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August 13, 2005
Battlestar Galactica - The Farm
This episode delivered on every level and proves again that the writers and actors are giving us fully rounded characters...no, people to care about.
Yes, Adama is finally back. It is an emotional reception he walks into, for him as well as his command. But he isn't the O'IronSides that is just picking up where he left off when he was shot. He is angry, physically still weak, and all that has gone on is having it's toll. You see the play of emotions in his eyes -- and this is where the strength of Olmos' acting just shines -- with small movements across his face, in the slight change of timber in his voice. When Adama has outbursts they're startling in contrast. The scene of him in the morgue with Boomer's body was emotionally wrenching.
Adama's strengths (and moments of emotional doubt) are mirrored in Roslin. She knows what she has to do, yet she is still catches herself in moments of humility demonstrated by the scene in which those that follow her kneel and seek her blessings.
Now, let's talk about the surreal and well played scenes of Starbuck in the "hospital." Nicely underplayed and well shot to keep us, like Starbuck, off balance and questioning her well-deserved paranoia, the writers also dropped bonus information in the scenes about Starbuck's background. Besides adding yet another facet to our attempts to understand her inner demons, you know that this information is going to come back again in a later episode.
AND, we are getting more information on the Cylons themselves, regardless of the toaster models, the biologically based Cylons have some very telling problems ... they cannot naturally reproduce regardless of cloned copies. This is ultimately a fatal flaw in their success as a new race and sheds light on some of the desperation and possible dissension we have seen hints of within the clones. Helo's Boomer, if we accept that she does truly love Helo and is pregnant, seems to have gone renegade. And just like the information about Starbuck's past was woven in her scenes with the doctor, I recall from the first season some heated arguing between a Six clone and Helo's Boomer about the nature of love and how it would affect them. Also, an even earlier, almost a throwaway scene, when Helo was first on Caprica, where a Six clone seemed to be ready to help him (and seduce him) and was then executed by another Cylon.
Wheels within wheels.
Last night's episode was one of the best of this season to date, and really moved all the story lines forward.
Posted by Darleen at August 13, 2005 12:07 AM
Comments
Battle Star Galactica? I suppose you call yourself a science fiction fan, too.
Posted by: Lo Ping Wong at August 13, 2005 09:14 AM
I wonder... I haven't read all your Battlestar wrapups... so maybe you've already hypothesized... but I sometimes wonder if Adama is a cylon. It struck me as he was over Boomer's corpse on the slab when he asked her why... why he betrayed her. He was deeply saddened. Of course there is the obvious implication that he loved her as a human, and felt betrayed by her being a cylon.
But what if Boomer shot him because she betrayed him... her knowing he also was a cylon, and fully deciding to betray her brothers and sisters. After all, she did successfully blow up the base ship earlier in that episode. So why the two opposite actions? What if the Boomer copies she met on the base star told her that he was a cylon? There seemed to be a shocking revelation in that episode that she learned, that was kept secret from us.
What if that was the betrayal that saddened him?
Just a thought.
Posted by: Nick at August 15, 2005 07:07 PM