Catch up on Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica, Season Four will premiere in exactly 1 week!

If you missed out on the first three seasons and don’t think 1 week is enough time to get them on DVD, you can catch the cliff notes online.

First, here is an eight minute, fifteen second (815??) recap of everything you need to know:

Also, this article sums things up as well.

Yer welcum.

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A recent entry on one of the many blogs I read. I have no idea what the first one is, it’s the second one I’m passing along.

This weekend I stumbled upon two new obsessions.

1) Ra Ra Riot. I entered their sold-out show at Bowery Ballroom on Friday night a new listener and left a hardcore fan. The performance was incredible, the songs upbeat and catchy, and the band genuine. I found myself smiling the entire time, despite only hearing the songs for the first time.

2) Battlestar Galactica. Obsessed. Frooch and I watched the entire first season in about 72 hours. Before this weekend, and admittedly based on nothing but the name, I assumed Battlestar Galactica was some Star Trek-y, futuristic nerdfest. Now I realize that it is awesome. I find myself making an average of two Cylon jokes a day.

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I always get nervous posting stuff like this when I host the video on my own site, because I’m scared of the big bag studios with endless money bullying me to take it down. But I have to believe this constitutes “promotional use,” so I should be fine, right?

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Yes, I really did stay up and encode this because I didn’t feel like waiting until someone had a grainy YouTube version up by tomorrow.

Anyway! I can’t believe the new season is only about two weeks away. I finished Season 3 around November, when they were deliberating about starting Season 4 in January or April. They chose April, and back then it felt like forever. But with Lost on from week to week, BSG hasn’t been on my mind much.

These were actually really funny, but then again I think it’s because I actually watch the show. #7 seems to be the hottest most relevant to the average viewer. #5 and #4 got an audible mumbly laugh from me, which is saying a lot because I don’t usually laugh when I’m by myself.

By myself. Watching Battlestar Galactica top 10 lists and posting them online.

::sigh:: Off to bed! (Next to a laaaaady, even!!)

EDIT 3/20/08 @ 6:00PM - As much as I’ve enjoyed the influx of traffic to this site (5x more viewers in a day) CBS on YouTube now has the video up so you all can embed it on your sites.

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Holy crap!

This week’s episode singlehandedly squashed my doubts about the show, and was leaps and bounds ahead of what came before it. I don’t know how the show managed to go from “mediocre” to “incredibly awesome” in one week, but it did. I’ll wait until next week to see if it maintains this new confidence or if it was just a fluke — but wow, even if this show ends up getting tanked, that episode alone is a fine hour of Terminator mythology that can stand alongside the movies. When it ended I immediately wanted to rewind and watch it again, and the only other show that makes me want to do that is Lost.

The storytelling this week took a cue from Lost, I think, in that it told the story of Derik Reese in a series of flash backs (technically flash forwards, I guess, since they occurred in his future). I really like this style of storytelling because I think it works best for the kind of stories I like… it gives you information from the beginning, information from the end, and then fills in the little details slowly over the course of an episode, or, on a larger scale, a season or even the entire series.

For example, what the hell was in the piano room in the basement? That was creepy as hell. They were all locked up in a room after the machines took over, and they pressed their ears against the floorboards… “is that piano music?” It reminded me of Battlestar Galactica, when the four remaining Cylons heard mysterious music… I thought that maybe they were just sharing a hallucination. But no. Derik was taken down there, and what he saw confused and scared him. But what was there? We don’t know yet.

And we finally saw Cameron of the future. I was pretty naive thinking they’d drop the ball on this one — I had even thought up an entire backstory for her on my own because I thought they would never explain it. Yet there she was, and she was there from the beginning of the entire Terminator story arc, too. Since this episode took place in the year John Connor sent back Kyle Reese to protect his mother (the first Terminator movie), she was by his side. What’s interesting is that in my little “backstory,” she was John Connor’s lover. They hinted at it this week, after some of John’s officers were upset that they were letting “one of them” roam around, even though she was reprogrammed. Then someone said, “it’s what John wants.” She was his aide, essentially, and it implies that he trusted her more than what would be expected if she was just brainwashed.

I thought it was amusing that they didn’t cast an older John, instead they just referred to his off-screen presence, such as “John will see you now.” I was hoping that when Derik met him, they’d show him, but I realized that it’s been 20+ years and we have not yet seen future-John. Throwing him in all willy-nilly (yes, willy-nilly) is a big step. Naturally, they want to build the suspense. However, the rumors for the Terminator 4 movie have Christian Bale cast as future John, so we’ll see what happens with that. Maybe the show won’t show him because they want it to tie into the movie.

