Signs of Judgment Day, Part 1

From Gizmodo:

UK robotics professor Noel Sharkey is raising a fuss over the US Defense Department's intention to put $4 billion into "unmanned systems" in the next year or two. One fear is that spillover from all that R&D will give terrorists new ways to build effective GPS-guided suicide bombers for $500 or less.

"How long is it going to be before the terrorists get in on the act? With the current prices of robot construction falling dramatically and the availability of ready-made components for the amateur market, it wouldn't require a lot of skill to make autonomous robot weapons."

But Sharkey has other more philosophical issues, ones that echo Isaac Asimov's own concerns of more than a half century ago.

Says the New Scientist:

Sharkey is most concerned about the prospect of having robots decide for themselves when to "pull the trigger." Currently, a human is always involved in decisions of this nature. But the Pentagon is nearly two years into a research program aimed at having robots identify potential threats without human help.

But Ronald Arkin of Georgia Tech, the Siskel to Sharkey's Ebert, says that because a robot has no emotional baggage, it could be a much more "ethical" killer:

Arkin suggests trying to design ethical control systems that make military robots respect the Geneva Convention and other rules of engagement on the battlefield... "With a robot I can be sure that a robot will never harbour the intention to hurt a non-combatant," he says. "Ultimately they will be able to perform better than humans."

Hello!

Terminator? Battlestar Galactica? ED-209?

Read more...

Fall 2007 TV Season

OMG, I can hardly find time to post on this blog any more! :(

Anyway, the new Fall TV season is here, and there are a few shows to catch up on. I spent the weekend watching most of season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. I have about four episodes left.

Man, did that season suck. I stopped watching in November and I didn't miss much. More on that later.

I see that they're remaking the Bionic Woman. I have a bad feeling about that show (that it will be sleazy), but I will watch the pilot.

As for Heroes, I hated the season finale, but I will continue watching just to see if it gets better.

There's a new vampire show, I think on CBS. How can that NOT be terrible?

Looks like a wasteland for fantasy and sci-fi TV this season...

In Praise of Science Fiction

You never know where you'll find someone praising Science Fiction, but here's a little gem from, of all places, the Huffinton Post blog:

The first step to enjoying science fiction is - well, the first step is getting used to the worst writing on earth -- but the second step to enjoying science fiction is getting past the titles.

And it's worth doing. Because we're living in a science fiction world.

We should have seen China's anti-satellite program coming, but the only venue where it was being discussed was You Only Live Twice.

There was this boring movie where this sonorous blowhard said the ice caps were melting, but it was called Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, so no one paid any attention.

What if a cowardly dickweed with a messiah complex got to be President and started World War Three? Don't say The Dead Zone didn't warn you.

In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Q is experimenting with radioactive lint. Now spies are running around London, killing each other with teeny tiny polonium specks.

I could go on, but I'm late for the convention and my mom's still sewing my costume.

And this isn't about me, anyway. This is about you. Snooty.

Battlestar Galactica is the best show on television, but you're not watching it just because it has robots in it. Yet you'll still watch Desperate Housewives. Like Nicollette Sheridan isn't more machine than man.

LOL!

Read more...

Found 'Em: Battlestar Galactica Micro-heroes

Remember I mentioned that I hadn't come across any Battlestar Galactica Micro-heroes? Well, I found 'em (sort of) on someone's starwars.com blog.

The art is a different style than the standard Micro-heroes, but some of the characters are spot on. Check out Tigh with his bottle of booze. :D

But why do an icon for Kat but not for more important characters like Dualla and Tom Zarek?

Could Battlestar Galactica win an Emmy?

From the New York Times:

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the overseer of the annual Emmy Awards for prime-time television, has revamped its procedures in an attempt to spread the wealth of Emmy nominations — if not the actual awards — to a broader array of actors, actresses and shows.

That could result in some overlooked and new titles — like "Gilmore Girls" or "Battlestar Galactica" — making the list of nominees in the top Emmy categories for the first time when this year's nominations are announced on July 6.
...

