The finale to BSG season 3
Mar. 30th, 2007 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grinninfooleAgain, don't bother reading this if you don't care, or if you don't want spoilers.
Each problem is serious. Overlapping the two, as the show's creators have done, only makes them worse. For now, I shall wait (9 months...) and see what they do. They might be able to pull the fat out of the fire, but I do not have the faith in them that I did after first season, or even after second.
This episode featured one of my favorite scenes in the whole series so far in Lee's testimony on the stand in Baltar's trial. Lee was angry, impassioned, eloquent, and finally came out and said what he's been thinking for three years. I'm really happy that he brought up incidents that had happened throughout the series. I'm glad that Lee is still bothered by the Olympic Carrier incident, and that someone still finds it remarkable that he has was allowed to get away with mutiny, that his father got away with treason, and that Helo and Tyrol got away with murder. I also really liked the the interactions between Adama and Roslin, Lee and Lambkin, and Baltar and Gaeta (he went from "oh, Felix, what are you doing?" to "Butterfingers!" in less than a minute.)
And, Starbuck is back, and something about her facial expression and the tone of her voice was just heartbreakingly sweet.
However....
The episode has two problems, which synergize unfortunately and which undermine (partially if not completely) our suspension of disbelief in the show.
First problem: All Along The Watchtower. This is, of course, a song by Bob Dylan (and I like it), so why do four of the characters hear it in their heads? I have heard a number of theories to explain this (space probes from earth, the series is set in the far future, cosmic coincidence) and I don't know if one of them has been declared true by the creators. The crux of the problem with using the song remains regardless of the 'in-show' explanation for its use. (On a meta level, Ron Moore and the other creators thought it was a good idea.) As viewers, the song connects the fantasy setting of the show to our here and now, and opens up such questions as: what does this song mean to the characters? The song is in English, and they understand it, so does this mean that the characters have been speaking English all this time? (Obviously, the show is performed in English, but this is a story occuring in a time and place quite different from our own--maybe with no connection to our real history at all, maybe in the past or future, but certainly light years away from us, so we have to presume that, really, these characters aren't actually speaking English, and their real language is simply represented as English so that we can understand them.) Colonial society, while sharing some points of cultural reference with America today, spans a dozen planets, has over a thousand years of recorded history and technology of which we can literally only dream (e.g. artificial gravity). Yet, they speak early twentyfirst century American style English? Even setting that aside, what connection do the lyrics have to the characters and their situation? And would anyone else recognize the song?
When we get down to the brass tacks of how these characters could be hearing this song, it gets worse. If, as I have read others allege, Ron Moore and company do not intend to explain it, but simply call it a 'coincidental' creation by a Colonial musician, my point about language becomes, for me, an insurmountable obstacle. Imagine, if you will, that the song had been, say, an Umm Kulthum or a Celia Cruz ballad in Arabic or Spanish. Would Tyrol and the others have still be spacily reciting snippets from it? For that matter, why a Dylan song? Why not Lucky Star by Madonna or Hit Me One More Time Britney Spears? If this doesn't seem absurd to you, imagine someone in the world today happening to exactly recreate a poem originally written by a Sumerian scribe 4000 years ago in ancient Sumerian.
If, as I have suspected, the show takes place very far in the future, one has to wonder how/why Bob Dylan's music and lyrics weathered the test of time. Again, how much ancient music still matters to us today? Some of it does, of course, but only what's preserved (in translation) in religious texts. Bob Dylan's All Along The Watchtower is still resonating with colonial society all those years from now, is it?
All of the theories that I have heard run up hard against these twin problems of language and meaning. How did they come to hear this particular song, how do they understand it, and why would they care?
[as an aside, I also fetl embarassed for the actors having to deliver the lyrics as lines, which also breaks me out of the show.]
Problem Two: Tyrol, Tigh, Anders and Tori are cylons???
First off, in this interview Ron Moore states flatly that they really are cylons, so any unreliable narrator ideas go out the window. Moreover, he says that he decided that they were cylons during the third season, so this really does come out of left field. In Tigh's case, his incredulity seems right on the money: after forty years and service in two wars, how the hell could this possibly be true? Ron Moore says, simply, that these four cylons are 'different' from the others, and that there is backstory we don't know.
Unfortunately, this explanation is simply bad faith on Mr. Moore's part. Of course, there is backstory we don't know--he's chosen to withhold it. In doing so, however, he has forgotten perhaps the most basic principle of storytelling, and of the suspension of disbelief. The series opened (and still opens) with text informing us that the cylons were created by humans as, essentially AI slave labor, and that about 40 years earlier, they rebelled. That's all we know. It's the bedrock premise of the series. If we accept it, we can move on and enjoy the show. If we don't, we shrug and watch something else, perhaps wondering what anyone sees in BSG.
