by Malinda Lo
Last night I didn’t catch the season finale of The L Word. No, instead I watched the season finale of Battlestar Galactica, and damn if I wasn’t totally floored by the last five minutes! (If you haven’t seen the finale yet, you might want to skip this blog posting because there are spoilers ahead!)
My thoughts, in random order:
1. Starbuck, Starbuck, Starbuck!! Did Lee Adama really see Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff) in the last few seconds of the episode, or was that all a hallucination? Sackhoff is signed on for the next season, but who knows how exactly she will fulfill her contract. (I don’t think an affair with Number Six is in the works, unfortunately.)
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2. Earth is on the horizon? Starbuck (or at least Lee’s hallucinatory vision of her) told Lee: “I’ve been to earth. I know where it is, and I’m gonna take us there.” The journey to the elusive Earth has been the central driving plot of the series from day one, and I am really excited about the possibility of finally getting there, but also a bit concerned about how it will affect the series. Because getting to Earth sounds a lot like getting to the end, and a lot of signs point to the fourth season being the final one.
3. Did anyone else totally dig that scene with Number Six (Tricia Helfer), Sharon (Grace Park) and Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) together in the cell? The image of the three of these women together was just so powerful: BSG really does their ladies right.
4. Four of the final five cylons revealed! Some fans have been speculating the the four people who were revealed to be cylons are not really cylons, but executive producer Ron Moore told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:”These are four of the final five, which puts them in a separate category from everybody else. … A part of next season’s storylines will uncover how they came to be who they are and the specifics of that.” It struck me that these four cylons have been placed in positions in which they are the direct support for Very Important People. If your right-hand man (or woman) is a cylon, what does that say? How is that going to change things?
5. “All Along the Watchtower.” The Bob Dylan song played a key role in last night’s episode, and BSG composer Bear McCreary has explained on his blog that the version you hear in the show is his own cover of it, with his brother, aka Bt4, doing the vocals. When the four cylons started speaking the lyrics (in a way that was done very well; it could have been extremely cheesy but it completely worked for me), it just clicked: These four people are all linked together, and the song, which has been playing in snippets over the past few episodes, triggered their dawning awareness of who they are.
The lyrics, by the way, are really interesting, and you should take a look if you’ve forgotten them. They speak clearly to the themes of class struggle that have emerged during Baltar’s trial, as well as the cylons’ complicated spirituality.
6. Baltar’s trial and Lee Adama’s testimony was riveting – Lee totally sold me on his argument for why Baltar should be acquitted. I have to admit that I have never thought Baltar is as evil as Laura Roslin thinks he is; to me he has always just seemed to be kind of a blundering but brilliant guy who has given into his weaknesses (Number Six) one too many times. I kind of pity him, but I don’t think he should be thrown out of the airlock or anything. It’ll be really fascinating to see if he becomes a leader of the oppressed masses in Season 4.
Speaking of which, Sci Fi has renewed BSG for a 22-episode fourth season, but it is not slated to premiere until 2008. It will be a long wait, but thankfully in the fall we will at least get the direct-to-DVD movie featuring the entire cast (including, I am assuming, Starbuck). According to Moore: “It’s really just a couple of extra episodes for the fourth season that will air earlier than the rest of the season, sometime in the fall. They’ll come out on DVD the next day.” The movie flashes back to the Pegasus and the very cool Admiral Cain (Michelle Forbes) and is tied in somehow to the fourth season.
In another tidbit of exciting news, Moore also revealed that they are considering how they can bring Lucy Lawless back in her role as the cylon D’Anna Biers: “We’re developing a storyline dealing with D’Anna and what she saw and who she was talking to. We haven’t talked to [Lucy Lawless] about it and she was just cast in a pilot, which makes it tricky. But it’s something we would like to look at.” Cross your fingers!
