...Surpriiiise!

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.


Should'a realized that a small Canadian business wouldn't do business on Canada Day, thus buying me one more day of blogging...very fortuitous, as I celebrated Confederation by finishing off season 3 of Battlestar.

J. Michael Stracynzki, creator and sole scriptwriter of Babylon 5, once famously answered a fan's question regarding the physics of projectile weapons in the B5 universe by saying that bullets travel at the speed of plot. On Battlestar, what moves at the speed of plot is intelligence, which can be very frustrating when we've been told (and shown) that our heroes can do better - as in the season finale, where the entire command staff notices that the Cylons have mysteriously stopped tailing the fleet, three jumps away from the huge ion nebula that will hopefully point the way to Earth...and thinks nothing of it, and jumps with both feet, with no one coming up with the idea that maybe, just maybe, the Cylons went for the nebula instead, as the fleet wouldn't detect them there because of all the radiation and interference? Boooooooooooo! I hate when the writers do that. I think it's very lazy. I also think they've repeatedly demonstrated that they can do much, much better.

That being said, I'm still very happy with this season, and content with where it's left off. It continued to emphasize that Roslin is a very realistic leader - brilliantly perceptive in some areas, yet completely blind in others, as demonstrated in the episode dealing with poor working conditions in the fleet that resulted in sabotage and striking. It continued to look Lee Adama in the face, with the proceedings of Baltar's trial confirming just what a firecracker of a man he is, and how easily that passion can be manipulated. The way Baltar's attorney so easily got Lee to join the defense team, with him being completely convinced that he was doing it on his own accord and not to get revenge/show his father that he's his own man? Priceless. Also priceless: the fact that Lee continues to believe he's his own man, and doesn't make all his important decisions based on his feelings towards Starbuck or the admiral. Jamie Bamber is doing a great job bringing these factors to life.

Fortunately, the folks behind the camera didn't get too straw man when getting into the issue of a "re-emerging" aristocracy and underclass - but they also ignored the fact that they clearly stated such a system was already in place when everyone was living on the Colonies, with the lower-class folks who "made it" being the exception rather than the rule. The problem with going into unnecessary issues - and, at this point in the show, everything not directly related to the skin Cylons, the final five, and Earth is unnecessary - is that if you're going to spend precious airtime on it, you have to do it really well to justify taking up the space. So I was very disappointed with the strike episode, especially as they'd already addressed the problem in the previous episode, which was really tight.

Where they did straw man the viewer was during Baltar's trial. Can anyone seriously believe that the prosecutor would be so rattled or whatever the writers intended by Lee's testimony masquerading as a closing statement that she wouldn't, um, give a closing statement? That being said, the trial in general wasn't nearly what I'd feared it to be, and I appreciated the commentary on the broken state of our justice system, that so often requires us to let the guilty walk so as not to risk punishing the innocent. I think they took a decent crack at the problem for 90 minutes of TV. I also appreciated just how skilled Baltar's attorney was. As well, Lee made some excellent points regarding who had received presidential pardons for heinous acts, some of them potentially just as heinous as the ones they can confirm Baltar was responsible for. It was an interesting look at the nature of forgiveness and blame.

Thanks to newspapers that like to print that sort of thing, I knew when the episode first aired that Starbuck would die near the end of the season. What baffles me is that so many people, at the time, actually believed she was dead for good, when the whole episode was spent discussing how she was being prepared to travel to the space in-between to fulfill her destiny. Is the DVD release completely different from what was aired? Is this proof that more media hasn't made us better at multitasking (no MSN messenger while the TV's on for you!)? Either way, it was a nice, strong episode. Other nice thing about this season: it didn't overdose on Starbuck-based episodes. There was just enough to keep her trials interesting and relevant.

One thing the newspapers didn't spoil flagrantly? That there were four Cylons revealed at the end of the season, not three. Maybe they figured people wouldn't care about Tori, because she's not a major character? She's the president's freakin' aide! Why wouldn't we care? The plus side: at least I had one surprise. Wish I'd had all four surprises, as the confirmation was stunning and nicely done. Second priceless moment of the evening: in the midst of flight-deck chaos, Callie spotting Tyrol and asking where he'd been, and him replying, in a manner suggesting absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, "I'll tell you later."

And I'm not sure why the producers/director re-imagined "All Along the Watchtower" as Indian music. Maybe it was an interesting exercise in arranging, but as a film score I found it unnecessarily confusing, as Indian sounds had no relation whatsoever to the story. When they used Arabic music during the Cylon occupation and human insurgency, it was heavy-handed, but the comparison made sense from a narrative point of view. This? not so much!

Something I noticed in the last few episodes was that I should really go back and watch the little black-and-white cartoon at the end of each episode, as they appear to be very relevant to the show's point of view. For example, they appeared to confirm, for all the show's focus on faith and destiny (and Starbuck's story of the person who least believes in destiny winding up having one she must submit to), that they don't actually respect religion or take it seriously with a little cartoon clip of The Exorcist ("we need more religion!"). Interesting. At the end of the season finale, the cartoon was another classic movie clip, this time referencing Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts - extremely interesting in this context, because of the nature and purpose of Jason's voyage, and the fact that his guiding patron goddess is....Hera, for whom Helo and Sharon's daughter is named. So now I'm wondering what's in the rest of those cartoons...

Hopefully the first half of season 4 will be on DVD by the end of the summer. In the meantime, here are my predictions for where it's headed:

1) The skinjobs are not actually Cylons, but highly evolved humans from the 13th colony - the basestar Hybrid makes a good case for this being the next step in human evolution;

2) The skinjobs were made not by other Cylons, but by the 13th colony, or;

3) They'll take the pyramid way out; in other words, it will be revealed that the Cylons are not our misguided children - it's the other way around.

I'm betting on theory 3 myself, as a) the concept of the human race being created by or derived from aliens or "others" is a very popular sci-fi idea, and b) it'll satisfy the humanist audience, because then God didn't make humanity, he just enabled the Cylons to do so (or he's really just something the skinjobs made up to justify their own existence and actions); and it'll satisfy the religious audience, because it makes for the sort of good metaphor people love to make pop-culture devotional books out of (Finding God in Battlestar Galactica, coming soon to a bookstore near you!) - there is that persistent belief that co-opting (instead of discussing) popular media is a good evangelism tool. Also, it will provide a good reason for the Cylons launching the nuclear assault on the colonies, and their obsessive pursuit of the survivors - a version of the Flood story, if you will (their creation has become so horrible they want to start from scratch). This is especially plausible due to season 1, which focused largely on how disgusted the Cylons had become with humanity's view of, and response to, God - it's been established that they see the human race of having abandoned God, and erred so wrongly as to enslave their makers. It would also be the most effective one-two punch - what would be more shocking on this show than the revelation that the Cylons were right?

The downside to the concept being so popular is that it's become very tired and overdone but, let's face it, it's the easiest way out - something which, for all the high quality it offers on a regular basis, BSG has repeatedly proven itself to not be above. And if you do a tired idea well - very well - it can still make for engaging TV. And I believe the writers can do it very well - the question is, will they?

I may sound harsh, but I did in fact enjoy this season. It was a significant improvement from the second, it had a good flow of episodes, and was generally solid and compelling TV - and I am greatly looking forward to what comes next.