posted
A less revelatory edition than last week's, but clearly setting up a lot for the next episode.
It could've been a little boring, if it weren't for the frequent humour. Has there been an episode before with so many one-liners?
Adama's taking a lot of pills. A second "dying leader" candidate?
Gaeta's actions are clearly influenced by what he found out in the Face of the Enemy webisodes. You can't trust a Cylon.
Did Hotdog get that rash way back when from Cally? Revealing that Tyrol's not Nicky's father nicely frees up Hera as the only hybrid. Having two hybrids was always a bit of an issue before, after Six had bigged up Hera's significance.
Saul and Six's baby seems like another indication that the final five just aren't the same type of Cylons at all.
(btw, with the title I followed on from the previous thread which called Sometimes a Great Notion episode 13, but BSG wiki lists this week's episode as 4x12. I take it we're adding Razor to the count?)
posted
Episode numbering for this season is a bitch. Try the wikipedia discussion pages, its a minefield.
I really didn't like Gaeta much. What an asshole.. and why was he even attending the Cylon meeting with Adama? Tom Zarek is a lot better as an opponent. I can really believe a lot of the civilians would echo his ideas.
Did we have any evidence of him tampering with the votes to 'buy' the Vice Presidency? I'm not sure I like the idea, as it clearly puts Adama on the moral high ground, whereas I liked it if they had equal rights to 'existence'. Zarek seemed to work fine as just a populist leader with typical anti-government ideas.
Did anyone else find it quite shocking that Adama gave the order to arrest (with deadly force!) the Vice President? Adama having that classified file on him made it more reasonable, but he must've lost a lot of credit with the Quorum by arresting the VP.
IIRC, Baltar was preaching for the Cylon God, right? He apparently has denounced that God now. His internal Six seemed to be suspiciously absent?
Did I understand correctly that Tyrol is acting, or wants to act, as something of a leader of the fleet Cylons? It would fit his previous stint as union leader or resistance leader.
All in all, a lot of realigning happens in this episode. Adama and Roslin appear to be losing interest in leading the fleet, Zarek and Gaeta are forming an anti-Cylon faction, Baltar's cult has apparently denounced the Cylon religion, and Tyrol is attempting to forge a Cylon-Colonial union. Once more, any attempts to speculate on the future of the series seems impossible...
posted
Adama's an old hand at arresting governmental leaders, I don't think it bothered him. What I did find interesting is that his bluff with Zarek worked, which indicates he's not the squeaky clean idealist he makes himself out to be.
posted
See, I was wondering about that. Did Zarek cave in without even looking at the "evidence" because he was guilty, and Adama managed to trick him? Or did Zarek just assume (rightly, I expect) that it didn't matter that he hadn't done anything, because Adama would just fabricate evidence?
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OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
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posted
I think Zarek just caved because Zarek always caves. Because the plot demands that he cave.
-------------------- If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.
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posted
He caved because he's not stupid; Adama is a tactical thinker and he simply out manoeuvred him this time. Zarek is a lot of things but he's not crazy and has no wish to destroy the fleet for the sake of furthering his own agenda. No matter how he might compromise himself, he's still at his core, an idealist. That's what I like about the character and for that matter, Baltar. On any other show, both of them could simply been written as self serving villains, but instead they're antagonists, which is much more interesting because allot of the time they at least have a point and good reason to work against the protagonists.
posted
Zarek's main asset, in fact the core of his whole being, is his image. He's got to be the rebel, he never Belongs, the farthest he'll go is to work behind the scenes. He never sought power, initially, because he knew people weren't ready to see him as a leader and not just as a terrorist/freedom fighter. He's constantly lookig to stick it to The Man, whoever The Man is at the time - at the end of season 1, The Man was Adama so he helped Roslin escape. Then on Kobol he was able to sense that things were changing far sooner than his henchman was, and therefore avoid being entangled in his actions. Later Roslin became The Man, and so he sought to help Baltar become elected. We don't quite know how events took their course on New Caprica but one year later, Baltar's now The Man (or rather The Man's stooge) and Zarek's a dissident again. As soon as he became President he couldn't wait to abdicate in Roslin's favour. His whole complicity in the actions of The Circle were probably enough to persuade him to keep his head down for a while. And when Roslin was missing, he found his path to the Presidency to be wide open - but was thwarted again by the Adamas.