In past years, the whittling of the 4,500 entries to 5 nominees in each category was a two-step process. The members of each academy peer group — performers, directors, makeup artists and the like — voted on the eligible shows, with the top five vote-getters in each category being named as nominees. The winner was then chosen by smaller panels of peer-group members.

This year an interim step has been added. The first vote narrows the eligible shows to a list of 10 or 15 potential nominees, and a specially chosen committee then screens and rates an episode of each of those shows, with the ratings used to narrow the list to five nominees. Then a larger panel of peer-group members, numbering from a dozen to several hundred depending on the category, votes to determine the winner.

Because of the academy's adding both a screening and a committee vote to the nomination process, performers and shows that might not have placed high enough in a popular vote get another chance to impress their peers.

The academy has also expanded the peer group that chooses the nominees for best actor and actress, making directors and casting executives, in addition to performers, eligible to vote. That expands by about a third the number of people voting on nominations in the acting categories, Mr. Leverence said.

Read more...

Galactica/TV Guide Promotion

Dynamite Entertainment announced today that TV Guide is offering an exclusive sneak peak of their all-new Battlestar Galactica comic book series.

In cooperation with SCIFI, Universal and TV Guide, Dynamite’s Battlestar Galactica #0 will be featured in the May 22nd issue, with subscriptions begin being mailed on May 15, 2006. The exposure of the comic is expected to reach millions of TV Guides weekly readers, and through it the fans of SCI-FI’s hit TV series, Battlestar Galactica. An interview with series writer Greg Pak will be included to bring awareness of the comic to the potential untapped readers that TV Guide has to offer.

Interesting promotion. But the timing is weird. They should've dropped this at the beginning of the new season.

Read more...

Battlestar Galacticsimpsons

This is cute. A fan drew some pictures of the Battlestar Galactica cast as Simpsons characters.

See the rest of the images here.

Battlestar Galactica Prequel Announced

Interesting news!

"Caprica" will take place more than fifty years before the events that play out in the "Battlestar Galactica" series. The people of the Twelve Colonies are at peace and living in a society not unlike our own, but where high technology has changed the lives of virtually everyone for the better. Of course, a startling new breakthrough in robotics and artificial intelligence brings about the first living robot - the Cylon. The prequel will tell the story of two families, the Graystones and the Adamas (the family of William and Lee Adama, the leaders of the "Battlestar" Colonial fleet).

Read more...

BSG: Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2

It's official. This show is no longer on my "must see" list.

The new season won't start until October, but it won't seem like a long wait because I don't care what happens anymore. I no longer like any of the characters.

--

The attack on Kara's people and Anders' group ends and after about 18 hours the humans come out and discover the Cylons are gone. Brother Cavil (Dean Stockwell) declares it's a miracle. Of course, since we know Cavil is simultaneously on the Galactica, we know he's a Cylon. Tyrol ID's him when Kara's group arrives back on Galactica. Cavil says he has a message -- the Cylons have abandoned Caprica and the Colonies because "the heroes of the Cylon" -- Sharon and Number Six -- have persuaded the race that they were wrong to wipe out humanity. Gee, that was easy!

Laura meets privately with Baltar and urges him to make a joint statement with her tabling the talk of settling on New Caprica until after the election. He refuses and sees it as a sign of desperation on her part. Before he goes she reveals to Baltar that she saw him on Caprica on the day of the attack with "the blond Cylon." He denies it.

The presidential campaign is over and the votes are being counted. Surprise! There's voting fraud, but guess what? It's Laura's people who are behind it. Innocent Gaeta discovers that the ballots from one of the last freighters to be counted were frauds. Amazingly, the conspiracy involved Laura's campaign manager, Col. Tigh, and Dualla -- a very unlikely group. Gaeta, distrusting Tigh, reports the fraud directly to Adama, and Adama comes to Laura with the news. She admits that she knew her campaign manager was going to try something if the votes got too tight. She tells him about Baltar and his connection to the Cylons, and urges him to help her go ahead with the fraudulent election. He talks her out of it and Baltar is contacted to let him know he's now President.

