I’m willing to accept that it’s not the space-fantasy that the 70s original was.
I’m willing to accept meandering arcs that don’t appear to ever resolve.
I’m willing to accept increasingly nonsensical pseudo-religious ‘shared vision’ BS.
I’m willing to accept ham-fisted commentary about current events.
But come on…..a major plot point that appears to revolve around 4 individuals who hear phantom recordings of “All Along the Watchtower” and quote the lyrics?
WHAT.
THE.
FUCK.
Are we supposed to think that “Watchtower” is a song from their culture? Are we supposed to think that they’re hearing a song from Earth? (Yeah, ‘cuz the last time a Galactica show decided to go ahead and include Earth….that worked out well…..)
I’m sorry — This season was ASS. Jump the Shark time. In a major way.
I was very thankful for Lee’s big speech, as it finally explained the bitchy-whiny ass-hattery he’s been partaking of lately (though in his defense, he’s *always* been a whiney, emo bitch. That’s what I like about him).
I don’t mind the psuedo-spiritual stuff, though it was better with it actuall made sense (a la Kobol stuff from season one).
But yes. The quoting of lyrics and horrible “everything’s going to be ok” technicolor ending about made me vomit. The Badger stuff proved that somebody on that staff can still write, so for fuck’s sake, what was up with the rest of it?!?!
I didn’t realize it was an actual song they were playing – a known one, that is. That makes it sooooooooooooooooo much worse. And it was dumb how fast Kara showed up again. Blah!!!
I agree. This season was ass. I’m so glad I have the first two to look back on. *sigh*
I didn’t realize it was an actual song they were playing – a known one, that is.
It was originally done by Bob Dylan, and made much more famous by this cover version by Jimi Hendrix.
It was nearly unrecognizable because of the complete ASS Emo-ish cover version they decided to do, with sitars and stuff. I didn’t notice until they started dropping lyrics into the script early on— “There must be some way out of here” and “There’s too much confusion.”
When they started with the “said the joker to the thief” stuff later in the episode, I almost threw up.
Bob Dylan?!?! Hendrix? Woah. I thought it was just a crappy new agey rock song.
Wow. Thanks for the link. It just highlights how sucky the cover they used is. Gag.
Here’s the funny part – I’ve only seen the pilot for this show, which was okay, but didn’t really hook me. I tuned in, almost by accident, to the last fifteen minutes of the season finale and was impressed. I dug the choice of the Watchtower and I finally understood why I should care that Cylons are disguised as humans, and the kind of loss they must feel when they find out they’re not really human.
In short, I haven’t really been interested in catching the show, until then. And I even missed Lee’s speech.
It definitely should have been Purple Haze.
Omg. That really is funny. Hee. I’m probably finding it funnier than I *should,* in fact.
Hmm. So, do I treat emphatical asteriks like parenthesis or like quotation marks? *should,* or *should*,
Probably parenthetical.
/random internet grammatical pondering
If they pull if off, it’ll be the most audaciously awesome thing ever. But then again, I’ve written a solution to this that I really like in my head, so *I* think it’s possible.[*]
Now other stuff:
* Lee’s speech was good. The way it came up in Wacky Court was bad.
* Not resolving Gaeta/Baltar was BAD. I was VERY CROSS.
* The revelation scene with the four was *good,* especially with Saul — but where the hell did Tyrol’s kid come from, then? I bed they use this as a pretense to give the actor back his other eye.
* Baltar didn’t get enough screen time — but being left alone in the end was *good.*
* I think Laura Roslin should really become a villain, but that’s never going to happen.
[*] Here’s my idea: The final Five were designed by *Earth* humans. They encountered the exiled Cylons and turned them into their instruments, creating the other seven out of old Cylon stock and their own designs. All BSG humans actually come from Earth in colonies from *our* future, but Earth humans are actually posthuman cyborgs now. The Cylons are their instrument to prepare the rest of humanity to accept contact with a partly artificial posthuman civilization.
This also handily explains everything about the setting.
Eh. It’s one screwy posthuman civilisation if “letting our tools nuke the crap out of the twelve colonies” is less damaging than the culture shock of meeting it unprepared.
In general, though (not having seen the episode, but being pretty spoiled), I agree with the sentiment that they can possibly pull it off. It will probably involve telling us that everything we know about the show is wrong, certainly as regards the Cylons, but if the ‘truth’ is cool enough, it might work.
BSG’s always used recognizable, modern things instead of fancy sci-fi-itized ones where it was unnecessary. I didn’t really see this as any different.
