Archive for the ‘Battlestar Galactica’ Category

“Top Ten Reasons to Watch the New Season of ‘Battlestar Galactica’” from “The Late Show with David Letterman.”

Description
Now you can relive every action-packed moment of the epic story that Entertainment Weekly proclaims “Riveting”! Rejoin the fight to save the human race as a small but determined fleet quests for the fabled planet Earth while being hunted by their nemesis, the robot cylons. Presented uninterrupted, experience the phenomenon from beginning to end!… More >>

Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series

• Battlestar Galactica is a semi-cooperative board game for 3-6 players ages 10 and up, playable in 2-3 hours
• Battlestar Galactica Includes: 1 Rulebook, 10 Character Sheets, 10 Character Tokens, 4 Piloting Tokens, 2 Nuke Tokens, 12 Civilian Ship Tokens, 2 Basestars, 4 Centurian Markers, 4 Basestar Damage Tokens, 8 Galactica Damage Tokens
• Also Includes: 1 Fleet Marker, 1 Current Player Token, 70 Crisis Cards, 16 Loyalty Cards, 17 Quorum Cards, 5 Super Crisis Cards, 1 President Title Card, 1 Admiral Title Card, 105 Skill Cards, 22 Destination Cards, 1 Kobol Objective Card, 32 Plastic Ships
• Also Includes: 1 Eight-Sided Die, and 10 Plastic Character Stands

Product Description
After the Cylon attack on the Colonies, the battered remnants of the human race are on the run, constantly searching for the next signpost on the road to Earth. They face the threat of Cylon attack from without, and treachery and crisis from within. Humanity must work together if they are to have any hope of survival. But how can they, when any of them may, in fact, be a Cylon agent? Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game is an exciting game of mistrust, intrigue, and… More >>

Battlestar Galactica

Description
Battlestar Galactica: The Plan… The Cylons began as humanity’s robot servants. They rebelled and evolved and now they look like us. Their plan is simple: destroy the race that enslaved them. But when their devastating attack leaves human survivors, the Cylons have to improvise. Battlestar Galactica: The Plan tells the story of two powerful Cylon leaders, working separately, and their determination to finish the task…. More >>

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

Description
All will be revealed as the thrilling final episodes of Battlestar Galactica 4.5 land on DVD. From their initial action-packed battles against the Cylons to their desperate attempts to find the fabled 13th colony, Earth, a determined band of human survivors has captivated audiences everywhere with their desperate quest to find a new home for their dwindling numbers. Join them now as the fleet journeys into the furthest reaches of unexplored space and faces a crucial decisio… More >>

Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.5

In a surprising twist, Battlestar Galactica gave us an episode that was juuuust about one hundred percent flashback free! And no DeeLee or Anders! With just a smattering of Starbuck to remind us that she doesn’t die for a couple weeks the episode revolves around Chief Tyrol uniting the workers of the fleet and rallying them into a strike. You’d think with such a promising premise there would be no way the Captain had wiggle room to complain but like xmas ham on easter morning, this episode stunk and scared all the children away.

I don’t have a problem with character-centric storylines, per se. It’s when these storylines are the entirety of an episode without any forward movement of the actual plot that I speak up. Take the Helo and Sharon storyline from season one for example. The two of them are slowly, madly falling in love with one another despite the inherent differences of ideology and physiology, to only name two. It was done over several episodes and mixed with ass kicking amounts of shooting, running, screaming and without sole attention being paid to it. The writers just let it happen and didn’t sit and devote an entire episode to it chock full of flashbacks and dramatic pauses. Instead we got to sit around and watch the Galactica getting beat the fuck up, Starbuck struggle with her inner demons and Baltar slowly go insane. And we watched Helo and Sharon fall in love and get all preggers.