And what the hell was in the room where John was? Maybe I missed something? It looked like some sort of super-computer, and for a split second I thought they were making John himself into a machine. It’s entirely possibly I got distracted and missed something — was that the time displacement machine?

It’s also interesting that Cameron blatantly lies and collects bits and pieces of Terminators she kills. Obviously there is more going on inside her head than she’s letting on — which is strange, because a robot would just do what it’s programmed to do. Which means either she’s not just a run-of-the-mill robot, or she was programmed by future John to lie for a reason we haven’t seen yet.

Other great things: the music, as always, by Bear McCreary. Battlestar would not be what it is without it, and this show would struggle without it as well. The scene in the future when a Terminator walks into their hideout and starts… well, terminating, had that metallic, industrial tone that made the movies so menacing. And the buildup of both the piano music room and the “John will see you now” segment really built the suspense.

It was also genuinely disturbing seeing the machines salvaging jet engines. What the hey are they up to? Do they need them for time travel or what?

I really hope this show gets a full season order, because as of right now we have two more weeks and that’s it. I would love to see more of the future and how these new characters were there all along. This whole “destory Skynet in the past to protect the future” thing is good, but it isn’t sustainable, because if they do that, then there is nobody to go back in time in the first place to stop it. You can’t go back and kill your grandfather, in other words. The name of the show is also still a bit misleading, and this week’s episode is an example: it wasn’t really a chronicle of Sarah Connor at all.

I’m not sure what it should be, though. Terminator 4 is going to be called “Terminator: Salvation,” so something along those lines would have probably worked better. I think the average viewer doesn’t really like a show with a tongue twister title, especially if it isn’t accurate.

Did you see it? What did you think? Best episode yet? Complete failure?

Best line?  Once again Cameron repeating what she’s heard.  I thought this gag might get old but it’s still really funny.  “It’s a big scary robot,” and “I freak him the hell out…”  I lol’d.

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For the past couple weeks this show has felt a lot like Smallville to me, in that it’s just mediocre enough to be enjoyable. That’s not necessarily a good thing, but then again it’s not really bad, either, because I’ve made a point to see every Smallville episode since day one. But while Smallville lasted this long because it’s on the CW, Fox has a much worse history of keeping weak shows around. They usually get canceled within weeks of the premiere, which is why I’m still saying there won’t be any more episodes after number 8.

It’s just that they don’t take any risks. Two of my favorite shows, Lost and Battlestar Galactica, take risks every week with their storytelling. You can tell when a show does this because when someone asks you “what is it about?” the answer is so easy, but so complicated. For example, what’s your initial reaction when someone asks you: “What is Lost about?”

Well, it’s about a group of plane crash survivors. But is that it? No, not at all. You can go on for hours with that answer. Same with Battlestar Galactica, and I’m sure a lot of other shows that I don’t know about.

Smallville and The Sarah Connor Chronicles, however, suffer from that answer being a bit too easy. “What is Smallville about?” Superman before he was Superman. But is that it? Well, uhm, for the most part… yes.

What is the Sarah Connor Chronicles about? A robot from the future sent back in time to protect John and Sarah Connor so they can stop the robots from taking over in the first place. But is that it? Well, uhm…. yes.

So far, at least. I’m aware that it might take an episode or two, or three or six, to really develop the overall mythology of the show. Lost had it from the start, with the roars, the pilot, and the polar bear. BSG had a bit of it in the beginning because we knew Sharon was a Cylon, and it really picked up later when Baltar realized he has no idea how he knew where a Cylon installation was and accepts the fact that he may be getting played by the hand of God.

The good news is that the Sarah Connor Chronicles might have shown a bit of it in last night’s episode, specifically during the last fifteen minutes, when the mysterious girl at school gets in a car with an unknown person (she’s hiding something), John shows up with Sarah’s ex (just what did he say to him?), and Cameron collecting the Terminator chip then writing a grief note at the end (who was she writing to? suicide girl? and what did she say?)

It’s also interesting that we still don’t know why the girl jumped from the school’s roof and killed herself a few episodes back. Originally I just thought it was lazy writing but I’m smacking myself in the forehead now because it obviously is connected to something. It was both creepy and cool when Cameron replayed the event for the school’s grief counselor. I’m still frustrated, though, that she’s so different from episode 1 to episode 2.

