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Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica
Amber Swift  |  by blogcritics.org. All rights reserved. 4.01 | 19:03

Main Entry: nos bull;tal bull;gia
Pronunciation: n a - stal-j , n - also no-, nO-; n - st a l-
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin, from Greek nostos return home + New Latin -algia; akin to Greek neisthai to return, Old English genesan to survive, Sanskrit nasate he approaches
1 : the state of being homesick : HOMESICKNESS
2 : a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition; also : something that evokes nostalgia
- nos bull;tal bull;gic /-jik/ adjective or noun
- nos bull;tal bull;gi bull;cal bull;ly /-ji-k( -)lE/ adverb
- nos bull;tal bull;gist /-jist/ noun
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
WARNING: HERE BE SPOILERS


Currently I find myself in wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for, or return to or of, some past period or irrecoverable condition, namely October 2, 2006. That was the day I published , about my favorite show, Battlestar Galactica.

Four episodes into season three, I find myself shrieking to the writers of Battlestar Galactica like George Jetson trapped upon the perpetual sidewalk from Hell to please, for the love of the Lords of Kobol, stop this crazy thing!

It rsquo;s still my favorite show, and I believe the bones of the best show on television are still there, but, keee-rike guys. Every hour of the show this season has managed to end like a bad magic trick. The magician grabs the table cloth, yanks, and all the dishes go flying everywhere.

You think, Holy Zeus, how will they fix that unholy mess, and then the next hour begins at a brand new table, dishes and candelabra magically restored to wholeness.

Don rsquo;t worry. I rsquo;ll be using lots of wretched metaphors in this article today.

One thing I rsquo;m perpetually reminded of watching BG this season is what I like to call Aaron Sorkin Syndrome, or ASS. This is the practice of casually discarding seemingly vital plot or character points in the service of the next seemingly vital plot or character point. The country is thrown into turmoil and Bartlet hands the reins of the government over to Walter Sobchak because Zoe Bartlet has been kidnapped by unidentified but probably shifty and foreign A-Rab terrorists?

Oops, here she is in this abandoned trailer park off the Leesville Highway. A-rab terrorists or sorority hazing gone awry? Will we ever learn?

Why no, because it rsquo;s on to the next season.

The BG writers have been showing us an awful lot of ASS this season, so much that I barely know where to begin. If the Cylon skin jobs are trying to create a utopian human-ville, why don rsquo;t they plant some flowers, give them all stackable washer/dryer units, or, you know, something?

Conversely, if they rsquo;re not trying to create hu-topia, why don rsquo;t they just kill them all? Yeah, I get that they rsquo;re arguing amongst themselves, but there rsquo;s a really quick solution to the argument. An anti-human skin job can just nuke the lot of them.

End argument.

Two hundred people dragged off to be executed Russian pogrom style hellip; here comes an army of tin cans over the horizon, an army which can apparently be easily taken out by two sharpshooters on a ridge? If the detainees have that kind of firepower at their disposal, why don rsquo;t they use it?

Tin cans drag Laura Roslin off, but then apparently don rsquo;t notice that she rsquo;s come back into the city. That rsquo;s Kara rsquo;s baby? How old is she?

Three? Is that right? Adama rsquo;s going to create a distraction while the people are evacuated to the same spaceship impound lot - that rsquo;s not going to be a traffic jam - and where the hell are the tin cans with guns trying to stop them?

Gaius is trying to stop Xena from setting off a nuke. Why? All the people are gone.

What does it matter if she nukes the place? I rsquo;m just so FRAKKING CONFUSED!

They managed to answer one of these puzzlements on Friday rsquo;s episode, the question about Kara rsquo;s child, and quite cleverly, too.

But this is the problem with ASS. You don rsquo;t know which puzzling things to invest yourself in answering, and which are going to be magically erased by next episode. Admittedly, they gave us one hell of a season ender last year, and they certainly cannot be accused of giving us a boring season this year.

The action is gripping. The acting is fine. The drama is delightfully melo.

(Kara eats steak covered in the blood of the skin job she just murdered...

SNAP, I love this show. Ty poisons his treasonous tramp of a wife..

. SNAP, again I say..

. with tears and everthing..

. DAMN, you guys are good.)

I rsquo;m just asking, please guys, now that everyone is back on their ships, could we please have a little more of those tight, wonderful, suspenseful storylines of yore, and a little less ASS?


I am a film and music librarian for a public library system. Like many of my kind, I suffer from RKS, or Random Knowledge Syndrome. These musings are the inevitable end result of that condition.

