It’s summer time and the TV viewing is sparse.

Me, I’m rewatching 30 Rock Season One and the new season of Weeds now that Battlestar Galactica has gone incognito for 2008. The Office webisodes premiere July 10, but that’s only three minutes a week, roughly. It’ll take some planning and creativity to fill in the many blanks in my viewing schedule.

One way I’ll do that will be to gear up for the second season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles by rewatching the short first season. And I can do that easily  by tuning in to the Terminator marathon Fox has planned.

Starting Aug. 10, the network will replay the nine-episode season in order. If you caught it the first time, this will be a great chance to brush up. If you missed the first go-round, here’s your chance to jump on the bandwagon of a fun and tense show.

The funky schedule, according to TVGuide.com, goes like this:

Sunday, Aug. 10: “Pilot”
Monday, Aug. 11: “Gnothi Seauton”
Tuesday, Aug. 12: “The Turk”
Wednesday, Aug. 13: “Heavy Metal”
Sunday, Aug. 17: “Queen’s Gambit”
Monday, Aug. 18: “Dungeons and Dragons”
Tuesday, Aug. 19: “The Demon Hand”
Wednesday, Aug. 20: “Vick’s Chip”
Sunday, Aug. 24: “What He Beheld”

That takes care of the second and third weeks of August, but I’ve got to keep scrambling until then.

By the way, this made me laugh. Click the pic then just lean back and soak up the weird. Hard to believe that guy kills terminators today.

I can’t believe it’s going to be another six months — at least — before we get to see the final half of the final season of one of the best shows ever to hit the small screen.

So, sadly, this is the final So Say We All blog carnival of 2008. Sigh. This half-season went waaaay too fast, but at least it had an incredible ending.

I have more to ponder about last week’s amazing mid-season finale, but I’m not quite sure what I want to say about it yet, so I’ll just get right to this week’s submissions.

Read more of this entry »

Holy frakkin’ frakkity frak frak.

Mind. Blown.

We have to wait another six months, minimum, for the rest of this story?

Who saw them reaching Earth now?

A nuclear wasteland.

All this has happened before and all this will happen again.

Obvious now: Cylons and humans, once, long ago, slaughtered each other in a nuclear confrontation on Earth.

Some Cylons, and some humans, made it across the galaxy, only for it all to play out again. Or the humans already were across the galaxy, and the Cylons sought them out, to forge a new alliance that would reconcile the two peoples?

Yes, we know that in the Caprica prequel, Cylons are created by the humans.

But what if that happened totally independently?

All this has happened before and all this will happen again.

And what if the new skinjob Cylons were created by the ancient Cylons? Thus the raiders and centurions being aware of the Final Four, while the skinjobs could only sense them and were programmed not to be aware of them?

And they were programmed by the ancient skinjobs. Who somehow were programmed not to know themselves, or programmed themselves not to know themselves, or the Final One programmed them not to know themselves?

This is why the Cylons believe in the one God; the Earth, when it was destroyed, was primarily monotheistic.

Kara is the harbinger of death because she was the one (why?) who led them to a dead world.

I have more to ponder. But this was utterly amazing, astounding and compelling.

And Moore and Eick are brilliant. Just a couple hours ago, I was obsessing over who the Final Cylon is.

That’s almost besides the point now. They did probably the only thing they could do that could make me not freak out about having to wait six months to find out the identity of the Final One.

There was a special Battlestar Galactica “event” yesterday in Los Angeles (hey! what about New York City — what are we, chopped liver?), and it included a special screening of tomorrow night’s episode.

I refuse to read any articles about the screening, because if this is the last BSG I’m going to have for a while, I want it to be fresh. The clip I posted earlier today is the most spoiling I’ll allow myself.

But I had to read and post on this: show co-creator Ronald D. Moore told TVGuide.com at this event that the rest of Season 4 won’t air until after “the first of the year.” At best.

