boomer, and Leoben -- all have interesting personalities, and Doral seems to be a good Generic Evil Bad Guy). The lone exception is probably Apollo. To keep the B5 comparisons alive, it's like making your show's hero Keffler. Yawn. I'll take Helo, Chief, and Starbuck any day. Although he's still my favorite character in the board game.

Finally, the show gets bonus points for making Dirk Benedict and his precious little penis whine.