Keep reading for information and comments on this article, and add some feedback of your own!
I was very skeptical about a full season on New Caprica, but now they have left I think it was a nice diversion from two seasons of mostly space. Yes, it has it's problems.

Sure, Kara was gullible about the kid, but who knows how fast cylons grow? Well..

. we do, but Kara didn't. Also, don't they need explosive rounds to kill the tin cans, or were those different models that got on board Galactica.

We'll probably never know. And can we please get Lee out of the fat suit? It's a bit ridiculous.


All I do know, is last Friday's episode was possibly one of the best episodes yet.

There was no blood on that steak!!

! Why do people keep saying that? That was GRAVY!

!! If there was blood on the steak, where's the blood on the plate?

Where's the blood on the table? What, he gushed blood and it just conveniently fell on the steak and nowhere else? Watch that episode again.

...

it's gravy mate. Still, Kara took him out like the crazy woman she is..

. I LOVE THIS SHOW!!

!

I'm sorry..

.I wasn't clear about the blood..

.it wasn't on the steak..

.but it sure was all over her hands. She's such a badass!


Yes...

I concede this...

the blood was all over her hands...

and it's a touch I loved...

right down to the whole wiping in the carpet thing, the whole napkin to the mouth...

I LOVED that scene. And I hope I didn't come off rabid, it's just I've read that whole 'Leoben's blood on the steak' bit in three or four different places, and it just mystifies me. Mind you, I've watched that episode about twenty times since it aired, so you'll forgive me.

I am a BSG geek in the WORST way,,, and yeah, Kara is badass...

. one hard core bitch and I love her.
It's a little hard to blame Aaron Sorkin for the resolution to the Zoe kidnapping plot, since he left the show before it was resolved.

(The last ep he wrote was the ep when, as you put it, Barlett gave power to Walter -- thankfully Walter didn't deliver a speech about Vietnam.)
Anyway, most of your other concerns come from not paying attention.
Laura never reappeared in the city.

She was in Col. Tigh's bat cave hiding out with Zarek and the rest of the resistance. As Baltar noted in Exodus Part 2 no one knew where Roslin, Zarek, and Tigh were hiding.


The little girl looked around 2-ish. The incident at the farm happened early in season 2. Then at the end of season 2 we jump ahead over a year.

Then in season 3 we jump ahead another 4 months. So, the math might barely work out.
The resistance, the vipers, were distracting the "tin cans" allowing the people to get to their ships.


Xena may not have been aware that everyone had left, as Adama and Tigh's plan to totally confuse the Cylons seemed to work. Plus, as we saw she didn't really desire to set off the nuke, but was instead on her personal dream inspired quest to find Hera.
Not all the humans were gone yet, so Gaius' attempt to stop D'anna were well based.

Gaeta was clearly still there, and he got off the same raptor as Tigh and Tyrol. Roslin and her crew hadn't gotten to Colonial 1 yet (the whole conversation about the nuke occured on Colonial 1). Kara and Anders and Kacey were still in the detention center.

And there may well have been many more.
Baltar had no way of knowing whether there was still a significant human population or not.
Watching the 'Resistance' webisodes will tell you a lot about the weapons the detainees have, and how and why they choose to use them (sparingly).

Also, 2 snipers against 4 bulletheads out in the middle of nowhere is a far cry from a few guys with some guns against the entire cylon occupying force.
The Galactica wasn't just creating a distraction, it was ensuring that its few Vipers could get to ground level to assist the escapees and protect them from cylon ships flying about. I am a huge Battlestar freak, I have watched each episode about 20 times, and I saw no loose ends.

Pay attention in the future.
I appreciate all your points. I would propose, however, that it should not take 20 viewings to absorb an episode.


I doesn't take twenty watchings to absorb an episode...

I caught up with the show after Season 2 had ended, but had seen the mini-series when it first aired. The mini-series had made such an impact on me, three years ago, that I remembered small details that were relevant in later episodes. This is true throughout all the subsequent episodes.


Often though, as one re-watches you can connect other dots in the greater picture that is this show...

also when you watch an episode twenty odd times, the minutiae simply ingrains itself and a BSG geek understands and appreciates that this show does not degrade itself after multiple watchings...

in fact it appreciates.
I always absorb things on the first watching, but real analysis can only occur when I take in something more than once. This applies to art, to film, books etc.

...


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    Keywords: Battlestar Galactica, New Latin, Aaron Sorkin
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