When did BG become about spooky Cylon cultural studies?
Half of this episode is great stuff, as Starbuck and Tigh let their internal bitterness and bile infect the rest of the Galactica crew, and Adama has to take harsh action to deal with it.
The other half, though …
Shows with mysteries have a terrible problem. Hold the mystery back too long, and the audience eventually gets tired of it, rejects it, is ready to move on. But if you reveal the mystery, or resolve it, you run the risk of alienating the audience who first got hooked on the show because of it.
To my mind, BG’s strengths have rested on two aspects: the human drama of wartime desperation, and the mysterious adversaries, the Cylons. The former continues, but the latter are becoming the objects of cheap sets, cheesy dialog, and general exemplars of why it doesn’t help to pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
The tension about the interface between Cylons and Humans was from that mystery. Why did Cylons do as they did? Could they be trusted? Could the Cylons who lived among us truly change?
By showing us so much of what’s going on with Cylons, by making them understandable, they lose much of that mysteriousness. Now they’re merely more human-looking aliens who spout strange philosophy but who aren’t really much different from Us Folk — and not in a metaphysical fashion, but more in a lack-of-imagination fashion.
Disappointing.
But keep up the tension on the human ships about What Will We Do To Survive, and the show remains at least a partial success.