I have a sinking feeling that this season would treat that storyline differently. The feel of the show has changed and not for the better. Instead of weaving storylines together into an enticing mesh the writers are separating the plot into ala carte entrees with other storylines serving as appetizers, perhaps to be made into entrees of their own but not at this meal. Good television just doesn’t work this way. I’m not intrigued when they haven’t dealt with Colonel Tigh in almost a month. His ab sense has been noticeable and isn’t causing me to craft alibis for him in my mind, wondering what wacky hijinks he’s been up to. Instead I picture him sitting in his quarters, drinking and wondering when he’ll be called to appear on camera next and why he killed his wife on New Caprica when all it would get him was co-billing in what was essentially an Adama-centric episode near the start of the season. The same can be said for Starbuck being Starbuck. We’ve seen Starbuck-Anders all over the place but what about the brash, rebellious pilot of last season? Did faux motherhood take the edge off? I’d be interested to know, the writers are going to address that next week it appears but why has it taken this long and what did we gain from leaving her character development on hold?

And let’s address Baltar, he’s been an afterthought since the end of last season. He serves to pull plot out of others, he’s a crutch and nothing more. Maybe in the coming weeks as the season grinds to a close we’ll get somewhere with him but in the meanwhile I’ve almost forgotten this is the same Baltar that forged Sharon’s Cylon test results and smuggled a nuclear warhead onto Cloud Nine. Or even the Baltar and fiddled while New Caprica burned. He’s just been Baltar that Walks With Cylons or Baltar, Threesome Toy with optional talking head. He could have stayed with the Cylons and at least had more robot nookie but the show deemed that to be Not Boring Enough so we get Baltar, Inmate and pseudo political entity (with optional talking head).

Caprica Six? Almost did something with her last week, huh. Oh well, could’ve followed up on that but we’ll just not bother. Hey! More Tyrol time for everyone! He’s so blue collar, so hard working. Gosh it was awesome to see him organize a strike for the mining workers only to cave like Mammoth when Admiral Adama threatens to put Cally against a bulkhead and shoot her for treason. A real activist would’ve dared him to do it and then ripped out his own eyes, tossed ‘em at Adama and set himself on fire. But Tyrol just makes some silly faces and calls the strike off. Way to go, Chief. Show ‘em what you’re made of – gelatin.

So we’re down to the last few episodes. I’ll go ahead and spoil things for you because this season has treated us fans with disdain and annoyance, more of a bother than anything. Starbuck supposedly dies but really makes a break for Earth after realizing she’s known the location all along (see the whole Eye of Jupiter painted on her wall back on Caprica for evidence). Dee turns out to be a Cylon, big surprise there. Not sure of what else but I’m sure it will lead to some sort of climactic cliffhanger of a season finale with webisodes to tide us over until the inevitably disappointing season four begins. Battlestar Galactica? More like Boringstar Galactica.

The Captain upgraded to a 53″ HDTV this weekend so from now on you’ll get high definition scathing criticism of shows. No more general complaints and small nitpicks, no no no. Big complains, huge nitpicks! So with that out of the way, we gots space bullshit to cover!

Last week on Battlestar Galactica we wasted a shitload of time with Helo and his craptacular quest to save the retarded Sagimatronianers. Well fuck them, no one cares about that anymore. We’ve got other fish to fry. This week we concentrate on Adama being a pussy and Tyrol with wife Cally in tow getting their asses stuck in a command pod that’s slowly venting atmosphere out into space. Intermittently we also discover that they’re still planning Baltar’s trial, there hasn’t been a Cylon sighting in 49 days and this show is really starting to test my last fucking nerve.

It’s Battlestar Galactica, right? I’m not hallucinating, am I? This is the show on SciFi that is about the humans running from the evil Cylons and trying to find their new home, Earth. I’m fairly certain up until they discovered the planet known as New Caprica that they were trying damn hard to accomplish exactly that. But since? Inane fucking bullshit. Love stories, food stories, human interest nonsense and character back stories that could be explained in one or two sweeping expositions instead of entire episodes.

Now we know that Adama and his wife didn’t get along so hot. Well whooptie-fucking-licious that sure means a whole lot to me seeing as his ex-wife was vaporized back when this show still tried. Ooh and it caused friction between Lee and his father? Well gee, that couldn’t have been explained in a few lines of dialogue, nah. Seeing as the colonists are short on medical supplies, food and other necessities I support pointless flashbacks are all they have left to spare. It’s imagining the audience actually tunes into this garbage and finds it captivating that scares the ever-loving shit out of me. I know for a fact there are fanboys and fangirls Tivoing this crap and eating it with a fraking spoon, begging for seconds. But not the Captain. I’m just watching in the vague hope something interesting happens.

