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Ongoing Battlestar Galactica thread of doom.

Drink for every blatantly reused stock clip: The "combat landings authorized" vipers landing shot, the beauty shot of Galactica with the 2 Futurama/landspeeder-looking ships flying past above it, etc.
 
Apologies if I shit up this thread with mawkish bloggy whining. Mods can delete this. Last run-through of BSG for a time. First time going from the miniseries to the end in order. "Faith" tonight. I forgot this was the one with Nana Visitor/Emily Kowalski. I just thought "Faith" was related to the A plot (as a sidebar, this show almost doesn't have an A plot and a B plot. It's almost co-plots that reinforce each other and set up later stuff. Both are as important.

Anyway, my Dad died of cancer in 2000. I was there for most of it, although in the end he died in the hospital while I wasn't there. My Mom died of cancer in 2012. I was there for a lot of it, but in the end she died in an assisted living place while I wasn't there. Neither was very fun, but my Mom's was the worst. My Mom wasn't a very trusting or likable person and she was terrified of dying so she held on to the bitter end. There really wasn't any kind of closure in her death. Without going into detail, she said and did things that made it harder every step of the way. So getting whacked with the Emily Kowalski episode really hit me tonight. I was able to mourn her character in a way that I wasn't able to mourn my Mom.

And yeah, someone should've chilled the Centurion the fuck out. Either sent him off to another room or told him what was about to happen and explained that he shouldn't freak out. And Helo really should've just headed back to the Fleet. That was Starbuck's plan. And that way they could've said "look, if a damaged basestar just jumps into the middle of the fleet, it's cool," preventing the tragedy that almost happens in the next episode. For that matter, Starbuck could've come up with the raptor plan a lot earlier and Gaeta could've kept his leg. I think there's a lot of stuff we missed on New Caprica that might have wound up with him allying with Zarek anyway, but maybe not if he'd kept his leg. I guess we won't know unless we get a series about the 14 months or so of New Caprica that just get skimmed past. How'd Boomer wind up going from being with Caprica Six to being with Cavil? What was there between Gaeta and Baltar? How'd Tigh wind up in jail and missing an eye? Not enough for a full series, but maybe a miniseries.
 
Drink if there's a cold-blooded gangland shooting involving an 8. Slam it if it's an 8 shooting an 8.

"Good artists copy, *great* artists *steal*." -Picasso.

It's fun to pick up the stuff they rip off from other great works. I mean, there's the flat-out ones where the title of the ep tips you off like "Sometimes a Great Notion," but there's also other great bits of dialog they lift. For example, when they establish the Council of 12 on Cloud 9 and Zarak runs his little scheme and he and Roslin meet later and she says "Don't worry, I shan't kiss you" and he replies "Pity, I shaved especially close on the anticipation of getting smacked by you," that's lifted straight out of "Patton," when Patton beats Montgomery to Messina.
 
And I will say they sometimes try to be too clever for their own good. Lampkin's "The Sixth Sense" cat. I finally had to get on the Internet to figure out what was going on. Apollo says he's been dead for weeks but we just saw him a second ago. The "don't you ever feed that cat?!" line might've worked--but we see the cat run past in the shot. I guess Apollo says "where is he anyway?" and we're supposed to pick up that the cat isn't there, but really, he's not looking right at the cat when it runs past, he might not have seen it. The flip of Boomer on New Caprica, what happened between Felix and Baltar, there are some things that could've been spelled out better to make more sense.
 
I may have to work up a Cliff's Notes version of he series. Pulling my dog around her favorite patrols in a wagon, I can't help but want to watch "Daybreak" and Adama and Roslin's last raptor flight over Earth. That kind of makes me want to rewatch the entire series, but then I remember all the slow bits where they have to stop and develop the story. And I wonder if, with the "Previously, on 'Battlestar Galactica'..." openings, I can get away with skipping a fair number of the plot-advancing stories.
 
