| By blogs.tuscaloosanews.com,
on 21-12-2006
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Favoured : 119 |
" We really missed the last hurdle with Tigh. One minute he was a bitter, broken pilot. The next minute he was grinding those teeth behind his smile, back on the bridge again. It would be nice to see a bit of why he came back. Or at least give him more time to shine at the tail end of the year."
No, we missed nothing. Colonel Tigh's slow return to active duty was a major storyarc of the past 10 episodes, it's just that they didn't lump it all in one place. Specifically, the episode that dealt with Colonel Tigh's return to duty was "Hero", when dealing with Novechek's problems helps Tigh to deal with his own. He then slowly returns to duty by next episode, "The Passage". Didn't you see "Hero"?
Switching around Caprica-Sharon (Athena) and Galactica-Sharon (Boomer) might be a fun idea in theory (over Athena's loss and finding of her child) but the writers have said that would be a little silly and they probably wouldn't switch the places of both Sharons again. The possibility remains though, that Athena would go to the Cylons ALONG WITH Boomer.
Meanwhile, I have to entirely agree with your assessment of Dualla: she stinks and needs to be either killed off or revealed as a Cylon (they've been dropping hints she's a Cylon, i.e. in a recent cast video where they're all ranking how big they are on the show, i.e. Olmos is #1, AJ (Gaeta) says he's like #15 from the top, and Dualla says "I'm #12!" (12 Cylon models....). Indeed, as you pointed out we know so little about her backstory that she could be a Cylon.
It was a major fan complaint that Dualla has been going downhill since mid-season 2. Basically, she started out as one half of the Dualla/Billy romantic couple, but then the actor that played Billy left the show, so they had to re-pair her with Apollo. It's funny, because originally Dualla and Billy were supposed to be the "Everyman" characters on the series, showing what life was like for people on the bottom rungs of the ship. But now that role has largerly been taken over by Galen and Cally Tyrol. When the serie started they didn't think Chief Tyrol would be as big of a character as he turned out to be, while Cally started out as just a backround extra they bothered to assign a name. But last episode the Chief/Cally scenes in the temple sure were more entertaining than the 2 minutes of screentime that Dualla got.
In fan straw polls, the Apollo/Dualla relationship consistently ranked as one of season 2's biggest mistakes, and now season 3 revealed it to be a sham.
The problem is, Dualla got very little buildup time with Apollo because their scenes kept getting cut: they aren't related to the main plot of a give episode, and as pretty much every single BSG episode runs 5-10 minutes long, it was always the first to be cut. In something like 5-6 episodes in late season 2, Dualla scenes with Apollo got cut. They were included in the DVD set.....but even then they weren't all that good. It just would have made things less confusing, but no more entertaining.
So when season 3 rolled around, we thought "Ok, they've got time to develop this more unlike last year, Dualla will be fleshed out more". Instead, she basically served as a mouthpiece for the writers spouting off exposition about Apollo in the first 2 episodes ("You are sad, Apollo") and those "heavy" scenes between them in episode 3 were truly godawful (in hindsight, "Unfinished Business" ran the flashbacks in such a way to suggest that when Apollo delivered the bad line "that's why I'm proud you're my wife"...he was actually, in character, lying and didn't mean it, which might explain why it seemed really forced).
Ever since they left New Caprica, for the past 6 episodes Dualla has had basically nothing to do. She wasn't in some episodes, and in others she's back to her old job as communications officer.....but now that the Pegasus communications officer is doing the same job in the same room (as seen in "Hero") they've basically got two people in the room doing the job of one. Dualla is.....she's not "becoming Uhura", because Uhura actually kind of did a meaningful job on the Enterprise. Dualla is Sigourney Weaver's character from "Galaxy Quest"; the attractive young woman they put in charge of the nebulously defined task of "talking on the computer" (i.e. not a real job) for the sake of her being on set to make eyes at the male lead. That's all that Dualla *does*: she doesn't act, has no exposition, she exists to make big eyes at Apollo. I mean, can you name a "Colonel Tigh-ism", a type of line Tigh has or would say? Yes. A "Starbuck-ism"? Or even a Racetrack, Kat, or Cally-ism? Yes. But I honestly can't think of a truly quotable Dualla moment, nor what something she's say WOULD be.
I don't blame the writers for this; there's 20 plot threads moving around and they've got to keep so many (over 2 dozen) character arcs moving along, I don't blame them for dropping the ball on one. But they did.
Basically, when you said "wow, they've really got to improve Dualla in season 3.5 after Christmas break or else".....I was saying that at the end of season 2, about season 3.0. And Dualla simply didn't do anything. I hope they just make her a Cylon, retaining the actress while "killing" the character. Source Link: http://blogs.tuscaloosanews.com/default.asp?item=394132 Submitted by Zipper Talk about this artcle on our forum: http://galacticabbs.com/index.php?showtopic=881
Last update : 21-12-2006
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