So what else happened this week? Well Tyrol and Cally get saved by getting jettisoned out into space to a waiting Raptor piloted by Athena. Tyrol is alright by the end, Cally is still fucked up. Adama’s anniversary comes and goes with everyone walking on eggshells around him. He himself walks on eggshells around Roslin concerning the telegraphed old-person-sex that we all know is coming. In other words – nothing. Where are the Cylons? Fuck if we know. Where’s Earth? Not in fucking sight. How about Hera? I’m sure she’s around, who gives a shit?

I miss fat Lee. I miss Xena killing herself over and over again. I miss Quantum Leap Al being all creepy having sex with Tigh’s wife. I wish the fucking smoke monster from Lost would come and kill everyone and let this show die before they even get a chance to continue this gigantic shark jump they call season three. I’m starting to hope I’m one of the last Cylon models just so I stand a chance at resurrecting once this show inevitably kills me with bullshit.

Helo paces around his room at night, haunted by two really decent seasons that stand only to remind him that this latest season has devolved a once proud franchise into Melrose Place In Space. So this week on As That One Ship That Looks Like A Vague Allusion For Sex Turns we get see the fleet exposed first hand to racism as the Sagittarons are treated like second hand citizens. Get it? They’re Muslims! Only in space. Space Muslims.

On The Love Boat Colonial One we get reaquiainted with Tom Zarek, formally of Battlestar Galactica (a show on SciFi that didn’t suck eggs). Apparently he’s there as an advovate for Baltar in his trial. He says that a trial will tear the fleet apart and is interested into in the safety of everyone and that perhaps martial law should be imposed. Meanwhile sickness is ravaging the newly arrived Sagittarons who blame Doctor Robert for killing their people. This sets Helo off on another one of his annoying Helopian quests to solve the mystery and save the day.

If there’s one thing that’s killed this show for me it’s been that love quadrangle between Starbuck, Lee, Dee and Anders. If there’s something else that does it for me it’s people growing moralistic backbones for no discernable reason or in direct contridiction with their prior actions. Helo is one of those. He’s gone from love-lorn soldier to posessed pussy-whipee. He has sympathy for everything and anything, seemingly without discern. It’s almost as if the writers don’t know what to do with him, so he just does a little bit of this and a little bit of that. In this episode he plays some square-jawed Inspector Clouseau, sneaking around trying to discover what really won’t amount to anything in an episode or two. Just more stalling while the show refuses to address anything the previous two seasons were building toward. Earth? Eh. Cylon war? Oh well. Hell, even the five unseen Cylon models? Well now that Xena is on ice it seems that’s also on hold. We’re just floating through space, wasting time.

So instead of wasting more time, I’ll sum up the episode. Athena meets with Caprica Six and tells her to cooperate to gain favor with the humans. Six then hallucinates her own Baltar and kisses him. He exposes her for her true reason for being on the Galactica and that’s because she secretly wants to be human. This is overseen by Roslin who wonders who the hell Six was talking to and who the hell is still watching this dreck. Helo snoops around and discovers Dr. Robert has a history of killing Sagittarons and it’s still the same here but nothing comes of it. Robert gets arrested, Adama thanks Helo and we’re one more wasted episode toward an inevitable third season letdown of a finale.

So Captain Obvious and company settled in for our favorite Friday night activity – Battlestar! After last week’s sharkjump-worthy Oprah fest we were happy to see things getting back on track for Adama and company. Namely the potential for explosions, death or at the very least some actual space travel and Cylon activity.

Now sure, it’s not like we’re counting but we haven’t seen a Cylon raider in weeks. We haven’t seen anyone threaten the fleet with a stolen nuke in even longer. Episodes nowadays are all about emotions and shit, something that was blessedly absent from a lot of the first two seasons. But this is the new Battlestar where interpersonal relationships are far more important than, oh, actually trying to get to Earth so we’ll take what we can get.Imagine the smiles across our faces when in the first 10 minutes we see more Cylon plot than the previous week in entirety! And it keeps getting better, too. Turns out the humans are running out of food and finding algae from some planet on the other side of a radiation-plagued star cluster is their only hope to a good meal. Problem is navigating through, as they can’t do it in one jump so they decide to have the pilots lead the ships with raptors, first having them jump into the life-threatening cloud, finding the next jump coordinates and then jumping back out. Unfortunately they’ll be blind in the cloud, not to mention the whole ‘dying from radiation poisoning’ thing so time is of the essence.

