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Old 03-06-2009, 01:29 AM
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Zeke Zeke is offline
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So. Problems with "No Exit"...
  • First we have the huge coincidence. Anders gets shot, magically restoring his memories (good aim!), while at the same time, Ellen is escaping from Cavil. I'm not sure why they even bothered with the Anders storyline when Ellen was just going to bring the same information to the fleet next week. It makes for a more varied if confusing story, but it's too contrived to be worth it... and it's a "Rapture" ripoff too. I like Anders, but he's no Ben Sisko.
  • No, wait. That's not even the biggest coincidence. The biggest one is that Earth and the Colonies had exactly the same kind of man-machine war, with the Colonies' war breaking out right before the Final Five's thousand-year journey ended. Why did Earth's Cylons even have to build their own robots? Did Kobol just skip that in-between step, go straight from no robots at all to near-perfect androids?
  • And what happened to the Twelve Tribes, anyway? Kobol had this amazing technology; how was it lost? And why was the course of re-evolution so similar that the Final Five could understand Colonial Cylon tech?
  • Probably the most obvious contrivance: how did the Final Four survive the apocalypse? Ellen's easy*, she was extracted by Cavil in the confusion and then shipped back later to mess with Tigh, but why the others? We know now that they would have downloaded on Cavil's baseship if they'd been killed; he wasn't trying to spare them. Is it really just random chance that they all made it?
  • We know now for sure that Tigh and probably Ellen were installed in the Colonies way earlier than Tyrol, Anders, and Tory. How come?
  • So the Final Five invented or reinvented resurrection tech (I don't like that term much, but the show's using it). That surely means they were scientists or engineers, with maybe a psychologist or two to handle consciousness issues. So why is Tyrol apparently the only one who had any interest in his old career? Wherever you stand on nature vs. nurture, nature plays some role.
  • Okay, the Five survived nukeage by downloading. Their new bodies must have been somewhere safe. Why didn't they just go wherever that was instead of dying? And did they even try to save anyone else?
  • Obviously the robots won the war for Earth. Where'd they go?
  • As I said, I like Anders fine. But I'm ticked at him now because he's the latest to imply that "we", so to speak, brought the Cylon war on ourselves. The show is determined to ram this completely wrong moral down our throats. The Five were coming to warn us to treat our robots better? How 'bout warning us to dismantle the damn things? And hmm, what real event was that Cylon apocalypse supposed to remind us of again? (Actually, the apocalypse should be harder to blame on us now that we know it was all a tantrum by Cavil.)
  • Oh yeah, Cavil. That's a big problem. In one episode, BSG has gone from a somewhat complicated** human/machine war to a single supervillain wrecking everyone's day. The war is now solely Cavil's doing -- he reprogrammed the other models to share his resentment. (Kind of a half-assed job he did, too. What was to stop him from eliminating that pesky monotheism he didn't believe in?) This is deeply unsatisfying. I've loved Dean Stockwell's acting since Quantum Leap, but Cavil is just not a compelling enough character to be the one true Big Bad. The war is much more interesting without an Imperious Leader to blame it all on.
  • You're probably expecting Ellen's total personality change to be on this list. Actually, I liked that. It's one more reminder that Tigh and Ellen bring out the worst in each other. We've seen Tigh's best, but never Ellen's until now. I have more of an issue with her having been on Cavil's ship all this time and Boomer having been aware of her. I don't remember perfectly, but there must be at least a couple of Boomer scenes that'll be iffy now.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Anyone else?

* Ba-dum chh.
** I say "somewhat" because I don't really buy what the show sells here. When you genocide our civilization, you are the bad guys, period. It's a crime on a scale that overwhelms any grievances you could possibly have had against us. And we're not even talking descendants here -- you're the same individual Cylons who planned and executed the apocalypse. If some of you feel bad now, that's great. Go somewhere new; make something of yourselves. And never, ever darken our doorstep again, because only God can forgive what you've done.
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[03:17] FiveMinZeke: Galactica clearly needs the advanced technology of scissors, which get around the whole "yanking on your follicles" problem.
[03:17] IJD: cylons can hack any blades working in conjunction
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