I do think it was a transmission from Earth, so they were activated when they came close enough. Otherwise I’m not sure what the fuck, but I wasn’t sure what the fuck at the end of season two either.
Wasn’t there a Jimi Hendrix Track on the Voyager Probe?
*Yes I know that it wasn’t on Broadcast, but on a pressed record. And so is hardly an escuse…
I’ll stop now before I accidentally tie BSG into Star Trek… Damn.
Nope. It was Chuck Berry; Johnny B. Goode
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html
>>I do think it was a transmission from Earth, so they were activated when they came close enough.
That is actually something that could potentially be cool. I’m not sure how I feel about trying to link BSG universe to our actual Earth, but maybe it’s an alternate universe where Bob Dylan is the fifth Cylon.
Actually, I’m wrong. Moore explained it like this:
Them all remembering the same song simultaneously was supposed to represent the slow recall of their Cylon memories. The reason for the particular song was:
A) If they’d just been singing some random song Bear McCreary made up, we wouldn’t have realized something was going on since we’d never heard it before.
B) Moore likes Hendrix.
ugh. how disappointing.
I like your version a lot better.
>>A) If they’d just been singing some random song Bear McCreary made up, we wouldn’t have realized something was going on since we’d never heard it before.
Because them all hearing phantom music wasn’t enough of a clue “something was going on”? I think I’m insulted. No, actually, I know I am.
Best summation, from Salon.com’s review of the finale:
Re: ugh. how disappointing.
They both work for me. This is just reminding me of the complaining at the end of season two, and that turned out to be awesome beyond compare. I think BSG suffers from its own quality a bit, no one gives it even an inch of slack.
Thus far, the only thing that’s really not been handled well was the Sagittaron subplot that got dropped, but that was explained in the podcast fairly well. I’ll give them that one, they managed to cut out an entire plotline that wasn’t going well and stuff all the damage into a single sub-par episode.
Well, maybe you have a better eye for it than I do. I’d never heard All Along the Watchtower before so I didn’t realize they were quoting it. It was meaningless until someone else in the room pointed out that they were all singing the same song.
Re: ugh. how disappointing.
There was complaining at the end of season two? I thought that was one of the niftiest finales I’d ever seen.
>>Thus far, the only thing that’s really not been handled well
I have to disagree. Everything regarding the Lee/Starbuck/Dee/Anders debacle was handled pretty poorly. It dragged down a lot of this season. The first real episode dealing with it (the boxing one) was possibly one of the finest of the season, but everything after that was dog vomit.
Re: ugh. how disappointing.
complaining at the end of season two, and that turned out to be awesome beyond compare
Your Mileage May Vary.
Personally, the whole season 2 to season 3 thing proved to me that they don’t know what the hell they’re doing — they set up this whole New Caprica thing with the finale, and then in the interim realized that they really didn’t want to tell that story, so they handled New Caprica in the first 3 episodes, leaving most of the potential to be used as flashbacks here and there.
That’s just really bad writing. It made it seem like they had come up with the finale, then said “now what do we do?” “Umm….I dunno.” “Screw it. Wrap it up quickly and get back to the whole “rag tag fugitive fleet” premise.”
I’d have had tons more respect for them if they had devoted the entirety of season 3 to life on New Caprica, with the liberation occuring at the finale. That would have been risk-taking, rather than what they ended up doing.
Re: ugh. how disappointing.
There was tons and tons and tons of complaining at the end of season two. It was pretty much forgotten when season three started. I expect the same here. But, of course, it’ll be a goddamn age before we know if it’s going to work or not.
Re: ugh. how disappointing.
Huh. I assume it was about the time-jump. Interesting!
Re: ugh. how disappointing.
I completely agree.
…Especially if they’d done away with Fat Apollo. ;)
Re: ugh. how disappointing.
Yeah, part was just the idea that they’re on New Caprica instead of the fleet, but most was the time jump. The complaints were actually almost identical to what I’ve been reading now, lots of sharks were predicted to be jumped and storylines ruined and such.
They may have fucked up the show with this, but I don’t think so, and either way we won’t really know until 2008. I’m just looking forward to the Pegasus movie now. I predict lots of Admiral Cain shooting people.
Yeah, I wasn’t thrilled with the cover, either. When they started muttering the lyrics, I burst out with, “Dude – they’re channeling Hendrix!”
Re: ugh. how disappointing.
Fat Apollo was pretty damned annoying.
Re: ugh. how disappointing.
According to John Aravosis over at AmericaBlog, who also hated this season, the writers just pretty much make it all up from week-to-week.