The subplot this week is discovering Kat is actually a drug runner named Sacha. Her dealer Enzo recognizes her which tips off Kara who busts her on it. Turns out she stole the Louanne Katraine name during the Cylon attack to escape. She begs Kara not to go to Adama with the news.

So Tigh returns to the bridge to keep an eye on things. In the end they only lose a couplefew ships and Kat, torn between her old life and the new one she’s fabricated decides her true identity is the viper pilot and sacrifices her health to ensure the civilian ship’s safety. She emerges from the star cluster all flavors of fucked up and collapses on the flight deck after returning to raucous applause from the crew.

In Cylon news, Baltar has figured out Xena’s plan of killing herself over and over to gain insight of what exists beyond death. Turns out she sees the other 5 Cylon models in that gray area so Baltar encourages her to keep doin it so he can find out if he’s a Cylon afterall and not a traitorous piece of shit with neither morals or a conscience. Captain Obvious thinks he can be both without issue. It’s a lot like playing Grand Theft Auto and trying to launch yourself into orbit on a motorcycle. You keep dying but you gotta keep at it, just to see if it can be done. In the meanwhile Baltar and Xena accost the hybrid stealing a scene from Minority Report in discovering a clue to finding Earth, Jupiter’s pasties in a cow’s eye or some shit. However brief, those were the Cylon developments for the week.

Back on the Galactica Kat is in sickbay the medical unit dying. Kara swings by for a second to tell her she’s all brave and to give her a bunch of sleeping pills to kill herself with. Then Adama swings by and tells her she was like a daughter to him, something he’s also told Kara. Makes you wonder if that’s just some line he whips out when he has nothing better to say. He makes her honorary CAG and she croaks, bringing to a close another retarded conflict for Kara. Now she only has personal fights with Lee, Anders, Tigh, possibly Dee and Adama to resolve.

But that can wait for next week, when we see a return of Al Brother Cavil and the first actual Cylon/Human conflict in weeks!

I swear to the gods the writers of Battlestar are trying to lose me as a fan. Maybe it’s my bloodthirsty, masculine warrior side that is crying out for stuff blowing up or maybe it’s my dainty, feminine side wishing beautiful, stylish things would explode. Either way I settled in for this week knowing full well there wouldn’t be a ton of action but little did I know I was being set up to watch As The Galaxy Turns starring the Adamas and some random womens.

So tonight’s episode lasted an hour while the actual events occurring in the episode, real time, lasted 15 minutes. So we’re starting with a 4:1 ratio of nonsense to reality already. Coupled with the fact that there were about eight million flashbacks we do the appropriate math and end up with a 14.3:9:1 quotient which translates into a trip down memory lane for very little real effect. Emotional styrofoam, as it were.We enter to see Lee and Helo boxing in present day on Galactica. Colonel Tigh, our favorite cycloptic alcoholic referees. While they fight we fade in and out of Lee flashing back to the early days on New Caprica, hereout referred to as NewCap as I’m already tired of typing the full name and after this episode, hopefully, we won’t hear about it much. Lee’s reminiscing about Kara who in present day wakes up next to on-again off-again husband Anders, gets dressed and tells him she’s still not sure what she wants but isn’t ready to do married life yet. She heads down to ringside to watch Lee fight but ends up in Helo’s corner, an obvious statement that she and Lee are still at odds.

Flashback to NewCap by Lee as he sees Kara and Anders walking toward him. What does it mean? We won’t find out until the very end so back to present day we go as Helo gets a clean shot on Lee, sending him sprawling to the floor. He’s just about to stay down for the count when Kara slides his way and tells him to get up, so of course he does but the chain-smoking Doc calls the fight, saying Lee can’t continue. Poor Lee.

Lee is going to leave when Kara comes up to him from behind and challenges him to a fight, we go to the opening credits from there. OMG, they are going to fight! Maybe something will explode! But then again, maybe not.

