Thursday, June 28, 2007

Okay, okay, okay, so I'm totally freaked out now

so i -finally- saw the season 3 finale of Battlestar Galactica.

and, plotwise, i figured on a fair amount of it (i couldn't help overhearing the gist of the spoilage, even though i studiously avoided seeking any out).

but the existential implications are freaking me out! maaaaaaan

"All of this has happened before, and all of this will--"

oh SHUT up.

it must be that cheesy hippie song they introduced (and yes, THAT was cheesy, i am sorry). it's, like, giving me acid flashbacks...of a past i never had...or did I?

i smell patchouli

it's coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE, i mean the ship.

wooOOOOoooo

13 comments:

R. Mildred said...

I kinda stopped even trying to follow BSG once I saw they'd made Starbuck into a tupping housewife.

It's like they let the fanficcers loose on the damn scripts.

queen emily said...

That really was a rubbish song. Put me *right* off that whole episode.

little light said...

I actually liked their cover, but it wrecked my suspension of disbelief, and I caught it from the first instance of "no reason to get excited" in the first act. It had people talking out of character, it put familiar Earth music written by a very personal musician for particular times in the Colonies, and then tried to make that...well, make sense. And super-important. And significant.
As background music in the climax? Fine. But that was just a bizarre writing/directing choice.
At that point, I got so dispassionate and analytical about the whole thing that when Big Spoiler happened at the end, I just sorta went, "hm."
Of course, there was also the tragic shortage of Sharon, but then, well, I always feel that way.

belledame222 said...

Yeah, what LL said. I -liked- the cover, but the sudden introduction of familiar pop culture into what was supposed to be such a heightened moment, plus that they'd never done it before...it was like, you know,

"Rudolph the Red Knows Rain, Dear."

Anonymous said...

I've been feeling crappy lately so I just spent the past week resting and watching this entire series; saw the last 2 eps yesterday. Ditto kinda liking the sitar-esque cover but not liking the sensation of being repeatedly jerked out of the Battlestar universe by a familiar piece of art woven through an entire ep like that. That device didn't really work for me, but I'm still very interested to see how they wrap everything up story-wise.

Anonymous said...

But *she*'s alive! Which has totally excited me all over again, and is kind of unusual since I've spent all three seasons to date desperately trying to will Helo out of the TV and into my bed.

Anonymous said...

Well, one of the things that needs to be taken into account is the deck-of-cards analogy (the one-eyed jack or king of diamonds, etc. -- each of the four had a match to an unusual court card, and there's the connection of the playing card deck to the Tarot in popular analysis), the watchtowers (you know, four, like in Enochian magic and, later, Wicca, and the fact that they gathered around a square in the sparring room) and the joker and the thief pair (Starbuck and Apollo, noting that both the joker and the thief can be regarded as forms of the Fool). Then there's the whole wheel aspect of the Tarot (ROTA, etc., and the circular form of the image that Starbuck kept painting, which also plays into the Sun trump, which signifies, to put it simply, the influx of divine influence), which plays into the "this has happened before" line.

The Tarot analogy could be pushed further: Saul Tigh being the Hanged Man, losing an eye and going through the sacrifice involving Ellen, etc.

So I don't think that the choice of song was really a pop culture reference. More of a complicated allusion, maybe. But I could be reading too much into it.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and there's the fact that in double-current hermeticism (Horus-Maat, in which you have the male and female currents in balance), the Wheel is known as the Crossroads (and there's the fact that the episode ends with going out to a view of the entire spiral galaxy, before coming in to earth), that the vipers are all Mark VIIs (trump VII = Chariot), that Apollo is in viper 3 when Starbuck finds him (trump III = Empress, attributed to Daleth, the "doorway" and path across the Abyss), etc.

But I suppose that with enough esotericism, one could find meaning in just about anything. :)

Anonymous said...

Ugh. Scratch that -- looks like only Apollo and Starbuck were in Mark VIIs. But that makes a bit more sense, I guess.

belledame222 said...

o, i get that there was supposed to be deep Meaning associated with that particular song. it just...jarred. as others have said: i would've been happier if they'd just played it over the credits and found some other way to get the four into the room.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I get that. I guess that for me, the history of the song helped it make sense as a choice.

But one other reason for using it, beyond all this, is that Dylan may have been inspired to write it partly by the Witch's Tower in St. Paul, MN. That's the same city in which Eddie Seidel, then 15 years old, committed suicide after the original BSG series was canceled.

A theatrical release was done shortly afterward, and there's a straight-to-DVD movie coming out to bridge the gap between seasons 3 & 4.

Anonymous said...

And evidently, they weren't sure about there being a season 4. From an interview about it (warning, major spoilers at that link):

Eick and Moore also confirmed that they are in the midst of developing a 2-hour standalone "Battlestar Galactica" film, which may be released between Seasons 3 and 4. If there is no Season 4, then the film, which would probably be released on DVD and air on Sci Fi, would not go forward.

In any case, the DVD movie would not be a conclusion of the show’s third-season cliffhanger finale, which they say will once again take the show in a shocking new direction.

"If you think about the end of Season 1 and the end of Season 2, both of those cliffhangers -- they weren't just of the 'Who shot J.R.' ilk. They actually turned the storytelling in a new direction." Eick says. "So what we’re doing at the end of this year, which involves Kara Thrace and others, is [taking the storytelling] in a different and unique direction from what’s come before."

(Heh. All of this has happened before, but we don't want it to happen again.)

Anonymous said...

lol