Looking Out To Sea

It’s too bad she won’t live! But then again, who does?

Coverville episode 381, from November 2007, contains a cover of All Along The Watchtower. The host does his very best to drive home the importance of this particular track to the ending of season three of Battlestar Galactica.

But it’s been a long long time since I last heard that track, and it totally escaped me when we got round to watching the season finale. I kept completing lines, thinking “this is funny, why are they all saying Dylan lyrics?”. Even when the song become part of the soundtrack I still didn’t make that leap. I am clearly an idiot.

But aside from that, exciting stuff! Now I really want to dive straight into season four but that would be bad. We should watch Razor first.

As always, spoilers beyond this point.

The middle of this series was pretty slack. Lots of “emotion” episodes, and not much Cylon action to advance the plot. The minor betrayal by the Six when she let Athena leave the Cylon ship with the baby was almost completely ignored. You’d think that would be a major and important event but clearly not quite as important as boxing. The incongruous American influence was really obvious in this series, in some really laughable ways. Who else refers to mixed-sex showering facilities as “co-ed”?! Anyway.

Things started to pick up when the trial loomed. The replacement lawyer was a blast. Turns out it was Badger in a purple jacket and sunglasses! It’s good to get a character that just breezes through everything as if he knew what was going to happen from the outset.

They tell ya, never introduce a godlike cypher to a work of fiction but it is, on occasion, hilarious.

I was a wee bit disappointed in the way they’re taking the Felix/Gaius relationship. I don’t know whether I slept through some important flash point but they really do seem to hate each other. What did Gaius whisper to him in the interrogation room? Why did Felix want to stab him? So it was as much a surprise to me as it was to Gaius Baltar when Felix lied in the witness box.

Starbuck has something happen to her, but we don’t know what. Though I’m perfectly willing to blame the psychic as such people are always trouble. Dwelling on a prophecy is worse than splitting up in order to stay safe. But anyway, she seemingly gets herself killed, in a very mysterious manner.

A random collection of people start hearing strange snatches of tune that they can’t quite make out. At the final moment it leads them a quiet gym room while there’s panic outside, and they come to the conclusion they are all Cylons. Saul Tigh seems to be the quickest on the uptake, and realises that this doesn’t change anything about who he is. The facts of his life get a bit more mysterious though — how could he have fought the Cylons in the first war if the humanoid Cylons weren’t created until after this war ended? The plot thickens…

Tyrol (trying hard not to think Tyrell Corporation here) is also revealed as the parent of a second human-Cylon hybrid child. I think he (and Cally) will take some time to come to terms with the news though. It’s interesting the way this Battlestar series is cleaving closer to the Second Variety plot. There’s another Dick story that I can’t quite pin down about a man who discovers he’s a machine who has ticker-tape running through a spool under a flap in his chest. He spends a great deal of time agonising over his condition and what would happen if he tampered with the tape. This also seems relevant but I can’t quite articulate why.

So while the power goes down across the fleet (interesting…) and the Gang of Four¹ are discovering they’re Cylons, Starbuck appears in the immediate vicinity in a clean, unexploded ship and a bunch of Cylon battleships start bearing down on them. How many of these are connected? Is Starbuck the final Cylon and has she really been to Earth (which still seems a very long way away, according to the galactic zoom at the very end)?

I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that we’ve only got half a series left in the house (after Razor). Maybe we’ll have a big BSG party next year when the DVD comes out, to watch the second half of season four.

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