Baltar celebrates by going over to the Rising Star to screw Gina, the Pegasus Number Six. She celebrates by detonating the nuclear bomb he gave her, destroying the Rising Star and killing God knows how many more innocent people.

Suddenly it's a year later.

WTF?

President Baltar, bored but still whoring, is dealing with a union strike. Only a handful of people are still on the Galactica and the Pegasus with the rest now living on New Caprica. Laura is a school teacher again. Callie is pregnant with Tyrol's child. Kara has married Anders, who spends his time playing pickup ballgames in the mud while fighting off pneumonia.

Guess what suddenly happens?

The humans are caught with their pants down once again as Cylon raiders fill the sky. The two battlestars and the rest of the fleet jump away, leaving those on the planet on their own. Some human Cylon models march into Baltar's office and he quickly surrenders on behalf of what's left of humanity.

End of season 2.

Things I Liked

• Nothing.


• Okay, I liked the fact that Laura didn't go through with stealing the election.

Things I Didn't Like

• The flash forward to a year later was bullshit. It's an obvious dream sequence coming from Baltar's mind. I thought the writers of this show were above cheesy sci-fi "twists" like that.

UPDATE: This may not be a dream sequence. Read more here.

BSG: Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 1

The Colonials have inexplicably decided that now's a good time to act on Kara's information about the resistance on Caprica. A volunteer group of pilots is briefed by Starbuck and they plan a series of jumps to take them back to their homeworld.

Meanwhile, the presidential candidates engage in a series of debates. With Baltar trailing in the polls, he needs to latch onto an idea that will propel him past Laura. His chance comes when one of the raptors in Kara's group jumps to the wrong coordinates and accidentally finds a habitable planet. Baltar, at the urging of Six in his mind and Zarek in real life, advocates that the fleet should settle here and give up the search for Earth.

On Caprica, Kara finds her lover Anders' group with ease, but moments after their reunion, a Cylon ambush erupts.

Things I Liked:

• The priest (Dean Stockwell) counseling Tyrol seems interesting. His no-nonsense approach was refreshing. Maybe he'll become a recurring character.


• No Lee and Dualla scenes, thank God.

Things I Didn't Like:

• The violence against Callie was truly senseless. That didn't advance the storyline at all.


• There needed to be an episode before this showing how the crew of the Pegasus has reacted to three commanders being killed and having the son of the Galactica's commander being put in charge. They can't be pleased.

Fears:

• I hate to say it, but this series is starting to get tired. What's going on here isn't compelling enough for me. Next week's 90-minute season finale has to do a LOT to impress me.

BSG: Downloaded

In a change of pace, this episode was told from the point of view of the Cylons. We really don't learn more about their society or their religion, but we do get to see what happens when they reincarnate.

The Sharon who was shot by Callie and the Number Six who was with Baltar during the attack on Caprica are brought together by the Lucy Lawless Cylon, last seen on the Galactica as the reporter D'Anna Biers. Sharon and Number Six, though both seen as heroes to the Cylons, are having trouble adjusting to being reincarnated. D'Anna feels that Six can help Sharon, but ultimately Sharon makes Six question what it means to be a Cylon.

Meanwhile, back on Galactica, the other Sharon's baby is being delivered prematurely.

Things I Liked

• It was interesting to see an episode where the Cylons were interacting with each other.


• Caprica Sharon really loathes herself. Her deep cover programming was so complete, she still feels human and still feels used she was by the Cylons when she shot Adama.


• Baltar is in Six's head the way Six is in Baltar's head back on Galactica. An amusing touch.


• The Cylons are rebuilding Caprica, planting trees and opening up cafes. They hate humans but they can't think of anything else to do but imitate them. Sad.


