(no subject)
I look forward all week to SciFi Friday, more than ever these days, and this week's batch of shows did not disappoint. I am enjoying SG-1 so much, SGA makes me insanely happy for so many reasons (though many of them are named Shep), and BSG -- damn, I'm just along for the ride even if I have to hang on to the side-rails for dear life every week.
SG-1
10,000 geeks in the SGC and no one ever watched Dragonball Z? Or anything else with the old "Enemy Absorbs The Energy You Fire At It And Becomes Stronger" trope? I'm trying to tell myself that the Priors/Ori would have succeeded in creating the whole force field somehow, but it was really annoying that the good guys were so thoroughly tricked into it. And it was even more annoying that Vala was like, wow, what a surprise, because it's so true. What the hell were they thinking? I wish they had not had Vala have all those throw-away lines about trusting Nerus, because, yes, they fit well with her character, but they also made it all the more annoyingly obvious that the SGC strategy would not be a good one, so why didn't they see this themselves?
I was troubled the whole episode about what happened to the Jaffa on that planet. Why did no one say anything about them? How many were living there? Did they give up after a couple days of firing uselessly at the force field, and decide to leave? Did they have enough space-faring vehicles?
For that matter, two shipfuls of Jaffa were definitely destroyed, and no one seemed too put out by it. Even Gerak seemed more annoyed at SG1 than anything. So I was all conflicted. On the one hand: utter relief to see the supergate demolished. On the other hand: noo! what happened to all the Jaffa?! And how come nobody cares?? (Especially when they all had a hand in it -- albeit unintentionally, but as is being illustrated so well this season, consequences won't be mitigated by un-intention.)
I'm sure that in the coming conflict with the Ori, there will be large-scale losses, as the other side is one that doesn't bat an eye at making crispy critters of nonbelievers. I would like the characters to react appropriately to those large-scale losses, even if viewers may not necessarily care if Generic Planet #53 is blown up.
Eps like this are when I almost wish they would not bother with the scientific explanations. As soon as they said the Priors/Ori were collapsing the planet to create a black hole, I was like, but that planet doesn't have enough mass!! Very distracting during a pretty horrifying sequence, just as the full implications of the good guys' screw-up were coming into focus.
And then at the end, when they said that a matter stream could have been pulled into the singularity, and Vala might be around somewhere in the Ori's home galaxy, and they were just pleased as pie at that thought... ARGH. I mean, again, I'm going yay!! Vala lives!! at the same time that I'm thinking, Oh, and just how do you propose to reconstitute that stream, assuming first that it can even withstand the trip in, then assuming that you can get anything to come out, and then assuming that what information you can get to come out is useful at all? Sometimes I just want them to hand-wave it all as Ancient Big-Brain Magic and leave it at that.
Atlantis
My one quibble with this week's ep, in line with the above point about the Jaffa planet, is that Rodney took out almost a whole solar system and no one was inordinately troubled by it. Now, Rodney was beautifully upset at the death of one man under his charge, and he and various others were clearly upset that the attempts to perfect the Ancient technology failed twice. All this was well done and well played. But for their troubles during this episode, they blew up almost a whole solar system! Are they sure there was no life anywhere in it? (If so, could someone have said something onscreen?)
Yes, Elizabeth was letting Rodney have it at the end, but honestly, for all her anger, she was actually remarkably nonchalant about the actual consequence of planets blowing up, and it was more about Rodney's ego and how he had endangered himself and John. The audience may not care that some CG planets got destroyed in a big CG explosion, but when the characters living in that universe fail to say OMGWTFWeBlewUpASolarSystem, it makes them seem like weird dysfunctional robots.
I'm not saying I wanted them to have a huge fuss about it, as the character interactions were perfect and were rightly the focus of the episode, but if they don't want the Atlantis crew to seem like weird dysfunctional robots, they should not have any of this nonsense about solar systems casually being blown up just for a little action. Why not just blow the outpost, which still (1) irretrievably takes out the weapon and power source, (2) seriously endangers John and Rodney's lives, and (3) causes a big BOOM, which are all that's needed for excitement, plot, and character development purposes? (If last-minute eavesdropping and heroics by Assistant Director Surly Pectoral God are absolutely needed, the Daedalus can still show up and beam them out of there.) Or just have someone say, gosh, good thing there wasn't a speck of bacteria anywhere AT ALL in that solar system!
But even then, what kind of monster would Rodney be, especially as a scientist, not to be visibly freaked out for the next two years that he caused such large-scale destruction? I mean, even if you could be sure that nothing else was going on nor would ever go on in our little solar system, even under the ice of Europa, wouldn't you be the least bit bothered if everything from Mars on out to Pluto were wiped out? by you? because you made a mistake? I think Rodney, as a member of the group of People In Their Right Minds, certainly would be. So I will pretend that only the outpost blew up in this episode, and everything else happened as is.
