my big fat Battlestar Galactica post

First off: “BSG: Razor.” Loved it. More on that in a bit. First I want to declare my true feelings for BSG.

I love this show. Love love love with big floaty hearts.

However. I lost faith in the second half of the third season. The show lost its way and I’m not sure it can find it again.

Backing up: I love this show for all the many brilliant things it does. After years (decades) of squeaky clean Star Trek, it gives us military SF that actually looks like the military, with all the jargon and behaviors that go along with it. It’s topical without being obvious, insightful without being heavy handed, because it’s all done through the characters. Great, flawed, human characters. And it’s extrapolative in the very best tradition of science fiction. It asks “What if?” and answers that question in a thoughtful, realistic way. Then it keeps going: Then what? What next? And what would that do?

BSG did that without blinking for two and a half seasons. What if human civilization was destroyed and only a small fleet fighting for survival remained? Well, if the civilian government remained intact there’d have to be some kind of power sharing with the military. What if the military leader purposefully uses a religious legend to motivate people? Then what happens if the civilian leader actually starts believing it? Well, that would split up the fleet. What would happen then? And so on.

Then the show started swinging wide and hitting fouls. Instead of drawing stories from the existing situation and extrapolating further, plots dropped out of left field involving mega soap operas that depended on the characters behaving like immature dimwits. And we know these characters aren’t either. (I’m wondering if the New Caprica story arc just made everyone tired.)

I don’t even want to talk about the “All Along the Watchtower” nonsense. Really.

Back to “Razor.” This was a big step toward getting back to the heart of the show, which is about good people reacting to horrific situations. The brilliant thing about the Pegasus story is it’s the alternate Galactica story. It’s what could have happened if just a few things had been different. In effect, there but for the grace of Laura Rosslin go they.

And Kendra was amazing. Brilliant. Unlike any character I think I’ve ever seen on TV. Yes, she’s a pretty much a war criminal. The thing is, she knows it, and is in so much pain, and has no choice but to keep going the way she’s always gone. Cain is very big on her razor metaphor, and she did a great job making Kendra sharp and relentless. But what Cain failed to tell her is how difficult it is to stop being that razor when the fighting is done. It’s a huge credit to the writing that it didn’t occur to me until about twenty minutes before the end of the show that Kendra wasn’t going to make it, because this is a flashback and she isn’t in the rest of the series. Talk about your unsentimental endings. But again, this character couldn’t have it any other way.

That line about Starbuck near the end? Took a big step toward redeeming the muddle at the end of last season. Now I CAN’T WAIT for the series to get started.

And I gotta say, the cameo of the old school Cylons in the raider ROCKED.