• The decision to hide Sharon's super baby with an unsuspecting foster mother is interesting, since it's something that happens in a lot of fairy tales and myths. It's one of those things that happen in a Hero's Journey tale, but the baby almost never is a girl.


• No Apollo or Dualla in this episode.

Things I Didn't Like

• D'Anna obviously doesn't like or trust Sharon or Six, so why go through the farce of trying to rehabilitate them? Why didn't she immediately "box" them (retrieve their memories and trash their bodies) instead of toying with them?


• I wish the reincarnation had been more interesting. They just wake up in a vat of goo.


• That Doc Cottle sure is offensive. He shows his typical crass bedside manner to Sharon in the birthing room when he says, "You people went to all the trouble of imitating us -- you should've upgraded the plumbing." This is in response to the fact that Sharon has a detached placenta. That's nice.


• Anders' commandos decide to blow up the Cylon café. It's basically a useless gesture, designed mostly so that the writers can have Six and Sharon come across Starbuck's dogtags on him when they meet.


• I'm assuming that they drugged the baby to fool the parents, but I'm surprised that Sharon couldn't tell that the baby wasn't really dead.

BSG: The Captain’s Hand

This week’s episode covered three issues -- the ongoing lack of trust between the two battlestars, the upcoming presidential election and, from out of nowhere, the issue of abortion.

Some Raptors belonging to the Pegasus go missing during a training mission and, predictably, those on the Pegasus want pursue at all costs, while those on the Galactica want to show more restraint.

Laura gets a new secretary to replace Billy and work on her campaign. The new woman seems very media-savvy and briefs Laura on how she’s doing in the polls.

A pregnant stowaway arrives on the Galactica looking for asylum and an abortion. Her parents and the Gemonese government are not happy.


Things I Liked

• The nicknames for the two battlestars are amusing. Galactica is “The Bucket.” Pegasus is “The Beast.”


• I like when they examine the reality of the survival of the human race. They haven’t done it in a long time, but bringing up the need to start ensuring that there is a future generation is a start. Another logical move will be to show what’s happening to the hordes of unsupervised children that must surely be present among the survivors. We saw in Black Market that children are being sold as sex slaves. There will be children that band together for protection as a reaction to this.


• Doc Cottle turns out to be pro-choice, which surprised me. He always seemed very old school, especially when he described Baltar’s radical treatment of Laura as “dammed unnatural.” It is Cottle who tells the woman to ask for asylum and evidently he’s been doing abortions on the down low for whoever wants them, no questions asked.


• Zarek decides not to run against Laura. Instead, he backs Baltar and pegs him as someone who’ll remember his friends. Not true, of course, but still a shrewd move.


• Laura finds herself having to make abortion illegal, both to keep the fleet’s population up and to appease the Gemonese zealots. Yet she still lets the Gemonese girl have her abortion, which pisses off the girl’s family and Sarah, the Gemonese councilor.


• After telling Laura how the human race will be extinct if people don’t start breeding, Baltar backstabs her at a press conference, says she’s taking away their rights, and announces his candidacy. Bastard. ;)

Things I Didn’t Like

• The episode starts with Lee and Dualla in bed in the officers’ rack. Ick. Well, at least we didn’t have to see that with Billy.


• Yeah, it’s realistic that with so few people left alive people will move up the ranks quickly, but too many people got promoted this season. Adama made admiral, Lee went from captain to major to commander in three weeks, Starbuck went from lieutenant to captain to CAG in the same time period. It robs the value from these promotions.


• The leaders of the Pegasus are getting killed so fast it’s ridiculous. With the death of Garner that’s three this season. Of course, now that Apollo is in charge, the deaths will stop.


• Kara gets thrown in the brig again for mouthing off at a superior officer. Later, she gets an angry lecture from Lee. We’ve been down this road before. Ho hum.


• The Pegasus falls for a really obvious trap, jumps to where the missing raptors are supposed to be, and gets the shit bombed out of it by three basestars. Duh.


