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.

I’d planned to have a whole intro musing on Kara Thrace and her non-Cylonicity, but it was so long that I made it a separate post.

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 13th tribe of man. Earth.

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.

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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.

There’s lots of really interesting stuff, so check it out. But then come back here tonight, about half an hour or so after “Faith” ends, to see my insta-thoughts.

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?

It’s up and running, hosted this week by my partner in BSG crime, Len Neighbors at Athens Exchange. Enjoy.

Want to join in the fun next week? Click here to submit.

So there we have it.

Kara Thrace: Harbinger of death or angel full of God’s light?

Or both?

As much as I found the first few episodes of the season to be amazing, I have to admit I was rather relieved this week to find a more subdued Kara Thrace. No more holding her head screaming, “We’re going the wrong way!!!” or having frak fights with Anders.

Plus, any time Kara and Leoben share screen time, the intensity ratchets up. He is the only one who really seems to know what Kara is, whatever that may be. I wonder, did he sense Anders is a Cylon? What did he mean about Anders and Kara being meant for one another? Does that mean Kara is, indeed, a Cylon?

And even though I knew from last week’s previews that Leoben would make an appearance this week, I found myself still gasping when the badly burned heavy Cylon raider carrying Leoben (speaking to Kara telepathically?) came upon the Demetrius.

What we learned this episode:

Kara does need to trust her instincts. She didn’t go out on patrol in how long and the first time she does, a Leoben who escaped the attack by Cavil & Co. appears?

Look, we’re in the odd position of knowing that most of what Leoben had to say is true. Everything he said about the civil war is accurate. Why should we think that anything else he had to say wasn’t? In fact, the only thing I can think of that we know for sure Leoben has lied about (besides pretending to be a human at various points on Galactica and in the pilot when he was trapped with Adama) is that that little girl on New Caprica was her daughter.

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Sorry for the delay; I really meant to post on Tuesday night, but I had the house to myself for a change and I hardly knew what to do with myself. I actually was far less productive than I tend to be when the house is filled and I have all sorts of demands on me.

Yeah, whatever, Amy, just get to the good stuff, I can hear you saying.

So, since I’m so late, I’m going to just get straight to the point:

• The new revolution. Doomed! Um, exactly what did Sam think was going to happen when he promised the Devil he’d do him a favor? And it’s not like Satan didn’t tell him a zillion times in so many ways that the favor was going to be big, bad, uncomfortable and come at a really bad time. Sam, Sam, Sam, will you ever learn? Apparently not. And poor Tony. He did love Steve so, and his true immortal (um, I guess not completely) love is now gone.

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We had some amazingly in-depth analysis of this week’s Battlestar Galactica episode, “Escape Velocity.”

The title refers to the need for a spaceship to arrive at a certain speed before being able to achieve said escape velocity, i.e., what’s needed to escape the gravity of a planet and launch into space.

It’s a metaphor, I believe, for the show needing to build up some tension and exposition in order to start revealing things that are going to blow our minds.

We had: Baltar beginning to preach; Six beginning to sense something about Tigh; Tyrol beginning to allow himself to be himself; Tory beginning to be completely insane because she figures, what the hell, I’m a Cylon; the mystery of “Head” Six beginning to become even more mysterious; Tigh beginning to hallucinate his dead wife on Six’s body and beginning to want to have the pain of having killed her go away. By the end, these beginnings had achieved a sort of escape velocity and something’s gonna blow.

We had an outstanding episode this week, with “Escape Velocity” giving us not a heckuva lot of action but still giving us a heckuva lot of exposition. I was truly amazed at the depth of the analysis some folks gave the episode in entries we received this week, some from old hats at the carnival, others from newcomers.

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Well, not quite, but FHM has its annual list of the 100 sexiest women of 2008, and at least 14 15 of them are familiar to our blog’s faithful readers:

90. Summer Glau (Cameron, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)
83. Jenna Fischer (Pam, The Office)
73. Carrie Underwood (American Idol)
63. Grace Park (The Eights/Sharons, Battlestar Galactica)
49. Katherine Heigl (Dr. Isobel ‘Izzie’ Stevens, Grey’s Anatomy)
41. Kristin Kreuk (Lana Lang, Smallville)
38. Katherine McPhee (American Idol)
37. Evangeline Lilly (Kate, Lost)
24. Kristen Bell (Elle, Heroes)
19. Ali Larter (Niki Sanders & Co., Heroes)
15. Erica Durance (Lois Lane, Smallville)
11. Hayden Panettiere (Claire Bennett, Heroes)
9. Blake Lively (Serena van der Woodsen, Gossip Girl)
8. Tricia Helfer (The Sixes, Battlestar Galactica)
4. Elisha Cuthbert (Kim Bauer, 24)

That’s more than 10 percent of the list accounted for. Hey! Where’s the 100 sexiest men of 2008?? (And isn’t April/May kind of early in the year for this sort of listing?)

