Angry in the Great White North

From Paul Wells' blog on something really important -- Battlestar Galactica:

Boy, that version of that tune at the end of last night's season finale was pretty lame. Excellent idea, though: if you're hearing the tune, you must be close to...uh, something.

So do we think Kara's the last you-know-what? Seems too easy, somehow.

Anyway, I was getting a bit tired of the whole thing, but I'm gonna stick in there for the beginning of next season, anyway. Unlike Lost or The X-Files, this show actually goes somewhere. I think.

Um, it's going to Earth. McFly? McFly?!

OK, I'm just kidding with Paul.

Seriously, I don't do entertainment on this blog often, but I've watched both the original series and the re-imagined version and enjoyed them both immensely. Unlike a lot of fans, I was eager to see the new version, having no qualms whatsover about the changes to the series. Let's face it -- the original series was crap. I mean, it was fun crap, to be sure, but crappy nonetheless.

I think there was only one moment of transcendence in the old series, and that was the two-parter with Count Iblis, played by Patrick Macnee. Iblis, who is the Devil, visits Baltar in his cell. The traitor Baltar had surrendered himself to the humans, seemingly at the contrivance of Iblis. In any case, Baltar is shocked -- not so much that Iblis somehow passed through the bars to be in the cell with him, but that Iblis' voice was the same as the Imperious Leader of the Cylons.

That's absurd, says Iblis with a grin, since it would mean I would have had to be there a thousand yarns ago when the Leader's voice was programmed. Or words to that effect.

In that moment, the old Battlestar Galactica showed what television could be like. That Patrick Macnee lent his voice to the Imperious Leader in the series pilot was pure serendipity. I've never read anywhere that they planned to bring Macnee back to play Iblis. But when he was cast in the role, the writers had a chance to eliminate a nagging problem in the series at a stroke, but to take that chance required some guts. They took it. That the original Cylons were a mechanical race created by a reptilian species long since dead (at the hands of their own creation) was a hackneyed cliche plagued with unanswered questions, but safe for television in 1979. However, by highlighting Macnee's distinctive voice, an entirely new interpretation was suggested -- that the Cylons (the organic ones) had made a deal with Iblis, perhaps for eternal life, and in classic devilish fashion, the contract was perverted and the Cylon souls became trapped in their machines. A living hell, as it were. Gutsy, especially since they didn't explain it in so many words -- it was just left there for the viewer to figure out. Since when were TV viewers treated with that much respect in those days?

Hey, that's just my interpretation of that little scene, but in all 26 episodes of the original series, it was the one scene I'll always remember. The new series? It seems like every episode has one or two great scenes like it. Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, back from the dead, flying alongside Lee "Apollo" Adama as the humans prepare to confont the Cylons is just the last of many in a great second season.

If you've been watching the new Battlestar Galactica, you know what I mean. If you haven't, it's your loss. Like Twin Peaks, it is redefining episodic television, especially sci-fi television. The ships, the tactics, the characters, their motivations -- it all makes sense and hangs together in a way that grabs you. I enjoy sci-fi, so no surprise that I like it. But that it is one of my wife's favourite programs tells you how effective the series has been at getting viewers outside of the sci-fi demographic.

Now the long six-month wait for season four. Well, more blogging to fill in the time, I suppose.