• Garner, an engine room kinda guy, abdicates the bridge to Lee during the attack, goes below to fix some stuff, then runs out of oxygen and dies. We’ve seen this in countless submarine movies.

Battlestar Galactica Season 2 Finale

**Spoilers!**

From Comingsoon.net:

...with the presidential campaigning in full swing, the election's outcome hinges upon a core debate - whether or not to abandon the search for Earth when the Galactica crew discovers a habitable planet. When the election begins to swing in favor of Baltar - a man whom Roslin is convinced is a Cylon collaborator - the incumbent president must decide whether or not to take drastic measures for the greater good. Things become even further complicated when the Cylons, led by Caprica Six and Sharon, find the planet and offer humanity a stunning proposal of peace.

Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2 will be presented as a special 90-minute television event on Friday, March 10, 2006.

Sounds great!

BSG: Sacrifice

Another mediocre episode. A woman whose husband was killed in a Cylon attack on one of the fleet’s freighters has become convinced that the Colonial military has been compromised by the Cylons. She and her cohorts take hostages in a bar on the Rising Star and demand that Admiral Adama had over Sharon for execution. Naturally, among the hostages are Ellen Tigh, Lee, Dualla and Billy -- all people who mean something to the major players on Galactica. And Starbuck, who just happens to be there on R&R, gets to lead a rescue mission.

Things I Liked

• They finally killed Billy.


• They’ve made it clear that the average person in the fleet really has no idea what is going on. To Joe Survivor in the rag-tag fleet, it’s only a rumor that there’s a Cylon in Galactica’s brig. Underground newspapers and random radio broadcasts are sent out, but no one really knows what we, the audience, know.


• Ellen is such a skank! She honestly thought Lee wanted to do her in the bathroom. Whew! ;)


• Col. Tigh is very sensible in this episode. He makes it plain to Adama that he’s been relying too much on Sharon for intel -- and he needs to start thinking of her as a Cylon, not “Sharon,” because there never was a “Sharon.”


• When Adama asks Sharon if she would ID the other Cylons hiding in the fleet, she says no. He respects that. Interesting.


• Lee got shot. By friendly fire. By Starbuck. Oops!

Things I Didn’t Like

• The relationship between Dualla and Lee seems very forced. And I dislike the way she seems to latch on to bland unappealing guys in positions of power. Billy was the right hand of the president and Lee, of course, is the son of humanity’s last military commander.


• The way Billy got blown away was out of character. Unless maybe he was trying to get killed since Dualla turned down his marriage proposal.


• Did Dualla even bother to see Billy in the morgue? When she kicks someone to the curb, she don’t play.

BSG: Scar

This episode was basically a rip-off of the “Red Baron” episode from the short-lived Fox series Space: Above & Beyond (if you remember that show). A Cylon Ace has been picking off the Galactica’s Viper pilots one by one over a four week period while the battlestar has been protecting a mining operation in an asteroid belt. Fear mounts in the younger pilots as newbies are killed right and left. Predictably, the rivalry between Kat and Starbuck heats up as each vows to be the one to kill “Scar,” the battered Cylon boogieman. Meanwhile, Kara is off her game because she keeps obsessing about the guy she left behind on Caprica.

Things I Liked

• Kat is now an instructor of the newbie pilots. It’s good to see minor characters undergoing career advancement and taking on greater responsibilities. Years would go by on a Star Trek show with supposedly competent people never rising up the ranks.


• The dialog between Sharon and Kara when the latter wants information about Scar was pretty good.


• Kara and Lee’s fumbling pathetic attempt to change the nature of their relationship to a sexual one was a failure, and that’s fitting.


• Kat is the one who ultimately takes out Scar and she and Kara still hate each other at the end of the episode. If this were Star Trek, they’d have taken out Scar together and bonded. This is better.

Things I Didn’t Like

• Anders, the guy Kara is pining for, just wasn’t depicted in a compelling enough way when last seen for me to boy that this dude is now the great love of Kara’s life.