Yeah. Then you get the conundrums like I want to watch the Kira subplot from "The Woman King," but really don't want the depressing Dr. Death main plot.
 
re: The Dog thing. Also, Bill reading to Laura during her treatments. When my Mom was sick, my favorite Aunt had a copy of "The Lord of the Rings" that my Mom got after she died and she'd never gotten around to reading it (she got put off by the prologue, which I just skip these days) so I read it to her. Didn't get to finish it so I finished it for my dog. I just reread it last year, but I started reading her chapter 1 today. After that I'm probably going to switch to "The Hobbit." Like I said, I just reread LotR recently. Besides, it's a little long, slow, and heavy for a dog.
 
Rewatching "Daybreak"...

...I get that, if this was our Earth, they needed a device to get rid of all the technology, because otherwise the story doesn't really work.

But really, when Lampkin and...I forget who, are talking about city planning and Apollo is just like "Hey everyone, let's just get rid of all our technology and fly it all into the sun!" They should've stared at him for about 5 seconds before saying "Are you high on crack?" Shit, let's just have Cottle lobotomize us all too. Because otherwise it's like, "Y'know, I bet it would be a lot easier to do this if I had a FUCKING screwdriver instead of a rock."
 
I never really got what the big deal was about that. After years all cramped up on tin cans with robots trying to destroy you, it seemed natural to me that they would want to jettison all that. They already did on New Caprica. And it's not like they completely rejected technology, I'm sure they had some screwdrivers around, and a number of Raptors and probably a lot of other things. They just sent the bulk of the fleet ships into the sun.
 
Acting in Season 1 and 2 ranked. Main cast first

1. William Adama - The king, undisputed
2. President Thingy - Actually very good and has some tricky things to pull off (coming off smack for example)
3. Jamie Bamber - Controversial choice maybe, but he plays his part well and never relies on his poster boy looks, good steely chin
4. Gaius Baltar - I know, so many people love the performance but he is just being asked to ham it up a lot. He's still good to watch
5. Number 6 - She just has to pout a lot but she does deliver lines well.
6. Kara Thrace - nearly bad enough to be on the bad list. Full of stereotype moves and just a bit obvious.

Now we go onto the naughty step
1. Tigh - Undisputed king of the bad acting gang, I'm not counting his wife in main cast but together they are almost unwatchable.
2. Boomer / Sharon - Just vapid and boring. Like an ice cream that looks lovely but tastes of cardboard.


Now onto secondary cast
1. Dualla (Main crew) - I think she is good, has to be a link in many of the storylines and always does well
2. Leobon Conoy - Seen so little of him but he is excellent.
2. Galen Tyrol (Chief) - His handling of the Boomer affair was a bit wooden but overall, solid. He did a shooting thing on a planet which was good.
3. Dr Sherman - Every time he comes on I smile. Fab
4. Felix - Like Dualla has a lot of linking things and always does well. Could be even higher with more screentime.
5. Billy - He's ok I suppose
6. Cally - bit shit really, not on the bad list mainly because there is some serious competition really.
7. Heelo - see above

Now we go onto the naughty step
1. Ellen Tigh - I cAn dO bEtteR dRunk wItH mY eySe ShuT - awful, burn everything
2. Tom Zarek - Please, Please, he's so wooden it's awful. OH BUT HEADVOID HE WAS AN ORIGINAL don't care still shit
 
Tigh's acting is bad in a way that works exactly for what his character is meant to be. Or something I don't know, he's entrtaining. "The music's in the frakking ship!" is still a line I think about.

I was always disappointed Kandyse McClure (Dualla) isn't in more things. Good actress and hello there (she's good looking.)
 
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Michael Hogan is a BSG drinking game drink (well, he's a number of them, but I digress)--drink if someone says something shocking and they cut to a zoom closeup of Col Tigh looking shocked.
 
Tried to go back through the series but only got through "33." "Water" is really heavy and slow, IMO. And it reminds me of, for all the awesome Kobol moments and Starbuck scenes, there's a lot of clunky unpleasant stuff to get through. I guess I could still do one ep a week and still be watching more than we got in first run. That said, watching the 3 hour "Daybreak" finale does pretty nicely wrap everything up for me. We've got mystical Starbuck. We've got Laura's cancer. We've got Adama having his mind changed and making a grand theatrical gesture. We get the awesome payoff of the Opera House dream. And they all live happily ever after. Kind of.
 
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