… even though they are currently filming the series’ final scenes, the “practical realities” of post-production — coupled with the formidable end-of-year competition presented by new fall series, baseball and football — places the onset of the final episodes at the start of 2009, at the earliest. “Realistically, there’s no way to get back on the air faster,” he apologetically added.

Photo courtesy of NBC Universal. 

As I’ve mentioned a few times before, tomorrow is the mid-season finale for the final season of Battlestar Galactica. Fortunately, the good folks at SciFi have shared a compelling clip to whet our appetite.

Here’s the preview of “Revelations” that’ll make you wish it already was tomorrow night:

Download:

And here’s some tidbits I gathered throughout the week:

• On TVGuide.com, Jane Espenson answers some questions from fans. Here’s a couple of tidbits:

What happened to Boomer after D’Anna killed Cavil? Did she escape?
Espenson: She certainly would’ve had time to. Heck, there was even time for Cavil to download, I suppose. Huh. How ’bout that.

What is the “Goo-Bath” made of?
Espenson: Oh, I asked that too, and now I forget. It comes in big buckets and they heat it up and you can’t get it in your eyes. That’s all I remember. It’s also, mercifully, odorless.

Welcome to the weekly So Say We All: The Battlestar Galactica Blog Carnival.

An excellent penultimate episode of the first half of the last season. Wow. That was a mouthful.

Yes, I am extremely sad to say, this Friday’s episode, Revelations, is the mid-season finale. No word yet on when the second half will be aired, but conventional wisdom has it at next spring. I might have an aneurysm before then.

I don’t even know if we’ll find out the Final Cylon before the break. I don’t believe we will.

OK, I’ll stop blabbing now and share with you the carnival entries:

Tonight’s episode ended on an oddly optimistic note.

Waiting for days in his raptor, just floating out in space and determined not to give up on his lady love, Bill Adama not only is proved right but also is told he is loved.

How very un-Battlestar Galactica-y.

The entire rest of the episode, however, was vintage BSG.

First off, Baltar.

How amazingly, hilariously brilliant was Baltar’s explanation of God and slavery to the Centurion? And the Centurion actually seemed to be listening and absorbing. Interested. Curious.

I suspect we’ll see the Centurions taking some sort of role in … I’m not sure what. But I don’t think the Centurions are going to remain giant brainless robots for all of what’s left of the season.

And our Baltar confesses, finally, to his role in the destruction of humanity. But his belief in the One True God has released him of all guilt. He is perfect, he says. Just a tool of God. God wanted another flood to be unleashed on an imperfect humanity to wipe it clean. Just this time, it was a flood of fire rather than water. Baltar was a mere tool of God.

Oh, really?

Baltar’s ability to rationalize away all his guilt is typical and also disgusting.

Now, don’t get me wrong.

I’ve never really blamed Baltar for what happened. Even though he was the instrument the Cylons used to wipe out humanity, they would have found someone else to do it if he hadn’t been so susceptible to sexy blondes.

And he shouldn’t be immobilized by guilt for the rest of his days for what he’s done, either.

But to absolve himself because “That’s what God wanted” is disgraceful. And utterly, completely and totally Baltar, so it’s also brilliant.

As is his hitting on Roslin.

So, you were able (just barely) to wait two weeks between BSG episodes “Guess What’s Coming to Dinner” and “Sine Qua Non.” But why wait until tomorrow to get a sneak peek at “The Hub”?

I watched it, and it’s not spoilery in the meaning that it answers any questions whatsoever. It’s pretty short and gives a taste of what’s to come, but is driving me batty!

Take a look and tell me what you think:

Download:

So, despite the fact that I have absolutely no free time anymore, I’ve managed to find the time to ponder and come up with a totally out there Final Five theory that is probably totally wrong and is based on a guess Aaron Douglas has that he mentioned in this interview.

After my insane ramblings, stay tuned for the weekly So Say We All: The Battlestar Galactica Blog Carnival.

We’ve wondered for a while now where the whole idea of “All this has happened before and will happen again” comes from. What does it mean?