BSG
That whole sequence from when Starbuck steps foot onto the Astral Queen up to where Apollo's got his gun shoved into Boomer's face and Helo's got his gun shoved into the back of Apollo's head was a thing of freaking beauty. Holy CRAP what a teaser. When Helo identified himself as Lieutenant Agathon, that was so very hot. I've been so used to hearing him called Helo by other people, and only reading "Lt. Karl C. Agathon," it was almost a thrill of recognition hearing him call himself Lt. Agathon. It made a cool name come alive and made him seem more "real," as to an extent, especially earlier on, everything that happened on Caprica was like a fever dream, and outside the reality of the Galactica and its fleet.
I also didn't expect how exciting it would be to see Helo (also a very cool name) be re-integrated, even partially, into the Galactica family, after so long being on his own and/or with a colleague turned lover traumatically revealed to be a fancy kitchen appliance. There was a little of that when Starbuck first landed on Caprica and he was reunited with someone that, by all rights, he should never have seen again, but it was really pretty amazing for him to walk onto the Astral Queen right into that tight shot with Boomer, Starbuck, and Apollo, and you suddenly "realize" that oh yeah, of course he knows Apollo, and Apollo knows him, and all of these people have a history with one another. (In that scene, even the palettes of their clothes match up, and Helo no longer sticks out the way he did on Caprica.)
I think, earlier on, some of the Caprica scenes were sort of WTF, why are they showing this, and I always wanted them to cut back to Galactica already. Then I started caring that Helo was obviously falling for Sharon, and their storyline also became more important both in itself and in the larger framework of the show. And now I am very invested in Helo, and in bringing him into the fray with everyone else. I wonder if some of my initial resistance is that he was so incredibly SOL at the beginning, and subconsciously I couldn't begin to imagine that he would ever get off Caprica alive. I mean, talk about post-apocalyptic nightmare: you believe yourself to be alone on a planet poisoned with radiation, and by the way, there's fancy lethal kitchen appliances lying around, waiting to pick you off, and the Galactica fleet is moving farther and farther away.
But now, against all odds, he's back with a third of the fleet, and I think it's just a matter of time before he is reunited with other old friends on the Galactica. And even though the situation is obviously screwed up, what with Sharon being a Cylon carrying their child and all, the reunion against all odds is still a source of hope. I can't wait to see Helo meet up with Adama.
SG-1
10,000 geeks in the SGC and no one ever watched Dragonball Z? Or anything else with the old "Enemy Absorbs The Energy You Fire At It And Becomes Stronger" trope? I'm trying to tell myself that the Priors/Ori would have succeeded in creating the whole force field somehow, but it was really annoying that the good guys were so thoroughly tricked into it. And it was even more annoying that Vala was like, wow, what a surprise, because it's so true. What the hell were they thinking? I wish they had not had Vala have all those throw-away lines about trusting Nerus, because, yes, they fit well with her character, but they also made it all the more annoyingly obvious that the SGC strategy would not be a good one, so why didn't they see this themselves?
I was troubled the whole episode about what happened to the Jaffa on that planet. Why did no one say anything about them? How many were living there? Did they give up after a couple days of firing uselessly at the force field, and decide to leave? Did they have enough space-faring vehicles?
For that matter, two shipfuls of Jaffa were definitely destroyed, and no one seemed too put out by it. Even Gerak seemed more annoyed at SG1 than anything. So I was all conflicted. On the one hand: utter relief to see the supergate demolished. On the other hand: noo! what happened to all the Jaffa?! And how come nobody cares?? (Especially when they all had a hand in it -- albeit unintentionally, but as is being illustrated so well this season, consequences won't be mitigated by un-intention.)
I'm sure that in the coming conflict with the Ori, there will be large-scale losses, as the other side is one that doesn't bat an eye at making crispy critters of nonbelievers. I would like the characters to react appropriately to those large-scale losses, even if viewers may not necessarily care if Generic Planet #53 is blown up.
Eps like this are when I almost wish they would not bother with the scientific explanations. As soon as they said the Priors/Ori were collapsing the planet to create a black hole, I was like, but that planet doesn't have enough mass!! Very distracting during a pretty horrifying sequence, just as the full implications of the good guys' screw-up were coming into focus.
And then at the end, when they said that a matter stream could have been pulled into the singularity, and Vala might be around somewhere in the Ori's home galaxy, and they were just pleased as pie at that thought... ARGH. I mean, again, I'm going yay!! Vala lives!! at the same time that I'm thinking, Oh, and just how do you propose to reconstitute that stream, assuming first that it can even withstand the trip in, then assuming that you can get anything to come out, and then assuming that what information you can get to come out is useful at all? Sometimes I just want them to hand-wave it all as Ancient Big-Brain Magic and leave it at that.
