Finally all caught up (via Universal HD) with Season 4 of of Battlestar Galactica. Woot!
The season hasn’t, too my eye, been up to the better aspects of earlier seasons — too many WHAM! plot threads, and too many of them in turn settled way too abruptly (whether from running out of time or interest isn’t always clear). The mid-season climax is appropriately cliff-hanging, if not terribly imaginative.
I would say that the eventual shape of the conclusion of the series is becoming visible — but, honestly, they’ve been so willing to completely up-end expectations (for good and for ill) in the past, I wouldn’t lay any money on my guesswork.
The “Final Ten” start in January, to be preceded by ten “webisodes” (as between S.2-3). I am indeed looking forward to it.
(No spoilers in the post by intent, but anyone can feel free to spoil in the comments. You few people who aren’t caught up have been warned.)
Thought it was a bit of a shark jump.
Hope the final ten are as good as they should be.
The climax?
I wouldn’t say that. I mean, there were only so many possibilities *if* they were going to play the (SPOILERS!!!!) Earth card:
– It’s full of Humans.
– It’s full of Cylons.
– It’s full of someone else.
– It’s full of Humans, but it’s only 1980 here … wait, that’s been done.
– It’s a Garden of Eden.
– It’s a Nuclear Wasteland.
I was waiting for a loin-clothed Charleton Heston to ride up to them on a horse …
The question, of course, is what they do about it. Is the place actually habitable? If so, then how do they go about dealing with integrating Human and Cylon societies (which I think has been the ultimate question planned all along)? And … well, there’s still a Cylon civil war out there. What happens when the Bad Cylons show up?
Or there may well be some other twists that the writers have in mind, which I’ve certainly been poor about guessing in advance. Given the number of plot twists they’ve been inserting per episode, practically anything could happen … but if it turns out there wasn’t an “end state” in mind, it will be very disappointing.
And, of course, there’s the Fifth Hidden Cylon. It’s hard to think who it could be without it seeming wildly anticlimactic.
We’ll see.
Given the series record so far the question should be, “What would really break the characters now?”
Well, that’s true, too.
The problem is, even with so large a cast, it’s difficult to conceive of something that would be a real “gasp” moment. We’ve already had the “oh my gosh, that long-term character never realized until now, with us, that they are a Cylon” reveal with the Four. Doing it again would be repetitious, even if it’s one of the biggies (Roslin, Adama Sr or Jr, Starbuck).
Similarly, to discover that someone else in the regular cast is the One but has known it all along would seem odd if it’s a significant character (since we’ve already spent so much time in their heads), and goofy it it’s a minor character. (The only possible candidate can think of is the Richard Hatch character.)
I just hope that, like the Cylons, the writers/producers actually do “have a Plan.”