Galactica - "Resurrection II" review
Jan. 14th, 2006 10:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tagrynThoughts on the most recent Battlestar Galactica episode
Firstly, I wasn't sure how the writers were going to go about resolving the presence of Pegasus. Having two battlestars around would seem to add complexity to the storyline: we already know about many minor characters on Galactica, like the hangar workers & bridge personnel, and adding Pegasus would seem to beg the question of whether to start that on Pegasus as well. However, the title of the show is "Battlestar Galactica", so if Pegasus is kept around, she may turn out to be more important than Colonial One but definitely the minor sister to Galactica.
Am still not convinced the powers behind the series won't decide to remove her from the storyline at some point, but the director's comments on the episode indicate he knew that offing Pegasus during the fight was too predictable.
Loved the scene with Baltar and the two Sixes in the cell. His repeating the dream 6's recollection of going to sporting events back to the "real" 6 was very well acted & underscored that Baltar doesn't really need the Six in his head anymore, that he's taking control of his own destiny instead of letting her or anyone else control him. Nice evolution of the character.
OK, to the battle. Visually the episode showed enough of it to be satisfying without making it the dominant theme of the episode, as a play-by-play would have done, leaving us with time for the personality and moral conflicts which are much more interesting from a plot perspective. The plan was already outlined by Starbuck in Part I, so mostly it was just seeing things play out as expected. After seeing the episode the first time I was left wondering why the Cylons would send most of their raiders after the four or five civilian ships which were apparently having FTL problems (the bait) - in the pilot, it only took five raiders to wipe out the 30 or so non-FTL civilian ships left behind. But it was a mistake on understanding the timing on my part, I think. From the Cylon's perspective, they'd caught up to the Galactica and the civilian fleet, and every time this had happened before the Colonials had always jumped away - there was no reason not to send everything at once and catch what they could. They'd also probably had to expect to fight through a Viper screen to get to the fleet, hence the need for raiders en masse.
The second part of the plan was visually the most spectacular. Galactica jumped back in, along with Pegasus, and catches one basestar between them. They open up with their main batteries, then start using secondaries and everything else to blast the one ship, leaving the other relatively untouched. This worked tactically because of the element of surprise. The Cylons have no idea the Colonials have two battlestars available, and therefore have an offensive capacity far out of proportion to what they've come to expect. It takes some time for either basestar to cycle up their weapons, although by the middle of the battle we see both Galactica and Pegasus sporting some fairly heavy fires from hits, mainly from the second basestar shown off to one side. The final destruction of the first basestar was very well done, and emphasizes how far special effects have come since the '70s series.
The director's commentary says that Apollo collided with a damaged Raptor which was floating in space. He says they originally had him floating afterwards among the dead corpses of the Raptor crew, which fed his fatalism to die in the end, but it just became too much to work out technically with CGI and get the other things in the episode done.
Exactly how devastating this is to the Cylons will depend. They've lost one basestar - presumably the other jumped away with the raider fleet - and the Resurrection Ship. If there are no more of the latter, they may be forced to cease their pursuit until they can build another one for self-preservation purposes, and if what the "real" Six told Baltar is true, the Colonials may be too far out by the time that happens to receive homing messages from their remaining agents.
One last question: where did Baltar send the "real" Six? Where is his "someplace safe" for her? I guess it depends on whether they could get access to an FTL-capable craft or not. Donna thinks it might be Kobol. My initial guess was either the prison ship or Caprica, but I don't know.
Firstly, I wasn't sure how the writers were going to go about resolving the presence of Pegasus. Having two battlestars around would seem to add complexity to the storyline: we already know about many minor characters on Galactica, like the hangar workers & bridge personnel, and adding Pegasus would seem to beg the question of whether to start that on Pegasus as well. However, the title of the show is "Battlestar Galactica", so if Pegasus is kept around, she may turn out to be more important than Colonial One but definitely the minor sister to Galactica.