Atlantis
My one quibble with this week's ep, in line with the above point about the Jaffa planet, is that Rodney took out almost a whole solar system and no one was inordinately troubled by it. Now, Rodney was beautifully upset at the death of one man under his charge, and he and various others were clearly upset that the attempts to perfect the Ancient technology failed twice. All this was well done and well played. But for their troubles during this episode, they blew up almost a whole solar system! Are they sure there was no life anywhere in it? (If so, could someone have said something onscreen?)
Yes, Elizabeth was letting Rodney have it at the end, but honestly, for all her anger, she was actually remarkably nonchalant about the actual consequence of planets blowing up, and it was more about Rodney's ego and how he had endangered himself and John. The audience may not care that some CG planets got destroyed in a big CG explosion, but when the characters living in that universe fail to say OMGWTFWeBlewUpASolarSystem, it makes them seem like weird dysfunctional robots.
I'm not saying I wanted them to have a huge fuss about it, as the character interactions were perfect and were rightly the focus of the episode, but if they don't want the Atlantis crew to seem like weird dysfunctional robots, they should not have any of this nonsense about solar systems casually being blown up just for a little action. Why not just blow the outpost, which still (1) irretrievably takes out the weapon and power source, (2) seriously endangers John and Rodney's lives, and (3) causes a big BOOM, which are all that's needed for excitement, plot, and character development purposes? (If last-minute eavesdropping and heroics by Assistant Director Surly Pectoral God are absolutely needed, the Daedalus can still show up and beam them out of there.) Or just have someone say, gosh, good thing there wasn't a speck of bacteria anywhere AT ALL in that solar system!
But even then, what kind of monster would Rodney be, especially as a scientist, not to be visibly freaked out for the next two years that he caused such large-scale destruction? I mean, even if you could be sure that nothing else was going on nor would ever go on in our little solar system, even under the ice of Europa, wouldn't you be the least bit bothered if everything from Mars on out to Pluto were wiped out? by you? because you made a mistake? I think Rodney, as a member of the group of People In Their Right Minds, certainly would be. So I will pretend that only the outpost blew up in this episode, and everything else happened as is.
BSG
That whole sequence from when Starbuck steps foot onto the Astral Queen up to where Apollo's got his gun shoved into Boomer's face and Helo's got his gun shoved into the back of Apollo's head was a thing of freaking beauty. Holy CRAP what a teaser. When Helo identified himself as Lieutenant Agathon, that was so very hot. I've been so used to hearing him called Helo by other people, and only reading "Lt. Karl C. Agathon," it was almost a thrill of recognition hearing him call himself Lt. Agathon. It made a cool name come alive and made him seem more "real," as to an extent, especially earlier on, everything that happened on Caprica was like a fever dream, and outside the reality of the Galactica and its fleet.
I also didn't expect how exciting it would be to see Helo (also a very cool name) be re-integrated, even partially, into the Galactica family, after so long being on his own and/or with a colleague turned lover traumatically revealed to be a fancy kitchen appliance. There was a little of that when Starbuck first landed on Caprica and he was reunited with someone that, by all rights, he should never have seen again, but it was really pretty amazing for him to walk onto the Astral Queen right into that tight shot with Boomer, Starbuck, and Apollo, and you suddenly "realize" that oh yeah, of course he knows Apollo, and Apollo knows him, and all of these people have a history with one another. (In that scene, even the palettes of their clothes match up, and Helo no longer sticks out the way he did on Caprica.)
I think, earlier on, some of the Caprica scenes were sort of WTF, why are they showing this, and I always wanted them to cut back to Galactica already. Then I started caring that Helo was obviously falling for Sharon, and their storyline also became more important both in itself and in the larger framework of the show. And now I am very invested in Helo, and in bringing him into the fray with everyone else. I wonder if some of my initial resistance is that he was so incredibly SOL at the beginning, and subconsciously I couldn't begin to imagine that he would ever get off Caprica alive. I mean, talk about post-apocalyptic nightmare: you believe yourself to be alone on a planet poisoned with radiation, and by the way, there's fancy lethal kitchen appliances lying around, waiting to pick you off, and the Galactica fleet is moving farther and farther away.
But now, against all odds, he's back with a third of the fleet, and I think it's just a matter of time before he is reunited with other old friends on the Galactica. And even though the situation is obviously screwed up, what with Sharon being a Cylon carrying their child and all, the reunion against all odds is still a source of hope. I can't wait to see Helo meet up with Adama.