"The five are close..."
"What?"
"I can feel them."
Well, Battlestar is back.
(Insert spoiler warning here.)
Wow. Episode one of season four is a prime example of why I love this show. The character development is just insanely phenomenal, especially given how many characters there are in this stellar cast. On every level, from the creators to the writers to the actors, this show has managed to embrace and portray the fact that every single human life is valuable. And no wonder, in this story the human race--just less than 40,000 survivors--is on the run, trying to preserve its very existence. Even some of the not-human lives are worth risking everything for in this universe.
Obviously this is a show in which death plays an integral and recurring role. What I truly admire about BSG is that even though rarely an episode goes by that someone doesn't die, no death is casual. Nine times out of ten the character that dies is someone we've known and followed for quite some time. I very much doubt all of the primary characters will finish out this season. President Roslin has, since the start, kept the current number of people in the fleet meticulously updated on her little dry erase board. It's a sad truth for her that she has to keep it in such a medium, but it is a constantly changing--and mostly decreasing--number. At the start of episode one of season four, one of the ships in the fleet is completely obliterated. The President's reaction is shock and dismay as she immediately calls up the name of the ship's captain and how many souls the fleet just lost with one blow from the Cylons. Even when we do rarely meet someone and lose them in the same episode, we are still given enough exposure to them to be able to feel the loss--or to at least understand how the remaining characters feel their loss.
As Apollo pointed out in the season three finale, many characters have sinned gravely and gotten away with it, even been forgiven, up to this point. What he didn't say, but what has become increasingly evident, is that even forgiven for their actions, everyone is still dealing with the consequences of what they have done, and you can see the reality of that weighing on each character every time a decision has to be made. Of course, that hardly means that the characters are learning the lessons they should be learning or subsequently making the right choices. That's what I find so fascinating about this series. These characters are truly human, there's not a one of them without flaws, and those flaws shape their every day. It is just amazing to me.
A recent interview I read mentioned that some of the actors revealed to be four of the final five Cylons are having a hard time coming to grips with this turn their characters have taken. Some of them lament that they didn't know where their character was headed because it would have caused them to play a scene differently if they had only known what their character truly was. I have to applaud the decision to keep it from the actors however. These characters had absolutely no idea they were Cylons. Having the actors have no idea as well means they played their characters as human as they could--which is exactly what the sleeper agent Cylons are programmed to do. I think it also adds a genuine sense of absolute shock for the characters having this revelation thrust upon them.
One character I have really come to enjoy during my rewatching of the series is that of Sam Anders. He started out as this confident professional Pyramid player who managed to pull his team together and form a resistance to the Cylons occupying Caprica after the initial attacks. He had no reason to assume his efforts would be successful or have any kind of lasting effort, but he became a rally point for all of the civilian survivors left on the planet. He managed to win over a hard sell like Starbuck to the point where she convinced the Admiral and the President to send a rescue operation back to Caprica for the survivors, despite the expense of life and supplies such a mission had to cause for such a potentially limited payoff. On New Caprica he quickly became one of the leaders of the insurgents and even his wife's infidelity couldn't really shake his cocky demeanor. But now he's a nugget--a Viper pilot newbie--and add to that the realization that he's truly a Cylon--it has left his completely shaken. The unflappable Anders has been flapped. He is completely out of his element, and I am loving it. I was a little concerned about Apollo leaving the service (more of that character development I keep yapping about), but I have to admit that having Anders step into the pilot world is really making up for it in my humble opinion.
I especially enjoyed his panic before getting in his Viper and joining the fray during the opening battle scenes. His uncertainty in flight was very well done. And his reaction to Starbuck's return. Oh man. The poor guy is really hoping she's the last Cylon, and even then he know's he probably still lost her once she finds out about him. Her line at the end, about if she found out he was a Cylon. Wow. You can almost hear the man's heart breaking.
Also, coolest moment of the entire episode: When Anders is facing off with the Cylon raider and can't get his weapons to fire, then the thing scans him and they get this close up of his eye, and you just see it flash red, and away go the Cylons. Hell yes.
So, there are my initial thoughts on the new season so far. Is it Friday yet? I am already geared up for the next episode!
Take care,
C
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