We were treated to quite a bit of the hidden Cylons tonight, excepting Anders, who’s still aboard the garbage scow Demetrius somewhere out in space.

Tory is happy she’s a Cylon. She’s perfect, she believes. And Baltar’s preaching at the end of the episode just confirmed it for her. She doesn’t know if Baltar’s a Cylon himself, but she knows that she’s perfect just how she is and that the One True God loves her.

Tigh is slowly trying to understand who and what he is. He insists he’s still a man, human, but the idea that he could turn off the pain caused by his murder of Ellen is too tempting. If there’s some way he can stop imagining her, remembering her, seeing her where she isn’t, he wants to take it, even if that means being a Cylon.

But did Caprica Six sense who he really was at the end, there? She realized that the pain was not, in fact, what he needed. She kisses him in apology. Is she apologizing for inflicting pain? Is she apologizing because he is like her and not human? Is she apologizing because she enjoyed (did you see that smile on her face as she wailed on him?) beating the crap outta him?

The Chief, well, he’s another story entirely.

If he’s not who he believed he was, then maybe he can just stop being that person. And that person was always one of the most reliable, dependable in the fleet. He never rocked the boat. He fought the Cylons. He kept the ships running.

But he’s not that person. So why be that person anymore?

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Tricia Helfer, Battlestar Galactica’s most excellent Cylon Six (and, according to me, one of the most underrated actresses of her generation), has been cast for a multi-episode arc on Burn Notice.

The USA Network summer show stars Jeffrey Donovan and Gabrielle Anwar (and Sharon Gless!) and Helfer would be Michael’ (Donovan) “sleek, sexy and lethal ‘handler,’ who often comes across as unaffected and slightly amused by him,” says Michael Ausiello at TVGuide.com.

Teases series creator Matt Nix: “To protect the people he loves, Michael is forced to work for Carla — his only link to the people behind his burn notice.”

Burn Notice returns July 10 and it was one of my favorites last summer. Donovan’s Michael was a sort of low-grade Jack Bauer with a badass sidekick and lady love Fiona (her skillset runs more toward the lethal than the computer, so she’s not really his Chloe, even though she sorta is).  And his friend Sam played the sort of Sock (Reaper) role, always wisecracking, but coming through in the clutch. Usually.

I’m really going to enjoy this season…

The good folks at SciFi continue to provide us with preview clips, today one from tonight’s episode, “Escape Velocity”:

Download:

And I never got this one up, the recap of “Ties that Bind”:

Download:

Meanwhile, there’s been lots of news lately on the brilliant men who bring us the brilliant Battlestar Galactica, and I’ve been lax in reporting on it, so I’ll make it up to you now. Read more of this entry »

The premise for “Night Out” holds lots of laugh potential, though I’m uncomfortable with leaving the office just one week after establishing how great office-based episodes are.

Michael and Dwight decide to surprise Ryan in New York for a night of clubbing and meet his friends. Meanwhile, the Scranton branch is upset when they find out they have to come in on a Saturday for Ryan’s website project. Jim’s plan to save them has unexpected results.

(Read Remote Access’s chat with actress Cassie Fliegel, pictured, who had a club-side seat for Dwight’s and Michael’s antics.)

There’s plenty of online speculation as to what “unexepected results” could mean. Just going on memory here, but over the past few weeks we’ve heard commentary coming from cast and crew about a potential downfall coming for Ryan.

I think it was Greg Daniels—I could be wrong—who said something about sexual predators hacking into Dunder Mifflin Infinity. And we’ve heard tonight’s episode is the second in a three-part arc that is building towards some kind of Jim-Pam-engagement resolution.

So putting all that together….I’ve got nothing. I do hope Jim’s plans to save the company leads to the end of DMI. (Let’s hope its virtual counterpart at NBC.com follows suit.) Readers with better memories are encouraged to chime in under the comments section with your own speculation.

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Thanks to Len Neighbors over at the Athens Exchange for hosting this week’s carnival.

Who doesn’t love a carnival? The funnel cake, cotton candy, Gravitron … Puking up funnel cake and cotton candy in the Gravitron …

Ah, I could go on.

But why waste your time on that, when you could be headed over to read all the Battlestar Galactica bloggy goodness in this week’s carnival?

Thanks to all for your contributions and let’s meet back here Friday night to discuss “Escape Velocity.” AndI will, once again, be your humble hostess for the next carnival (submit articles here).

Caprica Six and Tigh have some sort of meeting, so things should be interesting ………

Just a quick note:

The blog carnival has been postponed one day because the Blog Carnival website has been down and some folks haven’t been able to send in their entries.

If you are among them, feel free to e-mail me a link to your entry at avernon@lohud.com

For the rest of you, visit Athens Exchange tomorrow for the carnival, where it’ll post, rain or shine. I’ll post something here when it does go up, so check in.

I’m not even sure where to start with tonight’s episode.

