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| Monday, January 19, 2009 03:23 PM |
| (Last updated on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 03:05 PM) | | On the Viewer - Battlestar Galactica (Season 4.5, Episode 1 - "Sometimes a Great Notion") |
 by Fëanor |
My "live-blog" of the Season 4.5 premiere follows. Spoilers abound, so if you haven't seen the episode yet, for frak's sake, skip this post!
I love the slow, contemplative opening, showing the main characters and how they're reacting to finding Earth in this state.
Roslin gets back to Galactica, and there's a whole crowd waiting silently there for her, expectant. But she can't think of anything to say to them. Brutal.
Woah! Old school Cylon heads in the wreckage! The 13th Tribe were Cylons! Insane.
Poor Tigh! He's lost his only friend. Adama won't even talk to him.
Woah! Chief is having a vision of old Earth! He just saw the 2,000 year-old nuking of the planet. That was... odd.
Apollo and Dee again? That guy just can't make up his mind!
The ship whose signal they tracked here is Starbuck's ship... and Starbuck's still inside it. That's so disturbing and mind-blowing it even scared Starbuck's creepy Cylon stalker away!
Here comes Bob Dylan back again. The Final Five all have memories of Earth. But how?
Roslin is really not taking this well. The scene of her just sitting there burning the prophecy of Pythia is hard to watch, it's so intense and raw. Wow.
Starbuck just built a funeral pyre for her own dead body. That's not something you do every day!
I like that we didn't see Apollo's speech to the Quorum, but just heard about it afterwards in a conversation between himself and Dee. Well done! I think it would have ended up being melodramatic if we'd seen the actual thing.
I saw Dee's suicide coming, but it was still a powerful and effective scene. Man, this show is brutal.
Adama's drunk. Even he is just done with everything. Edward James Olmos is amazing. His scene in the morgue is fantastic.
It's pure chaos on the ship. People just sitting around with their heads in their hands, getting into fights for no reason. Good lord.
Did I mention that Olmos is amazing? His scene with Tigh is amazing, too. This show is fearless and relentless and uncompromising. Who would have ever thought there'd be a time when Adama would be the drunk and desperate one, and Tigh would be the sober, strong one?
Adama's speech too the fleet is a good one - strong and realistic and not corny - and they head off to find a new home. A Number Three plans to stay behind, because this will all happen again and again and again, and she wants off the merry-go-round. It's a powerful line.
And at the very end, we get the reveal on the identity of the final Cylon. Unexpected, interesting, and tragic. Will they bring her back somehow? Has she been resurrected somewhere?
A very emotional episode, very moving and effective and well acted. I'm more than curious to see where they go from here. I can't even guess where it might be. But I know it'll be fascinating. |
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