So, what do I hope the Sarah Connor Chronicles is about? A robot from the future who is sent back in time to protect John and Sarah so they can stop the robots from taking over in the first place? Sure. But maybe it will also be about Skynet’s realization that they need John and Sarah, because without John and Sarah, the first Terminator (Arnold) has no reason to go back in time and therefore serve as the inspiration for Skynet itself. Therefore, Skynet should be sending Terminators back to protect John and Sarah, and the twist should be that future John is sending back agents to kill himself so the resistance that sparks this whole mess in the first place never happens… thereby ensuring Skynet never exists.

One of those “ultimate sacrifice” stories. If that really is what this show is about, I hope Fox keeps it around after week 8.

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Robots have always been interesting to me, but lately they’ve been on my mind more than usual. It has something to due with the Terminator being on TV (the name Sarah Connor Chronicles still makes me cringe), and this book, called Love + Sex with Robots, which I heard about somehow. I also just watched a special on the History channel about artificially intelligent machines, so it made me look into it a little more.

Basically, we’re a lot further along than I thought in creating a robot that acts human.

And once you act human, who is to say you’re not human? The above examples are far from perfect, and they are not “self-aware,” but once that happens (if it happens, I suppose), who’s to say what is alive and what isn’t? It becomes a very fine line.

It’s that fine line that I think a show like the Sarah Connor Chronicles has a great opportunity to explore. It’s too early to say “they’re missing it,” because for all I know they might jump into that concept sooner or later. It would be different than Battlestar Galactica or the Matrix at this point, because for the first time we’d see a self-aware machine before they decided to go all ape-shit. And since the robot in question (Cameron) is from the future and knows what happens, all the while learning about humanity and self-sacrifice and worth from Sarah and John, maybe she’d grow and learn and end up saving the world before it’s destroyed on her own, rather than just because she’s programmed to.

Then again, that opens up a pretty big plot hole. In the opening monologue of tonight’s show, Sarah says, “Today we fight Skynet so that it’s never created.” Let’s say they’re able to complete that mission. Great, right?! No Skynet means no death and destruction, no six billion dead. It also means no John Connor leading the resistance, and no one going back in time to make Sarah Connor crazy about saving the world. And since nobody went back to make Sarah crazy about saving the world, she doesn’t. She stands by and lets it’s happen. So she fails the mission and Skynet is created, starting the cycle all over again. It kind of shoots free will in the face, too, because no matter what John does, we know that he’ll live. If he doesn’t, there is no future resistance leader for the machines to worry about and go back in the past and get everything started. So Sarah might freak out when John runs off into an empty warehouse filled with Terminator-making materials in tonight’s episode, but she should really just relax, because if he were to have failed, they wouldn’t be in that situation in the first place.

Kind of makes you wonder if John’s purpose isn’t exactly what’s been established in the first three movies. Maybe his destiny is completely misunderstood at this point. Or something.

The bottom line is that Lost’s Desmond may be right about the universe “course correcting” when minor things happen in the past that aren’t supposed to, but major things, I think, would take a lot more time for the universe to correct. Destroying all the seeds of Skynet would send enough ripples through spacetime, I think, to destroy what was left of the universe at that point in time.

So, I guess I should shut up and enjoy the show for what it’s trying to be, right?

I like Cameron’s new outfit, and I like the story about the Gollum that Sarah told in the beginning and the end. I like Cameron’s T-model, whatever it is, and how pleasant she is when she says, “oh, thank you for explaining,” when learning something new. I like how Sarah Connor was her T2-badass self tonight, telling someone she’d “beat him to death” if he didn’t tell him what she wanted to know — and then essentially following up with it. I loved how Cromarty killed his new human counterpart, and while doing so studied his facial reactions to appear more human. That’s creepy as hell.

Most of all, I love how much effort the writers are clearly putting into the show, covering up cheesy scenarios like John tracking a truck using his cell phone by having a character say, “that actually works?” It’s such a small line and a bit of a cop-out, but Smallville could learn a thing or two from this show by not taking itself too seriously.

I still say the show would be 10x more interesting if it revolved around Cameron and her part in the birth of Skynet. But that’s just my opinion. It’s also my opinion, hence the blog title, that the show is still not strong enough to last past episode eight. I’d bet all the coltan in the world on it! (Don’t get me wrong, though… I’ll still watch all eight!)

*****
Would You Like to Know More?:

Sarah Connor Chronicles - Week 3 of 8
Sarah Connor Chronicles -Ep. #2 - Another Little Mini-Review
Sarah Connor Chronicles - Adam’s Little Mini-Review

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