BSG: Black Market

Since it worked two weeks ago, they decided to do it again. The episode opens with Apollo in a life and death situation then the rest of the episode is a flashback to how he got into the situation. The episode centers on how the non-military half of the fleet lives, but since the POV is Apollo’s, we’re still not getting the full story.

As is to be expected, there are supply shortages in the fleet, and a black market has emerged to meet the people’s needs. Laura wants it stopped. Predictable conflicts of interest follow.

Things I Liked:

• If you still weren’t sure that this Apollo has nothing to do with the original Apollo, the fact that Lee regularly visits a prostitute who has a young child should settle that debate.


• Lee really sucks with kids. I can’t believe he gave that ugly-ass Raggedy Ann doll to the prostitute’s daughter. Of course she was scared.


• Lee seems to be unaware of what a freaking hypocrite he is. It’s okay for him to buy black market medicine for his ho, but if Tigh wants booze or Baltar wants cigars, they’re evil.


• Lee has several flashbacks that involve some blond chick he had an argument with. From the looks of things, he broke up with her and she may have been pregnant. Yet another indication that Lee is a sleaze. Maybe Baltar isn’t the biggest cad on Galactica, eh?


• Zarek shows up to give Apollo some advice. It’s always cool to see him. And at the end of the show, it looks like he will fill the power vacuum opened up by Apollo’s assassination of the black market leader.


• Lee’s prostitute turns down his offer to come back to the Galactica. She’s tired of playing the role of the girl he kicked to the curb on Caprica. Good for her -- he’d have ditched her sooner rather than later anyway.

Things I Didn’t Like:

• Cain’s second in command got killed moments into the show. Waste of a potentially interesting character. Same with Bill Duke's black market character.
  


• Lee is asked to investigate the murder. He’s a pilot and a detective. I hate that kind of weak storytelling.


• Dee continues to flirt with Lee, then goes back to flirting with Billy. Is that all she’s going to be used for in this series now?


• Laura is totally healthy. Come on.


• How come it’s okay for Apollo to blow away the black market dude? He can’t even call it self defense.


• After Lee shoots the guy, he tells the guy’s henchmen that he’s not shutting down the black market. He wants them to continue serving the fleet and they’re not to hold back supplies or harm children. Talk about mixed signals. Furthermore, exactly how is he going to enforce that?

Fears:

• I don’t want them to be like Star Trek, and I don't want to see any aliens, but are they going to land on any planets at all this season?


• I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again -- where are they? Is the fleet going in any particular direction?

BSG: Epiphanies

189 days have passed since Laura received the report from her doctor on Caprica that she had terminal breast cancer. In the present, on the Galactica, she is being rushed to the intensive care unit on a stretcher as she enters her final hours.

This episode, like many Galactica episodes, makes effective use of flashbacks. Laura, as she weaves in and out of consciousness, is drawn back to the scenes of her life on Caprica, where she served as the Secretary of Education under President Adar. From the flashbacks we see where Laura got some of her negotiating skills (settling a teachers’ strike), but more interestingly we see that she and Adar were having an affair. We discover that Laura happened to be in the same plaza as Baltar and Number Six on the day of the Cylon attack -- and she subconsciously remembers seeing their little tryst.

As Laura lays dying in ICU, other things are going on. Newbie pilot Kat (who is becoming increasingly arrogant) bitches with Starbuck, but the two are forced to table their arguing when it becomes apparent that their Vipers have been sabotaged. This uncovers an entire “peace” movement comprised of people who feel that surrender to the Cylons is the best option. To demonstrate they mean business, they plant bombs and damage the Tylium factory, leaving the fleet once again low on fuel and vulnerable to attack. The Cylon sympathizers have a headquarters on the Cloud Nine ship and Baltar discovers that they’ve taken in Gina, the Cylon clone who murdered Admiral Cain (but they don’t know her true identity).