So, in a sense, Zarek is following his tradition of sticking it to The Man, but combined with what could be a personal vendetta against William Adama and a feeling that now finally he's ready to lead for real rather than working behind the scenes. No doubt events will show he's probably stuck his neck out a little to far this time. . .
Anyway. His image: Zarek knows he's done a lot of work behind the scenes, a lot of it questionable at best and open to a much worse interpretation. He stands to lose his rebel image and just be exposed as an arch manipulator who's all too happy to work within the system. He had to back down.
posted
My first thought on the last scene: "About damn time!" My wife's second thought: "EW! Old people!"
The only thing that bothered me about this episode was the retcon of Callie's fling with Hotdog. I'm fairly sure the writers came up with Tyrol being a Cylon after they had already written in the baby, so this just seems like a messy clean-up to me. I know they needed to fix things so that Hera is the only "special" child, but it just seems so out-of-character for Callie.
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posted
Zarek caved because he's a consummate politician; all his preaching about political idealism, about the responsibility of government, and more, is simply to get the people riled up and supporting some cause or another that disrupts the current administration. That's what he (apparently) did way back on Sagittaron, that's what he did with the uprising on the Astral Queen, that's what he did on Colonial Day, that's what he did leading the breakaway fleet to Kobol, that's what he did to force the settlement issue on New Caprica. He's almost a one-trick pony, except his trick is a real good one. He's got the legend of being a champion, for better or worse.
What Adama was threatening was to destroy that legend. Zarek might not have known whether or not Adama was bluffing, but I'll bet that Zarek's been up to a few things that could have been in that file packet. And that was probably enough to make him cave.
I really didn't see that thing with Baby Nicky coming, though.
quote:Did Hotdog get that rash way back when from Cally?
I thought so, at first. But then I went and looked up the reference, which is from "A Day in the Life." That's way after the whole New Caprica thing.
quote:Revealing that Tyrol's not Nicky's father nicely frees up Hera as the only hybrid. Having two hybrids was always a bit of an issue before, after Six had bigged up Hera's significance.
See, I kinda think it's the other way around. Yes, Number Six was referring to Hera as "the face of things to come," but there are some big parallels to having two kids rather than one. It would make more sense, procreation-wise, if there's one female hybrid and one male hybrid. Unless Six and Saul's kid is somehow going to be considered a hybrid. ('Cause we still don't know how different the Five are...)
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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posted
Y'know I was surprised at Tyrol taking on the role of Ambassador between the colonials and the cylons. I never expected him to do it. Also I assume he still doesn't know that his wife was killed.
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posted
Well, either they nuked themselves, or the humans who used to live on Earth nuked them. If humans ever did live on Earth. Which wasn't really clear.
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
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posted
Mercifully, my parents live the other side of the country, so I don't have to explain it all to them as they watch. Unfortunately this means I then have to explain it to my dad who then has to explain it to my mum.
I didn't get much headway on explaining that Ellem Tigh could reappear, because if the Five had been previously (and maybe repeatedly, given the long passage of time) resurrected, and not using a Resurrection Ship or Hub, then they must have some other method of doing so and that might still exist. And it may even have been used to bring back Starbuck as well.
On the subject of Earth, I did a little better. I was able to boil it down to two scenarios:
1. "Earth is the 13th (and Cylon) Colony." Humanity evolved on Kobol, created Cylons, a schism happened, humanity went to the 12 Colonies, the Cylons to Earth, eventually Earth was devastated either in a war with humans or just among Cylons. Of course, the initial war might have been between Kobol and Earth, and after both were devastated, then the 12 Colonies were formed.
2. "Earth is Earth." Humanity evolved on Earth, created Cylons, schism happened, humanity left for Kobol, Cylons remained behind. Then both planets devastated in war, Cylons almost exterminated, surviving humans found 12 Colonies.
The BSG Wiki page seems to favour option 1. I suspect however that somehow the BSG universe will end up getting tied to our reality in the end, so perhaps the mythology goes deeper, perhaps Kobol is not the birthplace of humanity but just a stepping-stone from another planet. Perhaps the 13th tribe didn't go out to find a new world, but a much older one.
posted
I agree; I've kinda assumed from the very beginning that the second scenario is where the writers are heading. And I've always liked the far-future stories where Earth is nothing but a nearly-forgotten myth (like Dune and Asimov's series).
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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