Et Tu BSG?

I can't believe this is happening...

Now, however, things are looking grim. For those that have been missing out on the absolute best thing on TV, here's BSG in a nutshell (I really should devote some serious time to describing it properly, but that would take a book and overly long blog posts are against my religion):
BSG starts off with a set of 12 planetary systems that live in some sort of advanced technological state (they have spaceships and stuff) whose religion centers around a set of Gods and prophecies (sort of like ancient Greek/Norse/Roman mythologies). These "colonies" are reaping the benefits of a 40-year peace accord with the Cylons. The Cylons were AI machines that the colonies invented to do menial labor and serve humanity. They held an uprising and started a war (40 years ago). After an armistice was reached, the Cylons took off to a home world of their own and cut off all contact. In the really kewl miniseries pilot, the Cylons emerge after having infiltrated and crippled the colonies' defense system and launch a sneak-attack that destroys, essentially, all of humanity. After reemerging, it seems that the Cylons have found their own religion based on a single supreme being and, to be honest, BSG wastes most of season 2 beating us over the head w/ lame religious overtones as these 2 religions don't exactly jive w/ each other.

The attack leaves a bunch of people stuck in in-flight transports and fleeing all of the cities that have been nuked. Battlestar Galactica is an aging warship that was about to be decommissioned. In the original, it was something like the flagship, and this was a nice twist in the retelling. The commander of BSG (Bill Adama) tries to get his ship into the fight but is convinced at the last minute that since the entire fleet has been destroyed in the sneak attack, he should shepherd the remaining colonists to safety, since humanity faces extinction.

In this retelling there are a lot of gender reassignments, and they actually (imho) work out just fine. Boomer is not only a woman, but a Cylon double agent too. This sounds tough to swallow, but Boomer in the original was kind of a fringe character, and a complete tool. The new Boomer is also a serious hottie (#2 most smokin' on the show). Starbuck was (and is) the best fighter jock they have. In the new version, Starbuck has gone from a he to a she. It works though (imho) because she's pretty hard core. The new show pays homage to the old in many ways, and one is that the old Cylons and their ships (raiders and basestars) are shown as relics from the first war. The Cylons' big advent is that they are now controlled by versions that look very human. How human? Well, I mentioned that Boomer is really a Cylon (no one picked up on that as she was growing up apparently), and another Cylon is the hottest chick on the show. Tricia Helfer... OMG, that woman is smokin' and she's a toaster. *shrug*

OK, so this show has been kickin' ass with kewl plots (although more viper fighting would be nice), and special effects that are so good that they basically blend in and you forget that they're not real.
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Now the rub... This week, they killed Starbuck! They KILLED STARBUCK?!?!? What the hell? Her character has been in a downward spiral, and that's been entertaining, but she dove her fighter into a planet because she was ready to die? Come on! This is messed up. Now the writers are taking liberties that I don't think they should! I mean, come on! She was supposed to represent that hardcore badassness of humans vs. toasters.

This really pissed me off, and I feel like BSG may have just tanked. I think anyone who's with me ought to drop a note, and we'll send this up the chain to the douche bag writers. BSG doesn't need Starbuck, but turfing her like that his just BS (no G). I've seen some forums talking about this, and others seem more optimistic than I am. I'll be especially pissed off if it turns out that Starbuck is one of the final-five Cylons. That would mean that her character (previously the bastion of human badassness) was really just a toaster, and the number of badass viper pilots that are human would be either 1 or 0 (depending on whether you think Apollo is badass or a pantie waste)...
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*sigh* I used to look forward to BSG every week... :( Does anyone have a spin on this that makes it feel less shitty?

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 12:18:58 PST

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