What if the Final Five are actually the Original Five?

What if the Final Five have not merely been to Earth but are from Earth?

What if the Final Five were created by Earthlings in the Diaspora and set out across the Universe to find the other 12 Colonies after a huge war between the Humans and the Earth Cylons?

They’re different, and yet the same.

My view is thoroughly bleak, but it’s perfectly in keeping with the series, which has been as bleak as it’s been brilliant.

Once upon a time, Cylons were created by man. They evolved. They rebelled.

And at the end of a devastating war, the ragged remnants of humanity fled across the universe to escape the Cylons, who pursued them.

They settled on a planet called Kobol, then eventually settled in the 12 Colonies. In time, the story somehow got turned around; Earth was the lost colony and became a beacon of hope to a newly defeated humanity.

The Cylons who had pursued them somehow programmed themselves or were programmed (OK, this is where it sort of breaks down a bit) by someone to go dormant, basically become human, until such time as they needed to be reawakened.

Which is now.

So, whaddya think? Am I completely insane? Would a good, long vacation on the Mediterranean do wonders for my mental state?

With that, I bring you So Say We All, after the break.

An odd episode.

Sine Qua Non (Latin, a “dead” language): Without which, not.

Adama is nothing without Roslin.

The fleet is nothing without a president; it also is nothing without forward motion, heading inexorably toward its ultimate destination.

Romo Lampkin is nothing without his cat, his lone connection to his dead family.

Lee is nothing without a purpose.

Athena is nothing without her daughter.

Is humanity truly doomed?

It would seem, in the end, that Romo accepted Lee’s assertion that people need to make a conscious decision to live, to perpetuate the human race. So long as there is faith in humanity, so long as the human race believes in its future, there is a future and it is deserved.

But what if he was right and Lee was wrong? What if the human race is doomed? What if the human race doesn’t deserve to go on? What if the future of humans and Cylons as a hybrid race is the true future and the only way that either race can continue?

The fleet is now headed by Lee Adama, a virtual Boy Scout, and a Saul Tigh, a Cylon who is only just coming to grips with what he is. The two races already are co-existing; they just don’t know it yet.

I have more to ponder and at least one more viewing before I can properly consider what I’ve just seen, but I do have a few other quick points:

• Great fight between Adama and Tigh. Tigh’s the only man in the entire fleet who could have punched Adama (who, frankly, needed it) and not ended up in the brig.

• Even so, Adama was totally right in blasting Saul about his relationship with Caprica Six, and Tigh needed those punches as a wake-up call just as much as Bill.

• Speaking of, if Caprica Six is pregnant, what does that mean? Is Saul actually the father? If he is, does that mean Cylons can procreate with one another just like humans do? Do they not need hybrid breeding? Or is it the difference between the Final Five and the Known Seven that makes the pregnancy possible?

• Will Adama finish reading Searider Falcon before he finds Roslin? I mean, c’mon, you know he’s going to. There are few things certain on this show, but there’s no way Adama is going to stay floating out in the middle of nowhere, especially considering we know that Roslin’s still alive. Not that we have proof of that, either, but, I mean, c’mon.

Photos courtesy of NBC Universal. 

It’s been a long two weeks (not as long as the next, what, seven months without Lost will be, but that’s another story for another day), but Battlestar’s return is not a moment too soon.

We were left with the jaw-dropper of the hybrid being plugged back in and immediately jumping the base star away (to where?) with Roslin, Baltar and others on board.

Here’s a “What the Frak” video recap of “Guess What’s Coming to Dinner”:

Download:

Tonight’s offering, “Sine Qua Non” will look at the deepening divide between Lee and his father, and Athena having to answer for her actions in shooting Natalie. A preview, after the break:

Read more of this entry »

This week’s So Say We All: The Battlestar Galactica Blog Carnival has posted at Athens Exchange.

To whet your whistle, I figured I’d toss together all these bits of news and vids and the like that I’ve been gathering over the past week.