We return to NewCap and more backstory about how Lee and Kara are all looking at each other. Back and forth. Looking looking looking. I already start tiring of what I know is just leadup to something inevitably happening between the two of them but the show hasn’t the decency to just let it happen and move on to blowing things up. Nope, we get an hour of film school project fodder, boy and girl looking back and forth ad nauseum.

Back in present day Adama gets to explain to Roslin what the fights are all about, basically giving the crew an outlet for their aggression and unresolved feuds. You leave your tags at ringside so rank doesn’t exist in the ring. Roslin blabs about how her dad loved the fights so she does too. Yay giving a character other than an Adama or Starbuck something to say in the episode. Too bad it was a throwaway addition.

Hotdog challenges Starbuck while Lee smolders. More flashes back to more wistful glances on what we next learn is the groundbreaking and our only glance at Balter this episode. It was a simpler time, a time of new beginnings and a lot of glances between Starbuck and Lee. We also get our senior citizen audience interest piece in Adama and Roslin flirting. As if I could lose more interest in this episode, there they go.

Finally a bit of substance arises and we find out Adama initially refused to let the Chief and Cally go have their kid on NewCap, keeping them stationed aboard Galactica. In the end it was a mistake as Chief was stuck planetside while Adama fled after the Cylons reappeared. But at the time Chief was upset as he hadn’t read the spoilers yet so he had no idea what was to come. With Roslin’s help, Adama eventually comes around and lets the Chief settle. A mistake in hindsight, which leads Adama to challenge the Chief to a match back in present day. “Chief,” he begins, “get your fat lazy ass in here.” The bell is just ringing and Chief turning around when Adama blindsides him and drops him to the ground with a hook. It’s not an explosion but it will do, for now. “Get up,” Adama quips, “we’re just getting started.”

Huzzah!

Back on NewCap we continue with the Lee/Starbuck almost doing something inexplicable but mercifully get back to present day as Adama and Chief pummel each other. Adama taunts Chief and then fakes him out, drawing the Chief toward him pretending to be winded and then 1-2s him to the mat. Kara uses it as an excuse, saying the old man still has his chops and knows when to make a move, unlike his son. Ooooh, burn!

We return to NewCap and finally get somewhere with the Lee/Starbuck flashbacks as they’re both drunk and their respective dates are out for the night. Will something finally happen? In short, yes. But not before Adama gets his ass handed to him by a second-winded Chief who beats him without mercy. Adama falls, then is helped back up by Chief and Tigh and gives a fancypants speech about how he gave people too many breaks back in the day and let them go before the fight was really over. He “let this family disband and paid the price in lives, something that can’t happen again.” Then he wanders off to stuff his liver back into his abdomen.

The crowd starts to dissapate when Starbuck realizes she hasn’t had her fight with Lee yet, so she calls him out and the crowd gets back together to watch, Anders and Dualla coming to ringside to watch their lovers go at it. I lean back and take a long sip of Pepsi as I know we’re in for flashback overload at this point. I’ll be kind and only highlight the twelve hours of flashbacks I had to endure.

Starbuck and Lee are alone and drunk after the groundbreaking party. Lee asks if life with Anders on NewCap is what she really wanted for the rest of her life. They kiss, they frak and then realize what they’ve done. “What are we gonna do?” Starbucks asks. Lee responds that they’ll tell their mates what happened and live happily ever after together. Uh-huh. And maybe Tigh will grow back his eye and monkeys will fly out of his manic depressive ass.

Lee rises, no pun intended, and screams out to the desert night that he loves Kara and doesn’t care who frakking knows. He won’t stop til Kara does the same so she reciprocates, saying she loves Lee. This was truly the gayest moment shared by two straight actors in the history of television and my vote for the precise moment this show jumped the shark.

Next morning Lee wakes up alone, heads into town and finds his father who tells him Kara got married to Anders. Lee gets all salty, runs into the couple and congratulates Sam saying “Good luck, you’ll need it” while giving Kara the stinkeye the whole time. C’mon, Lee, you knew what this was going in – mediocre writing on an otherwise outstanding show. Too bad you didn’t get the memo.

The two fighters fall together in the middle of the ring and everyone falls out, seeing the fighting is over. “I missed you,” Kara says. “I missed you too,” says Lee.Captain Obvious? I missed the Cylons. And explosions.

End credits.