Am still not convinced the powers behind the series won't decide to remove her from the storyline at some point, but the director's comments on the episode indicate he knew that offing Pegasus during the fight was too predictable.
Loved the scene with Baltar and the two Sixes in the cell. His repeating the dream 6's recollection of going to sporting events back to the "real" 6 was very well acted & underscored that Baltar doesn't really need the Six in his head anymore, that he's taking control of his own destiny instead of letting her or anyone else control him. Nice evolution of the character.
OK, to the battle. Visually the episode showed enough of it to be satisfying without making it the dominant theme of the episode, as a play-by-play would have done, leaving us with time for the personality and moral conflicts which are much more interesting from a plot perspective. The plan was already outlined by Starbuck in Part I, so mostly it was just seeing things play out as expected. After seeing the episode the first time I was left wondering why the Cylons would send most of their raiders after the four or five civilian ships which were apparently having FTL problems (the bait) - in the pilot, it only took five raiders to wipe out the 30 or so non-FTL civilian ships left behind. But it was a mistake on understanding the timing on my part, I think. From the Cylon's perspective, they'd caught up to the Galactica and the civilian fleet, and every time this had happened before the Colonials had always jumped away - there was no reason not to send everything at once and catch what they could. They'd also probably had to expect to fight through a Viper screen to get to the fleet, hence the need for raiders en masse.
The second part of the plan was visually the most spectacular. Galactica jumped back in, along with Pegasus, and catches one basestar between them. They open up with their main batteries, then start using secondaries and everything else to blast the one ship, leaving the other relatively untouched. This worked tactically because of the element of surprise. The Cylons have no idea the Colonials have two battlestars available, and therefore have an offensive capacity far out of proportion to what they've come to expect. It takes some time for either basestar to cycle up their weapons, although by the middle of the battle we see both Galactica and Pegasus sporting some fairly heavy fires from hits, mainly from the second basestar shown off to one side. The final destruction of the first basestar was very well done, and emphasizes how far special effects have come since the '70s series.
The director's commentary says that Apollo collided with a damaged Raptor which was floating in space. He says they originally had him floating afterwards among the dead corpses of the Raptor crew, which fed his fatalism to die in the end, but it just became too much to work out technically with CGI and get the other things in the episode done.
Exactly how devastating this is to the Cylons will depend. They've lost one basestar - presumably the other jumped away with the raider fleet - and the Resurrection Ship. If there are no more of the latter, they may be forced to cease their pursuit until they can build another one for self-preservation purposes, and if what the "real" Six told Baltar is true, the Colonials may be too far out by the time that happens to receive homing messages from their remaining agents.
One last question: where did Baltar send the "real" Six? Where is his "someplace safe" for her? I guess it depends on whether they could get access to an FTL-capable craft or not. Donna thinks it might be Kobol. My initial guess was either the prison ship or Caprica, but I don't know.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-14 10:07 pm (UTC)As for the "real" Six, I'm not sure Baltar did send her anywhere; he was going to, but then she took his gun and completed her own personal mission, so there's every possibility that she made her exeunt on her own. Mind you, I suspect this is not likely to remain a mystery for long.
Oh, and the word frak is now being used less and less ambiguously, to the point where it's really making a mockery of the FCC rules. In the right circumstances, any word can be an expletive (cf. "Kelly Clarkson" in The 40 Year Old Virgin).
no subject
Date: 2006-01-15 01:14 am (UTC)There's some complaining on USENET that there weren't nearly enough battle scenes, but I agree with Moore that we've seen things like going to red alert, prepping Vipers for launch, etc. many times over, and the setup for the assassination plots was actually more interesting.
He also said he based Apollo's experience on something that happened at the Battle of Midway. A Lt. Gay was the only survivor of the carrier Hornet's(?) torpedo bomber squadron, and he survived by bailing out after getting hit and floating along with his life jacket. So he ended up bobbing along in the water in the middle of the main Japanese fleet, and he had a close-up view of the whole battle as the IJN carriers were hit and sunk.