This YouTube video is amazing, splicing together Gaeta’s Lament, the song he sang in snatches throughout the episode.

Which brings us to Bear McCreary’s Battlestar blog entry about “Guess What’s Coming to Dinner.” He has the whole story about how the song was developed, from writer Michael Angeli’s wife, Karen, having written the melody as a gift to him, to Alessandro Juliani (Felix Gaeta) and McCreary (BSG’s composer) involvement in the story sessions for the episode.

Who knew that Juliani had such a gorgeous voice (he studied opera at McGill University in Montreal!)? I liked how they even commented on that in the episode.

McCreary’s blog also contains the entire lyrics for the song and even the sheet music for it:

Alone she sleeps in the shirt of man
With my three wishes clutched in her hand
The first that she be spared the pain
That comes from a dark and laughing rain
When she finds love may it always stay true
This I beg for the second wish I made too
But wish no more
My life you can take
To have her please just one day wake

Wowwowwowwow.

Of course, Baltar knows all about Roslin’s dreams that she shares because he’s in them, too. He has them; remember back on Kobol? He was the first to have the opera house dream, shared with a Six. Before Hera was born; long before; and Hera was in it, too.

Hera is a key to something, but to what I can’t figure.

OK, I’m jumping all over the place, so let me do one thing at a time:

Roslin

I wondered when she’d either learn that Tori was shtupping Baltar or admit to knowing it. I mean, Tori hasn’t been extremely discreet. She may have started out that way, but she visits Baltar a bit too much. They’re on a spaceship, not in a wide-open city. You can’t keep those secrets forever.

Roslin’s a real badass, too. She knows how to play hardball. She knows what she needs to know and makes sure she knows EVERYTHING she needs to know.

Wondered why it took so long for her to realize Baltar knew about the visions because he had them, too (at least, that’s what I believe to be true). That’s why she took him to visit the hybrid. There already are Sixes and Eights on the wounded base star, so she didn’t need to bring them.

She, however, is the one who’s going to figure out what the opera house means. So says the hybrid.

Sixes and Eights —  and Hera

We already know there’s bad blood between the Sixes and Eights on the base star. The Eights were ready to revolt against the Sixes when Sharon and Starbuck showed up. And Sharon is so determined to be human that she can’t stand any Cylons. And now, in the visions, she believes the Six wants to take Hera away and like any mom, she won’t —  can’t —  let that happen.

The Six named Natalie, though, is a fascinating creature.

She is ready to lay all the cards on the table. She wants to tell all the truth to the Colonials, antithetical to everything a Cylon is. The Eights, of course, are wholly against it. Leoben, as usual, can see the middle way and will make sure the Centurions don’t attack the humans.

Back on Kobol, Head Six told Baltar that this hybrid was their child —  hers and Baltar’s. She’s told him that many times since. How and why is this true? Will this cause the ultimate schism among the Cylons?

The hidden Cylons

Why is it that only the Raiders have recognized the Hidden Four? Is the programming of the first seven models so intense (and why is it so?) that they can only just vaguely sense their presence but can’t recognize them when they’re standing in front of them?

Do the Centurions recognize the Hidden Four? Can they?

Why is there no model Seven among the original Seven? (I’m going to ask this EVERY week until I find the answer.)

Is Felix Gaeta’s constant singing a red herring? Is he truly the final Cylon or are Moore & Eick trying to throw us off the scent? I don’t suppose we’ll know for sure until they decide to tell us.

How did Tigh tell that the injured base star wasn’t a danger? Did it somehow communicate with him? Did he just sense it? Does Adama buy his explanation that it was just luck? Now that they know the Final Five are in the fleet, will Adama start to suspect his XO?

The hybrid

Did the Leoben and Sharon know the hybrid would jump the ship as soon as she was connected?

What caused her to order the jump? Was it Roslin’s presence? Baltar’s presence? The reconnection, and thus sensing danger? All of the above, and more?

Do we really have to wait two weeks for the next episode? Sigh.