I’d thought, going into it, that the Cylon civil war was going to be the big deal that was going to blow my mind.

And I’d even predicted, based on a sneak peek, that Tory was going to kill Callie.

But I still gasped out loud when Tory went all Cylon on Callie, knocking her across the launch tube like a rag doll.

Never saw that coming.

Tory is fully embracing her Cylonocity. Cylonness? Cylonism?

You could see that in the early part of the episode, where Tory was enjoying her ambrosia and hitting on Tyrol.

I’m sad to see Callie go. She’s been on BSG since the miniseries and she’s really evolved.

She started out pining after the Chief, jealous of Boomer. Heck, she killed Boomer and her hatred of Cylons has been about the strongest of anyone in the fleet.

She and the Chief were leaders of the resistance on New Caprica; she didn’t play as big a role because she was pregnant and then caring for their child (the second Cylon-human hybrid), but she was big into the resistance.

For her to discover her husband is a Cylon is utterly devastating. But her murder is even more devastating to the viewer, because we see that Tory is willing to do whatever it takes to keep the secret. And any doubts as to exactly how similar to the other skinjob Cylons these four hidden Cylons are was erased in that moment where Tory knocked Callie’s block off.

What this means for the future of the fleet and of the Cylons is anyone’s guess.

Read more of this entry »

Here’s one of the best scenes in tonight’s episode, when a resurrected Cavil sits down to talk turkey with the Sixes and Eights:

Download:

Stop back in about half an hour or so for my thoughts on the entire episode.

See you then.

A week and a half ago, Jenna Fischer, who plays Pam on “The Office,” and Brad Beyer, who plays Stanley on “Jericho,” were deadlocked among Remote Access readers who voted in a poll to determine the supporting actor “most crucial” to his/her show.

After a tie of 171 votes apiece, Fischer broke away from Beyer and claimed the honor. She finished with 222 votes; Beyer claimed 203. (Photo of Jenna Fischer courtesy of NBC/Universal.)

Like last week’s results, actors from their shows also filled the poll’s next two slots: Rainn Wilson (92 votes), Dwight on “The Office,” and reader-submitted Skeet Ulrich (73 votes), Jake on “Jericho.” (I’d still contend that Ulrich is a lead actor, but it’s an interesting poll trend regardless.)

Rounding out the top 10 were Michael Emerson as Ben on “Lost” (43 votes); Robert Sean Leonard as Wilson on “House, M.D.” (36 votes); Tricia Helfer as Number Six on “Battlestar Galactica” (32 votes); Summer Glau as Cameron on “Terminator: The Sarah Conor Chronicles” (25 votes); Masi Oka as Hiro on “Heroes” (18 votes); and Allison Mack as Chloe on “Smallville” (17 votes).

Our new poll, in the right margin of this page, is all about elbow grease: Who is the hardest-working TV personality? We’ve even given you a few suggestions to get you started.

From “Lost” to “Cloverfield,” it seems like JJ Abrams is everywhere these days. “Daily Show” alumnus Steve Carell rocks “The Office” and is an A- or B-list movie star at this point. “Saturday Night Live” alumna Tina Fey is the MVP writer/producer/star of “30 Rock” and also has movie cred with “Mean Girls” and “Baby Mama.” Ryan Seacrest hosts “American Idol,” the Emmys, “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” his own radio show, E! newscasts, “American Top 40” and pretty much everything that needs an emcee. And Oprah Winfrey’s talk show continues to rule and her presence extends into prime time, politics and international charity work.

As we like to do here at Remote Access, we’re giving you the option to submit your own nominations as well. So feel free to do so. Remember: We’re looking for people who got their start and/or are best known for their contribution to television. Movie stars making a TV cameo now and then shouldn’t count. Vote, vote, vote!

Check out the rest of the results of the supporting actor poll after the break.

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An excellent carnival, with more entries than last week, a recap clip courtesy of SciFi, a cool widget you can grab for your site and lots of BSG bloggy goodness.

No favoritism! Entries are posted in the order I receive ‘em. Enjoy, comment, visit our carnival contributors’ blogs and come back next week for Volume 3!

Chase Me ponders who the final Cylon might be, in BSG & The Five? posted at Wantabetravelin’s Weblog.

Mike Moody asks an excellent question, Is Battlestar Galactica today’s Deep Space Nine? posted at SciFi Observer. Having been a fan of DS9, I think Mike makes some good points. DS9 should have gotten lots of love. Maybe the show should have had sexier robots? Hmm?

Len Neighbors’ weekly recap starts with an interesting look at ratings and how they can’t possibly represent reality, in Battlestar Galactica Commentary, Episode Two, “Six of One” posted at Athens Exchange. Amen, Len, amen.

Danijel ponders the lack of advanced technology in BSG and how that actually grounds the Colonials’/Cylons’ world more in our world and lifts it above being a mere space opera, in Looking Back: new “Battlestar Galactica” posted at CouchSlobs – A Monument To Human Idleness.

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