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Marek

Battlestar Galactica Final Season Thread

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Yeah BSG has been suffering from a slightly lessened but still present case of Heroes syndrome, where everyone's roles and allegiances and goals change so often that you can't remember what has happened or who is doing what, to the point that you don't know if the characters even know anymore.

Lampshaded in the latest episode :tup:

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Aye, but a particularly in-character and subtle lampshade!

Nice episode by the way. Good to see Tom Zarek again (I met him in real life!), though I kinda had hoped him to be one of the 'good guys' now. Pity that Baltar is in preachin-mode again. And a shocker of an ending! ;)

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Liked that episode, just a shame the mutiny was put to bed so easily and now it's back to skulduggery.

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Christ, I wish someone would teach Adama how to hold a rifle. The guy's been in the military for decades, it's a disgrace.

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Yup, shit be kicking off. Gaeda is sooooo dead....

Heh, I found Adama's laisez faire weapon handling kind of amusing. It's like he just doesn't give a shit any more.

Edited by DanJW

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It's improving, definitely. I've been fairly indifferent towards BSG since mid-way through season 3, but the latest episode was good.

Bit too Trek at times for me, but still, they're getting the tension back in there that we all loved originally. (Well I did...)

Nice that Adama and the Prez tongue each other in public now, too. That was starting to get ridiculous.

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This episode was so amazing, making up for everything the previous ep was not. I mean... this episode had... EVERYONE running around in corridors with guns. Lee in a SUIT with a gun. Adama and Tigh with GUNS. They had a jail break and everything. Hell yes! :tup:

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So,

Gaeta survives, right?

Dan called it on page 2, sort of.

Time to take out the trash and get back on track. I wonder what Tyrol was so surprised about at the end of the episode though, it looked like scorch marks or something?

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Huh what? Gaeta seems total dead meat to me? If he survives I'm going to be very disappointed. That would instantly make the last episode completely pointless. (Thought the episode was brilliant in every way, btw. Best episode in a very long time.)

Ragarding Tyrol, apparently the ship is both metaphorically and literally tearing apart from the inside. :shifty:

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I think Cigol was just being cute, Marek. Gaeta's dead alright.

With Tyrol, I got the impression that he was having a vision/projecting, but we didn't see all of it yet. I could be wrong of course.

It was a great episode I agree, but now that the political turnoils are sorted out, I can't say I'm not keen to see what happens next. Caville is out there somewhere (and so is Ellen presumably).

Oooh, I just had a thought. What if Tigh's poison tea doesn't totally kill cylons?! Silly Tigh, always check the pulse.

tip: never let Tigh make the tea or coffee. It's terrible, he adds too much sweetener.

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I'm curious to see if any of the last few episodes matter.

I mean, if they had just stricken these episodes from the record, and Gaeta and Zarick had just never made another appearance during the run of the show except in crowd shots or whatever in a hypothetical series finale, would anyone have noticed?

We've had all of this cool revolution military coup business, but now are we just back to where we were before the last two or three episodes, with Adama unequivocally in control and "unrest in the fleet" over siding with the Cylon rebels?

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It does smack a bit of the old "status quo is restored, hooray!"

However, the Quorum has been wiped out, so government might have to start over. What this will do is probably force Roselyn out of her stupor. But then I'm also expecting Roselyn to die soon (the prophesies said she would die before reaching their new home, not before reaching Earth specifically).

In the meantime all political opponents to the Roselyn/Adama hegemony are handily removed, allowing them to do whatever they want now with little argument.

Also we saw what might be a genuine change of heart for Gaius. Actual remorse, and feelings of responsibility. Is he in danger of growing up? I hope we get some more Virtual Six and Virtual Baltar before the series ends.

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Excellent episode! Really, really heartwrenching. I loved it.

This totally had to happen though, the whole coup thing. Zarek's arc had to be played out, otherwise there would have been way too many loose ends. The status quo has been reached again, though, but I think now's the time for the other Cylons to enter the fray again, for the final confrontation.

Seeing how they resolved the political story in the previous couple of episodes, I have great expectations in their ability to give the series a satisfying ending. Can't wait!

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Not a bad examination, but anyone that thinks Gaeta turned 'bad' or 'evil' is missing the point of the series entirely. Gaeta's actions were entirely based on trying to do the right thing. His judgement is just at odds with that of Adama et al. This is how real life works: everyone disagrees while also thinking they are more in the right than the others. There is no good and evil, just differing opinions. This is what we call 'tragedy'.

Gaeta just got more extreme in his method because he's desperate to prove to himself that he is in the right, following the Number 8's big reveal in the webisodes (and all the other minor tragedies that have befallen him). That and he's kind of lost his faith in everyone else. I'd say the episode was a study in uncompromising idealism.

Just before he gets shot, Gaeta's leg stopped hurting. Why? It was a symbol of his feelings of guilt. It stops hurting because he knows he tried to do the right thing. It didn't matter how it turned out, just as long as he knew he tried his hardest in good faith.

It kind of pisses me off that the audience is so inured to childish morality fiction that they immediately start labelling people as good-guys and bad-guys when they come to blows, like they were wearing white and black cowboy hats or something :tdown: Fuck you, io9 commentors.

Edited by DanJW

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Oh god, I didn't bother reading the comments. Never do with popular blogs, it's a waste of precious seconds.

I don't think the piece itself was that unfair, though the headline doesn't help. People were passing the link around on twitter with "Hey, don't be a Gaeta hater" :)

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Telltale designer Chuck Jordan always has good writeups on Lost and BSG. I don't always agree with his assessment but they're usually worth reading. Here's his for this week's BSG.

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As much as I hated Gaeta in the end, I really felt bad for him at the end of this latest episode. The webisodes really bring insight to his character and definitely changed the way I saw him during the mutiny.

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Interesting how Gaeta's character is perceived by different people; I was really sad that he was executed. He had the balls to start a full-scale coup in order to do what he believed to be right, and he'd been through a lot (his very dangerous double-dealing on New Caprica for example).

I didn't feel anything for Zarek, however. Having been written into the whole BSG canon as a terrorist, to my mind he had to be killed before the end of the series. I don't think slaughtering the Quorum was entirely necessary to the story, and it was done purely to cement the viewer's dislike for and distrust of Zarek if you ask me -- and as a mechanism for Gaeta to begin his process of regret.

Both interesting characters and well played. :tup:

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