By Lisa Fary
There wasn’t enough booze in the house for this ep.
There may not have been enough booze in all of Philly for “Islanded in a Stream of Stars”, which is saying something because Beer Week started today. There’s a lot more beer than usual flowing around town right now.
So, what happened? The council yelled. Adama and Roslin had a smokey heart to heart. Ellen berated Tigh. Baltar revealed Starbuck to the crew as the walking dead. Boomer bonded with Hera.
And, btw, could the Cylon colony’s launch tubes have looked a little more like vaginas?
Top notch acting – as usual – but this ep was about as entertaining as sitting around a hospice.
My mind kept wandering to better things, like that time I was in Africa and my host family made me take a bath in their rice paddy, which I had recently learned was likely infected with schistosomiasis.
I really don’t get the staunch defenders of BSG. Do you not see how Show has treated you? Do we need to stage an intervention and get you out of this relationship?
Because, that’s what it is. A relationship. At it’s core, BSG is just a sci-fi show asking you to love it.
And love it, I did. Like any relationship, it was great at the beginning. I’d never felt this way before (maybe a little, once, for a plucky FBI agent with an affinity for cherry pie and Douglas Firs). We had our ups and downs, and then it was just downs.
Now, I’m just sticking around because the bastard is about to die and I expect a pay off.
At the very least, I did get some wish fulfillment in this ep. Anders was naked in a tub of goo.
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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.
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Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
UGH. I tried. I really, really tried to point out to some people on message boards about how this show has let itself go*, and all I got was "You're just never satisfied." Actually? I was totally satisfied for like a season and a half, and then for parts of season three and the first part of season four. But they stopped trying. They stopped pretending that they aren't just waiting out the clock. There are tons of reveals and stuff we could get into that they're not getting into in favor of cramming everything in at the last minute.
Pacing. That's the problem here. The first season of this show sucked me in immediately because it was something new, something more, every week, every hour, every minute. They built well, but they have no idea how to pack up and fold the story. The guys from LOST could have really helped them out, methinks. That's how you work mystery and unravel it at the same time.
*-I tried mentioning how the women on the show have been victimized, marginalized, invalidated, and needlessly killed off with alarming and increasing frequency. This, more than any other objection, got me shouted down as being overly sensitive and never satisfied. I don't see why I should have to accept imitation, knock-off crap from a show that gave me season one Starbuck and President Secretary of Education Laura Roslin.
Same here, along with the argument that the men aren't treated any differently, and the women really aren't that bad off. As if putting a gun in her hand is enough to make her strong, even when said gun is pointed at her own head.
The problem for me is that I realized that women were never exalted for classically 'feminine' attributes. The women that amazed were those who appropriated 'masculine' characteristics. Fail to be manly enough (fail to have THE BALLS in other words) and the show rips you apart.
An era is about to end! I liked that the PRES and the Admiral lit up.
When you think about it, all three galactica shows have been utter messes – the original one never had a focus, the 1980 never had a clue, and the new one really did seem to be all over the place and on the verge of the narative falling apart. In the case of the first show and this one, I think that 'nearly fraying to bits' quality helped them – there's a desparate energy in a production who's cast and crew are trying to keep it on the rails, and that translates in to good TV that you can't get in a more professional production. When it goes bad – the 1980 show – well, it goes really really bad of course.
I was slow to warm up to this show, and I've been slow to cool on it, but I'm coming around to your way of thinking. There's a whole lot of waiting out the clock here, and not much in the way of story or development. And the big show-down is just going to be the Galactica kamikaziing into the big new Cylon Death Star in the final episode.
Yawn.
Oh, and one of the problems I had with the show from the outset was that Starbuck struck me as yet another case of a dude writing a female character to be "Empowered," which means basically that she acts exactly like a dude without a penis. Having been in the service, I've served alongside a lot of females, and that's just not how they behave. This always annoyed me, particularly since so many women seemed to buy in to the whole "She drinks and cusses and screws just like a man, therefore they take her seriously" thing.
Sadly, the strongest impressions that I took away from this episode were "relationships lead to misery and death", and "Auntie Boomer sucks". After the almost-revelation at the end of last week, I was really hoping for some strong plot-forwarding. I was mostly disappointed. The only bright spot was well-groomed Lee in his snazzy pinstriped suit.
On the upside, because of Show, I met James Callis. Totally worth it.
Now if Baltar would get more than a few minutes of screentime in the last eps ….
Also, while I couldn't understand Adama being so harsh, Helo's begging to be allowed save his daughter was very touching. As was Baltar's broken-hearted look with how Caprica treated him.
It's scary right now. There seems like there is just still so much that needs to be accomplished before this thing can end. Most importantly, IS STARBUCK A WITCH OR NOT??? Maybe she's a zombie. I don't know. It's the only really interesting question left. They found Earth, they revealed the last cylon. Explain wtf Starbuck's deal is and lets move on with our lives.
With the exception of a few brief moments, the show hasn't even been very good since Pegasus. What was that, a decade ago now? I've just invested way too much time to stop watching. With so little left, I have to see it through to the end. It just does leave me with a lot of goodwill towards their little Caprica spin-off.
Interesting. I put another email up here when I posted the one above about how I never thought Starbuck was written all that well, and the reasoning behind that being the "Major Kira" syndrome of some dudes writing what they think an assirtive woman acts like, rather than what women think one acts like (I'm sure I didn't use those words, it's been a week, I forget). Anyway, it's been deleted. How come?
I remember seeing your post here myself, but am at a loss as to what happened to it. I'm providing a copy/paste from my email notification below.
El Mysterios Said: "Oh, and one of the problems I had with the show from the outset was that Starbuck struck me as yet another case of a dude writing a female character to be "Empowered," which means basically that she acts exactly like a dude without a penis. Having been in the service, I've served alongside a lot of females, and that's just not how they behave. This always annoyed me, particularly since so many women seemed to buy in to the whole "She drinks and cusses and screws just like a man, therefore they take her seriously" thing. "
Ah, thank you!
Starbuck is the first hybrid. Hybrids can project – which we've seen Starbuck do twice now – and they seem generally superior in terms of reflexes and strength, yet they can reproduce biologically, which gives them advantages over both humans and cylons. It follows that they can probably resurrect, provided some kind of gear is available.
The only real question remaining in the show is who is it that's been manipulating them these last 5 years? Can't be God, so who is it? Clearly, whomever it is has a working resurrection node and access to factory showroom vipers.
I've been keeping my fingers crossed for the Ship of Lights for about a year (they're starting to cramp).
This show's cut-rate low-budget "edgy" version of the Ship of Lights is that damn Rebel Cylon Base Ship. The angels or ship of lights aliens or seraphs or whatever the hell they're called are the Final Five. I still feel the Final Five/Aliens were kinda' clever, but I couldn't help being disappointed by their take on the Ship Of Lights.
And, hey, why no planet Terra? I'd much rather see a Terra spinoff than this "Craprica" thing they're tossing around.