Laura, in a lucid moment, gathers Adama, Baltar and Doc Cottle by her bedside and tells them that Sharon’s pregnancy must be terminated for the good of the fleet. Her decision is prompted by Cottle’s report on blood abnormalities in the fetus. Adama has no problem with complying, but Baltar argues against it.

Helo is, predictably, enraged when the Marines come for Sharon and drag her kicking and screaming to medical where the staff is ready to do the abortion. Baltar, however, appears and neatly solves two problems by revealing that he’s discovered that the Cylon-human fetus’s blood has the ability to cure cancer.

How convenient!

He simply extracts fetal blood from Sharon’s womb, injects it into Laura and, voila! Laura’s cancer is completely gone within hours.

Things I Liked:

• Laura’s look of horror when she woke up and looked at Baltar, who she now knows for sure is intimately connected with the Cylons.


• Baltar is unbelievable pissed when he reads the letter Laura left him in the event of her death. Everything she said about his character was true.


• Gina rejects Baltar’s advances and gives him a bloody lip.

Things I Didn’t Like:

• I can’t believe that anyone would believe they can sue for peace with the Cylons. If you look at the original mini-series you’ll see that that was tried the day they bombed the Colonies. It didn’t work then, why would it work now?


• Simply injecting a couple cc’s of Cylon-hybrid blood into Laura repaired all of the cells in her body that were ravaged by cancer? That’s weak sci-fi science at its best.


• How come there was no mention of whether Baltar was ever questioned about the Cylon that escaped and killed Cain? No one cares about that? He’s not being held responsible for Gina’s escape?


• There was no mention of how the crew of the Pegasus is adapting to being under Adama’s command.

Fears:

• There’s more bad science to come.

BSG: Resurrection Ship, Part 2

The episode starts with Lee floating on his back in a lake. It’s a peaceful scene, but there’s a falseness to it and an underlying tension which blossoms into full-blown tension when the scene morphs into an image of space. A battle rages silently in the background while Lee in a spacesuit and strapped to a chair, drifts helplessly away.

The opening scene sets the tone for the episode since the all-out space battle, which would be the crux of a “normal” Science-Fiction show, is essentially meaningless. It’s everything else that really matters -- the parallel assassination plots scheduled to take place when the battle against the Cylons is done, Tyrol and Helo awaiting their execution, an increasingly ill Laura and Baltar’s attempts to break through to the wounded Cylon, Gina.

Things I Liked:

• The viciousness of the Pegasus’s crew may start at the top with Cain, but it filters down even to the lowest levels. A couple of specialists, angered that the executions of Tyrol and Helo have been put on hold, take it upon themselves to give the prisoners a “blanket party.” The culture of violence on that ship is pervasive and it remains to be seen if it can be changed.


• The XO of the Pegasus stops the beating of the two men, but he does so with little emotion. He has no sympathy for two men who killed an officer who in his opinion was doing nothing wrong. As he puts it, “You can’t rape a machine.”


• Cain seems to have a genuine desire to mentor Starbuck.


• The way the battle between the two battlestars and the basestars was filmed was stunning, even though it was strictly background material.


• The decision of both commanders not to go through with their original assassination plans is handled well. Each has different reasons -- Adama doesn’t go through with it because an assassination (to him) would prove the Cylons are right about humanity no deserving to live. Cain stands down because... Well, it’s not clear. Perhaps because she saw that Kara didn’t want to kill her.


• Cain goes out well.


• Laura promotes Adama to Admiral.

Things I Didn’t Like:

• When Apollo is ejected from the destroyed stealth ship, he discovers a hole in his suit. At first he tries to cover it with his hand (bad science alert), but then he exposes the hole and waits to die. I’m sorry, but I don’t get it. Why is he suicidal all of a sudden? And more importantly, why wasn’t some effort made to make this act the meaningful?


• How come Baltar isn’t in trouble for letting Gina escape and kill Cain? Or does that come in the next episode?

Fears:

• What’s up with Dualla sneaking around the pilots’ quarters and listening in on Kara and Lee having a private talk? She’s got the Jones for him now? Please.