The revelation that Tigh, especially, is a cylon contradicts everything that we know about the show, everything that we were told right at the beginning, everything that we implicitly had to accept to enjoy the show. If we would just trust them about these basic facts, they would tell us a delightful story. With this new development, Ron Moore and the others have reneged on that bargain and violated that trust. If we can't trust them to tell us anything about the premises of the show, then anything could happen and 'make sense' in the show's internal logic. Why only five more cylons? Why not have aliens appear and save everybody? Why not have Kara fall wildly in love with Leoben (I don't mean the Leobon in her visions in Maelstrom, I mean the one who kidnapped a child and kept Kara locked away to get her to 'love' him.) It's incredibly creepy and very much against the character of Kara that has been established heretofore, but why can't the writers just decide that there are these incidents in Kara's past that we just don't know about that lead her to be open, nay yearning, to become Leoben's love toy. Or, why not simply tell us that Roslin and Billy were lovers all along, and they just didn't tell us? Such 'developments' would seem shockingly out of character and would strike us as 'fake', as unbelievable.
It's true, of course, that Mr. Moore may know what he's doing, but this revelation is NOT something that's been coming all along. Instead, Mr. Moore says in the above interview that he decided to make these four cylons during third season. If he can change his mind about this, why not about anything else? If anything goes, if we can't even rely on our basic premises, how can we continue to believe this stuff?
And, Starbuck is back, and something about her facial expression and the tone of her voice was just heartbreakingly sweet.
However....
The episode has two problems, which synergize unfortunately and which undermine (partially if not completely) our suspension of disbelief in the show.
First problem: All Along The Watchtower. This is, of course, a song by Bob Dylan (and I like it), so why do four of the characters hear it in their heads? I have heard a number of theories to explain this (space probes from earth, the series is set in the far future, cosmic coincidence) and I don't know if one of them has been declared true by the creators. The crux of the problem with using the song remains regardless of the 'in-show' explanation for its use. (On a meta level, Ron Moore and the other creators thought it was a good idea.) As viewers, the song connects the fantasy setting of the show to our here and now, and opens up such questions as: what does this song mean to the characters? The song is in English, and they understand it, so does this mean that the characters have been speaking English all this time? (Obviously, the show is performed in English, but this is a story occuring in a time and place quite different from our own--maybe with no connection to our real history at all, maybe in the past or future, but certainly light years away from us, so we have to presume that, really, these characters aren't actually speaking English, and their real language is simply represented as English so that we can understand them.) Colonial society, while sharing some points of cultural reference with America today, spans a dozen planets, has over a thousand years of recorded history and technology of which we can literally only dream (e.g. artificial gravity). Yet, they speak early twentyfirst century American style English? Even setting that aside, what connection do the lyrics have to the characters and their situation? And would anyone else recognize the song?
When we get down to the brass tacks of how these characters could be hearing this song, it gets worse. If, as I have read others allege, Ron Moore and company do not intend to explain it, but simply call it a 'coincidental' creation by a Colonial musician, my point about language becomes, for me, an insurmountable obstacle. Imagine, if you will, that the song had been, say, an Umm Kulthum or a Celia Cruz ballad in Arabic or Spanish. Would Tyrol and the others have still be spacily reciting snippets from it? For that matter, why a Dylan song? Why not Lucky Star by Madonna or Hit Me One More Time Britney Spears? If this doesn't seem absurd to you, imagine someone in the world today happening to exactly recreate a poem originally written by a Sumerian scribe 4000 years ago in ancient Sumerian.
If, as I have suspected, the show takes place very far in the future, one has to wonder how/why Bob Dylan's music and lyrics weathered the test of time. Again, how much ancient music still matters to us today? Some of it does, of course, but only what's preserved (in translation) in religious texts. Bob Dylan's All Along The Watchtower is still resonating with colonial society all those years from now, is it?
All of the theories that I have heard run up hard against these twin problems of language and meaning. How did they come to hear this particular song, how do they understand it, and why would they care?
[as an aside, I also fetl embarassed for the actors having to deliver the lyrics as lines, which also breaks me out of the show.]
Problem Two: Tyrol, Tigh, Anders and Tori are cylons???
First off, in this interview Ron Moore states flatly that they really are cylons, so any unreliable narrator ideas go out the window. Moreover, he says that he decided that they were cylons during the third season, so this really does come out of left field. In Tigh's case, his incredulity seems right on the money: after forty years and service in two wars, how the hell could this possibly be true? Ron Moore says, simply, that these four cylons are 'different' from the others, and that there is backstory we don't know.