Be sure to come back Tuesday for So Say We All: The Battlestar Galactica Blog Carnival.

Been a bit remiss about blogging BSG lately, other than my musings on Starbuck (during which I completely forgot that we’re dealing with a 40-year time period that’s passed, so it’s unlikely – though not impossible – that Starbuck was that young blonde girl in “Razor”) and the blog carnival.

But we learned that Eric Stoltz has joined the Caprica prequel cast to play the yin to Esai Morales’ yang.

Stoltz plays Daniel Graystone, the patriarch of the other major family at the heart of this prequel movie/back-door pilot. Alessandra Toressani plays his daughter, Zoe. Morales plays Joseph Adama, daddy to William. (Everything you need to know about Caprica is in these posts.)

Then, we have this really fabulous interview the Boston Globe did with Edward James Olmos. He shares a lot about the feelings on the set without spoiling anything at all.

Take this comment:

It is bleak. And it is getting darker. This last season has gotten to the point where we end up crying a lot. Emotional breakdowns. It’s human drama. And when you perform in it, you’re inside of it. A lot of people are dead. I’m not going to say who, because why ruin it for people, but a lot of us die.

Here’s a peek ahead at tonight’s episode, “Guess What’s Coming to Dinner”:

Download:

Then, we have the What the Frak recap of “Faith”:

Download:

Come back tonight about 11:30 p.m. or so for my insta-recap/analysis of “Guess Who.”

Photo courtesy of NBC Universal. 

Welcome to this week’s So Say We All: The Battlestar Galactica Blog Carnival, for episode six, “Faith.”

Lots of good entries this week, thanks to all contributors. As usual, it’s all in the order I received it.

So here’s your bloggy goodness, and enjoy:

David Bird time warps us with his commentary on The Road Less Traveled, in Galactica Log: The Road Less Traveled posted at David Bird, giving us my favorite description, ever, of Gaius Baltar: “the swinging bachelor messiah.”

James Newberry is in love with President Roslin and discusses how this season of BSG has dealt with our reactions toward death in Bald is Beautiful posted at NewbSpeak. (By the way, James, I am SO with you on Anders. He shoulda just jammed his hand right into that interface.)

Norman Doering ponders what drugs Katee Sackhoff could be taking to inform her performance as someone pushed so far over the edge (just read it; he explains it better) and whether Roslin had the dream about the river because she knew Emily was dying or if she was really on the river, in Faith in the Heart of Darkness, posted at A Blog from Hell.

Len Neighbors explains why the crew of the Demetrius doesn’t believe in Starbuck — they don’t know she’s a main character, as we do —in Battlestar Galactica Commentary: 4.6, “Faith,” posted at Athens Exchange.

Paul Levinson sees the distance between the “good” Cylons and the humans receding, in Battlestar Galactica 4.6: Cylon on Cylon, posted at Paul Levinson’s Infinite Regress.

Roberta is left scratching her head, pondering more questions than ever before, in BSG – WTF?, posted at CouchSlobs – A Monument To Human Idleness.

MaryAnn Johanson presents ‘Battlestar Galactica’ blogging: “Faith” posted at FlickFilosopher.com.

And my insta-recap/analysis and today’s ponderance on Kara “Starbuck” Thrace.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Kara Thrace of late. In fact, I have about a 45-minute drive each way to work and find myself pondering Cylons, Starbuck and other things BSG as I drive on the Garden State Parkway.

And so I found myself yesterday morning on a rain-soaked road, listening to the BBC World Service with Friday’s episode, “Faith,” meandering through my multi-tasking brain.

Kara Thrace, you see, is most definitely not a Cylon. Too obvious. So obvious, in fact, that it’s obviously not the case.

But she was there at the beginning of the skinjobs.

Think back to the Razor telemovie, one of the flashbacks to a young Bill “Husker” Adama on the ice planet after his firefight with the old-school Cylons.

He stumbles upon a chamber of horrors. At its center is a tub filled with goo; a hand shoots out, grabbing Husker. His startled cry alerts some prisoners to his presence and they bang on a door, begging him to set them free.