BSG: Resurrection Ship

Season 2.1 starts off where season 2.0 left off. Helo and Tyrol have been scheduled for execution and Adama isn’t having that. He sends his fighters out to engage the Pegasus and Admiral Cain sends hers. There is a tense, confusing standoff as the fighters from both ships fly around avoiding each other because no one wants to be the first to pull the trigger.

The standoff ends when Kara, who has taken the Blackbird stealth ship into the heart of the Cylon fleet, misleads the Pegasus into thinking (briefly) that the Cylons have landed in their midst. She then uses the opportunity to beam back photos of her recon mission to Cain, who is impressed enough by the intel (and Kara’s balls) that she agrees to a temporary truce.

The rest of the episode has Cain and Adama in a mediated meeting with the president in which they agree (on the surface) to cooperate in order to coordinate an attack on the Cylon fleet. Baltar gets the abused Number Six clone on the Pegasus, Gina, to interpret Kara’s shots. She ID’s the mystery ship everyone is interested in as the “Resurrection Ship,” which is a facility stockpiled with clones waiting to have the consciousnesses of “dead” Cylons downloaded into them. The Colonials theorize that destroying this ship could make the Cylons back off. They would lose their safety net and be truly “dead.”

Things I Liked:

• Baltar was the conduit for useful information and he didn’t act crazy. That’s a major achievement for him.


• Laura and Adama have bonded again, which is nice.


• Laura is getting tough again -- it’s she who tells Adama straight up that he needs to kill Cain.


• More of the backstory of the Pegasus is revealed.


• Kara got promoted to CAG -- and Lee now works for her.


• No Billy, no Dualla!


• The parallel plans for assassination cooked up by both Cain and Adama at the end of the show were great.

Things I Didn’t Like:

• No real problems with this episode, except that they’re making Cain too much of a one-dimensional villain. She has absolutely no redeeming qualities. The backstory info in this episode reveals that she cannibalized the civilian ships that looked to the Pegasus for protection and had civilians shot who resisted being separated from their families.

Fears:

• Baltar has to somehow thwart the destruction of the Resurrection ship.

The Answers (1)

Answers to yesterday’s questions!

Luke Cage asked:

Now that the 2 trilogies have been combined into one epic tale, what do you think Lucas will do next with the Star Wars franchise?

I think that George will put great effort into his TV ventures in the hope that he can take over the space once dominated by the Star Trek franchise.

I also think he (or his heirs) will remake the original trilogy.

I don't know if you are a comic book fan, but if you are, are you as stoked about the Bryan Singer Superman movie coming out next summer considering the great job he did on the 2 X-Men movies?

Oh, Frank, you missed a classic rant from me back in September about me and comic books. (smile)

I think this incarnation of Superman will probably go over well. The way that Wolverine adhered so closely to the way he is in the comics shows that Singer knows how to handle this genre. Kevin Spacey will kick ass as Lex Luthor.

Having said that, I doubt I’ll catch this in the theatre. I avoid comic book movies in general nowadays, but I might be interested in seeing a Doctor Strange or Thor movie.

Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame is doing Wonder Woman, and he’s good (I loved Buffy), but how can Wonder Woman not be a T&A fest? Great for the guys, but not for me.

Ribbiticus asked:

If a genie were to give you three wishes, what would they be and why?

Can I start by wishing for more wishes? No? (smile)

Whenever I think about wishes, I think about wishes that go awry, like in the short story The Monkey’s Paw.

If I had to come up with something I’d wish that any future children of mine would be healthy and extremely intelligent. I’d save the last wish for an unforeseen emergency.

Who are your top three favorite authors and one book of theirs that you really love.

Oh, this is tough.

• J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of The Rings


• Orson Scott Card - Seventh Son


• Ursula K. LeGuin - A Wizard of Earthsea

Let me tell you, I was enraged at the horrible adaptation that Sci-Fi Channel did of Earthsea. Grrr!

I’ll answer the remaining questions tomorrow!