Unfortunately, this explanation is simply bad faith on Mr. Moore's part. Of course, there is backstory we don't know--he's chosen to withhold it. In doing so, however, he has forgotten perhaps the most basic principle of storytelling, and of the suspension of disbelief. The series opened (and still opens) with text informing us that the cylons were created by humans as, essentially AI slave labor, and that about 40 years earlier, they rebelled. That's all we know. It's the bedrock premise of the series. If we accept it, we can move on and enjoy the show. If we don't, we shrug and watch something else, perhaps wondering what anyone sees in BSG.
The revelation that Tigh, especially, is a cylon contradicts everything that we know about the show, everything that we were told right at the beginning, everything that we implicitly had to accept to enjoy the show. If we would just trust them about these basic facts, they would tell us a delightful story. With this new development, Ron Moore and the others have reneged on that bargain and violated that trust. If we can't trust them to tell us anything about the premises of the show, then anything could happen and 'make sense' in the show's internal logic. Why only five more cylons? Why not have aliens appear and save everybody? Why not have Kara fall wildly in love with Leoben (I don't mean the Leobon in her visions in Maelstrom, I mean the one who kidnapped a child and kept Kara locked away to get her to 'love' him.) It's incredibly creepy and very much against the character of Kara that has been established heretofore, but why can't the writers just decide that there are these incidents in Kara's past that we just don't know about that lead her to be open, nay yearning, to become Leoben's love toy. Or, why not simply tell us that Roslin and Billy were lovers all along, and they just didn't tell us? Such 'developments' would seem shockingly out of character and would strike us as 'fake', as unbelievable.
It's true, of course, that Mr. Moore may know what he's doing, but this revelation is NOT something that's been coming all along. Instead, Mr. Moore says in the above interview that he decided to make these four cylons during third season. If he can change his mind about this, why not about anything else? If anything goes, if we can't even rely on our basic premises, how can we continue to believe this stuff?
Each problem is serious. Overlapping the two, as the show's creators have done, only makes them worse. For now, I shall wait (9 months...) and see what they do. They might be able to pull the fat out of the fire, but I do not have the faith in them that I did after first season, or even after second.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-03-31 10:37 am (UTC)We get to hear the characters seaking in English because the show has been created for an English-speaking audience. We have no idea what language they use to communicate.
I cna't think of many songs that are commonly used in English that started out in another language..Silent Night and O Tannenbaum are some, and they were written in a language that is not too far from Rnglish. Summertime, from Porgy and Bess, has been recorded in a lot of languages (http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Summertime_(song)#Translations), and was based on a Ukrainian lullaby (www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1998/219816.shtml), so it's probably the best example.
The guy who does BSG's music talked a bit about the thinking behind their choice in his blog (http://www.bearmccreary.com/html/blog/), and he was my source for "cosmic coincidence" idea. (That article goes into a lot of depth as to how he disguised the music so we wouldn't immediately recognize it.)
I have some of the same objections to Tigh being a Cylon, although it was pointed out to me that we only have Tigh's word when it comes to exactly how long he's been in service. Adama's known him for a bit over 20 years, and we don't know when, exactly, the Cylons created their humanoid forms, so maybe he's the first model. Still, it's a pretty weak retcon, in my opinion (especially since we've previously heard details about Tigh's family which appeared to be confirmed by other characters), and I agree with you that it slams hard on major premises of the show.
I've had a similar loss of faith. I think they'll be able to pull off a decent 4th. season, but I'm glad it isn't going much beyond that, and I am worried that the prequel about the creation of the Cylons they've been planning will turn out to be awful.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-31 11:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-31 04:44 pm (UTC)the point about the cylons being created to serve man... thats from the human perspective. what if 40 years ago, the cylons came to the colonies from someplace else and seeded the information on how to make these things? toasters are long lived, and could be going on the vampire rule book - i live forever, therefore my plans will come to fruition after a very very long time. what if they were part of another war and they needed a palce to build up their armies again? i donno, theres tons of different possiblities.
i AM sorry to hear that who the final five were (and remember we only have seen 4 of them to my knowledge) were chosen like a week before the episode airs. that sucks. i'm all for shooting from the hip, but geez i wish when something huge like this happens i could look back through the episodes and see where this was seeded. you aren't going to be canceled next season people! stop living in fear! plan ahead!
all in all, in 9 months...holy crap 9 months shit... we'll see what happens. maybe by then i'll have cable and i'll be able to see it live instead of stealing it through teh intar-tubes.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 10:03 pm (UTC)Don't have much of anything to say; just wanted to tell you that your planets icon is so made of win. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 11:57 pm (UTC)9 months!
Date: 2007-04-01 10:02 pm (UTC)I'm tempted into paraphrasing Romo's quote: They're going to find out Baltar's pregnant before we get to see what the hell happens with all these new threads.