Husker can only get the door open a few inches, but through it we see a young, blonde girl.

I am not alone in assuming this girl is Starbuck, I am sure.

But I posit this theory: The girl is Starbuck. She and her father were among those taken by the Cylons for experimentation. Her father ended up in another goo-filled tank; in the goo-filled tank, in fact, that she boards with Kendra Shaw and others in Razor. He is the first hybrid. He knows Starbuck and her destiny because he is half her genetic material.

She is the harbinger of death and will lead humanity to its end because her revelations about who and what she is will lead to the demise of both her race and the Cylon race, as they will merge into one.

Or not.

Photo courtesy of NBC Universal.

A riddle in numbers.

An opera house.

The Cylons split even further; schisms within schisms.

The constant prattle of a hybrid (a hybrid between human and Cylon), resetting and guiding an utterly damaged ship, guarded by a lone Centurion whose only mission is to keep her alive.

The missing three will get you the five who have come from the home of the 13th.

The final five Cylons.

The missing (model) Three, a boxed D’Anna Biers.

D’Anna has looked upon the face of the five; indeed is the only Cylon that knows who they are. That is why she was boxed; whoever programmed the Cylons made that a rule. The Cylons must never think about the Final Five, never mind know who they are.

Why is that?

So that only once the humans and Cylons can actually come to a truce and understand one another and accept one another and live in (relative) peace and harmony (I mean, c’mon, neither race has proved capable of living in true peace and harmony within its own race, we can’t expect rainbows, hearts and flowers when you bring the two races together) that they are allowed to know the Final Five and, by extension, the location of Earth?

Is Kara the one to bridge that divide because she is married to a Cylon, because a Cylon is truly, deeply, madly in love with her? Or is that even just beside the point? How did Leoben know Kara Thrace was the special one, the one who could bring them all to Earth? None of the other models, until now, seemed to believe his obsession was anything more than an obsession.

After a week’s break, the good folks over at the SciFi Channel resumed giving us recap clips of the last Battlestar Galactica episode. So I present you with this, a quickie recap of The Road Less Traveled:

Download:

And meanwhile, to prepare you for tonight’s episode, called “Faith,” check out this interview Beliefnet did with BSG exec prod Ronald Moore about “The Souls of Cylons.”

Here’s a snippet:

At the beginning, I sort of assumed that the Colonials —  the human beings —  would have a belief system, probably polytheistic. In the original, the “Lords of Kobol” were referred to several times. But it wasn’t until the development of the miniseries when I sort of randomly gave the Cylons a belief system. I was creating the characters and working on some lines for Number 6 and I thought it was interesting if she professed a belief in a single God. I had really given her a belief in a singular God almost by accident.

I compared that with the polytheistic religion of the colonials, I started to realize that an interesting pattern was developing —  the Cylons believing in the one true God and the Colonials having an older, multifaceted system of deities that was obviously patterned on the Romans. As the series went on, I started to believe that the Cylon belief was going to be a guiding principal.

Some simply perfect news this week: Esai Morales has been cast in the Caprica pilot/telemovie as Joseph Adama, father of William Adama (now played by Edward James Olmos).

Morales most recently played, of course, our heroic Maj. Beck on Jericho. Given the different schedule of cable and network shows, one would hope that when (not if, when) Jericho gets a Season 3, he’d be able to work out both?

Paula Malcomson (remember Trixie from Deadwood?) will be Amanda, described in multiple spots as a surgeon who works as a double agent. But she’s also the matriarch of the Greystone family, the rival to the Adamas.

So what is Caprica going to be all about? Check out this post, this one and this one.

Wired had this interview with SciFi network exec veep Mark Stern, in which he discussed the science of BSG, sci fi in general and talked about how the network has high hopes for Caprica as more than just a pilot.

Esai Morales photo courtesy of CBS; Edward James Olmos photo courtesy of NBC Universal. Can you see a family resemblance?