Battlestar Galactica has a real literary feel these days. The Cylons are morphing into characters from a 1970s SF sexploitation novel, while Galactica's crew seems more like the one in Iain M. Banks' brilliant novel, Consider Phlebas. The former is slightly good, the latter... not good at all. Everybody likes a little Cylon sex, and we certainly get that in the latest episode, “Hero.” After Baltar's torturegasm last week, he scored big. The D'Anna Cylon wakes up naked in a sumptuous, silky-velvety Cylon bed with Baltar and Number Six. Way to go, everybody! Back on Galactica, we're not getting the sexylove vibe. It's everybody versus everybody when one of Adama's former pilots, Bulldog, arrives on the ship, full of bad feelings about being in a Cylon prison for three years.

Turns out that Bulldog got captured by the Cylon three years ago, during a black ops mission under Adama's command. The Admiralty ordered Adama to send a pilot over the Armistice line to see whether the Cylon were still out there. Adama sent Bulldog into Cylon space, where he was promptly seen by some Cylon -- and then shot down by Adama, who was trying to protect the Armistice. In a lameass retcon, Adama tells Apollo that it's really his fault that the Cylon attacked the twelve colonies in the first place. His black ops mission over the line started the war. This is just plain dumb for two reasons. First of all, it's obvious that the war was caused by factors other than just Adama's actions. For the Cylon to launch their strikes when they did, they had to have been beefing up their combat forces for years in advance. Second, a retcon in which Adama has even more guilt than ever doesn't deepen his character. It just makes him seem absurd and dreary.

Meanwhile, it turns out that Bulldog didn't actually escape the Cylons. They let him go, so that he would try to kill Adama for abandoning him when his mission went bad three years ago. After Bulldog issues some severe pipe-slapping, though, Tigh busts into the fight and talks Bulldog down. Adama is so grateful he makes the still-alcoholic Tigh his XO again. At least Tigh has started playing with ladies' underwear in his cabin while drunk. That adds something to his character, don't you think? Maybe we can graft something stupid onto his past, too. Like maybe he was on a secret mission to make Adama go on a secret mission to send Bulldog on a secret mission to start the Cylon war.

Nobody should be allowed to write a plot like this unless he is Iain M. Banks. And David Eick is no Iain M. Banks.

Luckily, the D'Anna Cylon is having a total mental meltdown, which saves this episode from total awfulness. First, she has strange dreams about running around in a hideous blazer on the Galactica, where she's shot. Then she does the naughty robot dance with Number Six and Baltar. Finally, she randomly decides to program a Centurion to shoot her in the head. Huh? When she wakes up in the bucket of resurrection snot, D'Anna tells her Cylon buddies that there's something amazing between life and death. That something, by the way, looks to the audience like a prop room full of shiny chrome 1970s furniture. Which makes perfect sense, because the Cylon are acting like refugees from an episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

Tune in next week, when D'Anna does shrooms and becomes convinced that Mother Earth wants her to become vegan and go to an all-night rave on the Northern California coast.

Source Link: http://blog.meevee.com/my_weblog/2006/11/totally_frakked_4.html

Submitted by Zipper

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Last update : 21-11-2006

Keywords : News, Battlestar Galactica News, Totally Frakked: Battlestar Galactica, Cylon Threesome Good; Adama Retcon Bad

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